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.