Progressive hero Ta-Nehisi Coates (an atheist) is conflicted about whether to bring on the guillotines. From a recent interview with Vox:
When he tries to describe the events that would erase America’s wealth gap, that would see the end of white supremacy, his thoughts flicker to the French Revolution, to the executions and the terror. ‘It’s very easy for me to see myself being contemporary with processes that might make for an equal world, more equality, and maybe the complete abolition of race as a construct, and being horrified by the process, maybe even attacking the process. I think these things don’t tend to happen peacefully.’
Materialist ideas have entailments, including (1) God does not exist; (2) good and evil do not exist as objective transcendent ontological categories; (3) God, who does not exist, cannot endow men with inalienable rights; and (4) men are not image bearers of a non-existent God; they are jumped up hairless apes.
If there is no good and evil and no God-endowed rights, by what standard does the progressive define the eponymous “progress” they claim to want to achieve? Certainly, there is no transcendent standard. The answer is that progressives want what that want. Theirs is a political philosophy bound by nothing and defined by their unbounded will to power.
Coates rejects the ideas of the Declaration of Independence. A non-existent God does not endow men with the right to life and liberty. Jumped up hairless apes have no inherent rights. So why not lop their heads off if they get in the way of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ pursuit of the greater good – i.e., Ta-Nehisi Coates’ idiosyncratic take on economic and racial justice. After all, as every tyrant from Robespierre to Pol Pot knew, you’ve got to crack a few eggs if you’re going to make an omelet.