I sense a pattern here...

I posted this two years ago today. It was in the midst of the famous Topix flare-up. It may be a good idea for anyone new to the Benedict Option discussion to review this. Or anyone wishing to meditate further on the Platonic ideal of chickenness.

Especially note Jonah Goldberg's remarks on the archived link from that post. I believe they apply to the Benedict Option just as well as they describe Crunchy Conservatism.

I don't believe Crunchy Conservatism exists. I think it is Rod's invention. I don't think there is any body of thought, serious or otherwise, that is "crunchy conservative." I think Rod points to things he agrees with or likes and calls it crunchy and conservative when often they are one or the other. I think Rod's taxonomy is entirely artificial. And I think the word "crunchy" and the props used to support it are not only superficial, but they smack of precisely the kind of branding and marketing outlook Rod decries. Yes, yes, yes: There are people out there worried about the ravages of the free market and modernity who are conservative. Some of them dig organic food and open-toed-shoes. Some of them do not. I do not see what is to be gained by dividing people who agree on important things by concentrating on unimportant things.

Try it out, unless you fear that you may become a dreaded Benedict Option Denialist if you read it. But it is a good question to ask. Is the Benedict Option proposal "dividing people who agree on important things by concentrating on unimportant things"?

Benedict Option Denialism is like Climate Change Denialism

Confusing the phenomenon of El Niño for climate change (to be charitable, because he spends most of his time online he's not particularly knowledgeable about the real world)

We just came off a month of record-breaking heat and rainfall in the US, which is the kind of thing scientists predicted would happen as the planet warms

Rod Dreher then goes on to construct a rather random mashup of denialisms in order to suggest, in reverse application, that if one denies his Benedict Option is needed, one is remarkably like the cretinous Climate Change Denier (who in turn, of course, is like the savage and barbaric Holocaust Denier).

When several commenters question the validity of these associations, Dreher lays down St. Rod's Rule of Benedict Option Political Correctness:

Look, I’m not going to let this thread turn into a climate change argument. I brought up the global warming article to draw an analogy with the Benedict Option concept. If global warming turns out to be not true, that doesn’t obviate the Benedict Option, which is about something else...

But, wait, Slick: you linked the BO to climate change to give it the gravitas currently enjoyed by climate change. So any loss of credibility climate change may suffer directly vitiates the artificial link you're trying to construct here, in turn draining the credibility you're trying to pump from climate change over to your Benedict Option.

Are all BOppers as patently intellectually dishonest as you, High BOpper?

Anybody who wants to turn this thread into an argument about global warming per se, I’m not going to post your comment, no matter which side you take, and no matter how minor a part of your overall comment it is. I don’t have time to edit that part out. You have been warned.

Well, that's one way to save the village.

Rod's TAC blogging colleague Noah Millman asked

So I have to ask: is one of the strictures of the Benedict Option going to be to stop pursuing outrage porn? And if it isn’t – why isn’t it?

 and, for his trouble, found his post unpublished down the memory hole.

Those of us not yet within the Benedict Option's Soviet sphere are thus obligated to ask in turn: is one of the strictures of the Benedict Option going to be Liberal Political Correctness and, in particular, Liberal Political Correctness with respect to Climate Change Denialism and other Liberal apostasies? And if it is - why is it?
 
You have been warned, Mark Steyn.