Caption this photo

I imagine this might be what Helen of Troy's little sister would look like if held for ransom at the court of PeeWee Herman, but that's just me, and because I've enjoyed Mollie Hemingway's writing to date.

Let this be a warning to all: a "selfie" is anything but. It captures everything in its gaping optical maw, Federalist princesses, the defiled corpses of innocent oysters, anything and everything, and yokes them to its agenda of the moment for eternity

But now it's your turn. Write the caption of what this photo is saying to you.

Some additional perspective on General Rod Dreher and his Benedict Option™

While attorney and Iraqi War vet David French and professional foodie Rod Dreher debate the sense of the latter's Benedict Option™, let's not forget that currently self-appointing General of his Benedict Option™ (GBO) Dreher already has a book just freshly out, not the one he is using this debate to generate future publisher interest in, of course, but rather his previous, already written Dante book.

What, you might ask, is this Dante book about?

As followers of Dreher's blog over the course of his developing and promoting the Dante book only know too well, the book is about how Dante saved Dreher from the "dark wood" of depression and allegedly stress-induced mononucleosis caused by his family - those who know him best - not sharing his own vision of himself. His wife finally tired of his taking to his bed to sleep interminably and demanded he get professional psychological help.

Let this settle in for a moment. The general who is proposing to develop and lead us through our culture war campaign was driven to his fainting couch by his in-laws not liking him the way he wanted and ultimately booted from it by his long-suffering wife.

Is the phrase "folds like an origami under pressure" really adequate to describe this sort of petal-like character in a would-be leader of any sort of war?

And when contemplating the sympathy-sucking milquetoast depressive Rod Dreher of the Dante book versus the guerrilla general-to-be Rod Dreher of his Benedict Option™, the question obviously forces itself upon us: which, if either, is even the real Rod Dreher?

But, hey, I say follow him as far as the parking lot, at least.

Why Rod Dreher's Benedict Option is a capitulation for Christian conservatives

Rod Dreher, Christian conservatism's Marshall Pétain, writes in his post The LGBT vs. Orthodox Christianity War

My friend Ryan Booth speaks my mind on this on his FB page:

That’s part of why I resigned from the Republican State Central Committee and am planning to enroll in seminary.

In other words, he's electing the still-unemployable-Charles-S.-Featherstone-Option. Has Dreher's protege Featherstone found a job yet? If and when he does I'll be happy to update this.

In the meantime, those voluntary Christian unemployables among us are going to need a safety net. What might be another word for such a thing...oh: a big government welfare state. And I'll bet there would even be politicians willing to help out voluntarily unemployable seminarians with extra netting in exchange for their votes.

You go, Ryan. Go to your room like a teenager, shut the door, stamp your feet, and say, "You just wait, mean Mom and Dad. One day you'll get yours. Then I'll come out and it will all be mine."

Except, well, until they (oops, looks now like that won't include you, Ryan) change the Constitution to make the seminaries the levers of government power, then the only people passing laws and filling judiciaries will be the non-Ryan evil Moms and Dads. Who may legislate and vote, while Ryan and Rod hide out in their teenage rooms, to change the tax status of seminaries, making them economically untenable entirely. Or in their absence legislate and vote on any number of other anti-Christian things.

And, hey, get this: the only culture sure to collapse by the voluntary resignation of Christians from the public square is Christian culture. Or do you subscribe to the psychotic delusion that anti-Christians will lovingly maintain Christian enclaves among them at their own expense like little tanks of sea monkeys?

To put this in some perspective, just try to imagine an Islamic Benedict Option:

"Verily, my brothers and sisters, even though we are a dominating presence there, I fear all our lands of the Levant as well as Europe and even Dearborn, MI will inevitably be lost to the Infidel. I know, who are you to believe? Me? Or your lying eyes? Trust me, not your lying eyes. All is lost. Let us be happy in our prayers and in our delicious hummus. By the way, my new book, The Hummus Option, will be available from Amazon.com Monday."

But maybe I'm being too short and too cruel and taking Ryan out of context. The Facebook page Dreher excerpts ends

And we can’t show people the life-changing power of Christ if we’re fully enmeshed in the culture. If our lives don’t look any different than those of non-Christians, then why would anyone decide to become a Christian?

Gee, I don't know. Why would anyone decide to become a Christian? Anybody know? Maybe if we all wore Mohawks (you, too, Diane) even more people would want to celebrate us and and join us. Because of our cool differentness.

Dreher migrated out of political arguments in his blogging into ultimately now this pseudoreligious I Am the Eggman Generic Mahdi Tune In Turn On Drop Out Maharishi guru babblelogue of his Benedict Option because, frankly, cogent, coherent political arguments are harder to make than it is to play the mystical neo-Benedictine guru to the easily cowed and easily suggestible types who get approvingly "curated" into his blog.

The problem is that the fantasies of developmentally-arrested adolescents* like Rod always tacitly assume that the behavior of Mom and Dad will remain the same, unchanging indulgent supportiveness they've always known while they're petulantly sulking in their room, that they won't crack the door and find out, dang!, Mom and Dad have said good riddance to Rod and Ryan, sold the house, and moved to Fiji with the proceeds, leaving R & R faced with flipping a coin to determine who will have to kill little Skippy the hamster with his bare hands if they're going to eat that night.

I know, I know. The narrative Dreher's surfing is that the Benedict Option he has now appropriated as his own supposedly has a legitimate and venerable pedigree in Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue.

“We are not waiting for Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.”

Read all of Goerke just to scratch the surface of the difficulties of translating that sort of romantic academic apocalypticism into practical action for everyday people. For example, in a recent post, The Accidental Benedict Option, Dreher had originally concluded with

"I’m taking my stand there. I have made more progress towards healing and wholeness in the past two years at that mission than at any time in my life. St. John the Theologian Mission really is a “school for conversion,” to use St. Benedict’s phrase from his Rule. Without even knowing what we were doing, and by following standard Orthodox liturgical and spiritual practices, we have build a community institution that, in my view, keeps its members focused on what the church is for.

If you’re Orthodox or Orthodox-seeking, and looking for a solid parish in rural America for Benedict Option reasons, come see us."

When updating it, Dreher removed that last paragraph, and for practical good reason: how many people can really move to a rural parish in south Louisiana before it becomes exactly like the place they're fleeing? We can think of this as the Tragedy of the Benedict Commons.

And, as I pointed out previously here, implicit at the heart of Rod Dreher's Benedict option is the savage misanthropy of the petulant, passive-aggressive adolescent ("Oh, I wish a post-Enlightenment apocalyptic breakdown would just wipe them all out!"):

 At some point on our journey through the logic of the Benedict Option we really do have to ask: if all society but the cells of the Benedict Optioneers themselves collapses into chaos and barbarism, that is, into that seed bed now fertile enough for the Benedict Optioneer to finally re-emerge - what sort of Christian does that leave the Benedict Optioneer being himself - if any sort at all? Everyone else finally in misery, so he can finally triumph. Exactly what sort of Christian is that?

Until then, who wants to juggle the emperorography of presenting himself as that another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict?

Why, probably someone who has this as the formative, enduring focus of his world view:

*When I think about the bullying I endured in high school, the most indelible image on my mind is being pinned to the floor and tortured in a hotel room on a school trip, and the two adult women chaperones in the room literally stepping over me, lying there screaming for them to help me, as they left the hotel room.

Like the special snowflakes of academia, all Rod Dreher wants is some other, adult to provide a safe place for him where he can be whatever he wants to be, without criticism and without fear of anyone being mean to him. But to render that psychological obsession objectively legitimate, he needs you to believe in and create a functional Benedict Option for him - so he can then write a book about it and sell it back to you.

To cut to the chase, for the adults reading, here's our real Option, or at least the non-emperorographic basalt bedrock upon which it must be built: the Constitution of the United States of America. There has never been anything like it and there probably never again will be.

There's only one problem. You can't be Christianity's or conservatism's very own passive-aggressive special snowflake like Rod Dreher or Ryan Booth and operate it. It just won't work for invertebrates of that sort. You have to assert your rights under it.

Actively. Politically. Yourself.

As for "The LGBT vs. Orthodox Christianity War"? Unless you're a socially and politically passive Christian conservative like Rod Dreher, perched on your hands and knees, simpering back over your shoulder in the hopes of selling a Benedict Option book based on that posture, there isn't one.

Instead, like Kevin and Crystal O'Connor of Memories Pizza you're already exercising what I'd like to call...let's see...oh, I know - The Christian Option.

Loving. Treating everybody equally, under God and under the Constitution.

Uncompromising with respect to your Christian principles. Unmovable.

Not whining, "lying there screaming for them to help me".

Selfless and generous. When other Christians come to your aid, sharing the excess with those even worse off than you, not filling your belly at Galatoire's or sucking down oysters like the Sun King.

The Christian Option. Sort of has a ring to it, doesn't it? Sort of old-timey, some might even say authentic, yet at the same time, timeless.

But, darn. Somebody beat me to it. There's already a book out about it.


UPDATE (as they say): More David French

Great pictures of Cleveland

The guys at Cleveland Aerial Media really take awesome pictures of the Cleveland, Ohio area. Check them out on flickr.



These dudes are the Drone Cam Gods.

Selective Timidity

It is gratifying that David French decided to flick Dreher and his Bunker Option* off like flies. Just a quick requote of a couple paragraphs from his piece:

I’m sorry, but I have a real problem — in an era when Christians are getting their heads sawed off in the Middle East — with the idea that, say, an American sociology professor feels to scared to proclaim his real beliefs on a liberal campus. I have a real problem — in an era when young Americans have been dying by the thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq in defense of liberty — with the idea that Americans on campus are too timid to even attempt to exercise those blood-bought freedoms. I have a problem with Christians — despite the example of Christ and the Apostles — who are too fearful to share the reason for their eternal hope. No one’s asking you to be a street preacher or some kind of unthinking loudmouth, but you should be ashamed of your timidity.

Every single person who is a Christian who stays “in the closet” — who’s timid about his or her faith — provides fuel to the PC fire, contributing to the notion that there really is something to be ashamed of, that what he believes is somehow wrong.

David French is correct to call Dreher's behavior timidity. The TIME piece was plaintively timid, first explaining that non-Christians should understand that Christians don't see not baking a cake as equal to lynching blacks in the Jim Crow south, then going on to use the analogy of racism himself and include lines like "It is understandably offensive to have a baker refuse on religious grounds to make their wedding cake." This is pure concession and surrender. It should not be offensive to them. That's the real point here. It is no wonder that liberal TIME magazine hand-picked Dreher to write this weak-tea, weak-kneed response in their gay issue.

But here's the thing about Rod Dreher's timidity. It is very, very selective. Dreher is all for "standing up" if he is "stand[ing] up to people like Governor [Scott] Walker." Being outraged that someone doesn't share your high value for a liberal arts education is fine. But let's stay in our bunker over religious issues. Being outraged at your family, dead sister and all, so much that you tell the story over and over again is fine because they didn't like you enough, and they didn't run anyone out on a rail when you got a couple wedgies on the field trip and wouldn't eat your French fish soup. No turning the other cheek for those atrocities. But if some gays are upset about a baker or a pizza place or who knows what other humiliation, well... that's understandable, everybody. After all, we heterosexuals wrecked marriage by getting divorced. (We did? Oh, yeah, some of us did. That's the "Royal We", sorry.) Let's be wiser in choosing our battles, people.

Rod Dreher has a history of showing no timidity when he "stands up" to people like Rush Limbaugh, Ted Cruz, Olympian Michael Phelps (no, really), etc. And of course those horrible Catholic Bishops.

He has always had a softer touch for cases like Andrew Sullivan, Brian Williams, Dan Rather, etc. And, of course, Russian Orthodox pedophiliacs.

Certainly it is almost impossible at this point not to be able to predict how Rod Dreher will react to any event based on a small number of factors. He will come out of his Bunker Option to shake his fist when he perceives that conservatives have behaved badly. He will go back into the Bunker Option to read his Bible where it won't offend gays and atheists. And he will come back out again to take food selfies until it's time to cut the grass and he is taken back to the Bunker Option on a stretcher.

What an unreliable moral guide. Only a Judith Regan would look at this guy and see a Virgil.

----------
* - I refuse to take St. Benedict's name in vain on the Pope Emeritus's B-day.

At last: David French calls out self-dealing sellouts like Rod Dreher

At last.

David French at NRO says what I've been saying all along, in a higher profile venue with better credentials than I can muster.

Ever since the Battle of Indiana, Rod Dreher has been quoting anonymous e-mails and other conversations with conservatives in higher education. The message from each of them is roughly the same: It’s worse than you think, if our views were known, we’d have real trouble on campus, and the campus is closing to Christian thought — with even Christian campuses bowing to the PC gods.

And concludes:

Every single person who is a Christian who stays “in the closet” — who’s timid about his or her faith — provides fuel to the PC fire, contributing to the notion that there really is something to be ashamed of, that what he believes is somehow wrong.

In reality, the timid Christian has already lost. Without a single act of overt censorship, the forces of PC intolerance end debate, silence a thoughtful voice, and make other Christians feel more isolated than they should.

The courageous Christian (“courage” is a strong word when there’s no physical danger), however, not only calls their bluff, he or she finds allies, and also discovers that even individual Christians still have extraordinary legal and cultural power to impact their campuses (and the broader culture). In real war, it’s typically safer inside the foxhole — huddled outside the sight of the enemy. In the culture war, the foxhole is exactly where the other side wants you, while they roam free, unopposed, across the cultural landscape.

Timid Christians are the masters of self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, things are getting worse. Partly because of you.

Like the native African brokers on the docks in Ghana singing "Sail Away" to their captive fellows as they ushered them aboard the cruise ships to their own Benedict Options, when someone is selling you out the way Dreher is, they're usually getting some kind of personal cut out of it for doing so.

Should conservatives take a bite out of Apple?

Bite this

Full disclosure: I own no Apple products and probably never will. Nor am I an orthodox Christian; as I've mentioned before, at best I'm a bad, lapsed libertarianish Methodist. Not only will my ox not be gored in anything I have to say further in this post, it probably won't even be nudged academically. And I've already ridiculed Rod Dreher for getting on his high horse about religious liberty while still enjoying subsidizing Tim Cook's lifestyle.

This said, why would any conservatives not immediately boycott Apple products? Wouldn't that still be a valid response even if made by my avatar while gazing into a jungle cam?

Apple's CEO Tim Cook blithely made a high profile splash for himself and his company with a sanctimonious, lying Op-Ed which helped fuel a boycott of Indiana in general and the reigning down of Hell itself upon the owners of Memories Pizza.

Why should that cost him absolutely nothing at all while he continues to rake in exorbitant profits on his Chinese slave labor-built devices from the very conservatives whose freedom of expression he cheerfully stomped upon?

If, like me, you don't already own Apple products there's admittedly not much boycotting you can do. And if you do, throwing away a device that still delivers good service is also a step that many without a Rod Dreher income just couldn't justify.

But, in the wake of Indiana's RFRA and Tim Cook's involvement (instead of just making electronics, like a good boy) why would any conservative now buy a new Apple product or service or spend money to repair a failing one?

It's not as if there were not now a vast market of products comparable or superior to Apple's. Does Apple cachet really weigh in that much on the scale opposite religious liberty among conservatives?

Why am I, full-disclosured above, even the one raising this? Why isn't it already being exhorted on every conservative outlet? Why is Tim Cook jauntily bringing a gun to the gunfight while conservatives are merely spitting in resentment into the potato salad they've decided they'll bring instead as their most appropriate offering there? That'll show him. Ptui! Giggle!

Because Barack Obama is supposed to be fighting these battles instead? Because there will always be room in Rod Dreher's Benedict Option for refugees with chubby little potato salad-smeared fingers?

Instead of mooning for the Sweet Meteor of Death (SMOD) to sweep away the corrupt GOP - Ace, and others - this situation is really pretty cut and dried: sacrifice a marginal bit of habit-comfort in exchange for demonstrating what gratuitously treading on religious liberty really costs. It's really just that get off your lazy ass simple.

Make what Tim Cook did hurt Tim Cook right now and in the future, and make others fear doing the same thoughtlessly stupid thing if it happens to be percolating in their dim little heads.

Because it really isn't turning the other cheek to turn in one's Christian card and make a potato salad for cheap demagogues instead. It's demonstrating that one might not be worth very much as anything at all.

Robots with sense of humor

Look what advertisement the robots of the internets decided to plop down on Rod Dreher's latest advertisement post for his book How Dante Can Save Your Life.

8 Shocking Ways Coconut Oil Will Change Your Life. Not "can", mind you. WILL.

Coconuts are awesome.