I have always been intrinsically and instinctively opposed to oppression, seeing and perceiving that the world could attend to the welfare demands of many, if not most, of the inhabitants of the world without much sweat. My idea of a life worth living is to always identify with the underdogs and keep a tab on their sufferings and how those could be ameliorated. This naturally puts me in the progressive camp of politics in terms of the organization of society, even if I do not play partisan politics, with the idea that society could be better organized to attend to the welfare needs of the (mass) of the people. And the philosophical starting point and standpoint has to be liberalism - the idea that humans are so diverse as to want to have the opportunity of listening to each and every one as part of that diversity. It was such an interesting and insightful perspective to humans’ reality for me as I soaked in the basic respect for human dignity intrinsic to these platforms, affording me the chance of wanting to listen to others and be concerned about them and their interests.

To be sure, humanity has benefited immensely and tremendously and indeed remarkably from the development outreaches of these platforms over the years as to become for many the representation of that non-limitation of human, evidence of what height and depth the human mind could bring about in terms of development and organization ad infinitum, making almost the argument for the limitlessness of humans and humans’ minds. And here is where I part ways as this was way an overreach on the fundamentals of both liberalism and progressive politics. How could we be talking of the limitlessness of humans when the reality is that humans are limited in every possible way in the long run due to imperfection and fallibility? How could humans with limited knowledge and limited capacity even for knowledge be limitless?

Here liberalism rather than following its starting point of deriving from God whose creation provides the diversity making for the need to have a thousand flowers bloom, becomes anti-God, preferring to invest humans with sovereignty and making it possible to contemplate existence outside of God.

With human beings invested with sovereignty and the absence of the need to look for direction from or even recognize the existence of a higher power, the implication has been a progressive and steady decline into everything anti-God and opposed to God. Now we know that humans pretend that there are many gender(s) and sex(es) in the world beyond male and female even as nobody has been able to show a human that is truly neither a male nor female. The uselessness of the transgender argument is plainly out there as there is nothing concrete to the experimentation with human body development under the unceasing application and influence of drugs and surgeries.

The argument here is that there is no philosophical justification for anti-God sentiments and actions under liberalism, properly so called, as it even immerses itself in and originates and luxuriates from the divine provision of diversity in the world. How could respect for diversity through a philosophical acknowledgement of such diversity translate into a fight with and against God, the originator and owner and creator of diversity? For many of us, being liberal is even an act in the service of the diversity provided by God and we do not see any contradiction in being a liberal and believer in God at the same time. Those who are overreaching themselves are the ones setting up anti-God sentiments for themselves as if that would further advance liberalism.

Real liberalism rests on the idea and belief in God and there is enough reason not to get involved in the overreach madness if only one is truly interested in and wants to find satisfaction in real liberalism!

** Olaitan, Professor of Political Science, was Vice-Chancellor, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State.

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