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Political Timidity & Clerical Cowardice
When an attempt was made to railroad George Zimmerman into prison for defending himself when assaulted, most conservatives fell silent, and some joined the lynch mob — and, to the best of my knowledge, not a single public official stood up to denounce what was going on.
More recently, when A&E suspended Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty for having the effrontery to repeat age-old Christian doctrine in an interview with GQ, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, and Ted Cruz let A&E have it. But the Republican establishment was present and accounted for only in its absence from the scene.
Moreover, when Mark Steyn blasted GLAAD in his inimitable way for trying to shut down public discourse, his editor at National Review Online took offense and went after him. Mark, being Mark, knew how to respond, and others at NRO have since rallied to his support. But I am nonetheless struck by the timidity on the right.
Even more to the point, however, I am really struck by the silence of the clergy. We can debate whether what Phil Robertson said was right or wrong, but the priests and ministers of the various Christian sects profess precisely what he said, and they have been ostentatiously silent. Did a single Catholic bishop speak up? If so, I missed it. Did the presiding officer of the Southern Baptist Convention speak up? If so, I missed it. Did any other clergyman speak up? If so, I missed it, and I tried hard—via Google—to find an example.
What bothers me about this is that it is tantamount to surrender. Christianity is being driven from the public square. Over the last half century, there has been one court case after another aimed at requiring that the federal government and the governments of the states and localities treat religion as a form of leprosy that one must never have any contact with—and that is part of a larger pattern.
When was the last time that you heard a religious Christmas carol at a shopping center? It has been a long time in my experience. Have you tried recently to purchase religious Christmas cards? We did, and we could not find any on offer from Hallmark or similar outlets. We ended up turning to a museum.
If someone like Phil Robertson cannot repeat standard Christian doctrine in the public square, if he cannot express disapproval for fornication, it means that prelates and preachers will soon find themselves harried for doing so as well. If they will not defend their right to preach the Gospel, then why should anyone else bother? It all suggests on their part a decided unwillingness to confront the zeitgeist and to stand up and be counted.
But perhaps I have been wrong. Perhaps, somewhere, there has been, on the part of a clergyman, an eloquent defense of Robertson. I hope so. But I fear that, to an ever increasing degree, men of the cloth in the United States are cowards. We live in an era in which, as William Butler Yeats once put it, “the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Published in General
This is the sort of criticism I had in mind:
Additionally, little more situational awareness on Zimmerman’s part might have given him the time to draw on Martin before getting pummeled and potentially losing his firearm.
That said, my sympathies are entirely with Zimmerman once Martin confronted him, and largely with him before that.
So… criticism ignorant of the situation, thinking he was on patrol rather than noticed someone being strange while he was heading to the store?
That said, my sympathies are entirely with Zimmerman once Martin confronted him, and largely with him before that. ·29 minutes ago
Tom
I appreciate your position and the link. My point was that numerous Second Amendment blogs – based on my reading, the majority – found Zimmerman’s actions entirely reasonable. In fact, the comments to the Farago piece show that many in the firearms community disagree with his criticisms. I didn’t want others who don’t regularly read firearms related blogs to get the wrong impression.
Well, so far we have “but he wasn’t Steyn’s editor for that specific branch,” ignoring of the Derbyshire situation to look at less similar situations, and now “they let him use English instead of American style,” never mind that many American teachers say you should not put punctuation inside of quotations or that being bi-national in punctuation is a plausible policy.
Have we digressed enough?
Mark Steyn butters his bread on the wrong side.
There, now we’ve digressed enough.
The punctuation should go inside the quotation marks, but Steyn places them, consistently, outside. It’s almost like he doesn’t have an editor! ·10 hours ago
See, that’s the problem.
Start with quotation marks before the period and just morph out from there.
Dangling participles, sentence fragments, pronoun errors, run-on sentences, double negatives . . .
Fortunately, I only hate bad grammar. I don’t hate the people who commit it.
Especially when they have a point.
As anyone who reads Mark’s reply to Steorts can see, he regards Steorts as his editor (which he is). The technicalities about the difference betweenNRandNROare irrelevant.
Second, Mr. Steorts did not simply disagree with Mark about the force of his argument. He went after him on the question of propriety. There is a huge difference.
·22 hours ago
Edited 22 hours ago
Mr. Rahe is welcome to address me in the first person.
I have read Steyn’s reply, I certainly hope I qualify as “anyone,” and it seems quite clear to me that Steyn didn’t give a rat’s posterior that Steorts was his “own editor” as evidenced by the way he outright attacked Steorts. It’s clear by the way you refer to Steyn as Mark and to Steorts and me as “Mr Steorts” and “Mr. Arthur,” respectively, that you are not an impartial observer. That’s ok. But you’re still slandering Steorts.
As anyone who reads Mark’s reply to Steorts can see, he regards Steorts as his editor(which he is).
Steyn does what he wants. As anyone who reads a Mark Steyn column at National Review or post at The Corner can see, he rarely conforms to National Review, or American, style. Instead, he uses English punctuation.
For instance, the reply to Steorts that anyone can read:
The punctuation should go inside the quotation marks, but Steyn places them, consistently, outside. It’s almost like he doesn’t have an editor!
The punctuation should go inside the quotation marks, but Steyn places them, consistently, outside. It’s almost like he doesn’t have an editor! ·10 hours ago
See, that’s the problem.
Start with quotation marks before the period and just morph out from there.
Dangling participles, sentence fragments, pronoun errors, run-on sentences, double negatives . . .
Fortunately, I only hate bad grammar. I don’t hate the people who commit it.
Especially when they have a point. ·6 hours ago
I agree with you.
Have we digressed enough? ·6 hours ago
What does the Derb situation have to do with it? Derb wrote something racist (it was in a different publication) and he was then fired from National Review by Rich Lowry (or as Lowry put it, they discontinued their relationship, since Derbyshire wasn’t an employee).
NR does not a have a bi-national punctuation policy.
What does the Derb situation have to do with it?
And that pretty much puts a cap on it.
Leading a horse to water, etc.