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Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason or simply the Enlightenment)[note 2] was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and effects.[2][3] The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.[4][5]

The Enlightenment has its roots in a European intellectual and scholarly movement known as Renaissance humanism and was also preceded by the Scientific Revolution and the work of Francis Bacon, among others. Some date the beginning of the Enlightenment back to the publication of René Descartes' Discourse on the Method in 1637, featuring his famous dictum, Cogito, ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"). Others cite the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) as the culmination of the Scientific Revolution and the beginning of the Enlightenment. European historians traditionally date its beginning with the death of Louis XIV of France in 1715 and its end with the 1789 outbreak of the French Revolution. Many historians now date the end of the Enlightenment as the start of the 19th century, with the latest proposed year being the death of Immanuel Kant in 1804.

Philosophers and scientists of the period widely circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffeehouses and in printed books, journals, and pamphlets. The ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Catholic Church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. A variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism, communism, and neoclassicism, trace their intellectual heritage to the Enlightenment.[6]

In France, the central doctrines of the Enlightenment philosophers were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Church. The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism, along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy—an attitude captured by Immanuel Kant's essay Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment, where the phrase Sapere aude (Dare to know) can be found.[7]

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The twin threats of Covid and Putin have obliged the leaders of the erstwhile free world to shit can the whole project of the Enlightenment. On its own terms, the Biden Government is silencing opposition to its asserted "realities" due to the possibility that citizens might believe disinformation. The current dogma is that "the" science has already solved the Covid problem and that Putin invaded Ukraine out of his personal depravity. Anybody who sows doubts about the Authority of Government Facts is, by definition, a threat to the lives of the rest of us. The power of the State is the only sure way to make sure that the Truth as determined by the proper authorities will prevail, preventing Unauthorized ideas from killing people.
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In short, the Biden government has corrected the errors of 17th Century Eggheads who chafed at the power of the papacy to determine what is the Truth. Instead of unelected priests telling us the way things are, the Government has reclaimed its proper role as arbiter of truth.

This abolishes the Enlightenment and its chaotic notion of debate.

This also makes me an Enemy of the State because I know that "the" science of Covid as followed by the Trump and Biden government is total crap. I also know that Putin, whatever his personal motivation, actually has some facts on his side of the dispute that totally contradict the Personal Evil argument.

I cannot believe it is this simple, but it is. The crisis of credibility that has grown steadily more acute over the last few years is obvious. The people running the US and its major allies are solving this problem the old fashioned way -- with State Power.

So ironic that today's liberals are destroying their own birthright.