"You didn't see that coming?"

Dreher-fan Jordan Poss writes a generally positive review of HDCSYL. But it is also quite honest, and he can't help pointing out several things with which I heartily agree. Excerpts:

Despite returning home, Dreher recounts that his relationships with family—especially his father and nieces—were terrible. I like Dreher a lot and value his opinions, but having read his work for several years now, he strikes me as a classic oversharer. Reading Little Way, I could only wonder, despite being moved to tears, what his family thought of such a soul-baring memoir. In my experience, a tell-all—even an affectionate, nostalgic tell-all—alienates people. This book gave me an answer: “I showed Mike the manuscript of Little Way before I turned it in, and asked him to let me know if he wanted me to make any changes. He did not ask for changes, but as I learned later, the book displeased him greatly. He thought I had used his wife’s death to tell a story about myself” (30). As a reader, I too had had a hard time escaping this impression.

We told you so, we told you so. Of course we all had that impression. The reason that Mike Leming thought Rod Dreher had used his wife’s death to tell a story about himself was that Rod Dreher had used Mike's wife’s death to tell a story about himself.

I really liked How Dante Can Save Your Life, but I still wonder about the propriety of what Dreher has chosen to share with his readers—especially considering that one of the sources of strife within his family is his previous book. Dreher writes with great feeling and sincerity but, as another reviewer has noted, the narration sometimes comes across as self-pitying, even in the later stages when he has learned how selfish he is and is striving toward greater humility. Even as he learns to let go of his bitterness and anger, he reminds himself over and over again of the incidents that made him bitter and angry.

Yes; he seems to love being bitter and angry. It's as if I said to Keith, "Keith, I have totally gotten over the time that you made fun of the space helmet I made for Halloween when I was 27 years old, and I hope that nothing will ever, EVER remind either one of us how much I cried about that at the time, and then got drunk and broke up with my girlfriend. But now that I've read Dante's Divine Comedy, I'm ready to forgive you ONCE AND FOR ALL for that and I will do so right after I pass out and take a 5-hour nap."

We must figure out what Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ is - and hurry!

It's time, people. Past time.

We have to continuing arguing about what Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ really is, and figure it out, and soon, so that Rod can write a book about it, taking official public credit for it under his name, and sell it back to us, enabling us to then know once and for all what the Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ we all finally agreed upon actually is and is not so that we can then take it (but not take that - what, are you kidding?), whatever it finally turns out to be.

I can already see this is going to be harder than the witches' brew of crunching a universe of totally unrelated social types into a Crunchy Con.

I’m pleased to see more and more people arguing about the Benedict Option. This is important. I don’t have a hard, fixed, formulaic idea of what it is, and all this back and forth is helpful to me in thinking through it.

but

I want to make it clear, though, that as I undertake this Benedict Option book, I am investigating, trying to learn what it could  and should mean, and what it cannot and must not mean. I do not have all the answers, but I am committed to talking to a number of people who have thought deeply about these things, and who have tried different things, even if they have failed. And I am trying to make this practical, that is, something that families like mine can do. Despair is not an option.

Despair is not an option, people. Platitudes, though - platitudes may be crucial in filling out the book, like that expanding foam that's so useful in keeping the drafts out around poorly framed windows.

Finally

More argument, please. More discussion, more debate. We have to figure this out together.

And, do I need to add? We must hurry. If Rod's Dante book doesn't fly, this is the only thing he seems to have in the pipeline and, as he himself says, he has no clue as to what Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ really is. We have to do this together, people, for Rod, so that he'll have another book to sell for us to buy so that he can purchase more of those delicious raw oysters he loves so much.

Let's not think of this as personal financial welfare for a millionaire gourmand, people, but as simple Christian community. If not St. Benedict himself, someone, somewhere named Benedict would surely want us to.

TAC's Wick Allison blames American Freedom Defense Initiative for Garland shooting

Nothing goes public from Wick Allison's D Empire without his express approval, so when one of his bloggers asks "Who Can We Blame for This Garland Shooting?", we know what Wick Allison wants the world to think, that the shooting was the fault of the "hate group" American Freedom Defense Initiative rather than the Muslims who pulled the trigger.

Wick Allison doesn't live in Garland, Texas, by the way, or even in Dallas, Texas. He lives in Highland Park, Texas, a little town exclusively for the very wealthy near Southern Methodist University, a place usually referred to with well-deserved contempt as "The Bubble". The Bubble is ferociously protected by its own well-manned police force, even to the extent that if you appear to be Hispanic and your truck doesn't contain at least one lawn mower and leaf blower, you can expect to be stopped and questioned. Within the cocoon of their Bubble, Wick and Christine Allison have little to worry from either ISIS-inspired jihadists or even any other humans at all not of their hue and station.

Wick Allison, the Obamacon money man and CEO behind both TAC's pro-Putin Daniel Larison and anti-Catholic Rod Dreher and the jihadi apologist FrontBurner blog. William F. Buckley must be sneering.

Gawd dangit, Bobby!

Bookworm reviews a review from George P. Wood of Springfield, MO

Reviews of reviews are all the rage these days, and all the cool kidz are doing it. So it is satisfying to read a review of a review of Rod Dreher's new book which is itself a massive review of Dante's famous work, The Divine Comedy which, I should say, I highly recommend reading for those with immortal souls.

Reviews, reviews, out the wazoos....

(OK, here's the review, without further ado.)

George P. Wood of Springfield, MO reviewed Rod's book on Amazon and explains to everybody what the problem was. George is a pretty impressive guy with some impressive degrees and obviously knows a lot about a lot of things.

[Link to review from George P. Wood of Springfield, MO]

"The problem was that Dreher had left Starhill for a reason: The inability of his family—especially his father, but even Ruthie herself—to understand any way that wasn’t their way."

See, that's the problem with folks around here, and George P. Wood of Springfield, MO knows it. Just close minded people. It wasn't Rod. George P. Wood of Springfield, MO just explained to the world why it wasn't.

And so when Rod came back, believe it or not folks were still that way. Unable to understand any way that wasn't their way, especially Rod's way. And that flaw in them made Rod physically sick.

Folks just can't get any lower or meaner than that, making other people physically sick by being unable to understand any way that isn’t their way.

“Well,” his rheumatologist told him,“you have a choice. Leave Louisiana, or resign yourself to destroying your health."

"Dreher felt that wasn’t a choice. There must be a way to stay put and find inner peace."

And sure enough there was. Write another book about how folks around here make other people physically sick by being unable to understand any way that isn’t their way. You heard it from George P. Wood of Springfield, MO himself, and so did the rest of the world.

I admit that on many occasions in the past I've been enraged by Rod Dreher. But this fellow Bookworm provides a great example of why I'm no longer angered by him. Everyone save a few weirdos is onto him at this point. He has sunk so low that he has had to invent academic sock puppets to encourage him and to beg him to write books and so forth. His publisher is basically an opportunistic soft-core peddler who made sure there was T&A on his book cover. He has blamed his poor health on people not liking him. He has clung bitterly to this Bunker Option thing even though it has proven to be nothing more than raving. He deplores our plastic disposable hedonistic society and then commits selfie-abuse amid piles of restaurant food.

No one I care about is giving this guy any respect anymore, and that's the way it should be. I just loaded that ridiculous pic into How Old -- here's the result:

When robots think you look like a 49-year-old woman it's time to pull a makeover or put the camera away. Or both, dude.

Rod Dreher, Culture Warrior - against his family

As I mentioned in my Ace post, sometimes it behooves conservatives to look in the mirror and realize the phone call from the killer is actually coming from inside the house.

As Dreher blogs whatever alternative gets him the most culture war blog hits on any given day - Miraculé! In the wake of the pushback he's received from David French, Glenn Reynolds and others, today's entree du jour now offers fighting back - now "here’s what the Benedict Option is not":

1) a counsel to run for the hills and to build a fortress where the outside world cannot get in; or

2) advice to quit fighting entirely, and to abandon the battlefield

and

For all that, I do not blame ordinary people, people who are not as privileged as Robby George, Ryan Anderson, and I, for not wanting to rush out and volunteer to die on every hill,

let's review what our extra-ordinary, privileged warrior knight has used his place of privilege to attempt to publish for millions of ordinary culture warriors to read and take fighting heart from. Feel free to look up the links yourself; I'm not Dreher's publicist.

Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, Gun-Loving Organic Gardeners, Evangelical Free-Range Farmers, Hip Homeschooling Mamas, Right-Wing Nature Lovers, and Their Diverse Tribe of Countercultural Conservatives Plan to Save America (or At Least the Republican Party)

Okay, so maybe this whole culture war thing started some time after way back nine years ago in 2006 when granola-chomping Crunchy Cons was published. But as soon as it did, Rod strapped on culture war fighting sword and buckler and waded in full-tilt, right? With

The Little Way of Ruthie Leming

about his sister's death and how, returning to their home town, he was forced to confront their very different views of life and their very different ways of regarding each other. Our host Pauli reviewed the book here. His home town residents, those most familiar with him, continue to review Rod himself here.

Okay, so he took some up front R & R home before battle. But, then, immediately onward and into the fray, right? With

How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem

Oh, dear, maybe not yet.

It seems moving home and encountering how his family and friends really feel about him once again threw our culture warrior into a "dark wood" of depression, which in turn caused a debilitating flareup of what he claims to be a persistent mononucleosis infection.

Fortunately, his wife, completely exasperated at his interminable sleeping, finally forced him to seek a professional psychotherapist for his mental and subsequent physical problems. During that process he also discovered Dante.

From the post I quoted from at the outset, it seems he's on leave from the culture war once again today to promote that book and its issues as well as the general welfare of TAC, where he works.

But hope endures! Only yesterday our brave knight promised us

I am writing the book proposal this week. Things are moving very fast. People need to wake up. You can have St. Benedict, or you can have Dr. Berman. If you don’t choose, do not doubt for a second but that the choice will be made for you.

That was, of course, a full 24 hours ago, ages before today's call to arms quoted at the top of this post.Tomorrow, who knows? Maybe sprinkles!

The problem in producing the long talked about emperorographic next volume in question, of course, is that from the beginning his shapeshifting Benedict Option has depended entirely on what can only be described as "crowd-sourced principle": Rod can't finally decide what the Benedict Option principle actually is until he hears from what enough people who want to pay for him writing a book about something actually want it to be about.

Maybe, just maybe, although the next book will now inevitably reflect the eclectic composition of granola itself, it will actually have our knight waging culture war on our behalf on a battlefield larger than the urban chicken coop, his bed, or his therapist's couch and will engage foes more formidable than the family and neighbors who know him best.

Rod Dreher, Culture Warrior

In the meantime, dealing with the culture war on our own, without the helpful intelligence guidance of a Curveball, might actually be an asset, not a liability.

UPDATE (as they say): In contrast to Curveball and his "strategic withdrawal", above, here's what true culture warriors look like:

"We will not obey.".

Some questions as the Supreme Court hears arguments on gay marriage this morning

What is the State - and here I'm including state governments as well as the federal government - actually doing by claiming any dominion over any sort of marriage, and what right does it have to make any such sort of claim? Is it actually addressing what marriage is or is not, or is it only really addressing marriage to the extent that marriage occupies a place as a gateway to a number of political rights and financial benefits? In other words, should the State actually be addressing the rights and benefits that attach to marriage directly rather than using marriage as a convenient catch-all means of doing so and thus, in doing so, leave the kernel "marriage" at the center of these various rights and responsibilities alone entirely?

For just one example of this, could the State forbid medical institutions from granting or forbidding visitation rights based on marital status, thus addressing visitation rights while stepping over and leaving marriage untouched as a point of action entirely? It certainly does so on race already: medical visitation can't be granted or forbidden on the basis of race, and the State doesn't enumerate which races are valid visitors and which are not. It simply commands hands off race as a deciding factor.

Can the State establish a definition of marriage - any definition - without running afoul of the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment? How, or how not? For example, to establish a Catholic (or Methodist or Muslim) definition of marriage as a law of the land, federal or state, would seem to be a clear violation of the EC. But if so, what are we really left with talking about if the State claims a right to establish a secular, non-religious alternative: how can the State even realistically describe the boundaries of that definition without implicitly invoking a prior, religious definition? Or, again, is it the case that, rather than dealing with any sort of marriage, the State is instead merely expediently seizing upon a collective placeholder for a radiating series of rights and benefits it should more properly be compelled to address individually and directly?

In other words, ever since the pluralistic secular constitutional republic American State necessarily let go of a religious definition of marriage it has really only been gliding in free fall, holding on to a now-empty husk of the past. Constitutionally, it cannot return to any religious standard, but, at least logically, it seems to me, it can ultimately be forced to release its grip even on the husk it's still grasping by forcing it to define exactly what the remnant it's asserting a claim to is. Anything it attempts, it seems to me, can immediately be argued as constitutionally discriminatory from one standpoint or another.

This seems to be the ultimate terminal logic of marriage within a secular constitutional republic to me as groups other than heterosexual couples rise to claim benefits radiating from it: if any one standard for State-sanctioned marriage proves to be unconstitutional, then all - that is, State-sanctioned marriage itself - must ultimately prove to be unconstitutional, thus jettisoning the kernel junction "marriage" itself from the grip of the State entirely and back into its myriad private niches. Rights and benefits previously coupled to marriage must necessarily and subsequently be de-coupled: medical visitation, adoption, financial benefits, etc., etc, and addressed individually, separately, and discretely on their individual, separate, and discrete constitutional and legal merits.

Could some practical collective State property-inheritance-child harboring license subsequently re-evolve? It almost certainly would, but when it does it would (if conservatives insisted upon it) no longer have any connection with now entirely private marriage.

Thus, for conservatives and Christians, life will probably change, but not at all necessarily in the ways envisioned, and almost certainly not in the ways exploitative doomsaying parasites would want it to.

The implications of this to me are that, should conservatives assert themselves on these matters, and contra the completely bizarre cult of personal weakness and submission Rod Dreher is desperately attempting to inculcate in and cultivate among others solely in order to promote his book sales, the whole gay marriage issue might very well prove to be that turning point at which the modern pluralistic constitutional republic American State, at least, was ultimately forced to abandon any direct claims upon marriage entirely.

Even short of this, though, to what extent does whatever the State claim with respect to any version of what it chooses to recognize as marriage bind or even implicate conservatives? I can see one consequence: even threading the needle between accommodation laws (can't discriminate against gays as gays) and compelled speech (conservatives can't be compelled to celebrate SSM), the percentage of conservatives involved in wedding commerce might decline, primarily voluntarily at the hands of conservative vendors themselves. Beyond that, though, what actual compulsions could the State possibly level against conservatives? I've already argued extensively that the idiosyncratic personal and moral cowardice of Rod Dreher should be recognized as the worst touchstone possible for engagement in the public square. For just one example, the State can no more compel conservatives to call gay marriage marriage than it can compel pro-life advocates to call unborn babies fetuses. And whether conservatives refer to gay marriages as marriages remains entirely up to them. The only question becomes the courage of one's convictions. Rod Dreher is God's loud and public gift to us all of an example of what having none looks like.

In short, when I try to look at this whole thing closer up a whole host of crevices seem to open up to me through which conservatives can pursue action immediately serving our interests, at least so long as we don't allow ourselves to be seduced by self-appointed gurus of doom.

I'm sure other questions would come to me, but that's enough from me. Maybe some of you have some others of your own.

BTW, the SCOTUSblog coverage of this morning's arguments can be followed here.

Saucy pug's tail Ace of AOSHQ finds itself wagged by Rod Dreher's Big Narcissistic Bunker Option dog

Is It Time to Formally Separate America Into Two Or More Sovereign Countries?

Really? That time already? I thought it was only about time to knock off from work.

Divorce

we should probably being discussing the inevitable division of the country. And remember: *We* did not press this.
— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) April 26, 2015

notice the lack of "that's crazy-talk" responses
— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) April 26, 2015

No, that's clearly crazy talk, you drooling imbecile, either from someone so deep in self-loathing and despair that the neurons will no longer fire or someone cynically desperate for those blog hits the cute cat and dog pictures aren't generating anymore.

Here are a couple of questions, genius.

How will the nation be divided in two? Rock, paper, scissors? Size of National Guard armories? You'll pull the different states out of a hat personally?

On the anniversary of the Armenian genocide, how will the transfers of loyalists between the two final new sub-Americas be made? Peacefully? As hostages to be bartered for further internecine concessions? Multiple Trails of Tears marketed as CrossFit for the whole family?

Look in the mirror, Ace, you astonishingly stupid remnant of a man. The problems the right has may be more home grown than we care to admit.

These sorts of deformations you're spitting up - no, sorry, you're not that original; the sorts of deformations Rod Dreher is spitting up and you're merely derivatively licking off his chest - are the retroviruses of conservative thinking.

Crap like this will really drive the undecideds to the ballot box, won't it: "Hurry, Martha, oh, we so want to be sure and get a good state!"

Or maybe this is just a case of conservative problems handily converted into some sort of utterly unserious BuzzFeed fizzy pop rocks blog filler to keep the kids entertained until their parents get home, like those adorable kitty and doggy pictures.