We should embrace liberté, égalité, and fraternité — not stupidity

HYSTERICAL conservatives increasingly blame the rise of so-called aggressive secularism for a plethora of societal ills while ignoring a far more pervasive problem — aggressive stupidity.

Last year the Pope warned us that “more aggressive forms of secularism” threatened “traditional values” while last week it was the turn of Conservative Party Chair, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, to caution that Europe was under threat from a rising tide of “militant secularisation”.

Asked to expand on how secularism — which, despite the rather alarmist prefixes consistently attached to it, is nothing more than a quaint belief in the importance of the separation of church and state — is heralding the end of civilisation as we know it, and its detractors suddenly become decidedly vague. After all, traditional values once comprised, among other horrors, the detention of single mothers in Catholic-run laundries and the placement of allegedly errant children in religious-run workhouses so, patently, they’re not all worth saving.