Erika Rudzis on
Why Bunker-Christianity isn’t an option
Shorter: you can try to hide where God won't let your pants be pulled down, or you can be a Christian, but you can't do both.
This post flows like a gentle, inexorable stream from source to delta, so you should without question RTWT.
I don't know if anyone noticed, but I had kind of stopped posting on Rod Dreher's incessant nuttiness. I outsourced that job to Keith who is just as insightful, and more entertaining. But Oengus linked to a new post which seems to be an attempt to entice readers to contribute to his magazine by showing them some food which he is eating. Whiskey, tango, fruitcake.
Anymore I skim these things, make an observation and let the rest of you help pick the plate clean. So here's the first comment which made me laugh.
Nick says:
December 19, 2013 at 3:57 pm
Rod, I love your blog. Read it every day. I’d be happy to contribute to your success. But the last time I gave money to TAC in response to one of these donation campaigns, it turned around and published that asinine Jon Huntsman piece on gay “marriage,” one of the worst paean’s to secular humanism and free market idolatry I’ve ever had the misfortune to read.
Since then, I have come to question whether there is really any intellectual coherence at TAC.
I’d like to give to support you, but I’m just not sure what else I’d be giving to. Maybe I should just send you a check personally.
[NFR: No, don't -- send it to the magazine. I didn't like the Jon Huntsman piece either, but I'm glad I work for a magazine that publishes stuff like that. Surely you get more than your fair share of the opposite viewpoint from this blog, yes? Anyway, thanks so much for your support. -- RD]
H/T Dennis Prager. It's always a great story when the cheerleaders get their comeuppance. Dennis highlights this paragraph:
It is not lost on many of the professionals that they are exactly the sort of people — liberal, concerned with social justice — who supported the Obama health plan in the first place. Ms. Meinwald, the lawyer, said she was a lifelong Democrat who still supported better health care for all, but had she known what was in store for her, she would have voted for Mitt Romney.
Wow, Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty agrees with Pope Francis and the Catholic faith about homosexuality. Excerpt:
We never, ever judge someone
Rod Dreher charges gay marriage greases a slippery slope to greater religious freedom for traditional conservative Mormons in Utah.
Huh?
Surely this guy is a liberal fifth columnist masquerading as a conservative, deliberately sowing sabotage in an effort to make social conservatives look desperately ridiculous. Not even a monkey on acid could accidentally make an argument this stupidly contradictory and self-defeating.
Hmmm, but looks like the spell didn't take first go-round. Muons maybe. So he doubles down. The monkey averts its eyes out of compassion, and Alex Jones begins to look sharper by the minute.
Anyone here have the bird flu? Have you been rounded up into a concentration camp? Enrolled in a Babylon Mystery School? And do you remember the existence of aliens being announced? Or the internet being shut down?
The "neocons" support Hillary Clinton?
If you don't believe Alex Jones, he thinks you are a dumbass and a stupid freak. (Listen to around 10 minutes in.)
Well there is one thing Alex Jones says that I can totally agree with: "Judge a tree by its fruits."
I touched on this post in a comment exchange with Pik, below, but I think another commenter exchange deserves its own post for showcasing a moral cowardice so profoundly congenital that it's become completely transparent to its utterly obtuse host.
In the post Help! Help! They’re Not Being Oppressed!, Rod tells us that the PEN writer's group is being a bunch of ninnies for feeling chilled from writing because of the NSA, concluding:
Please. Such self-important drama. I could be wrong here, but I think that anything not written by a contemporary American writer because he is afraid of the NSA is not something society will suffer from not having. If fear of the NSA prevents, say, Alice Walker from bloviating about cultural politics, well, that’s a point in the NSA’s favor.
Besides which, if you are so afraid of the NSA that you don’t write a book or give a speech on something that matters to you as a writer, the most useful thing someone can say to you is: Nut up.
UPDATE: In fact, if you think about it, who is more at risk of having her writing career damaged by something she was written: an American writer who publishes a book or article highly critical of the US national security establishment, or an American writer who publishes a book or article highly critical of gay rights, or progressive feminist and racial orthodoxies? Would your career be more in danger as a writer for defending Edward Snowden, or Pope Benedict XVI?
The comparison in your UPDATE: is complete nonsense. Nobody was asserting that writers were afraid that the NSA would hurt their careers. They are afraid of the NSA period. So it’s irrelevant to start with.
It’s also apples and oranges. On one hand we have a government leveraging their authority to do something (what isn’t exactly clear; just spy on the writer extra hard i guess) because they are upset by what someone has written. On the other hand you have a writer not being successful because they write things that are very unpopular. How are those the same?
Writing in favor of traditional subjugation of women, gays, and minorities isn’t bad for your career becuase of some conspiracy. It’s bad for your career because it grosses out an extremely large number of people. You are smart enough to see which way the wind is blowing. I can respect you for spitting into it anyway on principal, but whining about it is just pathetic.
[NFR: "Traditional subjugation," eh? You make my point for me: it is far riskier for a writer to take positions opposed to the progressive cultural orthodoxies of the institutions -- academic, media, publishing, etc. -- that she depends on for her livelihood than it would be to oppose the government. That you imagine the only threat to one's livelihood and creative freedom coming from the government is pretty naive. -- RD]
Roddus Tummius: "That you imagine the only threat to one's livelihood and creative freedom coming from the Romans is pretty naive, Petra. What do you really expect a wannabe Christian scribe like me to do about the progressive cultural orthodoxies of the Parchment Guild? Do you really expect me to risk being reduced to begging for scraps of stringy aged goat instead of dining on young Spring lamb as I am accustomed?"
Lo! I show you the Last Man.
"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" -- so asks the Last Man, and blinks.
The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest.
"We have discovered happiness" -- say the Last Men, and they blink.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him; for one needs warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbles over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end for a pleasant death.
One still works, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same; everyone is the same: he who feels differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse.
"Formerly all the world was insane," -- say the subtlest of them, and they blink.
They are clever and know all that has happened: so there is no end to their derision. People still quarrel, but are soon reconciled -- otherwise it upsets their stomachs.
They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health.
"We have discovered happiness," -- say the Last Men, and they blink.
