…advocacy of big government is by its very nature a quest for power and control, for the ability to use force against others—a cause that naturally attracts the bitter and intolerant.
…beneath all of these factors, there is something deeper, something more elemental. Something metaphysical.
I hate to say William F. Buckley was right, but I think it’s all about immanentizing the eschaton.
…For the secular leftist, the end state is social and necessarily political. It is all about getting everybody else on board and herding them into his imagined utopia.
—Robert Tracinski, “Why Is the Left So Angry?”
R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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Was it Buckley or Voegelin? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanentize_the_eschaton
It was Voeglin.
Charles Krauthamner’s definition of a liberal bears repeating, and often: “Someone who doesn’t care what you do as long as it’s mandatory.”
The immanentization of the eschaton for social and political ethics is regularly a method to legitimate a Foucaultian power subversion. As always, it is an example of equivocating theological terms and distorting meaning to suit political ends.