It's Wednesday, October 25, 2023.

I'm Albert Moeller, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from

a Christian world view.

Some ideas die a very hard death, even though they prove themselves to be unhelpful.

Many bad ideas have lives, half lives, they continue.

One of the dreams of the Enlightenment, one of the dreams of the modern age, has been

a cosmopolitan regime of enduring peace.

Now we are to seek peace, we are to pray for peace, but the reality is that in a fallen

and fractious world, peace is often illusory, and it is almost always temporary.

But as you're thinking about this Enlightenment dream, you need to understand that people

really believe, particularly the more liberal wing of the Enlightenment, beginning in the

18th century and beyond, they really did believe that reason, that human reason could be

deployed to prevent human violence.

That if people just had enough information, or if they were just met with sufficient

rational arguments, if a regime of rational people could be put in control, then violence

could be restrained and peace could be found among nations.

Now that wasn't true in the 18th century, it wasn't true in the 19th century.

There was a period of peace in Europe during those years, but the reality is that by the

time you come to the end of the 19th century, it is clear that there is no perpetual peace.

It's an illusion.

By the time you get to the 20th century, it is a murderous, even genocidal illusion.

But you see the illusion come up again and again and again.

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