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You Say You Want a Revolution, Part 2
Here’s what this post, and last week’s post are about: The cultural changes in the media that Ricochet readers don’t like didn’t happen by pure accident. They took decades. We propose equally patient, persistent, but ruthlessly effective efforts to push culture in another direction over the next 20-plus years. We are chewing over how to create or capture a big chunk of tomorrow’s media and the arts. It’s a myth that nothing can be done about the entertainment business. Success is Hollywood’s definitive history teacher.
@drewinwisconsin raises a tough point. He said, “So that’s probably why it’s important to try to change or break the current system rather than try to build an equivalent system that will have no users. Consider how much power and scope Google+ had, and it still couldn’t survive against Facebook. And that’s Google — already a malignant influence.”
@sabrdance asks, “What do we mean by a believable path to get there?”
I mean believable in real world terms. A Jonathan Edwards-style Great Awakening would obviously make all of this tactical maneuvering about the mere media moot. Let’s assume that won’t happen and we end up having to do this ourselves.
My distinguished colleague @Barfly asks: “I’m looking for a characterization of the state we’re aiming for. Society is trying to digest a major transformational technology, the educational system has been broken by affluence and tolerance, of all things, and the barbarians are at the gates armed with all of the above. We can’t expect any of these things to work out in our favor unless we know where we want to go. You must have some vision of where those six or sixty things lead – is that coming in the next installment?”
Here we are, now you be the judge. We’re facing a composite force with a dozen power centers. Among many other tasks, we first need to capture one or more of them or build its equal from scratch. We’ll get around to discussing both.
What’s a Long Game to capture a mindshare of Hollywood? Create something like the Sundance Institute and duplicate their success at making it the arbiter of what’s new and valuable. Like Sundance, win the credibility and the authority to hold screenings and festivals, to present awards and honors to praise the good and shame the bad. Hollywood is particularly susceptible to this. Sprinkle our “graduates” and allies widely through the industry, like raisins in raisin bread. Do you want to make heads explode? Let either the First Lady or Ivanka take a leadership role. Hire young women to make programs and announce a continuing scholarship and apprenticeship program, ours.
In the late Eighties and early Nineties, the street locations and bare breasts of underground movies turned into something more respectable called independent cinema, and people criticized Sundance for showing and promoting films that were, they sniffed, insufficiently political. Sundance said, accurately, that they were dedicated to pushing change through the choices of what they decided to show. When that was deemed not enough, Sundance has also bankrolled some independent films that leaned forward—that is, leaned farther Left–becoming in effect a competitor of their own partners. Like Android’s regular endorsement of a Nexus-quality mobile phone, rotated through the major manufacturers, the Sundance label on an “indie” is a trusted mark of quality. They don’t have to make all the radical films, just the key ones. Smart.
How would our first generation of film projects begin? Make an early (but affordable) splash to announce you’ve arrived on the scene. There’s only, oh, about a hundred ways to respond to the bizzaroid cultural atmosphere of our times. One suggestion: we constantly see efforts to honor women in history/herstory. Fine; great idea. Do our version, because nobody thinks we’d be interested in this. Elevate forgotten, politically unconventional female intellectuals like Clare Booth Luce and Dixy Lee Ray, as well as living writers like Liz Trotta and Amity Shlaes, and make an inexpensive bio series for streaming, to inspire girls and give them different role models than today’s dull lineup.
We can and should learn our Machiavellian lessons from how the other guys did it. Face it, they were good at it; look around you. For roughly sixty years, the culture of the media calls itself progressive, however broadly defined. No one central authority set that in motion, but over the decades, time and time again, lots of helpers stepped in to change movies and TV. It didn’t happen overnight. That change ebbed and flowed. Like King Canute, we can’t command tidal forces, but like good civil engineers, we can put them to work. Turn the tide in our direction.
As in politics, the progressive surge of Hollywood’s do-your-own-thing Sixties ran aground in the stagnating, crime-plagued Seventies. A couple of major hits can shape the attitudes and moods of a decade—think of the three years that took us from “The French Connection” to “The Godfather” to “Death Wish”.
Break that down for a moment, because it shows a persistent Hollywood weakness, a tendency towards unanticipated outcomes that resembles Mickey Mouse in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. “The French Connection” was rare in 1971 for declaring “The time is right for an out-and-out thriller”. It was a trend-setter. Cop movies took the place that westerns once had on the American screen; one bold, unappreciated real man up against smug, lawyer-sanctioned lawlessness. In other words, for all its vague gestures towards the supposed futility of the war against heroin, it had an objectively conservative effect on its audience. The filmmakers didn’t mind, but they were surprised.
“The Godfather” was supposed to be based on one central idea: crime and capitalism are deeply intertwined. Comparisons between the civilian authorities and the mob are always dismissive. Mario Puzo was angry at Francis Coppola for dropping what Puzo considered the single indispensable line in the novel: “A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns”. Actually, this pseudo-Marxist quip has, I have to admit, spread across the aisle. It’s not without a point. But “Godfather’s” unprecedented success wasn’t based on its acute critique of capitalist ethics and the Mafia in Cuba, but in an unexpected emotional reaction: they loved the idea of a Godfather, because in a time when the cities had become dangerous, he was a protector, the dispenser of instant, final street justice. The biggest of criminals was a welcome force against random crime, the most widely despised feature of the era. “Dirty Harry” all but gave up on due process. “Death Wish” took it farther.
Lasting change must be persistent. The Sixties wave stalled and actually reversed by the dawn of the Eighties. What made 1977’s “Star Wars” so different, a turning point for stunned Hollywood, was optimism, faith, and fun. That can and does happen. It can happen again. Think of Pixar’s hits over the past quarter century. Could you imagine, for example, animation and storytelling of Pixar’s quality, but guided by a creative team from the Babylon Bee? I could.
Google wasn’t built in a day. Suppose that when Rupert Murdoch bought Fox, he not only created a different kind of news channel but a different kind of movie studio. Suppose he teamed up with fellow conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz, who created Walden Media to produce the Narnia films. Suppose they realized they needed tech in depth to create and own streaming platforms. The biggest and most durable computer trade show of the era was owned by conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson. None of these team-ups happened. But none of it was impossible; if they’d done it, none of it could have been blocked by other media players. And if Rupe, Phil, and Shelly had figured out how to make money at it, which those three guys were rather good at doing, everyone else in Hollywood would have been aware of the development potential of all that empty real estate they’ve left fallow in the center and on the right.
That’s one of the self-limiting factors of my suggestions: If we’re right about what the public really wants, everybody will slowly, reluctantly, grudgingly compete with us. I couldn’t be more pleased at that prospect. In a century of fascism and communism, Hollywood stands proud for what the town has always believed in: plagiarism.
Of course, plutocratic bosses willing to take a chance can only carry a social movement so far. Ambitious writers who see daylight between the pillars of today’s deadening culture are obviously crucial. Form some embryonic institutions that will staff and guide the project. We already have a few, so start by supporting and enhancing them. We’ll need a farm team, its talent discovered and promoted by a media-based tribute to the success of The Federalist Society, with an unbending vision. It should be led by younger people because they’re going to have to maintain that focus, energy, and clarity of goals for more than a generation.
When you read the words “international cinema”, many of your eyes glaze over. They shouldn’t. Filmmakers, liberal or conservative, like to see sympathetic new artists, and being the gatekeepers of foreign films and TV can have an influence on tomorrow’s directors and writers greatly in excess of their effect on today’s audiences. Conservatives, and social conservatives especially, should be watching the principled defense of traditional culture in central, southern and eastern Europe. Here’s one unorthodox suggestion of a possible center of cultural resistance to today’s culture: Orthodoxy. Many of the film and TV artists of eastern and southern Europe still act in confidence that they’re part of a valid, powerful way of seeing the world.
Naturally, I’m more familiar with my own guys in places like Ireland, Poland, and Lithuania, and they too bring topics into serious films that you’d never see in American ones. But at this moment Catholic culture is crippled; I wish I could say otherwise. The posts of @skipsul make a superb case that Orthodoxy, however it compares to your denomination or religion, is one of today’s most coherent cultural forces and critics.
We’re working to promote real diversity of ideas, not merely a stale future of subsidized, institutionalized conservatism on screen. Yes, if done right our project would certainly lead to more conservative and centrist projects being considered acceptable. It might very well lead to fewer films being green-lighted purely because of their ability to insult your beliefs. But it’ll also lead to more projects that are interested in American history, pure entertainment, and yet informed by a non-PC point of view. “Back to the Future” was written by a conservative, “Apollo 13” and “Saving Private Ryan” by liberals. In 1985, 1995, and 1997, no one to my knowledge supported or rejected their insights based on those political facts. It was still possible to hold a conversation. It wasn’t yet an abyss. We don’t just need some room carved out for conservative politics in culture; we need some room carved out for no politics in culture.
Published in General
This is such a strange response, Skip.
I think that, from the founding through the 1920s, the following rules were typical in state law throughout the country:
There was broad consensus about this. It was undermined, principally by a combination of: (1) radical SCOTUS decisions, and (2) the political success of the radical Left.
What I’m asking for is some unity, on the Conservative side, to: (1) appoint Conservative Justices who will overturn prior, radical decisions to return these issues to the political process, and (2) advocate for, and pass, laws that will move us back toward traditional values.
I don’t expect some complete unity in a totalitarian sense. I’d like some political loyalty in a coalition with broadly Conservative goals, and for my fellow Conservatives to generally support the consensus even if they disagree on specific issues (as I do, myself, on occasion).
Skip, your response strikes me as very Libertarian, though I’m not sure if your personal politics are mostly in this category. In find it naive, in the (apparent) suggestion that we “can’t legislate morality.” You didn’t use precisely these words, so perhaps I’m misinterpreting you, but it seems to be the gist of your argument that one can’t impose “social controls” by law. Yes, you can, and we do it all the time, and so does the other side, and it’s been done since the Founding.
I appreciate your commenting, Jerry. Of course, you’re correct that we disagree. I think in the original post and in this one I haven’t been shy about bluntly stating that we’re fellow travelers. The railroad won’t go to the Promised Land. We can’t reach it on Earth. We can head in that direction, together for some ways.
I’m not trying to sell unanimity. Titus, for example, is much closer to your SoCon positions than I am. He does things his way and he likes Ahmari’s spirit. Me, I’m more of a French guy (that looks weird written out) largely because I don’t see anything that Ahmari would actually do that’s more effective than what French does. Yes, I said “do”, and stamping his foot and holding his breath isn’t going to do a thing. The Right wants to fight, but doesn’t even know how. Mostly, like your polite comments here, what Ahmari knows best is how to criticize people on his own side.
You’ve stated right here that you are not interested in joining any project to push back on the left unless it aligns exactly with your own goals. That does not leave a lot of room for forming alliances.
You do realize this would not have come about except that the culture itself shifted? How would you reverse it?
Might be better served addressing why people are not getting married like they used to.
No, you’re moving the goal posts here by claiming your own action items as Ahmari’s, then claiming I’m attacking you personally. You are not Ahmari, nor is he you. Ahmari, though does not really give much in the way of goals at all, other than mirroring what the Progressives do – “discrediting their opponents and weakening or destroying their institutions”. Your own goals stated above, it seems, are not so aligned.
Let’s look at the core of his infamous essay, right in his conclusion:
Ahmari is advocating tossing off civility and decency, and discrediting opponents and weakening and destroying their institutions, then “enforc[ing] our order and our orthodoxy.” How is this not totalitarian? How is this not seeking a final victory?
This is easily answered: Because he’s helpless to do anything. Because people on his side won’t put money & faith behind their principles.
Is it wise or generous to attack people who have been more successful? No, but mankind are prone to jealousy. Politics is a zero-sum game. Without principles for a common coalition, harshness must follow, for good reasons & bad.
I’ll give you some unsolicited advice–drop the habit of talking about totalitarian, authoritarian, & even exclusionary & the rest… I assume Americans will soon revert to the natural tendency to histrionic rhetoric. But I hope you won’t join in the national pastime. As you can see, even Ricochet is unwilling & incapable of making alliances. Don’t let’s make it worse.
Skip, this is my response to your reference to the Constitution in #24 above, the part in which you stated:
I never said that the Constitution is an end, in and of itself. I want to use the processes created by the Constitution — mostly legislative — to enact policies that serve certain ends. My precise point is that, if your only commitment is to “the Constitution,” then your primary commitment is to process, not to any particular end.
You seem to object to the use of political organization and the political process, under the Constitution, to promote certain ends. Gary’s OP was a call for collective action in opposition to the radical Left, and I want to defeat them, but that’s not the only thing that I want. For collective political action, we need a broad consensus about the ends that we are pursuing, and many of those ends relate to social issues (and other issues). The social issues were most relevant to the OP — I think — as it principally addressed cultural changes promoted by Hollywood.
I want to defeat the radical Left, but when Conservatives are not on the same side in the “culture war,” it makes common action difficult. The obvious way to solve this is with a political coalition, but we need to recognize that there are going to be disagreements within any coalition. To succeed, we need to agree to support the overall platform even when we disagree on particular aspects. This doesn’t mean that we can’t debate the issues internally, just that we need to present a united front externally.
What I see, in both French and in your comments, Skip, is a rejection of the idea of party loyalty. Well, why would I ally myself with someone who will break ranks whenever they disagree? Further, in your case Skip, you apparently considered the very request for united action to be totalitarian and unconstitutional.
Again, perhaps I’m misunderstanding you.
Might be better to seek alliances on issues where we can, minus the broad consensus, and let the alliances shift as they will.
Here’s a grab bag of wishes. I’d like to see some truth in portrayals of the American past and some subtlety depicting aspects of life that don’t look so great to us now. I’d like my uncle’s difficult work cleaning up the NYPD to be recognized as being more important than the “careers” of the career criminals on the streets. Like many of you here, SkipSul and I raised families (he’s still in the middle of the process) and we wouldn’t mind seeing ol’ dad get a little credit from the media every now and then. Skip runs a business; it would be nice if people like him were depicted like Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey, the source of prosperity, rather than as polluters and exploiters. I’m not asking for Chamber of Commerce boosterism towards business, but it would be good to acknowledge that they aren’t all rapacious thieves.
Again, this is not aligning yourself with Ahmari, but much more with French. It’s working within the system, not overthrowing it.
I’m no Libertarian as I find libertarianism often to be hopelessly naive in some instances, and frankly dangerous in others.
In many cases, though, you’re putting the cart before the horse. Most of these were laws prior to the Constitution, yet you talked of the founders imposing “very significant social controls at the state and local level” as if this was all top-down. You have your cause and effect inverted here. Moreover, you left out other things being laws of the land earlier in our history which have likewise gone away (and good riddance): state supported churches with tax-dollar support, slavery, racial segregation, anti-Catholic laws, and so forth. Just because something was the law of the land before, and now no longer is, is no sign that it alone held the culture together. That these things were knocked down, one by one, is a sign that the Christian culture in the US failed first. And that should be examined as that indicates that Christianity in America failed in its mission. Fixing the laws won’t fix that.
If you want to shift the laws of the land to get these bucket-list items put back, then you have to work at it. Getting the “right” judges or “right” laws alone won’t do it if the populace resists (as it did during Prohibition). Ahmari’s call to abandon decency and civility, and to mirror how “Progressives understand that culture war means discrediting their opponents and weakening or destroying their institutions. Conservatives should approach the culture war with a similar realism.” is a sign that Ahmari himself does not even believe in the power of Christianity to win hearts and minds back. Else why should this militancy be required?
Christianity has faced worse than this – in the USSR, in China, in Rome – without going where Ahmari suggests.
Well… how do you want to promote traditional morality? Do you want to do it in a way that leverages current cultural trends into an invitation to seek something higher? Or is it more important to castigate the current cultural trends, to make sure the youth who follow them know how icky we think they are, and so forth?
For example, take #MeToo and consent culture. Sure, we can mock them, and that has its own appeal. But stories about women who want sex on their own terms, who are strong enough to rebuff unwanted advances while also cultivating nonsexual friendships with men, don’t have to be “dirty SJW” stories: they also describe stories of exemplary Christian women. After all, a free woman who chooses sex on her own terms is free to choose chastity as her terms. Not a chastity born merely from fear of shame, either, but a chastity born of recognizing how important nonsexual love is for the cultivation of souls (and, incidentally, the good order of society: for social harmony, we should love a far greater number of people than we knock boots with).
Consider the stories of Kassia and Basia:
Kassia was a great hymnographer, and her surviving work is one of the earliest examples we have of legible musical notation. Even as a girl, Kassia was recognized by her mentor, Theodore the Studite, as exceptionally bright and holy. She also seems to have been a bit impertinent: the account of her rebuffing Emperor Theophilos’s marriage proposal by embarrassing him with a witticism might be folkloric, but it’s the best account we have and there’s no strong reason to doubt it.
Kassia rejected men’s sexual advances to cultivate her own soul, and while this cultivation wasn’t solipsistic — she was doing it for God — modern youth, I think rightly, would recognize her independence from “the man” in doing so. Kassia worked closely with the monks of Stoudios, as something like an equal, it seems. Pure as she was, her most famous hymn stands in solidarity with the impure, a sign that purity isn’t just cover for prissy scorn of “those icky people over there, who’ll never be one of us, and their icky ways”.
Kassia’s story is one of an utterly chaste love quadrangle: first and most importantly, love for God. But also nonexploitative love between her and her (male) mentor, as well as a justly unconsummated love between her and the Emperor. Love entangled with political intrigue, I might add (the iconoclasm controversy). In the right hands, why shouldn’t her story make a thrilling and relatable love story for modern audiences, despite the absence of sex?
The story of Basia is Roger Scruton’s story, told in the second half of this essay (which appears to have been scanned in from a hardcopy book and lost some of its punctuation along the way). Basia is an uppity woman with a checkered past — after attending a few of Scruton’s lectures, she waylays Scruton to say, point blank, she desires him, a frankness likely to end in embarrassment all round whether the desire is reciprocated or not. The twist is she’s also forthright about why she won’t consummate the desire, and thereby hangs a tale.
Basia is, by Scruton’s standards, poor and oppressed, though by the standards of her immediate circumstances, gifted and even somewhat lucky: how many unwed mothers in even a free country (and hers is not) get the chance to pursue an advanced degree in a philosophy even Scruton doesn’t understand? Basia’s story is also entangled, obliquely (Scruton’s essay remains a bit in-Scruto-ble on this point) with political intrigue: the essay doesn’t elaborate, but a shadowy figure, somewhat like the hackneyed Da Vinci Code’s Silas, tails Scruton occasionally, showing how Scruton is suspected of subverting communism.
Feminists might say, oh well, Basia’s story is still the typical story of a woman not existing for herself, but merely as an instrument to serve men — as muse, as caretaker. Scruton’s account subverts that trope, though: yes, Basia is a caretaker — just like the old man, Maronite priest of his Lebanese village, whose pastoral care includes even the village Muslims. (We’re prone to suspect inclusive messages of being a hackneyed leftist trope whose real purpose is merely erosion of respectability. But there is a way to do inclusive messages right, even if you’re right-wing.)
Returning to Kassia as an example, sex workers, usually too ashamed to darken the door of their Orthodox churches, creep into the sanctuary to hear Kassia’s great hymn every Holy Week: they rightly sense the hymn’s solidarity with their plight, even as the hymn laments (not approves of) such sin. Kassia’s purity isn’t degraded by this solidarity; rather, the impure are uplifted. And why shouldn’t they be? — how else would sinners be saved?
Much as we may resent the right’s attachment to sexual morality being caricatured as merely the instrument by which the kyriarchy keeps uppity broads and insolent weirdos down (or at least I hope we resent the caricature — some on our side seem to positively root for it), those buying into this caricature often have understandable reasons for doing so, and our simply harrumphing at them (though who doesn’t love a good harrumph?) reinforces the caricature. In order for our stories of chaste love to reach people other than ourselves, our stories should subvert the caricature. Yeah, it can be viewed as selling out to PC culture, but the point would be leveraging PC culture to our advantage in order to tell stories of our vision of the good life that can resonate even with those accustomed to PC: every investment starts with selling out in hopes of raking in later.
Christians really do believe the world needs more love. Traditional Christians also believe the world needs pretty tight boundaries on sex. Without a common currency of compelling stories of nonsexual love, it’s awfully hard to reconcile these two agendas, something even those “duped by PC” aren’t too stupid to notice. Can we really be surprised if people who miss out on such stories (and that seems to be many people in our modern age) might wonder whether traditional Christians’ idea of love is bogus?
The ones the (national) Chamber of Commerce represent frequently are rapacious thieves. I prefer thousands of Skips to one megacorp.
Again, this is why I find Ahmari’s way of thinking so troublesome. I keep coming back to that conclusion of his, especially this sentence:
“We should seek to use these values to enforce our order and our orthodoxy…”
I contrast that with something Madeline L’Engle said:
This is echoed in what Gary said too:
We’ll never get the laws changed (or get them to have any weight once changed) if we’ve failed to also move the culture our way, and not just on sexual morality but on the things Gary cites too We have to show that our ways are desirable before people will desire them. We have to show that there are better ways of living, and better ways of governing, and that’s all bottom-up work.
Skip, I really appreciate your comments. They lead in so many directions that I feel a bit like Hercules fighting the Hydra (though in a good way). Responding to your # 33 is going to take several comments. Here goes:
I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear. I didn’t state this, or didn’t mean to. I’m actually the one who feels abandoned by fellow-travelers like Gary, and you, and many of our heroes (from Jonah Goldberg to David French to Charles Murray, and many others). I have the good fortune to be quite close to the center of the old Reagan coalition, as I am a “threefer” (fiscal conservative, social conservative, and defense conservative). Since the 1990s, the coalition has done a poor job in holding together on “culture war” (i.e. social conservative) issues. Even the second President Bush was weak on this point (for example, opposing SSM while advocating civil unions).
More recently, with President Trump, the coalition has done a poor job in holding together regarding issues of fiscal conservatism.
My response was focused on social issues (traditional morality) because this seemed to be the subject of the OP. It wasn’t about tax or regulatory policies. My point was that “pushing back on the left” is vague, and I know that Gary and I disagree regarding SSM. If there’s a call for a coalition, I want to know what it is going to advocate. I don’t expect to get my way on every issue.
I do expect that any coalition worthy of the name “Conservative” will promote “traditional morality.” Otherwise, what in the world is it conserving? I’m open to discussion about details.
As if the culture shifted on its own. This highlights the validity of Ahmari’s criticism of French. French was pro-SSM until Obergefell, and then changed his position when he saw how the radical Left was using the mainstreaming of homosexuality (and the reasoning of the case) to persecute dissenters, especially Christians. This was completely apparent and predictable.
I know, past errors are is water under the bridge. But for crying out loud, we need to learn from them.
I think that the principal reasons for the cultural shift are Leftist bullying and deceptive propaganda.
One thing that I am doing is trying to rationally debate the issue here at Ricochet. I authored a series of six posts back in March on the principal arguments in favor of SSM and sodomy generally, discussing how they are both logically flawed and factually unsupported. Here are links to #4 and #6 in the series (which include links to the others).
Another thing that I am doing is refusing to use the terminology of my opponents on the issue. Conceding the linguistic ground is often a prelude to losing the argument. This is close to the heart of the French-Ahmari disagreement, as you quoted — specifically, Ahmari’s point that civility and decency are secondary values (which I’ll address in more detail later). One of the radical Left’s tactics is the weaponization of politeness.
Thus, I am no longer generally using the terms “gay” or “homosexual.” I have started using the traditional terms “sodomy” and “sodomite.” I have also started using the term “philosodomite” for someone who is not a sodomite, but who supports the pro-sodomy agenda. I am using the latter term specifically in response to the word “homophobic,” which I think is a term used as an epithet calculated to stigmatize any opposition or objection to sodomy.
I think that we are in the grip of a strange, Left-wing hysteria on this issue. I think that this is precisely what you and Gary are also seeing, and why you both want to “push back” against the Left, as I do.
“We should seek to use these values to enforce our order and our orthodoxy”
Ahmari? or Kylo Ren?
Since conservatives tend to be more religious they’re probably donating most or much of their money to religious organizations. Secular liberal billionaires are probably more likely to donate to leftist political organizations. I have no data on this. Just a hunch.
Skip, it is not totalitarian because it Ahmari is advocating the adoption of reasonable policies through our representative, Constitutional politics. I think that he advocates is the traditional morality that was commonly enforced in our country from the founding through the 1960s, through a combination of social and legal sanctions.
Let me get this straight. You want to “push back” against the Left, but don’t want to discredit them or weaken or destroy their institutions? How exactly are you going to accomplish the “push back,” then?
And, of course, you don’t want to win. Your position seems to be that seeking any victory is “totalitarian” and pointless because “final victory” isn’t possible.
Skip, I really think that you’re demonstrating how correct Ahmari is.
As noted above, the radical Left has weaponized politeness, in a largely successful Orwellian effort to frame the debate regarding traditional morality. Departing from civility and decency is unfortunate, but necessary, in addressing this tactic.
I have one more point, Skip.
You vigorously objected to Ahmari’s “advocating tossing off civility and decency.” Yet in the course of these comments, you have done the following:
I do wish that you would direct some of this incivility at our Leftist opposition, rather than at your friends. I am not angry or upset.
This criticism, incidentally, applies to David French as well, I think. Specifically, I think that he regularly accepts (or at least fails to oppose) Leftist falsehoods and slanders against fellow conservatives, such as the accusation that President Trump is a racist and the dubious and fantastical accusations of rape against Justice Kavanaugh.
That seems to be putting words in Ahmari’s mouth.
I’d rather win them over. I’ve never been the Conan-the-Barbarian type (Cohen the barbarian, however, was a sensible guy). I’m for discrediting their ideas, of course, but that’s different. And what institutions should we destroy anyway? I’d rather shift things so that institutions opposed to us rather wither and die than be wiped out.
Ahmari’s idea of “winning” is repellent precisely because he wants to destroy things and impose it from above – that’s what makes it totalitarian. It’s ephemerality is a different matter – if he failed to win people over during it all, or (worse yet) failed to keep them won over, in another generation or two his “order and orthodoxy” as he calls it would be resentfully overthrown.
You’re wrong to think I don’t want to win, but I do not see his way as any sort of victory but a defeat.
On this we will utterly disagree.
Which is exactly how the Roman empire was not Christianized.
I would point out that your insistence on terminology like “sodomite” et al is likewise extremely uncivil, as was Ahmari’s entire essay. But I stand by my criticisms of Ahmari, and doubtless you will persist in calling others “sodomites”.
I see my job in this as something like the guys in “Shane” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”; defend a bunch of decent people who are getting beaten up, help them learn to knock off the bad guys, then get out of town. If pushing for religious liberty puts me against gays, I’ll take that chance. But claiming that homophobia is not a legitimate word makes me ask, what is? There’s such a thing as hatred of Christians. Of hatred of Jews. Of hatred of homosexuals. That’s reality. Why play word games about it?
Jerry’s right about one thing: When or if this turns into The High Council of the Anti-Sodomy League, I’m gone. Obsessing over the gays is the right wing equivalent of Marianne Williamson-ism; a strange emphasis on the apolitical that doesn’t attract much more than the fringe.
I think what’s always bothered me about “homophobia” (aside from it being a made-up word) as well as “Islamophobia,” etc. is that its purpose is to reduce legitimate concerns or criticisms to “phobias” or fears, so that they can be dismissed as irrational. Prevents the left from ever having to make their cases with logic and reason. “Oh, you’re just phobic. Go see a therapist.”
Amen, brother.
To be fair, I don’t think you’re representing French’s position here correctly, chief.
As far as I know, his position and mine align pretty well, which is to say that the correct outcome was achieved through the wrong means. If gay marriage were adopted by the 50 state legislatures and that put us exactly where we are today, that would (in both David’s and my estimation) legitimate the concept of homosexual unions in a way that a court decision from on high never could. But nonetheless, the decision itself – unfounded on any solid legal reasoning though it was – was not a random bolt from the blue either.
It is a reflection of the fact that our society is capable of extending leniency to people who do not fit within the very narrow confines of what Ahmari and his confederates would deem to be “the Highest Good.”
The only way (in Ahmari’s view) to put this toothpaste back in the tube apparently is to become sufficiently authoritarian that you delegitimize your opponents’ position that our society can survive (or thrive!) containing this manner of heterodoxy via the power of the state.
At the very minimum, an endorsement of Ahmari-ism is philo-authoritarian, to borrow your terminology… and smacks of a certain wan desperation. It’s an implicit admission that Orthodox Christian values don’t hold the sort of appeal to people that he would like, and therefore they’ll be made to like them.
I will not be signing on to this program, for numerous reasons – but zero of them have anything to do with sympathy for the left or progressivism.
Well stated. If I were to start one of those new networked microblogs, I’d have a policy that anti-semitic bigotry and racial bigotry are not welcome, but that phobias will not be censored. Anti-homosexual bigotry might be censored, but homophobia would not be.
Agreed. The way our kids look at this stuff is still in progress. The way our grandchildren will look at these issues isn’t foreseeable today.
It is Puritanism distilled: the overwhelming fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time. Only, in this case it’s the fear that someone, somewhere is not having sex via the prescribed method.
Skip, I’m relying principally on the First Things manifesto “Against the Dead Consensus” (here), which Ahmari joined and which he referenced (and linked) in the “Against David French-ism” article that you referenced. I’ve also heard him on one or two podcasts, and got the impression that he is a rather typical traditionalist on issues relating to social conservatism.
You are correct that I don’t know Ahmari’s specific policy positions on social conservative issues. One of the unusual things about the issue is that Ahmari and French (and I) seem to agree, from a policy and moral perspective, on most issues relating to family and sexuality.
OK, I’d buy into that. The problem with the word ‘homophobic’ is that link to phobias. I think you’d find that the actual anti-homosexual bigots won’t like the censorship even without the word homophobia involved, so you wouldn’t win any thanks from them.
One cannot – or should not – kvetch in the fashion Ahmari has… calling out by name a person he sees as being “part of the problem,” practically yelling “j’accuse!” and then clam up about what his actual suggestion is to fix the problem.
It certainly leads people to wonder, particularly given the nature of the “dead consensus” manifesto… just what does Sohrab have in mind here?
He has no trouble calling out people whom he deems to be destructive to the public’s moral hygiene on our side. Now say what you want to do, Sohrab.