Rod Dreher's Blog, page 18

Rise Of Cherry, Decline Of West

The Guardian, the leading left-wing paper in Britain, is on the Hungarian election case. From its latest dispatch:

Until the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Hungary’s general election campaign was dominated by such ruling party preoccupations as “traditional values” and protecting children from “LGBT propaganda”.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine featured in the slogans of Viktor Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party or the opposition parties which have united to dislodge him.

Ha ha! Those stupid Hungarians, caring about “traditional values” and “LGBT propaganda.” Why can’t they be more like the enlightened Brits? For example, this from the BBC yesterday:

Teenage drag queen Cherry West is dreaming of a flamboyant future after stumbling across the “hilarious” drag scene on holiday as a 10-year-old.

Cherry is the alter ego of Sam Carlin, 15, an Edinburgh schoolboy who connected with the comedy of performing on stage as a woman.

Sam was no stranger to the stage when he decided to develop a drag act at 13.

He started busking during the Edinburgh Festival when he was seven, and was in a boy band from the age of 10 to 13.

His current passion began when he was introduced to drag on a family holiday to Lanzarote five years ago.

His dad, who is also called Sam Carlin, told BBC Scotland’s Mornings with Kaye Adams: “We just stumbled upon this drag bar and thought ‘this is going to be a laugh’.

“So we went in and had a great time, although I got taken up on stage and I got dressed up into a drag queen. Sam thought it was very funny; I was very embarrassed.

“He took it from there. We knew Sam kind of liked the drag scene, and the comedy aspect of it.

“He’s always been a performer.”

More:

When Sam, who is a fan of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, told his parents he wanted to do drag, they encouraged him to start by practising at home, and his sister taught him how to do his make-up.

“We didn’t want everybody else to know at that point in time,” his dad said. “We weren’t sure what people’s reaction would be.

“But since then, since he made it public, he’s just had great feedback.”

Sam said he was “quite surprised” at how supportive his school had been since he started performing in drag last year.

“All the teachers absolutely love it,” he said.

Of course they do.You see how this works. If you think drag kids and drag teens are a great thing, then it is not possible to write or broadcast too often about them. If you don’t, well, then you are “preoccupied” with things like this, and should get over your sick obsession, you bigot. This is the Law of Inverse Pathological Enthusiasm.Cherry West is what liberals want boys to be, or at least have no objections to boys embracing this repulsive identity. Conservatives — or at least Hungarian ones, if not US Conservatism Inc. grifters — don’t believe that. Which side are you on? A lot of people — especially conservatives — want to sit this out, but that option is not available to us. The Left will not allow that. If you are not consciously and actively opposed to this stuff — and act politically and otherwise to push back, as the Hungarian ruling party is doing — then you might was well get used to the cultural castration represented by Cherry West.

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Law Schools Fall To Revolutionaries

Here’s a very, very powerful addition to my danger of conservative complacency post.

Writing on Bari Weiss’s invaluable Substack, Aaron Sibarium details the corruption of the American legal profession by wokeness. Y’all, this is a five-alarm situation. Excerpts:

Read it all. Seriously, every word. As scholar Eric Kaufmann said over the weekend (see my link in the first graf), conservative voters and politicians have to make fighting wokeness in the culture war their No. 1 priority. If they don’t, we are going to lose our freedom. It really is that simple.

The people who lived under totalitarianism in the Soviet bloc were the first to understand the true nature of the changes sweeping over America in this last decade. I tell their story in Live Not By Lies, and share their advice on how to resist it. If you have previously thought the idea of “soft totalitarianism” was unduly alarmist, I invite you to read Sibarium’s report and reconsider. If you are the kind of person who think that wokeness is a fad among the young, and that they’ll grow out of it, you are not only wrong, you are dangerously wrong.

This week, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is appearing before the Senate in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Two years ago, in a law school lecture, she discussed Critical Race theorists who were influential in shaping her thinking. Here is a link to the text of the lecture. She also praised the fraudulent 1619 Project. Well, Critical Race Theory came up yesterday in questioning:

But it was a question about whether or not infants were racist that drew the first detectable sign of exasperation from Judge Jackson, who sits on the board of trustees at Georgetown Day School, a private school in Washington where the city’s elite — both conservative and liberal — send their children.

Wielding a stack of children’s books, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, had an aide display several large color photos from a children’s book called “Antiracist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi.

“This is a book that is taught at Georgetown Day School to students in pre-K through second grade,” Mr. Cruz said from the dais. “Do you agree with this book that is being taught with kids that babies are racist?”

Judge Jackson audibly sighed before leaning into the microphone.

“Senator,” she said, “I do not believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist, or though they are not valued, or though they are less than, that they are victims, that they are oppressors. I do not believe in any of that.”

During his 30 minutes of questioning, Mr. Cruz questioned Judge Jackson on her views of race, racism and critical race theory. Critical race theory is a field of study in law schools that argues that laws and institutions can incorporate structural racial bias, but Republicans have used the term as a way to criticize educational materials that describe ideas of racism, racial privilege or inequality.

After he was done with “Antiracist Baby,” Mr. Cruz asked Judge Jackson about whether or not she had read any of the children’s books. And she continued to tell the senator that she was not sure how the children’s books related to her work as a judge.

“I have not reviewed any of those books, any of those ideas,” Judge Jackson said. “They don’t come up as my work as a judge, which I am respectfully here to address.”

Earlier in his questioning process, Mr. Cruz quoted Judge Jackson’s praise of Georgetown Day’s “rigorous progressive education that is dedicated to fostering critical thinking, independence and social justice.” Judge Jackson replied that the school was private, and every “parent who joins the community does so willingly, with an understanding that they are joining a community that is designed to make sure that every child is valued.”

It’s a fair line of questioning. Someone who was against the principles of Critical Race Theory ought to have been eager to criticize the school’s racist policies. Moreover it ought to have been easy for the judge to give to Sen. Marsha Blackburn the definition she asked for:

“Do you interpret Justice Ginsburg’s meaning of men and women as male and female?” Blackburn pressed. Jackson did not comment on the matter.

“Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman?’” the senator asked.

“Can I provide a definition? No,” Jackson responded. “I can’t.”

“You can’t?” Blackburn asked.

“Not in this context, I’m not a biologist,” the judge replied.

“Do you believe the meaning of the word woman is so unclear and controversial that you can’t give me a definition?” Blackburn pressed.

“Senator, in my work as a judge, what I do is I address disputes. If there’s a dispute about a definition, people make arguments, and I look at the law, and I decide,” Jackson said.

This is completely disingenuous. Judge Brown knows well that judges like her are required to make these decisions in cases involving transgender civil rights claims. Her refusal to answer the question straightforwardly tells us what we need to know.

Judge Jackson is both a radical and a mainstream 2022 liberal, in the sense that Aaron Sibarium means in his piece. That is, it’s clear that she would be a reliable vector to Supreme Court deliberations of the kind of culture-war radicalism that has consumed law schools. I have a relatively expansive view of SCOTUS nominations, thinking that presidents should generally get their nominees confirmed absent some grave reason not to. In these times, though, and with the serious threat that gender ideology and CRT pose to the fundamental social and constitutional order, I would not vote to confirm any judicial nominee who was not explicitly opposed to both. This is too important to the country’s present and future.

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J.D. Vance Holds Line Against Warmongering

Greetings from Amsterdam. I’m in transit to the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels, and overnighted here to visit old friends. I just saw Tucker Carlson’s monologue from last night. It’s first-rate:

In it, he talks about how Volodymyr Zelensky has shut down all opposition political parties and TV channels that he doesn’t control. Tucker says that this is not necessarily out of question in a war situation, but that we should stop praising Zelensky as a beacon of liberty and democracy. Tucker aired a series of clips of Washington politicians heaping praise on Zelensky as a new George Washington. According to Tucker, Zelensky is certainly brave, and worth praising for that fact, and the Ukrainian people are rightly to be cheered for their resistance to this unjust Russian invasion. But come on, let’s not lie to ourselves about who Zelensky is.

Second, Tucker airs a video clip with the head of a Ukraine’s military hospital telling a journalist interviewing him that he has ordered those under his command to castrate captive Russian soldiers, because they are not human, but rather “cockroaches.” YouTube took the video down, but it’s still watchable online; Tucker had the clip. The Ukrainian doctor, Gennadiy Druzenko, later apologized for his words.

Tucker says that inasmuch as we Americans are paying for a lot of Ukraine’s defensive war on Russia, we should know what we are funding. He says several times in the ten minute segment that he supports Ukraine’s self-defense against this unjust invasion, but he is not about to pretend that Zelensky and Ukraine are other than they really are, just because it feels good.

Along these lines, I cheered when I saw J.D. Vance, speaking in an Ohio GOP Senate race debate, stick to his guns in opposing NATO instituting a no-fly zone over Ukraine:

WATCH: @JDVance1 explains why he opposes a No Fly Zone in Ukraine.

"It's not in our vital national interest. I'm in the minority up here…we have our own problems in the United States to focus on." #OHSen pic.twitter.com/CFtcaRgjpS

— Ohio War Room (@OhioWarRoom) March 21, 2022

Here’s what Vance said:

“It’s not in our vital national interest. I’m in the minority up here because at the end of the day we can accept as individuals — look, it’s tragic, it terrible. What Vladimir Putin did was wrong in invading a sovereign country on its border, but we have our own problems in the United States to focus on. I’m very distressed that for 4 years Congressional Republicans refused to give Donald Trump $4 billion for a border wall. $4 billion for a border wall when fentanyl was pouring into our country, killing our citizens by the tens of thousands. In one week, they give Joe Biden $14 billion for Ukrainian aide. What I would do in this moment is premise, condition further Ukrainian aid on support for our border and support for our problems. People always say we can walk and chew gum at the same time, let’s actually do it.”

The other GOP candidates came out for the no-fly zone, which would mean World War III. Do you remember how back in 2016, in the GOP presidential primary season, Donald Trump was the only candidate willing to say the Iraq War was wrong? Trump faced a bunch of slander and charges that he was an enemy of the tribe — same as J.D. Vance today — but he was right. The willingness of the revived neocons to ride the Ukraine wave to restoration and yet more war is a good indication that they have learned nothing over the last twenty years.

The entire Ukraine war is a good reminder that they would gladly have us in a world war at the moment if they could. The polls show that most Americans support a no-fly zone … until they learn what it is, and what it would likely mean. I am not watching US cable or broadcast news. Tell me, American readers: are US viewers being adequately briefed on what all this would mean?

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Disney Drives Conservatives Into Closet

You see the Daily Variety story the other day about how Pixar has restored a same-sex kiss to its upcoming film Lightyear after a gay employee group denounced its corporate parent, The Walt Disney Company, for not taking a tougher line against the so-called Florida “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The story says, in part:

The decision marks a possible major turning point for LGBTQ representation not just in Pixar films, but in feature animation in general, which has remained steadfastly circumspect about depicting same-sex affection in any meaningful light.

These disgruntled employees changed an entire industry that engineers the imaginations of children around the globe. And to be clear, “Don’t Say Gay” is a lie. The bill is called “The Parental Rights In Education Act,” and you can read its details here, in the primary document. 

The thing that has opponents so upset is that the bill forbids classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade. That’s it. That’s what liberals are so angry about. So devoted are they to the cause of making little children sexually aware and undermining their psychological stability around sex that they are throwing a massive tantrum over a law that says teachers can’t introduce this stuff to children under the age of ten.

Within Disney, activist employees organized on company Slack channels a staged walkout this week to protest Disney brass, including CEO Bob Chapek, for supposedly not doing enough to fight the bill. The crybullies blame Disney leadership for making its LGBT employees feel, yes, “unsafe” by not fighting the bill.  Here, from their website, are their demands — which, if enacted, would make Disney even more of a woke-capitalist, culture-war behemoth.

Can you imagine what it’s like to work at Disney as a political, social, or religious conservative under the reign of this mob of tyrants? You don’t have to. Today a group of anonymous Disney employees have released the following “open letter” begging the company’s leadership to keep the company politically neutral. The letter points out that these slacktivists have created a hostile work environment for anyone who doesn’t go along with their demands. Here’s the open letter text (which a Disney employee leaked to me):

 

Disney Employees’ Open Letter in Favor of a Politically Neutral Disney

As employees of the Walt Disney Company, we believe in the dignity of all people. This is why we do what we do. We write stories. We make costumes. We act in parades. We run cruises. We stream movies. We make magic. We do this because our work contributes to a fountain of wonder that inspires joy, awe, and delight in guests and audiences of all ages. We are proud employees of the Walt Disney Company. We love our jobs because we get to share the wonder of life and human experience with millions of people worldwide.

However, over the last few years, one group of cast members has become invisible within the company. The Walt Disney Company has come to be an increasingly uncomfortable place to work for those of us whose political and religious views are not explicitly progressive. We watch quietly as our beliefs come under attack from our own employer, and we frequently see those who share our opinions condemned as villains by our own leadership.

The company’s evolving response to the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation in Florida has left many of us wondering what place we have in a company actively promoting a political agenda so far removed from our own. TWDC leadership frequently communicates its commitment to creating an inclusive workplace where cast members feel comfortable sharing their perspectives and being their authentic selves at work. That is not our workplace experience.

Over the last few weeks, we have watched as our leadership has expressed their condemnation for laws and policies we support. We have watched as our colleagues, convinced that no one in the company could possibly disagree with them and grow increasingly aggressive in their demands. They insist that TWDC take a strong stance on not only this issue but other legislation and openly advocate for the punishment of employees who disagree with them.

An internal poll within the company went out a few months ago asking us if we felt accepted in the company. Many of us didn’t complete it because the nature of the questions made us worry that the results of the poll could be used to target us for quietly holding a position that runs against the progressive orthodoxy that Disney seems to promote. TWDC has fostered an environment of fear that any employee who does not toe the line will be exposed and dismissed.

Much has been made of our internal efforts to Reimagine Tomorrow, but as much as diversity and inclusion are promoted, the tomorrow being reimagined doesn’t seem to have much room for religious or political conservatives within the company. Left-leaning cast members are free to promote their agenda and organize on company time using company resources. They call their fellow employees “bigots” and pressure TWDC to use corporate influence to further their left-wing legislative goals.

Meanwhile, those of us who don’t align with this vision keep our heads down and do our work without bringing our personal beliefs into the workplace. We’ve done this without complaint because we don’t want to rock the boat, but the boat is being rocked, and our leadership seems compelled to reward those who are rocking it.

Employees who want TWDC to make left-wing political statements are encouraged, while those of us who want the company to remain neutral can say so only in a whisper out of fear of professional retaliation. The company we love seems to think we don’t exist or don’t belong here. This politicization of our corporate culture is damaging morale and causing many of us to feel our days with TWDC might be numbered.

Furthermore, as this politicization makes its way into our content and public messaging, our more conservative customers will feel similarly unwanted. You can only preach at or vilify your audience for so long before they decide to spend their money elsewhere.

Working for The Walt Disney Company is a dream come true. We love being part of creating the magic that so many people around the world enjoy. Our storytelling is second to none. It resonates with people from all walks of life across the political spectrum. Our parks are the source of joy and inspiration that Walt hoped they would become. Every year, millions of guests escape an increasingly divided world to a place where they can relive fond memories of the past and savor the challenge and promise of the future. They do this alongside thousands of other guests that might not have anything in common with them other than a shared love of Disney.

The unique brand of family entertainment that Disney is known for is an objective good in this dark world. It brings people together and provides cultural touchpoints that even the worst enemies can unite over. At the height of COVID lockdowns in the Summer of 2020 when the country was fiercely divided over a range of issues, Hamilton provided us something to collectively celebrate. At the end of an incredibly contentious election year, The Mandalorian was there to soothe a weary nation with non-political entertainment we could all enjoy no matter who you voted for. When Disney takes sides in political debates, they deprive the world of a shared love we all have in common. TWDC is uniquely situated to provide experiences and entertainment that can bridge our national divide and bring us all together.

CEO, Bob Chapek had the right idea in his original statement that he has since walked back. In Chapek’s own words, “As we have seen time and again, corporate statements do very little to change outcomes or minds. … Instead, they are often weaponized by one side or the other to further divide and inflame.” Disney is far more important and impactful to the world by avoiding politics than it will ever be by embracing a political agenda. By focusing on entertainment that inspires us with stories of universal appeal, we are doing good in the world.

Disney shouldn’t be a vehicle for one demographic’s political activism. It’s so much bigger and more important than that. More than ever, the world needs things that we can unite around. That’s the most valuable role The Walt Disney Company could play in the world at this time. It’s a role we’ve played for nearly a century, and it would be a shame to throw all of that away in the face of left-wing political pressure. Please don’t let Disney become just another thing we divide over.

Why does Disney force its conservative employees into the closet, where they have to live in fear, for the sake of appeasing this woke mob that wants to sexualize children? Has Disney forgotten who and what it is supposed to serve? And what about you, Mom and Dad? Do you really want to support a company that treats its religious and politically conservative employees like this — and that empowers a woke internal mob to compel it to interfere in politics to disempower parents’ control over the sexual education of their children, and to turn popular art into culture-war propaganda?

I stand with the internally silenced and persecuted Disney employees, and with the Florida legislature that is not allowing woke capitalist bullies to tell parents to sit down and shut up and hand their children’s minds over to activist teachers. I hope you will too. Trying to stop activists and woke capitalists from queering little children through the schools is a fight worth having.

UPDATE: If you want to signal your support for the conservative Disney employees asking for a neutral workplace, click here to go to the open letter and “sign” it. 

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The Peril Of Conservative Culture-War Complacency

A few years back, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban said to a group of international visitors of which I was part that he hoped we would consider Budapest our “intellectual home.” I’ve thought about that a lot over the years since, most recently this past weekend at the Danube Institute’s excellent one-day academic conference, titled The Post-Liberal Turn And The Future Of British Conservatism. 

Eric Kaufmann, the academic I was most looking forward to meeting, had to cancel because he came down with Covid, but he did manage to deliver his lecture by Zoom. And what a lecture it was! When the video recording goes up on the DI’s website, I’ll post it, because you really need to hear it to get the force of its urgency.

Kaufmann’s main point was that conservatives have to make fighting the culture war their most important goal — more important than economics, taxes, or anything else. Why? Because his research on the attitudes of younger generations shows that they are illiberal leftists who don’t believe conservatives have the right to participate in society. “I don’t think we are ready for what’s coming,” he said.

Kaufmann based his remarks on recent research he carried out for the Manhattan Institute; he discusses his findings in-depth in this City Journal article from earlier this year. Excerpts:

The clash between socialist and liberal economics defined the late twentieth century, and this century brings a cultural version of that struggle. Today’s culture wars pit advocates of equal outcomes and special protection for identity groups against defenders of due process, equal treatment, scientific reason, and free speech. Our political map is taking shape around this new divide between what I will call cultural socialism and cultural liberalism.

Cultural socialism, which values equal results and harm prevention for identity groups over individual rights, has inspired race-based pedagogies and harsh punishments for controversial speech. Rooted in the idea that historically marginalized groups are sacred, this view is no passing fad. Letters, associations, universities, and media defending free speech notwithstanding, the young adherents of cultural socialism are steadily overturning the liberal ethos of the adult world.

Survey data from my new Manhattan Institute report, “The Politics of the Culture Wars in Contemporary America,” show the scale of the challenge. While the American public leans two-to-one in favor of cultural liberalism, a majority of Americans under 30 incline toward cultural socialism. For instance, while 65 percent of Americans over 55 oppose Google’s decision to fire James Damore for having questioned the firm’s training on gender equity, those under 30 support the firing by a 59–41 margin. Similar gaps separate young and old people on similar instances of cancel culture, such as the oustings of Gina Carano (an actor fired from Star Wars for social media posts) and Brendan Eich (the former CEO of Mozilla forced out in 2014 for opposing gay marriage in 2008). Only part of this disparity stems from the fact that young people lean left: centrist young people, for instance, support Google over Damore by a 61–39 margin, while centrists over 55 support Damore over Google 58–42.

On the use of critical race theory in school, a similar divide emerges. Eight in ten people over age 55 oppose teaching schoolchildren that the United States was founded on racism and remains systemically racist, or that the country and their homes were built on stolen land. A slight majority of young people support teaching these notions. While opposition to critical race theory in schools can take an illiberal form, compulsory CRT violates two key liberal principles: first, that pupils in a classroom or employees in a diversity training session should not be forced to agree with ideas they don’t believe in; and second, that people should not be treated differently because of their race. Recent attempts by state governments to limit whites’ access to Covid-19 medication are another manifestation of this tendency.

More:

Another front in the culture war is censorship of speech, usually justified on grounds that such speech would inflict psychological harm on minorities and that power should be redistributed to “marginalized groups.” Activists pushing for such censorship organize online flash mobs and pressure campaigns, wielding accusations of racism, homophobia, or transphobia to ruin a person’s reputation and have them fired from their position. The problem is especially acute in higher education: the number of academics targeted for cancellation has exploded in recent years.

Young people are especially afraid of cancel culture. Forty-five percent of employees under 30 worry about losing their jobs because “someone misunderstands something you have said or done, takes it out of context, or posts something from your past online.” Just 29 percent of those over 55 have the same worry.

This fear, however, doesn’t appear to lead young people to oppose cancel culture. Most millennials and members of Generation Z are not cultural liberals too scared to say what they truly believe. Instead, many privilege cultural equality over freedom. By a 48–27 margin, respondents under 30 agree that “My fear of losing my job or reputation due to something I said or posted online is a justified price to pay to protect historically disadvantaged groups.” Those over 50, by contrast, disagree by a 51–17 margin. Younger age brackets are both more fearful of cancel culture and more supportive of it than are older age groups.

He concludes:

America still has two cultural liberals for every cultural socialist. Questions of cancel culture and CRT split Democrats and unite Republicans, putting pressure on both parties to resist cultural socialism. Twenty percent of Democrats, one-third of independents, and nearly half of Republican voters now rank culture-war issues as a top concern, my survey finds. The classical liberal inheritance that underpins our legal system does not live in the hearts of younger generations because it has not been brought to life in stories, film, or education. We urgently need to revive this lost tradition—but the hour is late.

Read the whole thing. 

This is the point of Live Not By Lies — that this stuff is coming, and coming hard, and we have to be ready for it. Kaufmann’s research provides strong evidence of the magnitude of the coming darkness. Yet Kaufmann believes that we can still fight it off, but not if we keep failing to take it seriously. And by “take it seriously,” he doesn’t mean merely being alarmed by it, but doing anything substantive.

In his Saturday talk, Kaufmann said that American conservatives are pretty good at talking about culture war issues, but terrible at coming up with effective policies to fight wokeness. UK conservatives, by contrast, have some good policies, but are very bad at talking about it. He praised activist Christopher Rufo and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for bucking the habit of conservative complacency about the culture war.

Kaufmann added that conservatives have to have plans to retake public institutions, as well as to bring political scrutiny to public institutions (e.g., universities) to force them to be fair and neutral. Defending the rights of individuals is more important that respecting institutional autonomy. If the state will not intervene to protect political and religious minorities from discrimination, and to ban woke policies on speech, and so forth, it will only get worse.

He made it very clear that, based on his research, conservatives are going to face a fight for their right to exist within institutions and in the public square. Kaufmann later added, in the Q&A period, that conservatives are either too “stupid” (his word) to see the seriousness of the threat to wokeness, or are too stubbornly distracted by the things they prefer to talk about (like cutting taxes) to recognize that if we lose the culture, we will have lost the opportunity to argue for anything else.

Kaufmann was followed by James Orr, a lecturer at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and a bruised but unbowed veteran of the culture war in that university. (It was Orr who initially tried to bring Jordan Peterson to campus to speak, was shot down, then fought back, finally succeeding.) Orr told the audience that conservatives should not make the mistake of thinking that wokeness is shallow. No, he said, it’s deep, and it’s a very serious threat to the free society. Only the State is strong enough to regulate all this and to defend liberty and sanity. Conservatives would be foolish to think that we can get by with modest responses to this threat.

Prof. James Orr

Indeed, in talking to various UK academics this weekend between sessions, I was shocked by how very far wokeness has gotten in British culture. It’s even worse than in the US. I am not sure how much of what I was told was confidential — though I know some of it is — so I’m not sure what I am at liberty to repeat here. I’ll just say that these warnings from Kaufmann, Orr, and others are in no way exaggerated.

Orr added that conservative attempts to reform existing institutions have generally come to naught. We need to create counter-institutions and networks, so our ideas can thrive. See, one of the reasons I think US and UK conservatives can learn from what Viktor Orban and the Fidesz Party are doing here in Hungary is that they are pretty effective at using the State to fight for conservative values, in ways that complacent US and UK conservatives are generally not. Plus, Orban and Fidesz understand the importance of culture more than their western counterparts do.

For example, here is the précis of a 2017 academic paper talking about how Orban and Fidesz laid the groundwork for their 2010 political victory, and the subsequent twelve years of Fidesz leadership (which will extent to sixteen years if, as expected, Fidesz wins another majority on April 3), via cultural organization:

Starting in 2010, the Fidesz party achieved in a row six (partly landslide) victories at municipal, national, and European Parliament elections. Not questioning other explanations, my ongoing research traces the remarkable resilience of the ruling party above all to earlier “tectonic” shifts in civil society, which helped the Right accumulate ample social capital well before its political triumph. This process was decisively advanced by the Civic Circles Movement founded by Viktor Orbán after the lost election of 2002. This movement was militant in terms of its hegemonic aspirations and collective practices; massive in terms of its membership and activism; middle-cIass based in terms of social stratification; and dominantly metropolitan and urban on the spatial dimension. Parallel to contentious mobilization, the civic circles re-organized and extended the Right’s grass-roots networks, associations, and media; rediscovered and reinvented its holidays and everyday life-styles, symbols, and heroes; and explored innovative ways for cultural, charity, leisure, and political activities. Leading activists, among them patriots, priests, professionals, politicians, and pundits, offered new frames and practices for Hungarians to feel, think, and act as members of “imagined communities”: the nation, Christianity, citizenry, and Europe.

Here is a link to a full 2021 academic paper analyzing how Fidesz did it through a variety of strategies.

And here is a link to a full 2020 paper analyzing in-depth how Fidesz built their political movement by focusing on civil society organizations. Over the weekend I went on three separate occasions to a couple of the three Scruton coffee houses in Budapest. These clean, cozy gathering places for coffee, wine, beer, and food, and named after the late, great British conservative thinker Sir Roger Scruton, are part of the contemporary Fidesz strategy to encourage the building of conservative communities.

(A side note: one of the visiting UK academics this weekend who was close to Scruton told me that Viktor Orban flew into Britain from Indonesia to attend Scruton’s funeral. He said Orban came quietly, with no fanfare, like an ordinary mourner. Such was the Hungarian PM’s esteem for Sir Roger.)

As I have repeatedly said in this space, it’s neither desirable nor possible to pick up everything that Orban and his party have done in Hungary and transplant it into American life. We are a different people, with different ways of living, and different traditions. Nevertheless, there is so much to learn from the way Fidesz does it here. Heaven knows American conservatives have to try some new things. They’re probably going to get Congress back this fall, owing to Joe Biden’s failures. But for once, they ought to try deserving power by using it to do big things — none more important than fighting back hard against wokeness, with positive legislation. Beyond pure politics, it’s time for innovative conservative activists and thinkers to get beyond grifty, tired Conservatism, Inc., strategies, and try to devise something like Fidesz’s Civic Circles movement from the early 2000s. What would that look like in an American context? I’d like to know. I really would love to see a growing stream of curious US conservatives beating a path to Budapest to learn from these folks.

What have we got to lose? Well, talk to Eric Kaufmann about that. He can tell you.

UPDATE: Should have mentioned the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and its Republican legislature, for going to war against the ghouls of the transgender industry. Here’s an article about how the state Attorney General ruled that transitioning children is a form of child abuse, as it certainly is. And here’s a story from the Texas Tribune about Jeff Younger, a father who lost a famous child custody battle, and whose son is now being medically transformed into a pseudo-female; Younger’s case helped move the Texas legislature to go after clinics that transition children. The Tribune, a liberal paper, writes of Younger and his GOP supporters as a villain, but you still get the idea that it was the grassroots that compelled Texas GOP politicians to act.

The Texas governor and legislature are being roasted by the media, but so far, are taking the heat. More like them, please.

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GOP Land: Old Times There Are Not Forgotten

Surprise! Now that Trump is gone, a number of Republican Party bigs have reverted to type:

Republicans held their tongues through all the ally-alienating NATO bashing Donald Trump did as president. They largely held ranks during his Ukrainian aid-related first impeachment.

The GOP of 2023 is turning into something very different. Key parts of it have shed the MAGA gag to assail Vladimir Putin for launching a war in Ukraine.

More:

Those were just a few of the personal insults [against Putin] that flew from the likes of Republican Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, John Cornyn of Texas, Jerry Moran of Kansas, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, respectively, as they unloaded on the Russian president at the US Capitol.

Wicker accused Putin of slaughtering tens of thousands of women and children over the years, citing his involvement in deadly campaigns including the leveling of the Chechen capital of Grozny two decades ago and the bombardment of Aleppo, Syria in 2016. “He will continue to kill innocent human beings until he’s stopped,” Wicker told reporters.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a former Trump rival who then became a key ally in Congress, said cutting Putin’s ambitions short should be everybody’s top priority.

“It is in America’s national security interest for Russia to lose because we don’t want Putin to be stronger and to take a major step towards reassembling the Soviet Union, towards threatening Americans, towards threatening our allies in Europe,” Cruz said earlier this week.

Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who advocated for shipping over whatever defensive weapons Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants ASAP, cast the current conflict in apocalyptic terms.

“It’s a moral battle between good guys and bad guys,” Sasse said while surrounded by a dozen colleagues at the US Capitol. “And we need the good guys to win.”

Yep, it’s just that simple, Senator. Good grief. Now that Trump is out of the picture, these guys would be willing to start World War III.

The post GOP Land: Old Times There Are Not Forgotten appeared first on The American Conservative.

Swim Not By Lies

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why women and the men who love them tolerate the destruction of women’s athletics by this giant man who calls himself Lia Thomas — and by the woke NCAA officials who mandate that everyone live, and swim, by the lie that he is a female.

I can’t think of anything today that better exemplifies this line from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” Look and listen to this man, who demolished the female competition this week in the national championships:

“It means the world to be here.”

Lia Thomas spoke about swimming in the NCAA women’s championships. pic.twitter.com/aP0afVA0KE

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) March 18, 2022

Look:

Emma Weyant takes second in the 500 free with the third-fastest time in UVA history – 4:34.99! #GoHoos pic.twitter.com/yRiErvzjkY

— Virginia Swimming and Dive (@UVASwimDive) March 17, 2022

No, Emma Weyant is the national champion. Lia Thomas is a usurper who stole Emma Weyant’s place by virtue of having powerful ideologues in his corner. This is the way of the world now. I wonder if CPAC founder Matt Schlapp has sent Lia congratulations for smoking the vagina-havers.

No matter what one thinks of Lia’s ability to swim with women her story deserves our compassion. It will be interesting to hear Lia’s pov in 30 years. https://t.co/NLY9f6TO6I

— Matt Schlapp (@mschlapp) March 6, 2022

Click on this tweet to read a thread about how transgenderism is destroying women’s sports — and how female student athletes can’t say anything about it because of Title IX rules:

Title IX is trending bc Lia Thomas has FINALLY made ppl notice what many women have been saying for the past few years, but being called “bigots” & “transphobes” by the media, politicians & virtue-signaling Hollywood celebrities for:

Yes, women’s sports ARE being destroyed.(1/8) pic.twitter.com/C7U9SCKSpQ

— Jennifer Gingrich #KeepPrisonsSingleSex (@fem_mb) March 18, 2022

The author is not a conservative, but a self-described “radical feminist”. If you wonder why more young women athletes aren’t protesting (other than Title IX), consider the harassment from LGBT media:

their schools and by knowing that when over 300 female college athletes sent a letter to the NCAA 2yrs ago asking for more review before biological males were allowed into their sports, Outsports leaked all their names & labeled them “anti-trans” (5/8) https://t.co/VldMsPozaN

— Jennifer Gingrich #KeepPrisonsSingleSex (@fem_mb) March 18, 2022

Women athletes are being dispossessed in full view of the rest of us, and we’re just letting it happen, because we have to be progressive, and live by the left-wing lie that biology doesn’t matter, and that sex is all in one’s head. Even a conservative leader like Matt Schlapp has accepted the lie (“her story”). Right now, all across the US, children are being taught in schools that men like Lia Thomas really are women. These kids are being prepared for submission to this totalitarian regime of lies. They are being instructed by the authorities in this culture — including parents who either accept the lie, or who are too timid to object — to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. Orwell says this was the Party’s “most essential command” because if you can force people to affirm something that they can plainly see and hear is a lie, then they are putty in your hands.

People who believe Lia Thomas is a woman, and who won’t raise their voice when he and his powerful allies steal from women, are preparing our society for slavery. Orwell told us how.

UPDATE: MBD snarks:

Is anyone out there in the mainstream willing to bite the bullet and claim that what’s happening on the right side of this photo amounts to transphobic assault on the subject to the left? https://t.co/xJM5BoSUrk

— Michael Brendan Dougherty (@michaelbd) March 18, 2022

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Earth To NYTimes: Hungary Is Not A Slave State

It’s Friday night, and I have better things to do than to push back against Michelle Goldberg’s New York Times column from Hungary, about the upcoming election. But what am I here in Budapest for if not for this reader service?

First, this stupid headline, which discredits the entire column:

A western European I met this spring in Budapest told me that his friends back home think that he risks being beat up by jackbooted thugs every time he goes out on the street. We laughed at how dumb people are back home, believing the media hype. Last week, an Alabama friend and his little boy came to visit for a few days. They didn’t have a political prejudice about Hungary, but they simply remarked about how wonderfully safe they felt everywhere we went in this city — this, by comparison to many American cities. The murder rate in many US cities is skyrocketing. Who lives in the “free world,” then?

Second, by what measure is Hungary not in the “free world”? Speech is free here (unless you want to talk to Hungarian children in school or on TV about how those penises of theirs might really be girl-penises — yep, you can’t do that here). The media is free to say whatever it wants — and it does, on both sides. There is not the slightest hint of a police state, or any of the other markers of Communism (the term “The Free World” was invented during the Cold War to describe the West). The idea that Hungarians are in shackles is typical progressive crackpottery. Seriously, come here and see for yourself.

I looked just now for video from the MCC Feszt in Esztergom from last summer. The anti-Orban liberal Peter Kreko and I appeared onstage for a dialogue before an audience. I wanted to find a clip to quote it on video here, but I couldn’t locate it. Anyway, Peter and I disagreed about a lot, but at the beginning of our session, Peter told the crowd that he has lots of complaints about the way Viktor Orban runs the country, but people should stop saying that Hungary is a “fascist” country. It’s not. It’s not even close. Goldberg interviews Kreko for her piece. Again, he’s one of the country’s leading Orban critics, but I wish journalists like Goldberg would listen to him.

Here’s the first graf of Goldberg’s piece:

On Tuesday, the day that the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia traveled to Kyiv to show solidarity with a besieged Ukraine, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of nearby Hungary, trumpeted his neutrality at a sprawling rally in Budapest.

You’d think that he cared more about holding a campaign rally than Ukraine. What Goldberg doesn’t tell you, which she might not understand, is that Tuesday was a big national holiday in Hungary, and this rally, which gathered hundreds of thousands of people outside the Parliament, had been scheduled for a very long time. But then again, Viktor Orban does find it more important to show solidarity with his own countrymen and their interests, not those of foreigners.

Goldberg:

State-aligned media — which, in Hungary, is almost all media — had been blasting out Kremlin talking points for weeks, and it was easy to find people in the crowd who echoed them.

Again, a lie. In terms of overall audience, Hungary’s liberal opposition media are bigger than the pro-Fidesz media. If nine newspapers in the NYC boroughs and suburban counties were conservative, as the New York Times is liberal, you could claim that “almost all the New York City area media are conservative,” and be technically correct, but still wrong. A useful though admittedly rough comparison in the US is when conservatives complain that the American media are overwhelmingly liberal, and liberals say, “Hang on, you have Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.” As if those were any kind of balance!

Goldberg:

I’d met the opposition candidate for prime minister, Peter Marki-Zay, the mayor of the southern Hungarian town of Hodmezovasarhely, the day before, as he worked on his speech. One of his central points, he said, was that Hungary must decide between two worlds: Vladimir Putin’s Russia or the liberal West. “Putin and Orban belong to this autocratic, repressive, poor and corrupt world,” Marki-Zay told me. “And we have to choose Europe, West, NATO, democracy, rule of law, freedom of the press, a very different world. The free world.”

Well done, Marki-Zay! He played the visiting Times journalist like a fiddle. He certainly knows that Orban’s Hungary is not remotely in the same category as Putin’s Russia. Orban supports the EU and NATO. In what sense does he not support the rule of law? The press is certainly free here. Democracy? If Orban loses, he’s going to do what he did the last time he lost an election: go home. And so forth. But Marki-Zay knows what Michelle Goldberg was looking for.

Marki-Zay is right that he and Orban stand for substantively different visions for Hungary. I understand why liberal Hungarians would prefer Marki-Zay to Orban. But the idea that Hungary under Orban is an autocratic hellhole is ridiculous. If that were so, why has the man been in power for twelve years? And why, after twelve years, is he favored to win on April 3? Unless most Magyars are idiots who don’t know what’s good for them — and it would not surprise me if a liberal New York Times columnist thought so (“What’s the matter with Hungary?”) — something is not adding up in Goldberg’s column.

Goldberg:

Just as Israelis from across the political spectrum united to get rid of Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungarians of many different ideological persuasions are working together to defeat Orban, a hero to many American conservatives for his relentless culture-warring.

The Marki-Zay coalition includes the Jobbik party, which formally joined the anti-Orban coalition last December. Jobbik was, until recently, an openly anti-Semitic party. From the Times of Israel in 2012:

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban condemned a Jobbik lawmaker’s call to create a list of Jewish politicians a day after thousands demonstrated in Budapest to protest the anti-Semitism of the far-right party.

“Last week sentences were uttered in parliament which are unworthy of Hungary,” Orban said during a parliament session on Monday. “I rejected this call on behalf of the government and I would like you to know that as long as I am standing in this place, no one in Hungary can be hurt or discriminated against because of their faith, conviction or ancestry.”

Orban’s denunciation and Sunday’s demonstration by an estimated 10,000 protesters came in the wake of a call last week by Marton Gyongyosi to create a registry of Hungarian lawmakers and members of the Hungarian cabinet of Jewish origin. Gyongyosi spoke during a Nov. 26 parliamentary debate on Israel’s military operations against escalated terrorist bombings from the Gaza Strip.

But in the past few years, Jobbik has tried to moderate its image. In 2020, Jobbik elected a new leader, a Catholic whose grandmother was Jewish. And yet, old habits die hard. Earlier this year, video emerged of one of Jobbik’s parliamentarians doing a Nazi salute and laughing about it. 

You would think that the fact that Marki-Zay is in a formal coalition with this party — which is not a fringe party at all, but the third-largest in the Hungarian parliament — would be of interest to a Jewish columnist for The New York Times. But I guess not; defeating Viktor Orban is more important.

More Goldberg:

Marki-Zay, who lived in Indiana from 2006 to 2009, often sounds like an old-school Republican. He favors lower taxes and a decentralized government. “We want to give opportunity and not welfare checks to people,” he told me.

He believes in Catholic teachings on gay marriage, abortion and divorce but doesn’t think they should be law. “We cannot force our views on the rest of the society,” he said. “One big difference between Western societies and certain Islamist states is that in Western society, church doesn’t rule everyday life.” Some on the left might blanch at the gratuitous invocation of Islam, but part of Marki-Zay’s skill is using conservative language to make case for liberalism.

Marki-Zay is a Personally Opposed, But kind of guy. He has said that if elected, he will introduce a bill to legalize same-sex marriage (Hungary now has domestic partnerships for same-sex couples), and overturn Hungary’s anti-LGBT media law — which is up for a national referendum on Election Day next month, and is expected to pass overwhelmingly. He also promised to overturn the constitution and start from scratch. 

One thing you learn from being here talking to Hungarians is that their economic lives have improved significantly under twelve years of Fidesz rule. Even people who are fed up with Orban and his high toleration for financial corruption say they are grateful to him for stability, prosperity, and for defending Hungarian sovereignty. Over and over I have had conversations with people who are sick of Orban and ready for a change, but unwilling to take a chance on an unproven amateur like Marki-Zay. Goldberg talked about his “skill” at using language to make a case for liberalism, but this completely ignores one of the biggest stories of his campaign: that it has been filled with gaffes (e.g., publicly accusing Orban’s son, a soldier and Christian pastor who stays out of public life, of being a closet case, and telling his supporters not to worry, that Covid would take care of lots of Fidesz supporters — implying that being old, they would all get sick and die). When I arrived back in Budapest in early February, I was shocked to see all my old conservative friends who had been downcast when I left at summer’s end last year, all happy, even ebullient. They had all feared Fidesz would lose, but Marki-Zay had been such a lousy candidate, tripping over his own tongue constantly, that Fidesz was riding high in the polls. Turns out that as mayor, Marki-Zay was fined multiple times for saying libelous things. He is not a cautious man.

Some of the anti-Orban crowd hoped that Marki-Zay’s gaffes would redound to his benefit, as Donald Trump’s did, by making him seem more authentic. It hasn’t happened. This is a different electorate, and now that there’s a war next door, they are even less eager to take a risk.

Goldberg:

The opposition has had to contend with a near blackout in the mainstream media…

How is that possible, given that the most popular news outlets in Hungary are aligned with the anti-Orban opposition?

Goldberg:

Even if Orban wins another term, Peter Kreko, the director of the Political Capital Institute, a Budapest-based think tank, thinks Orban’s dream of creating a right-wing nationalist bloc in Europe is dead. The war in Ukraine has driven a wedge between him and the nationalist government in Poland, which favors an aggressive response to Russia.

He might be right about that. It’s true that the Poles want a far more aggressive response to Russia than the Hungarians do, but if the war ends without a lot more destruction — if — then things will revert back to normal. The real problem with the nationalist bloc in Europe dream is that as Orban has said in the recent past, until and unless a nationalist-populist government takes power in one of the major western EU countries (e.g., France, Spain, Italy), nothing will come of it. I’m told that Macron is a shoo-in now for re-election in France. I don’t know about Spain and Italy, but Matteo Salvini’s political career in Italy, already in trouble before the war, will almost certainly collapse after his years of identifying openly with Putin.

Anyway, read the entire Goldberg column if you like. You know that I’m pro-Orban, so take what I say above in that light. I’m just trying to help you understand where this Times column goes seriously wrong in its analysis. The idea that Hungary is not free is simply lunacy, a claim that says more about the liberal imagination than actual conditions on the ground in Hungary. Do you really think that a people that lived for forty years under Communism, and who have had free elections since Communism’s end, would choose to live under bondage? You’d have to, if you accept Goldberg’s claim (which, to be fair, she got from Marki-Zay, who at least knows how to tell liberal Western reporters what they want to hear).

There are good reasons to vote against Viktor Orban and his party, but they barely come up at all in Goldberg’s column. I imagine that readers of the Times who think they’re getting an accurate take on the situation here in Hungary are going to be shocked when Orban goes back in on April 3. Ask yourself: if things are as dire in Hungary as Marki-Zay and Goldberg say, why is it that three weeks away from the election, this is what the polls look like:

 

When is the Times going to run an analysis on how Viktor Orban, after a dozen years in power, is on the verge of winning four more? What could he possibly be doing right, and why is the opposition so hapless? Are those even thoughts that Times columnists allow themselves to have? We are so cut off in the US from the way many others in the world think.  The whole reason I suggested last summer to Tucker Carlson that he come to Hungary and take a look is because I was here for maybe two weeks when I realized how different this country is from the way our media portray it.

At the Rudas Baths this morning, I spoke to a Hungarian who lived for years in America, and he said to me, “You hear Americans ask all the time, ‘Why do they hate us?’, but the way they ask it is not really wanting to know, but more like trying to figure out what’s wrong with foreigners for not thinking like Americans.”

By the way, for more commentary on Hungary’s election, check out the new piece by my TAC colleague Bradley Devlin.

UPDATE: Think of it this way: Hungary is no more “unfree” than Ukraine is, as Putin claims, a “Nazi” state. These are lies told not to promote thinking, but to short-circuit it. As I said, there are good reasons to oppose the Orban government and want a change, but you will barely find them in the Goldberg column.

The post Earth To NYTimes: Hungary Is Not A Slave State appeared first on The American Conservative.

Dispossession & The Ruling Class Narrative

This is true:

List of things that are suddenly considered “right wing”

-Skepticism of the Pentagon
-Skepticism of corporate media consensus
-Skepticism of regime change operations
-Skepticism of weapons-funneling operations
-Skepticism of punitive sanctions
-Skepticism of World War III

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) March 18, 2022

Along those lines, anything that deviates in any way from the Narrative — even simply to attempt to understand what is going on — is denounced as pro-Putin, pro-Russian, etc. Even though I always say that I support Ukraine in this war — not because I think Ukraine has a fine government, but because I stand with a small nation against the warmongering of a larger one — and even though I praise Zelensky for his great valor (though condemn him for the propagandistic lies he tells to try to drag NATO into this war), and even though I routinely condemn Putin for his unjust aggression and repression of antiwar dissidents at home … I still get crap from some readers, like the accusation that I “always” defend Putin and condemn Zelensky. I don’t think readers who do this are being cynical. I think that they have so plugged their brains into the Narrative Machine that they really do see this conflict as one of Uncontestably True Facts.

Here is a true fact:

A half-dozen ongoing uncontrolled population-scaled Milgram experiments in conformity and obedience ongoing at once

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) March 18, 2022

Here’s a trigger warning for sensitivos: I am going to attempt to explain something to you about why not everybody in the world hates Putin. This does not mean I endorse his invasion (see above). This is about trying to get the nuance of what’s happening here — what it means, and what it is likely to mean, and what it means more deeply. This is, in part, an explanation of why I am unwilling to join the mob. I know that trying to understand one’s opponents, or enemies, is considered an impure act by many today, but there will be some of you for whom this is a valuable experience. It was only the day before yesterday that all good classical liberals knew that listening and understanding is not the same thing as endorsing. This is a valuable principle to live by.

Yesterday Putin gave a fairly frightening speech, in which he spoke of the demonization of Russians by the West (true, alas), said that Russia is being “cleansed” of a Western “fifth column,” and denounced oligarchs who live abroad as traitors to the good Russian folk who live at home. It was a demagogic tour de force — as if Putin hadn’t created, and didn’t sustain, the oligarchs, and as if he didn’t have a $99 million superyacht. Nevertheless, it’s important to consider why this demagoguery might be effective. He’s building on a deep and longstanding fear and loathing Russians have for the West, and using it to deflect anger at him for crushing the Russian economy with his foolish Ukraine war.

But there’s more to it than that. Let’s consider this “news analysis” by NYT correspondent Stephen Erlanger.Excerpts:

Mr. Putin’s concept of a nation is an ethnic and autocratic one, in contrast to the Western idea of a multicultural state built on civic responsibility, the rule of law, and individual rights. To be an American, many have suggested, it is necessary simply to swear allegiance to the flag, obey the law and pay your taxes.

Erlanger thinks this is self-evidently a good thing. There are many Americans who think this is a terrible thing! This deracinated, placeless understanding of the nation is historically aberrant, a feature of postwar modernity, but is considered to be the ideal by the ruling class in the US, the European Union, and among the globalist Davos class. It is true that the US is a multicultural society, and we have (so far) been able to make it work, though as the scholar of ethno-demography Eric Kaufmann has observed, America is going to face a difficult period of shifting from having a dominant ethnic minority (whites) to one in which no minority dominates.  From an essay Kaufmann published in 2019; don’t skip over this — it’s important:

We need to talk about white identity. Not as a fabrication designed to maintain power, but as a set of myths and symbols to which people are attached: an ethnic identity like any other.

In the West, even without immigration, we’re becoming mixed-race. This is not speculation, but is virtually guaranteed by the rates of intermarriage occurring in many Western countries. Projections reveal that faster immigration may slow the process by bringing in racially unmixed individuals, but in a century those of mixed-race will be the largest group in countries such as Britain and the United States. In two centuries, few people living in urban areas of the West will have an unmixed racial background. Most who do will be immigrants or members of anti-modern religious groups such as ultra-Orthodox Jews. The reflex is to think of this futuristically, as bringing forth increased diversity, or the advent of a “new man.” But, if history is our guide, things are likely to turn out quite differently. Many people desire roots, value tradition and wish to maintain continuity with ancestors who have occupied a historic territory. [Emphasis mine — RD]

I would wager that Stephen Erlanger, as a New York Times correspondent and member of the globalist cultural class, does not know many of these people. I would also wager, on the basis of this news analysis, that he fears and loathes them. That old Cajun man in the photo above? I bet if he’s still alive, that he holds opinions that would make Stephen Erlanger and his colleagues shit their New York pants and want to see him crushed. I know lots of old men like this, and not-so-young men. You know who’s going to go fight the war if the US gets involved? The same ones who fought the last wars: that old man’s grandsons.

More Kaufmann:

The loss of white ethno-cultural confidence manifests itself in other ways. Among the most important is a growing unwillingness to indulge the anti-white ideology of the cultural left. When whites were an over-whelming majority, empirically unsupported generalizations about whites could be brushed off as amusing and mischievous but ultimately harmless. As whites decline, fewer are willing to abide such attacks. At the same time, white decline emboldens the cultural left, with its dream of radical social transformation. The last time this blend of ethnic change and cultural contestation occurred, in fin-de-siècle America, the anti-WASP adversary culture was confined to a small circle of bohemian intellectuals. Today, the anti-majority adversary culture operates on a much larger scale, permeates major institutions and is transmitted to conservatives through social and right-wing media. This produces a growing culture-war polarization between increasingly insecure white conservatives and energized white liberals.

The Western tradition of opposing one’s own culture begins with the so-called “lyrical left” in the late 19th century, which lampooned bourgeois values. After the First World War, the cultural left turned against the nation, to the point that by 1930, according to the liberal George Orwell, “in left-wing circles, it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman.” In the more diverse United States, the lyrical left’s critique took the form of an attack on their own ethnic group, the Anglo-Protestant majority, whom they saw as oppressing European immigrants and enforcing puritanical laws such as the prohibition on selling alcohol. In the 1960s, this countercultural movement, which I term left-modernism, developed a theory of white ethno-racial oppression. Its outlook superseded the logical, empirically grounded, left-liberal Civil Rights Movement after 1965 to become a millenarian project sustained by the image of a retrograde white “other.” Today, left-modernism’s most zealous exponents are those seeking to consecrate the university campus as a sacred space devoted to the mission of replacing “whiteness” with diversity.

It’s important to have people criticizing their own group: What Daniel Bell termed the “adversary culture” spurs reform and creativity when it collides with the majority tradition. But what happens when the critics become dominant? In softer form, left-modernist ideology penetrated widely within the high culture and political institutions of Western society after the 1960s. This produced norms that prevented democratic discussion of questions of national identity and immigration. The deviantization of these issues in the name of anti-racism introduced a blockage in the democratic process, preventing the normal adjustment of political supply to political demand. Instead of reasonable trade-offs between those who, for example, wanted higher or lower levels of immigration, the subject was forced underground, building up pressure from those whose grievances were ignored by the main parties. This created a market opportunity which populist right entrepreneurs rushed in to fill.

Ethno-cultural change is occurring at a rapid rate at precisely the time the dominant ideology celebrates a multicultural vision of ever-increasing diversity. To hanker after homogeneity and stability is perceived as narrow-minded and racist by liberals. Yet diversity falls flat for many because we’re not all wired the same way. Right-wing populism, which champions the cultural interests of group-oriented whites, has halted and reversed the multicultural consensus which held sway between the 1960s and late 1990s. This is leading to a polarization between those who accept, and those who reject, the ideology of diversity. What’s needed is a new vision that gives conservative members of white majorities hope for their group’s future while permitting cosmopolitans the freedom to celebrate diversity.

Read the whole thing. 

Kaufmann is a British scholar who studies this stuff, but he has been denounced by some on the Left as making excuses for racism (an English academic friend who knows him told me recently, “You cannot imagine what they’ve put him through”). But Kaufmann is right. He’s trying to point out social, psychological, and political realities that must be dealt with, even though the ruling class does not want to deal with them. Putin’s attack on Ukraine, and the immensely powerful Western response to it, is already causing spasms of liberal and neocon triumphalism, which will make it far more difficult for them to understand what it going on within their own societies. And it’s making a lot of knee-jerk conservatives in the US who are reverting to militaristic type fail to understand that they are being played by the same elite ideologues who are making culture war on them and their institutions and ways of life.

Putin is exploiting these realities and forces for his own advantage. But he’s not making this stuff up out of whole cloth. More from Erlanger’s piece:

“What Russia is doing is not just making war against an innocent nation here,” said Timothy Snyder, a professor at Yale who has written extensively about Russia and Ukraine, but attacking assumptions about a peaceful Europe that respects borders, national sovereignty and multilateral institutions.

How quick the West is to forget that the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia did not respect borders or national sovereignty, and was illegal under international law (the UN did not authorize the action). NATO did it claiming humanitarian intervention as its casus belli. Nobody can deny that the Kosovo situation was a serious humanitarian crisis, but Russians know perfectly well that the West has no intention of respecting borders, national sovereignty, or multilateral institutions when it decides its interests. Ask the Libyans and the Iraqis about that too.

I remind you again: I am not justifying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which I regard as cruel and unjust. I am trying to show you that the Western narrative here is self-serving.

Erlanger cites the Christian ethnonationalism of Putin and his theoreticians as behind the Ukraine invasion. From what I understand, he’s not wrong, and I join fellow Orthodox Christians — including some in Russia — in deploring how the Putin has subordinated Russian Orthodoxy to his imperialist aims. But even that is not so simple, given that Kyiv/Kiev is the birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy (in the year 988) and of the Russian nation. It seems that Ukraine has been hotly contested territory for the entirety of it history, and has only been a distinct state with the coming of the Bolshevik Revolution, when Moscow declared it to be the “Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.” This doesn’t make Russia’s invasion right, but doesn’t it complicate matters?

More importantly, I have to say: if you don’t think that Western ideas of liberal democracy, sexuality, capitalism, multiculturalism and the rest are an aggressive ideology, and indeed an ideology we are prepared to fight for economically, diplomatically, and militarily, you are deluded.

President George W. Bush, in his second Inaugural Address to a nation at war in the Middle East, said:

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation’s security, and the calling of our time.

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

This is armed utopianism, justified with religious rhetoric. We do it all the time, but we don’t recognize it as such, because we have convinced ourselves that what we believe in is neutral, and is obviously true. A liberal Democratic president would not likely have used the God talk, but he would have said the same thing in progressive terms, using words like “diversity,” “equity,” and so forth. My point here is that people who are outside of the American and EU ruling class hear things like what Erlanger and his interviewees say, and roll their eyes. They’re not wrong to. Putin’s being wrong about Ukraine does not make Timothy Snyder, The New York Times, and all the Davos men and women, right.

Erlanger:

In Europe, too, Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, has promoted Hungarian identity and nationalism despite censure from Brussels. He has handed out Hungarian passports to ethnic Hungarians in Romania and other countries, who are allowed to vote in Hungary, giving him, so far, an electoral edge. But Mr. Orban faces parliamentary elections next month, and his long, close relations with Mr. Putin have hurt him politically, even as he has moved quickly to support European Union sanctions on Russia and welcome Ukrainian refugees.

Oh boy. Once again, American ignorance of history shows itself. Why are there so many ethnic Hungarians in Romania, far western Ukraine, Slovakia and Serbia? Because until 1919 and the Treaty of Trianon settling World War I accounts with the losing Austro-Hungarian Empire, parts of those nations were Hungary. Suddenly Hungarian people found themselves living as foreigners in what used to be their own land, because the victorious Western powers dismantled Hungary and gave two-thirds of Hungarian lands to other countries. A century later, this is bitterly resented here in Hungary today. I am neither praising nor condemning the Trianon Treaty, but you have to understand that Orban is not doing this for cynical reasons. Hungarians living in those lands really do see themselves as part of the Magyar nation.

Erlanger:

Mr. Putin has done more to build Ukrainian nationhood than anyone in the West could have done, Mr. Krastev said. “Putin wanted to be the father of a new Russian nation, but he is the father of a new Ukrainian nation instead.”

I think this is true, but look, do Erlanger and his interview subjects understand the irony here? Do they imagine that Ukrainians are Slavic Swedes? They are rather conservative, as are most people in this region, and they certainly can be ethnic chauvinists. For example, do you know why Hungarians, though helping Ukrainian refugees out of humanitarian concern, do not fully buy into the Ukraine-worship in the West? Because prior to the war, they battled with the Zelensky government over what Hungarians regard as brutal and unjust treatment of Hungarian minorities living in Ukraine. Since at least 2018, the Kyiv government has been trying to suppress the use of Hungarian in schools attended by minority Hungarians. The Ukrainians also have a case for their side; they want to suppress ethnic separatism. Again, I don’t want to take sides here — it’s not my place to do so — but I want to point out that the world is not nearly as simplistic as the Narrative would have you believe.

Erlanger is trying to smear Viktor Orban as a Putinist, which is standard operating procedure for the Western media. It is fair to say that Orban has been close to Putin, relative to other European leaders, but do you know why? A lot of it has to do with the fact that Orban and his party, Fidesz, are the party of people who, to use Eric Kaufmann’s phrase, “desire roots, value tradition and wish to maintain continuity with ancestors who have occupied a historic territory.” They correctly see the globalist EU ideology as a direct threat to that, in that globalism seeks to abolish borders and peoples, and their particular traditions, to create a frictionless capitalist entity. The Orban supporters are proud to be European, but don’t understand why, in order to be part of the European community of nations, they have to surrender their roots, traditions, and desire to maintain continuity with their ancestors who have occupied the Carpathian Basin since the ninth century.

There are other Europeans — French, Spanish, Italian, and others — who feel the same way about their own peoples and traditions. These people are slandered routinely in the media and by Brussels as “far right.”

Here is something that went out today on Twitter by the new president of Hungary (the president is a ceremonial position; the political leader is the prime minister):

As long as we have free hands and free will, we cannot be subdued. This is the very basis of our #sovereignty. I will never surrender our national sovereignty. #ElectionSpeech #PresidentialElection pic.twitter.com/L2QqocEahs

— Katalin Novák (@KatalinNovakMP) March 18, 2022

Fidesz — Novak is a leading Fidesz politician — holds that the EU’s dictates are trying to undermine the traditional family, and with it Hungarian sovereignty. They are correct about that. And look, Vladimir Putin is flat out a warmongering autocrat, but he’s correct when he attacks LGBT ideology promoted as a sacred value by the Western ruling class. Again and again I say unto you: some things are true even though Vladimir Putin believes them.

None of this is to justify Putin’s attack on Ukraine. But it is to explain why the story Americans are hearing in the media is not the whole story, and why we should be wary. One more bit from Erlanger:

But now Ukraine, which also fought and suffered under the Nazis, is using the same tropes against the invading Russians. For Ukraine, Mr. Krastev said, “this is their Great Patriotic War.”

Wait … what?! Many Ukrainians openly collaborated with the Nazis — and frankly, given what Stalin did to them in the Holodomor, it’s not hard to understand why. The Azov Battalion is the main Ukrainian force defending Mariupol now from the Russians. It is openly neo-Nazi — and this is not even in dispute. Again, if I were Ukrainian, I would probably swallow my fear of and disgust with the neo-Nazis and be glad they were fighting against the invaders — but we Americans have no excuse for pretending that Ukraine is free of the taint of Nazism.

Putin is manipulating his own people into supporting his disastrous war. But our leadership class in the West is up to something quite similar, and you need to know that.

You need to know that in part because you should not allow yourself to get caught up in liberal triumphalism, such that you miss what’s happening in your own country (I’m talking to my fellow Americans). A friend from back home sent me this clip this morning, saying he wants it played at his wake one day:

 

My friend is not a rural farmer, but a highly educated urban professional who is sick of what he regards as the ruling class and the overculture’s demonization of people like him and their culture. He’s one of the conservatives I’ve been telling you about who reach out to me and say that they are not interested anymore in defending a regime that despises them, and systematically works to dispossess them of their culture and tradition, and their replacement by liberal market ideology. This is a similar sentiment that this left-wing Quebecois folk band Mes Aïeux sounded a long time ago in the song “Dégeneration”:

Take a look at this English-language cover by the Georgia musician David Mathewes, from five years ago:

Now, if you watch the “Bury Me In Southern Ground” video, you’re going to see an old video clip that shows some white Southern male mud-riding in his pickup truck, with a Confederate flag flying. You might think, “I KNEW IT! RACIST!” He might be … but not necessarily. Personally, I think that the Confederate flag is too tainted by slavery and white supremacy to be displayed in good faith, and I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it as a sign of respect to black Southerners. But I also know that there are Southern whites today who do not regard it as a racist emblem; rather, they regard it as the only sign available to them to show affirmation of their particular culture, especially as it is widely despised by US cultural elites.

But you know what they might also see? The flag of a weaker nation that claimed independence from a stronger nation, which then made war on the weaker nation to forcibly reunite it to the motherland. Me, I am glad the South lost the war because that was the only way to end slavery, but I am not at all persuaded that the South had no right to secede in the first place. Southern whites who fly the Confederate flag may wonder why Ukrainian nationalists with far-right, racist convictions get a pass by right-thinking American liberals for fighting Russians in the name of their nation, its culture, and its independence, but no liberal will ever grant that a white Southerner can be proud of his culture — despite the profoundly evil parts — and display their flag, or even look upon certain statues.

History and culture are not simple stories.

Whatever you think about the rebel flag, and whatever you think about Putin and his rhetoric, don’t lose the broader picture here of the war going on far outside of Ukraine. It is a culture war, and it is relentless. The aggressors see themselves as liberators — but they are lying to us, and lying to themselves. It should be easy for conservatives to decide to fight hard politically against liberal forces that are coming into the schools to try to colonize the minds of children to hate their ethnicity and hate their bodies and families via gender ideology. This is a fight against dispossession and degeneration (in the sense that the Quebecois song above means). And if you do, they will understand what they have to learn from the way Viktor Orban fights for the same things in his country. Unlike US Republicans, he usually wins.

Finally, I acknowledge that it might seem weird for me to be singing the praises of nationalism and sovereignty (cultural and otherwise) as a foreigner enjoying the hospitality of Budapesters. I see no contradiction at all. I am a proud American, and indeed a proud Southerner. I also love traveling the world and meeting people from cultures not my own, and learning from them. I think the French ought to be able to say how people in France should live, just as Hungarians should be able to protect their own heritage and traditions, as should Ukrainians, and everybody else. This is messy, and some things cannot ultimately be reconciled. Nevertheless, I think part of being truly cosmopolitan is recognizing and honoring local particularity. I don’t want Hungarians telling us Americans how to run our country, and I don’t think it’s our place to tell them the same.

In fact, this morning I was talking with a Hungarian friend at the Rudas Baths about the upcoming election. He says Orban will win, and he wants Orban to win. He think Orban will keep Hungary out of the war. He said, “You can see how beautiful Budapest is today, but I assure you, it didn’t look like this 25 years ago. We had to live with all the damage from the [Second World] War, because we were too poor to build it back. And if Hungary gets involved in this war, Russia will beat us, and we will suffer.”

He went on to say he hopes Orban wins because the opposition is eager to surrender even more sovereignty to Brussels. He said that nobody in Brussels cares about Hungarians, or anybody else in this part of Europe. “They pass laws governing us, but they don’t know us, and they don’t like us,” he said. “They treat us as a bunch of ignorant, uncultured Eastern Europeans who need to be taught how to be human. We have been through this before, you know. I’m telling you, when we see Brussels, we see the new Moscow. Wokeness is another form of Communism. We can all see that.”

“I have just the book for you to read,” I said.

“Who are they to tell us that we are backwards bigots because we believe that men have penises, and women have vaginas, and that you aren’t an aardvark just because you identify as one?” he said. I laughed at the line, but he wasn’t trying to be funny. He said he cannot understand what gives people from the more liberal cultures of western Europe the right to stomp into Hungary, Poland, and other more conservative Central European countries and order them to surrender what they believe, and have always believed, about family, sex, and sexuality.

I told my friend that I completely agree, and that we are dealing with the same kind of thing in the US. Unlike in Hungary, though, we don’t have many Republican politicians who have the guts and the brains to fight it. This, I told him, is broadly about dispossession, cultural and otherwise. The Left — and the neocon Right — doesn’t see this, because they are so supremely confident that their version of justice is the correct one, and the only reason anyone could possibly disagree is because they are Bad People — racists, bigots, fascists, Orbanists, Putinists, you name it.

He nodded, and said, “That’s it: dispossession.”

One more thing: I’m really past the point of tolerating bad-faith criticism (e.g., “You always defend Putin!”), so if that’s all you bring to your comment below, save your efforts, because I’m going to spike your remarks before they appear.

UPDATE: Michael Brendan Dougherty is well worth reading on the self-deception of the liberal triumphalists who assume populism and nationalism are over now.

You watch: when Viktor Orban wins the April 3 election, people who trusted the Western media’s assurances that Orban is being hurt with voters by his relationship to Putin will be left sputtering that Orban must have cheated. He simply must have, because they don’t know anybody who voted for him. Maybe they can call Bono for consolation and verse.

The post Dispossession & The Ruling Class Narrative appeared first on The American Conservative.

More On The Mark Galli Affair

You will remember that I posted the other day about accusations made against Mark Galli, the retired editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, who allegedly sexually harassed women on staff. Galli denied some of the allegations, and said the others were misunderstandings for which he would love to have the opportunity to apologize and ask forgiveness.

Since then, I am told that the publisher of Galli’s recent book about his conversion to Catholicism has withdrawn the book from the market — this, even though the accusations against Galli have not been proven, and Galli has had no formal way to challenge them. In the comments thread under that initial post, some people said that the allegations against Galli seemed fishy. Today I received communication from an Evangelical academic who wrote to say that Galli’s reputation has been destroyed, though he (Galli) has had no chance to defend himself. The academic wrote to say:

I don’t think it’s right to treat someone as guilty based on allegations that have not undergone the scrutiny of due process. Galli outright denies the worst of these allegations. Even though CT is acting sacrificially to publish these allegations, it’s not fair to anyone to treat the accused as guilty based on allegations alone. Especially since, as I read the story, some of the more serious ones do not seem to have other witnesses to the events alleged.

He may end up being proven guilty of all of it. I just feel like we don’t have enough to go on to definitively condemn the guy. Galli has been roundly and irreversibly condemned on the basis of these allegations alone. He is cancelled at this point, and it doesn’t matter whether the allegations are true or substantiated. That’s wrong.

And I’m saying that as someone who doesn’t know Galli and doesn’t appreciate his evangelical-lefty-friendly tenure at CT. I’m reserving judgment.

This statement from [CT CEO Tim] Dalrymple doesn’t fill me with confidence:

“In other words, as Guidepost expressed so well, we overemphasized the intent of the perpetrator and underemphasized the impact on the recipient. Divining intent is always a dubious enterprise, but sexual harassment is sexual harassment whether or not it is sexually motivated.”

CT brought in Guidepost, an outside consulting firm, to help it figure out how to deal with the matter. You can read the Guidepost report by following a link in this editorial by Tim Dalrymple.The academic continues:

Here is Guidepost’s sixth recommendation to CT. It doesn’t fill me with confidence either.

CT should develop an actionable plan for recruiting and retaining women and diverse candidates, with a goal of increasing the representation of women and diverse candidates at all levels of the company and communicate the plan to CT employees and the CT Board. This may include a refresh of a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee or other group where CT employees can help strategize and assist in concrete steps to develop a diverse culture under the support of CT leadership.

One more thing from the Guidepost report. This is important:

We wish to make clear that in stating that we find the accounts of Female Employees A and B and others to be credible, we are not reaching any legal conclusions. Guidepost is not a law firm and did not undertake any legal analysis of whether Former Employee 1’s alleged conduct, if proved, would constitute harassment under any applicable local, state, or federal laws or regulations and we are not providing any legal opinion or legal conclusion about that alleged conduct.

In other words, even though Guidepost thinks the people making allegations are credible, they are not making the case that Galli is guilty. This report does not establish Galli’s guilt in any way. It merely analyzes whether CT’s procedures for handling accusations were sound.

This is what I don’t like. He’s being treated as guilty without due process. I’m sorry, but a Guidepost review is not a due process adjudication of his guilt or innocence. It’s just not. But he’s going to be cancelled and treated as guilty on the basis of allegations alone. It’s a done deal at this point. And it’s wrong.

And keep in mind, this can happen to any of us. If someone makes an allegation against you, it doesn’t matte what your intent is. The only thing that matters is how the accuser feels. Their allegation alone will ruin you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Guidepost’s own report to CT says that their investigation is not designed to determine Galli’s guilt of innocence. They are only looking at whether allegations are credible and whether CT handled them properly. That’s it.

Due process involves presumption of innocence, right to face your accuser, opportunity to mount a defense, rules of evidence, witnesses, etc. This Guidepost investigation is not doing any of that, nor are they claiming to do any of that. On the contrary, they state that they aren’t doing that.

In the court of public opinion, Galli is guilty. He will never escape that verdict because in our current climate, it only takes an accusation to destroy a person. If it’s an allegation of sexual abuse or harassment, the allegation alone is the end of the matter.

The academic followed up:

Okay, sorry. Another item from the Guidepost report. This sounds like a woke HR employee wrote it:

The culture of CT does not appear to be dominated by sexual harassment or abuse. However, according to several interviewees, sexism does exist at CT (as it does at many other workplaces, both religious and secular) and is a systemic problem that needs to be addressed. Female CT employees who we interviewed stated that they had been subjected to various unconsciously sexist behaviors by men in the CT workplace, including being patronized, belittled, interrupted, talked over, and micromanaged. Several women told us that they felt they were deliberately omitted from decision-making, with one woman stating that “men go to men all the time and women are told to do what the men decided.”

It is possible that CT’s flawed institutional response to harassment allegations could have been influenced, in part, by unconscious sexism.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: A reader e-mails:

I don’t know anything about Galli apart from what you have written and quoted. And I don’t read CT, and am not really interested in their perspective. But about your academic friend’s final point and the Guidepost report of women employees alleging“systemic” and “unconscious” sexism etc…

Jordan Peterson talks about this from time to time. When men deal with men, there are rules governing that behavior that all understand. When conflict arises, at the final stretch, men fight with each other to resolve it. This is not permissible when men are dealing with women peers. Moreover, the possibility of career-ending allegations of sexism etc. are always latent in these interactions. So how is business supposed to get done now? This isn’t some arbitrary norm of the patriarchy, but rather rooted deeply in human evolutionary psychology. The genealogy of these phenomena go back probably hundreds of thousands of years. It is therefore safe to say that the deck is now stacked against men who have to work with women as peers. The only safe course of action is capitulation and deference in every instance. Which isn’t a good way to run anything.

Like everything else in the orbit of Western culture, this won’t end well.

UPDATE.2: Another reader, this one an academic, writes:

I am completely amazed that CT would release the findings of a human resources investigation. HR is not the FBI; they are not trained to sift through evidence, there was no opportunity for cross examination, and many of the allegations may be interpreted as the result of inculcating in employees a hypersensitivity about activities that in the past would’ve been seen as a minor annoyances but not sexual-harassment. If it were me, I would go balls to the wall lawsuit against Christianity Today, since they essentially have destroyed my career for the rest of my life.

UPDATE.3: Reader William Anderson comments:

Note that Galli already was trying to establish the DEI atmosphere at CT, not only in the workplace, but also in the pages of CT. It has been well-known in evangelical circles for many years that only leftist positions are acceptable for publication at CT, whether one writes of science, abortion, sexuality, etc. Conservatives have known for years that their submissions are unacceptable.

I point this out because we are seeing a larger pattern in evangelical organizations. First, the pressure to bow to the Left becomes stronger. Second, sooner or later, an “incident” or “series of incidents” allegedly will occur that “proves” the need for the organization to move even further to the left, which it usually does. What conservatives fail to understand is that the Left never is satisfied and will demand even more concessions. Having taught at Christian colleges, I am familiar with the pattern and the results.

Reader Muzan-e:

This is the sort of thing that chills me to the core:

Some years ago, we fired two female employees for sexual harassment. Their victim was a high-schooler, working for us over the summer as many local kids do. They were finding him in the kitchen or in stock and subjecting him to the sort of overtly, aggressively sexual questioning that wouldn’t be welcome at dinner parties, let alone the workplace. Obviously this cannot, must not, be allowed to continue. But this is what gets me —

As best we could determine, this had been happening for almost two weeks.
He was a very shy, quiet young man and he was afraid of telling management; of ‘making a fuss’.
If it had come down to testimonies, it would’ve been the word of two senior employees with established records vs one temporary hire.
And the stuff they were saying to him? You could repeat it in front of a jury of 12 and — keeping in mind their record, and that it is two of them against one of him — it would’ve sounded outrageous. Absolutely unbelievable.

We got extraordinarily lucky: another employee overheard it happening, peeked around the corner to see who on earth was talking like this, and phoned us immediately. We fired both women that day. Later, going through the camera footage, we could see it happening on other occasions — but it looked innocuous. If not for that one employee…

It chills me, man. That we might never have known; that if the circumstances were just slightly different, it would’ve been extraordinarily difficult for him to prove. I am a firm, lifelong believer in innocent until proven guilty — but when it’s a matter of words, when it’s a touch that will leave no physical mark… What then? We might hope for corroboration in the form of previous incidents, but when those are the same?

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