Rousseauvian idealism recast the explanation of evil. Evil was removed from the human heart against which we contend with the help of religion and was attributed to the institutions of existing society, to civilization itself. In recent years we see many manifestations of this. For example, the New York Times’ 1619 Project which says America was created on the basis of the institution of black slavery. The institution of marriage, which limited marriage to vows between a man and a woman, discriminates against same sex marriage. Pedophiles are deprived of sexual love between adults and arbitrarily defined children. Normalizing perversity is seen as liberation from discriminatory institutions. Civilization’s emphasis on moral character as a constraint on evil was replaced with the emphasis that evil resided in the institutions of civilization. Wokeness is now a pursued goal of profit-driven corporations such as Disney and Budweiser.

Paul Craig Roberts