Don't Take the Bait

If you are a mouse or a 21st century American I have some advice for you: learn to identify traps, then don't take the bait.

While driving down the road, several of my sons and I were watching some 20-somethings put up Black Lives Matter yard-signs in a neighborhood around West 150th Street in Cleveland. My oldest son stated it best. "Everyone believes that black people count just as much as whites, except for racists. So when someone says to you 'Black lives matter' what they really mean to say to you is 'You're a racist.' It's just an accusation."

He's right obviously. It's the same leftist abuse of language which infects the pathetic chant of the Occupy Movement "We. Are. The Ninety-nine Percent!!" But they're not; they are a tiny sliver of the American populace. They may speak for somewhere between 5% and 15% of the victicrat population, but that's probably generous of me.

Unfortunately some people who aren't anywhere near the fringe left have taken the rhetorical bait. The group Blue Lives Matter is one which I heartily support, but Oh! how I wish they hadn't named themselves that. Once you realize that saying "Black Lives Matter" is really a challenge which could be phrased as the question, "Are you going to support us or the police?", then saying "Blue Lives Matter" can be interpret as answering "No, I don't support you; I support the Police." It is a way to inadvertently perpetuate the perception that the police are out to get anyone who is black. That perception is a win for BLM and left's booming victim industry.

The latest abuse of this comes from the Charles Sheldon-style Protestant Socialist contingent in the form of WWJD-ing the rhetoric. The first place I saw this was a Facebook placard which simply appropriated the voice of Christ saying things like "Jesus didn't say all lives matter, He said leper's lives matter. Jesus didn't say all lives matter, He said the poor's lives matter." And on and on. The truth is that Our Lord didn't speak in hashtags and soundbites at all, and that is the best counterpoint here. One could point out the many times that Jesus used universal language (ever hear of John 3:16?) but I'd be wary of taking the bait.

The other place I saw something similar was a Patheos article which I won't even link to. It actually uses the Beatitudes in an attempt to make a similar point. It has a cartoon of Christ saying "Blessed are the poor in spirit," and a listener objecting "No, Jesus! Blessed are we ALL!" So the message is that anyone who says "All lives matter" is telling Jesus to shut up. One could point out that none of the Beatitudes mention race, but again, I think that getting into a theological discussion on this is getting into pearls/swine territory and we know how that ends. It's best to stay in one piece.

So the best comeback to shouts of "Black Lives Matter!" is not "Blue lives matter" or even "All lives matter". Calling out the Black Lives Matter movement for what it is, an organization profiting from civil unrest and organized by racist agitators, is the best reaction to anything touching which smells of their caustic rhetoric. Christians and especially American Christians have to become aware of real motives and quit being so gullible. Jesus instructed us as much.

What we're up against

As promised here, it's time for an installment of my take of By the People by Charles Murray, which I am in the process of reading.  The first portion of the book summarizes his take on how we got to where we are today, under the boot heel of a lawless regulatory state.  The book will later get to his prescription for how we can deal with that, which I will get to in later posts.

But for our purposes here in analyzing the so-called and undefinable Benedict Option and perhaps other options to that Option, the first part of the book usefully illustrates just what we, as nominally free people, are up against.  Pace Barack Obama, we should identify the actual enemy in order to develop our strategy. Mr. Murray summarizes that quite well, I think:

To simplify, progressive intellectuals were passionate advocates of rule by disinterested experts led by a strong, unifying leader.  The were in favor of using the state to mold social institutions in the interests of the collective.  

And quoting Woodrow Wilson:

...government is not a machine, but a living thing.  It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life.  It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. ... All that progressives ask or desire is permission -- in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word -- to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle.

Brought to you by the progressive movement

By the People sets out how the progressives put these ideas into practice via the judiciary:  elimination of constitutional limitations on the federal government, enabling use of civil litigation as a tool of wealth transfer for the "collective good", and unleashing the lawless regulatory state.  Mr Murray also sets out why we can't undo those actions directly.

My take from this is that we are up against a progressive movement that believes that the experts and elites ("disinterested", of course) can and ought to use the power of the State to change social institutions for the collective good as they see it.  Worse yet, the progressive movement seems to believe that human nature has evolved -- in the Darwinian sense -- such that the constraints presented by pre-modern documents such as the Constitution, as written and adopted, must also evolve.

And this is why, IMO, the so-called Benedict Option (as best one can understand it) would be useless.  Our progressive regulatory oppressors, or at least the true believers among them, will not accept limits on their ability to mold social institutions in the interests of the collective, even to the extent of leaving small insignificant groups alone.  And arguing merely from "tradition" (as in the weak tea of Dreher's SSM opposition) will be considered irrelevant by the progressives; after all, human nature has evolved, and constitutional liberties are to be interpreted according to the Darwinian principle as a result.

To the extent argument can still be used (which Murray seems to believe will be eventually fruitless -- but I'll see how the rest of the book turns out on that point), it will be essential to apply reason, backed by the knowledge that acting in accordance with reason is consistent with revealed truth and God's nature.

And in a more practical sense, we must say "no".  This will be the topic of the second part of By the People, and I will keep y'all updated as I work through it.