I've often argued that relativism (and atheism) are often just transitory states, states which simply work to scape people of more traditional belief systems in order to set them up for something more absurd and/or dangerous.

In the religious realm, I've noted numerous individual who have rejected traditional beliefs, swayed to radical materialism by various rationalistic arguments ("rationalistic" refers to the belief in rationality as a religion; rationalistic arguments themselves are seldom rational). For many, the emptiness of that state cannot be long sustained: crystal-gazing, incense-burning, chakra awakenings, and transcendental meditation follows.

Look at the former Soviet Union: after a lifetime of official atheism, Pravda now runs articles about how people are witches and vampires. Cultlike movements are very popular. Look at the UK: Having largely rejected traditional strains of religion (including traditional Anglicanism), England is now largely becoming neopagan. (As C.S. Lewis once observed, today's english 'paganism' has the same relation to authentic paganism as a divorcee has to a virgin.)

And there is an analogue of this phenomenon in politics: having rejected private morality in religion, democratic secularism can only be a transitory state. The end must alway be a form of state worship -- and I expect future incarnations to be more explicitly religious than previous, failed secular forms of state-worship.

To defend this idea, let me start by asking you to note that America was founded on two "legs" or forms of support: one public, one private.

In the public sphere, the overwhelming goal of the founding fathers was to limit the power of government to interfere with the individual. Governmental power, their thinking went, posed a serious threat to liberty. This is why the bill of rights consists of checks on the power of government, not a menu of handouts each person "deserves." Limited self-government was one strut supporting the fledgling Republic.

But the founding fathers didn't just believe in "radical individualism", as the contemporary left would caricature it. Rather, the other, private leg that supported the American experiment was the responsible, moral character of her people, chiefly ensured through religion. George Washington, for example, summarized this sentiment well in his farewell address, when he advised us:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness -- these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

I was reminded of these things when reading a dissection of British politician Will Hutton, in a long article (registration required) by Mark Steyn in The Spectator. Having rejected private morality or private religion, Hutton sees the American experiment as nothing more than radical moral relativism. He finds this state untenable, and opts, as many will when faced with that problem, for the comfort and guidance of a strong, controlling state -- for dictatorship:

... Will Hutton feels almost physically insecure when he’s in one of the spots on the planet where the virtues of the state religion are questioned. ‘In a world that is wholly private,’ he says of America, ‘we lose our bearings; deprived of any public anchor, all we have are our individual subjective values to guide us.’

Precisely. Having rejected the idea there can be any transcendant absolute morals, Hutton, playing everyman the little drama I put him in, chooses the comfort of an absolute morality imposed by the collective. Of course, not the collective, since the EU will not be a democracy, but by the wise ruling caste:

He deplores the First Amendment and misses government-regulated media, which in the EU ensures that all public expression is within approved parameters (Left to centre-Left). ‘Europe,’ he explains, ‘acts to ensure that television and radio conform to public interest criteria.’

‘Public interest criteria’ doesn’t mean criteria that the public decide is in their interest. It means that the elite — via various appointed bodies — decide what the public’s interest is. As Will Hutton is a member of the elite, this suits him fine.

Indeed. But you needn't be a member of the eilte to support such a move: as long as a person thinks they will gain from the supremacy of the state, the argument works the same. (And the point of the Gramscian Marxism we see currently is to convince group after group they will indeed benefit from this state of affairs.)

So let me recap: Secularism, using moral relativism as a tool, works as a transitional state to remove people from traditional absolutist notions of religion and morality. When this process is sufficiently advanced, the argument is then turned on it's head: the new demgogues then expose the problems of the moral relativism they just promoted and installed, in order to argue to a return to absolutist moralities -- but one in which the state (e.g. the elite) play the role formerly granted to God.

Steyn's version of Will Hutton is but one case in point.