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Not Ready for Martyrdom?
I bought Dreher’s book Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents to look for suggestions and ammo for fighting the culture wars but instead, I got a survivor manual for a war already lost. The first half of the book is about how bad it is out there and why it will likely get worse in large part because the west is rapidly adopting the Chinese social credit system. The right to have a bank account, to make purchases, or even to be employed are becoming contingent on a continued demonstration of right thinking and behavior. Being denied a social media presence is a slap on the wrist compared to being banned from commerce by all large corporations for being explicit enemies of the state (gun manufacturers and sellers, right-to-life groups, the fossil fuel industry, orthodox religious groups, etc.). Or just living under the constant threat of being called out, detected, and fired in some woke purge. In China, your ‘credit rating’ drops if your family and friends are not compliant. The scope and detail of the state leverage are frightening.
When reading the book, I recalled the outstanding German movie Lives of Others (2006) about the personal moral struggles of a Stasi secret policeman. In one scene, he and his team have just planted listening bugs in the apartment of the targeted figure. A neighbor peeks out at them as they departed the scene and the lead agent calmly warns her that if she says anything, her daughter (he knows and recites her name!) will not be admitted to university. It was less about the specifics of the threat than the terrifying realization that they know all about you. The Stasi relied on paper files and boxes of index cards. It is unimaginable how thorough they could have been with control over Alexa, Siri, and smart appliances, all run by a constantly learning AI on supercomputing platforms. Is that in our future?
Dreher quotes people who had lived under communist rule who are appalled at how passively Americans accept woke tyranny, social media manipulation, and “soft” social sanctions to compel silence and conformity in the face of obvious lies about human nature or history.
I was thus primed and ready for the second part of the book. How do we fend off this monstrous attack on freedom? The answer? Strengthen faith, learn from the example of Christian martyrs, prepare to endure suffering, strengthen the family and small groups, and expect the ultimate victory of the truth purchased, as ever, by the blood of martyrs.
Not really the answer I was hoping for, Rod.
I am more in tune with the character Thomas More wished to be in A Man for All Seasons “Whatever may be done by smiling, you may rely on me to do…. This is not the stuff of which martyrs are made.” I would rather remain in a comfortable mild cynicism (with ready access to second breakfast) without the demands of some great struggle, thank you. If really necessary, I would prefer the role of the reluctant hero, like Rick Blaine, Oskar Schindler, or Bilbo Baggins, and definitely not that of the martyrs and spiritual heroes of the death camps and gulags.
What is especially tiresome about the new totalitarians is that (a) they lack the radiant optimism of the suckers who first foisted communism on the world–the woke are not the type to die for the cause and (b) they are too ignorant of even very recent history to see that the inevitable end of a war against objective truth, morality and human nature is some form of Götterdämmerung preceded by the execution of numerous Nikolai Rubashovs as the ‘revolution’ necessarily devours its own. Yes, cupcake, no matter how woke you are, there is a wall and some bullets waiting for you too. People who waved red flags or wore swastika armbands in 1939 could perhaps delude themselves about where it would lead. Nobody in 2023 has that excuse.
The core of the resistance to the rule of Soviet puppet regimes may have been spiritual but the appetite for a materially better life also helped drive many young people in the communist world to resent and rebel. But what if the new totalitarians start with a wealthy society (which they will cause to decline) and threaten to take away access to that (shrinking) supply of wealth? A scary thought is that consumer capitalism and the concomitant false notion that freedom is solely an entitlement to self-indulgence have gutted our capacity to fight and endure a moral struggle for actual freedom. Meditate on that and welcome to Mr. Dreher’s world.
I recently had a chat with some young, conventionally lefty acquaintances. One opined that when the Second Amendment was adopted, gun hobbyists/collectors did not have access to automatic weapons (I no longer waste time explaining the definition of “semi-automatic). I explained that the Bill of Rights was mostly about the right to fulfill obligations of conscience to speak and live the truth as one’s conscience sees fit and to respect and protect the rights of others trying to do the same. Owning a gun was about the right to discharge an obligation to protect family, property, and community. If we don’t see the Bill of Rights in terms of requiring government respect for a conscience-driven life, then we don’t understand it. That drew blank stares. I don’t think my young friends are ready for a life in The Resistance. We have such a warped idea of freedom that it will be hard to want to fight for it.
I fervently hope that this cup shall pass and that we don’t need widespread martyrdom to get us past this era’s flirtation with the forces of evil and stupid. Maybe less dramatic, but more widespread moral heroism could be enough. As More observed from his prison in A Man for All Seasons:
If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us saintly. But since we see that avarice, anger, pride, and stupidity commonly profit far beyond charity, modesty, justice, and thought, perhaps we must stand fast a little – even at the risk of being heroes.
Is it possible for us all to ‘stand fast a little’ more often to oppose the silly but deeply pernicious lies that some are trying to impose by fiat? Would that be enough?
Published in General
You seem to be saying that the current crisis is baked into the Christian DNA. Interesting.
I think Christians failed at the “shrewd as serpents” part of the command and doubled down on “innocent as doves.”
So the remedy for this string of losses is to surrender harder? I’m not buying it. I don’t see anything built into the fabric of the universe that means a pendulum, having swung from “maybe we should decriminalize consensual sodomy” to “you must allow us to castrate your minor son” in a generation, can’t swing back just as far and just as fast. (Whether that would be a good thing is a whole different question.)
What could be more Enlightenment than a nation founded on principles rather than descent?
I take your point, but I disagree: all they had to do in 1939 was study the French Revolution to see where it would all lead. But of course those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, then and now.
Vince Guerra, who lives in Alaska, already said that the election integrity report was so bad that no one was allowed to publish it. And if you did get permission to read it you were bound by law not to write about it or discuss it (I think that’s all that he said). He said that Alaskan politics and elections are so bad that they don’t represent any near true voting. It’s no surprise that Murkowski won regardless of conservatism, party affiliation or the electorate’s voting.
I think the amplitude is increasing until it goes off the chart.
I hate to tell you. You’re already using “gender” instead of “sex”.
They move for freedom, which in a moral country brings prosperity.
They definitely didn’t move to Iran for freedom.
Edit:
And consider the movement of people from Europe to Latin America. They’re unlikely to have expected more freedom in another part of Spanish or Portuguese domains. Of course migrants from Northern Europe to North America may have had loftier goals.
I mentioned that a Machiavellian Republicans might say publicly that he supports same sex marriage (while privately opposing it) because 70 percent of Americans and 55 percent of Republicans support same sex marriage while at the same time saying that no person or business should be compelled to participate in any marriage, whether that marriage is heterosexual or homosexual.
Also, that Machiavellian Republican could also argue that people who are under the age of 18 just don’t have the cognitive ability to make important decisions such as whether to remove their breasts or their penis.
It would be a bit like Bill Clinton in 1992 executing a murderer despite Leftist opposition to the death penalty.
Clinton might have actually opposed the death penalty. After all, Clinton’s US Supreme Court nominees seem to oppose the death penalty. But Clinton knew that in 1992 there was a lot of support for the death penalty and that in 1988 Michael Dukakis might have lost his presidential race due to his opposition to the death penalty.
Clinton gave the voters a head fake to the right and then governed left.
It’s too bad that there aren’t some Machiavellian Republicans out there, willing to send out those “I’m cool with gay marriage” vibes in order to make sure that chopping off the body parts of 12 years is prohibited.
When I read about conservatives getting ready to hunker down and survive being ‘othered’ it is weirdly familiar. They wouldn’t thank me for the comparison, but why else did we have gay ghettos but the need for community in a hostile world? And the only way we survived was steadfastly believing in our own truth and not buying into the falsehoods of (then conservative) society about us.
Alan Turing was a gay British man who helped the British government break the Nazi codes during World War II. Yet he was subjected to chemical castration until he committed suicide.
That’s what real persecution looks like.
Dude! I hope they don’t chemically castrate conservatives! That’s brutal.
I not inclined to be doctrinaire regarding the use of words like ‘gender’. It is a perfectly good word when used the way I’m using it. On the one hand, it is a succinct way of referring to “biological sex” (your essential point). But I also meant that I intend to speak truthfully regarding gender as subject that is being lied about, and regarding which there is cultural pressure to participate in the lie. So with my use of ‘gender’ I mean to cover both contexts. One of the rules of good writing, as I understand it, is not to use a longer form when a shorter form will suffice. If I had said I intend to speak the truth “regarding sex”, would I have been talking about copulation? Or biological gender? Untethered use of the word “sex” is ambiguous outside the context and in my case I preferred the use of gender as a subject being lied about, which includes the question of biological sex.
Having said all of the above, I think the left is far more sinister regarding language than we generally spend enough time contemplating. Manipulation of language is always and everywhere an indicator of malevolence. I don’t like the way ‘gender’ is being hijacked any more than I liked the hijacking of ‘gay’ (regarding which I still have a smouldering linguistic resentment). And don’t get me started on the profanation of rainbows.
I also tend toward minor misbehaviors in some of my writing, preferring – say – masculine forms for the generic case (e.g. ‘mankind’ rather than ‘humankind’, ‘he’ rather than ‘he/she’.) Doing this gives me quiet satisfaction while also discomfiting readers on the other side, which is a happy reward all its own.
What an insult to those here striving for honest election processes as well as behavior of those elected to office. Lying and the misunderstanding or misinterpretation of roles, whether genetic or moral, is exactly what American society is coping with today. Here you are promoting more of that very thing. This is what the Leftist leaders do and it is a highly developed skill for embedding immoral standards in society.
I never know whether to call myself a social conservative or not. I don’t approve of the things you describe and recommend Machiavellian reaction towards but I don’t deny individuals their right to choose such behavior. I see no legitimate social reason to change the meaning of long-established English words like marriage and gender; this requires a total lack of imagination.
Your suggestion that lying and deception are good approaches for political parties to take are exactly the things that have put conservatives where they are today by failure to gain knowledge of truth and act on it. If you were conservative you would not approve of what Mitch McConnell has been delivering for the Republican Party .
In my bleaker moods I sometimes think Dreher is too optimistic. I think he’s correct that we’re living in a post-Christian society that is in a nascent soft-totalitarian phase. I think he underestimates how rapid the change is, and will be. Though he definitely believes it’s happening, and really can’t be stopped at this point. Thus The Benedict Option and Live Not by Lies.
FWIW, it appears that the late Benedict XVI agreed with Rod, at least to an extent.
“It’s very easy to whine about the failure of politicians on the Right to counter the Left in the battles of the culture war, but politicians mostly respond to their perception of where their voters are. If they don’t, they won’t be re-elected. The culture wars were lost, not because politicians on the Right didn’t fight, but because the public largely agreed with the Left.”
You didn’t exactly provide a lot of support for ‘your opinion’.
Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell would be my prime example to refute your opinion. They have a similar set of voters. I think it is dollars and national Party posture and influence that has been winning. We had a great example of that in Mississippi in 2014, IIRC, when Haley Barbour was heading the Party.
My point is that people like Bill Clinton are willing to tell the voters what they want to hear on some issues, such as the death penalty, in service of their other political priorities.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that Bill Clinton actually didn’t like the death penalty, yet he believed that the main reason why Michael Dukakis was defeated in the 1988 presidential election against George HW Bush was because Dukakis openly expressed his opposition to the death penalty.
So, Bill Clinton could have said, “I would rather lose on principle than trim my sails and win.” But Clinton decided to trim his sails and win.
Are Republicans willing to say to the 70 percent of Americans and 55 percent of Republicans who think that gay and lesbian couples should be afforded the same legal options as heterosexual couples? You don’t even have to call it “marriage.” You could call it “a union in the eyes of the government.”
By doing this, a large number of Americans (the 70 percent who support same sex marriage) might be more receptive to Republican arguments that 12 year olds should not be allowed to get their breasts surgically removed or that men shouldn’t be in mixed martial arts competition with women.
With respect to faith, there are non-believers, there are believers, there are those who like to think they are believers and there are those who want to be seen as believers. Republican voters tend to elect a lot of folks in that last category. So it is an open question whether the problem is a widespread actual loss of moral substance or a shortage of morally firm elected leadership. The answer is both.
The pessimists will do a better job recognizing and pushing back against this. The optimists will wait until it is too late.
I’m kind of big on truth and knowledge, this is why I’m positive on the enlightenment although those who judge that as a source of many of our difficulties today are likely correct. Problems emerging because of openness brought on by enlightenment are compounded by the exclusions of knowledge being promoted now by our Leftist leaning institutions. It’s complicated.
Bernard Lewis agrees.
If Christianity can’t stand up to reason. Then why should we base our society around it except for practical reasons. It seems like more of a story of Santa Claus trying to make people be good than Truth and beauty. Also, doesn’t Christianity lean anti-nationalist. It embraces universal brotherhood regardless of race or nation.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the left thought it good idea to get rid of masculinity. The only masculinity that seems to be celebrated is female to male trans people.
It isn’t that it can’t stand up to reason that’s the problem. That assumes a majority of people subscribe to reasonableness. I think that’s not true.
The problem was how to apply Christian virtue in a democracy. I know that’s not a popular position and is easily dismissed. It isn’t easy to defend, but French is hardly unique in the 20th century in trying to justify Christians keeping their morals out of legislation – that legislation should have secular underpinnings. How Christians should vote in terms of their beliefs is not a new debate and it isn’t a non-existent one.
Christians have been convinced that the only place for their faith is at the personal level – their homes, churches, personal relationships. It isn’t for school and it isn’t for legislation (though it is for picking the best politician).
Personal opinion is fine, but make it public is against the principles of our constitution and the enlightenment.
So Christianity was convinced out of the public sphere. And that is why we are here. But those foundations of openness to ideas, to not pushing ideas on others, to democracy… those stem from the enlightenment.
Reason existed in the church before the enlightenment. It still exists even as the world succumbs to a new intellectual dark age. But there could be an argument for false teachers, false prophets having led the church down destructive paths.
Regardless, Christians had every right to seek THEIR virtues represented in law. Those who taught otherwise were charlatans.
Many Christians consider ‘intelligence’ to be the ‘glory of god’. It certainly is what distinguishes humans from the remainder of the animal kingdom and it is what enables ‘free agency’ to be effectively used. This is a capability released to much of the world human population as part of broad-based education after the Enlightenment. Christians also have knowledge and many warnings of the lies and deceptions as well as the tools employed by Satan to destroy Christians and divert others from becoming Christian.
Leftist ideology has been effectively employed as the major tool in Satan’s toolbox since the time of Woodrow Wilson to fight this battle against human intelligence. Two world wars and the introduction of American Empire have been effective tools to further the attempts to destroy Christian influence. This has been well-disguised, a prominent feature employed by Satan, and has not been duly recognized by Christians and American Patriots until the present.
Now we must work to spread the truth first in America and then beyond.
The new Democrat minority is working diligently already with the lies and deceit. Byron Donalds is already being personally diminished as a token people’s representative in the House by Democrats. Media types and some Democrats on social media display their racism without understanding that they are suffering from that malady by attacking the fact that Donalds has a long-standing marriage to a white woman. I have to be careful here since I don’t know if the attacks are because she is white or because she is a woman or because she knows it.
The minority leader gave his opening speech projecting at least 26 routine Democrat behaviors on to the Republican majority after they selected a Speaker.
“Gender” is a linguistic term that has nothing to do with sex except jokingly. — source OED