Rod Dreher's Blog, page 240

The Race War The Left Wants

I posted something earlier today about a progressive Baptist pastor praying at a Baylor graduation ceremony that “straight white males like me” would diminish in leadership roles. You will notice that virtue-signaling white people like this never, ever resign their positions to make way for a person of color, or some other minority with whom they publicly ally themselves. They think that pulling a long face about their privilege is a moral disinfectant.

It really is astonishing to see how the left in this country is working itself into a frenzy of race, sex, and gender hatred. It is moving out of the academic fringes and well into the mainstream. Take a look at what the (Latino) schools chancellor Richard Carranza in New York City ordered the administrators and principals in the massive urban school system to undergo. The New York Post reports:

City Department of Education brass are targeting a “white-supremacy culture” among school administrators — by disparaging ideas like “individualism,” “objectivity” and “worship of the written word,” The Post has learned.

A presentation slide obtained by The Post offers a bullet-point description of the systemic, supposedly pro-white favoritism that Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza claims must be eradicated from the DOE, and provides just one insight into his anti-bias training efforts.

The list — derived from “Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups” by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun — names more than a dozen hallmarks of “white-supremacy culture” that school administrators are expected to steer clear of.

Here’s a graphic the Post created, taken from the training. If it’s too small for you to read here, click on this link, and you’ll see a bigger version:

I hope you will read it, in detail. The basic argument is that the fundamental qualities of professionalism, achievement, logic, clear thinking, and literacy are manifestations of white supremacy. The unavoidable corollary is that mediocrity is racially authentic. The NYC schools system adopted the toxic Acting White philosophy as a guide for its administrators. Andrew Sullivan writes:

I’m often told that the social-justice left’s assault on individuality, meritocracy, and achievement is a figment of my imagination, or only true in isolated pockets of super-woke academia. But here is one of the largest school systems in the country imposing this ideology on its most important employees, mandating lessons in “whiteness,” allegedly firing women solely because they are white, and indoctrinating an entire generation into associating the virtues of objective truth, academic excellence, and reason with the worst kind of bigotry. If you want to know why liberal democracy is in peril in America, mandatory indoctrination in critical race and gender theory is a factor not to be underrated.

Take a look at this fantastic passage from the Post story. It’s George Orwell by way of Bonfire Of The Vanities:

“It requires discomfort,” said Matt Gonzales, who serves as an outside adviser on the DOE’s school diversity task force and is a director of New York Appleseed, an advocacy group for school integration.

“Having to talk about someone’s own whiteness is a requirement for them to become liberated.”

Several recent attendees of the DOE’s overarching implicit-bias training sessions — mandatory for all, including teachers — have bristled at the program’s emphasis on the inherent insidiousness of “white” culture.

White employees who object when accused of harboring deep-seated bias are branded “fragile” and “defensive,” one insider who received the training has said.

But [Schools Chancellor Richard] Carranza said on Monday that such skeptics often don’t realize their own biases until they are forced to confront them and that they are likely the ones who need the training the most.

“It’s good work. It’s hard work,” Carranza said. “And I would hope that anybody that feels that somehow that process is not beneficial to them, I would very respectfully say they are the ones that need to reflect even harder upon what they believe.”

Got that? Resistance to the claim that you are guilty is evidence of your guilt. The book I’m writing about resisting the new soft totalitarianism has a lot to do with this kind of thing. I remind you that this is not something from the fringes of the far left, but was the diversity training course for administrators in the world’s largest public school system (serving 1.1 million kids).

A couple of years ago, when I wrote about a (now former) Texas A&M philosophy professor, a black man, and his racist, anti-white rants — including speculating favorably on the idea that black liberation might require killing whites — many people on the left (including the Chronicle Of Higher Education) howled that I was being racist. I don’t think they were being cynical. In their circles, it’s normal to allow persons of color to speak in anti-white terms. They’re completely inured to how immoral, offensive, and dangerous this sounds to people outside their bubbles.

I have said in this space for years that the illiberal left — and this demonizing of straight white men is totally illiberal — is calling forth demons with this kind of talk. What do they honestly expect straight white males — and the women who are married to them, and who have them as sons — to do? Roll over with their bellies up and whimper for mercy, like a liberal Protestant pastor, or an English department associate professor? Every time the left engages in rhetoric like this, or worse, institutes programs (like the NYC schools training) to institutionalize anti-white, anti-male, anti-heterosexual bigotry, they give implicit permission for straights, for whites, and for men to act on their own prejudices against minorities. And they incentivize straight white males (and, um, allies) to vote for anti-left politicians, if only as a matter of self-protection. 

In the wake of Trump’s 2016 victory, prominent liberal scholar Mark Lilla denounced identity-politics liberalism as toxic and self-defeating, and wrote a book about it. He was vilified on the left for his position, and even denounced by a Columbia University colleague for — yep — “making white supremacy respectable again.”

MH, a liberal reader of this blog, posted this 2018 USA Today column by Saritha Prabhu, who is worried about this trend on her own side. Excerpts:

As you’ve probably noticed, bashing straight white men, especially of the conservative kind, is very fashionable these days.

You seemingly can’t escape it — you switch on cable TV, or “The View”, read The Washington Post or The New York Times, and see liberal pundits verbally attack white men for this or that.

It’s become often enough that it is seemingly now normal to just casually attack a broad group of the country’s citizens.

And sometimes race is inserted gratuitously even when it isn’t an issue, like during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings: the Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee were attacked as old white men.

Besides, there is the strangeness in the spectacle of certain white people calling out certain other white people on their whiteness.

What gives? What is happening is that everyone’s id is now not just out in the open, it has gone berserk.

Yes. When I was in Australia last week, I saw a common theme on the left, denouncing Alabama’s strict anti-abortion law, was that it was passed by “straight white men.” As if that were enough to discredit it. As if it had not been signed by a female governor. None of these facts matter. It is enough among many on the mainstream left simply to associate an idea with straight white men to discredit it. More Prabhu:

Whenever I hear someone on TV bash white men, my overriding feeling is “Excuse me, but I really don’t want to be a party to this.”

I am a brown, female immigrant and I can assure these leaders and pundits that there’s no anger coursing through my veins at white people or men as a group.

One can have historical and contemporary awareness of inequities and injustices, without having hateful feelings toward the ordinary white citizens around us.

Today’s Democratic Party is predicated on having and expressing open hostility toward white citizens. They are making the dangerous bet that most minorities and immigrants will jump on the white-male-bashing bandwagon.

But it could backfire and turn off many voters. If you ask most minorities and immigrants, they’ll probably tell you they just want a fair, equal shot at the American Dream, and that they’re not angling for racial payback or Civil War Take 2.

The leadership class of the Democratic Party is not listening to Saritha Prabhu. Nancy Pelosi said last week that the opposition to abortion consists of “guys, guys, guys, guys, just white guys, guys, guys”. In fact, men and women hold abortion views — pro-life, pro-choice, or mixed — in the same numbers. And:

Stacey Abrams: “Identity politics is exactly who we are and it’s exactly how we won.” https://t.co/85uq8kgiQK pic.twitter.com/CoHlAejS80

— The Hill (@thehill) May 23, 2019

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Call me crazy, but I think you’d have to be out of your mind as a person who is straight, white, male, or some combination of the three, to vote these identity-politics Bolsheviks into office. They actually want people at each other’s throats over race, sex, and gender. They actually want to turn America into Yugoslavia. What other explanation could there be? They’re going to find out that the United States is not the faculty Senate.

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Baylor Prayer: Enough Of Straight White Men!

That’s the prayer delivered at Baylor University’s 2019 spring graduation by Dan Freemyer of Fort Worth’s progressive Broadway Baptist Church. I’ve cued it up to a startling point. This prayer was uttered at graduation at the Baptist Notre Dame, deep in the heart of Texas.

The Baylor alumnus who sent it to me comments:

[Broadway] is an open and affirming church that cut ties with the Baptist General Convention of Texas long ago over homosexuality.

Baylor is affiliated with the BGCT. Inviting this heretic was a slap in the face by Baylor’s administration.

Baylor is done, stick a fork in it. [New Baylor president] Linda Livingstone has taken it into clear rebellion.

This is appalling. Whoever would have imagined that “straight white men” would be denounced in prayer at a Baylor University graduation ceremony? I wonder how many straight white men are Baylor donors? I wonder how many straight white male and female parents of high school students will understand the meaning of this signal, and look elsewhere for their children’s Christian college education?

 

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Humiliation, A Severe Mercy

In the Q&A period of most of my Australian speeches, people wanted to know why I had left the Catholic Church. It’s a fair question, especially because many people who come to hear me speak don’t know my history with the Catholic Church, and are surprised to learn that I am not Catholic – especially given that I have written a book in praise of the Benedictine monks.

I am never satisfied with how I answer this question. I don’t want to discourage my Catholic listeners who are struggling with their faith, nor do I want to give false hope that their problems will be solved if they leave Catholicism. At the same time, I don’t want to give the impression that I have accepted Orthodox Christianity as a consolation prize, or that I am in any way dissatisfied as an Orthodox Christian. In fact, I am deeply grateful that God gave me new life as an Orthodox Christian. Part of that redemption required me to turn my back on the spiritual pride – manifested as triumphalism — that had a lot to do with my losing the Catholic faith. You can be a triumphalistic Orthodox Christian, or a triumphalistic Protestant if you like – and if you do, you will put your soul at risk. And because you take such pride in your faith, you won’t see it coming. I didn’t.

A sympathetic Catholic friend once told me that I’m too hard on myself, that if he had seen all the things I saw as a journalist in the first four years of the scandal, he might have abandoned the Catholic Church too. Maybe so. But I don’t want to be easier on myself about this, because I don’t ever want to forget the hard and painful lessons I learned about the danger of spiritual pride, and the importance of maintaining one’s vigilance against it. I can’t control the institutional church, but I can control how I react to it.

Still, I was surprised and even comforted in Brisbane the other night by a long dinner conversation with Melinda Tankard Reist, a brave Christian feminist who has taken on the pornography industry in her writing. She told me about the soul-searing things she has had to confront in her work – unspeakable things, violent things, that most of us can scarcely imagine. She looks into the eye of the devil, and doesn’t blink. It takes a personal toll, she said.

At some point, as I listened to Melinda’s stories, I realized that this was the first time since I left Catholicism in 2006 that I had spoken to someone whose inwardly shattering experiences writing about evil resonated personally with me. I was thinking, So you know what it’s like too. I’m so glad I found you.

Melinda is a Christian. Her faith consoles her. In my case, I had to see things a lot like what Melinda has had to see, but the Church was no help – it was the source of the agony. I wish I had been better prepared for it all – the courageous Father Tom Doyle warned me back in 2002 – but in all honesty, I don’t know how one ever really prepares for things like this. I tell audiences who ask about it that they should never, ever assume that because they have the arguments for the faith down pat, that their faith is solid. That was me, once upon a time. There is no substitute for deep prayer, and developing habits of the heart, mind, and body, that sediment the faith into one’s bones.

And for God’s sake, do not think that because you think and talk about Church things all the time, that you are also thinking and talking about Jesus Christ. I was way more into being Catholic than I was into being a follower of Christ. I didn’t realize that there was a difference; ideally, there ought not to have been a difference. One night, when we lived in Brooklyn, back in 2001 or so, we had another one of our long dinners with good Catholic friends, in which the men had gone on and on and on about the failures of the institutional Church. After we saw the last guests out, my wife turned to me and said, “We need to have a lot less talk about Peter around here, and a lot more talk about Jesus.”

I knew what she meant. But I didn’t realize how serious her warning was, until it was much too late.

These are the lessons I try to share with my listeners, and I emphasize that every single one of us Christians is susceptible to the same fall from grace that occurred to me. I was the kind of Catholic who enjoyed talking about how superior the Catholic faith was to all other forms of Christianity. And hey, if you really do believe in the truth claims of Catholicism, then the conclusion that Catholicism is superior to rival forms of Christianity is unavoidable, and not something to apologize for, certainly. But see, my problem was that I took pride in being Catholic, instead of seeing the Catholic faith as an unmerited gift. No Catholic priest taught me to be that way about my faith; it was something I took on of my own free will, and by hanging around in circles of other young believing men – men again! – who were inclined towards an intellectual Christian tribalism that I’ve also seen in a certain kind of young male Calvinist, and even some young male converts to Orthodoxy.

Last week, the Dallas police raided the local Catholic diocese’s offices after an investigator said that the bishop was not being forthcoming on investigations. In a follow-up story, the Dallas Morning News reported that some area Catholics, who have been receiving over 20 years of gut-punches from the local clergy’s sexual corruption, are worn out, and may have reached the end of the line with the Church. There was this defiant quote from the pastor of a parish raided by police last week. Its previous pastor stands accused of multiple molestation counts, and who is believed to have fled to his native Philippines to escape justice:

But the Rev. Martin Moreno told parishioners Sunday at the packed St. Cecilia Catholic Church that the raids shouldn’t shake their beliefs.

“If this news means you have to go, then leave already,” he said. “Those of us that remain will have true faith.”

What a pitiful thing to say to parishioners who have been exploited by one pastor, and who live in a diocese which has over and over and over failed to police its own clergy. From a Catholic point of view, it’s true: the truth of the Catholic faith doesn’t stand or fall on the integrity of its priests. But … damn. Lashing out like that to your people, who have had to endure so many lies from the bishops and the clergy, and taunting them if they are tempted to give it all up? It’s so cheap, so tawdry.

Then again, I would say that, wouldn’t I? I walked away. I walked away because I ceased to believe that Catholicism was the true faith, in that my salvation depended on being Catholic. I could see very clearly there at the end that my salvation probably depended on leaving the Catholic Church. Around the end of 2004 and early 2005, the only passionate feelings I had about the Christian faith were ones of rage, fear, and shame – shame that I was so weak in faith. When I read that quote above from the Dallas Catholic priest, I heard that voice, and that thought, going through my head over and over from 2004 until I finally stopped believing. The only thing that was holding me to Catholicism at the end was  fear that if I didn’t stay, I would not have true faith — that, and shame. Not love of Christ, love of His mother, love of the communion of saints, of the mass, or any of it. Just shame over my doubts. Eventually I quit feeling fear, and quit feeling shame, and that was the end of my Catholic faith.

It was a great grief for me, but also balm, because I discovered Jesus Christ in a new way. The turning point — an epiphany for me so strong that I remember where I was standing in my home when it manifested — was realizing that the truth that sets us free is not a proposition, but Jesus of Nazareth, the God-man. I must prefer nothing to Him. If, for whatever reasons having to do with my own brokenness and the brokenness of the Catholic Church, I could no longer reach Jesus as a Catholic, then I had to find some other way to do that.

I know this doesn’t make sense to Catholics. But it was true. I found Him through the Orthodox Church. How intensely I wish my conversion to Orthodoxy had been clean and neat! It was instead that of a drowning man who clung desperately to driftwood. But that was enough, and more than enough: it was everything. It took, however, the total humiliation of me, in my religious and intellectual pride, for me to be open to the grace of healing God was offering me through Orthodox Christianity. Could I have found that experience in Catholicism? Yes, I think so, though given what the Catholic Church has done to its liturgy and devotions, it would have been more difficult. And of course the scandal of clerical corruption and episcopal arrogance, and malfeasance, was an insuperable stumbling block for me. But that possibility was there.

I knew from bitter experience that I could get in the way of that grace in Orthodoxy if I didn’t change — that is, if I had looked in Orthodoxy to regenerate my own triumphalism, this time in a Byzantine key. I have tried not to do that. This is part of my frustration in communicating this experience to audiences. I am afraid of being interpreted as someone who apologizes for his Orthodoxy, or in any way regrets it. I have not yet figured out how to convey my love for Orthodoxy in a way that doesn’t sound like I’m lording it over others. I am still so ashamed by the memory of my Catholic triumphalism that I’d rather be taken as insufficiently enthusiastic than as an Orthodox chest-beater. Again, that Catholic triumphalism was not the Catholic Church’s fault; it was mine.

In my travels recently in Eastern Europe, I met a Russian Orthodox Christian who was also traveling. He told me how hard it is to be an ordinary believer back in Russia, because of the Church’s captivity to state power. He said that this is something that weighs heavily on the minds of many faithful Orthodox in his country. I told him that we American Orthodox are lucky, in a way, because our church is tiny, poor, and powerless. Even so, I added, I had to work to overcome my own disposition towards preoccupation with churchiness. Some Christians manage to balance engagement with the institutional church and its failings, and their own devotional life. I lack that grace. It’s useful to know that about oneself.

I want tradition-minded Christians of all kinds — Catholics, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Orthodox — to regard me as an ally. I want to be a real ally, even if I cannot affirm everything they affirm theologically. I’m not being sentimental or falsely ecumenical when I say that in the post-Christian world, we are all in this together. As important as it is to maintain substantive distinctions, as a practical matter, we have in common matters far more than what separates us. An Australian Catholic I met last week mentioned in conversation how moved he is by the faith of Australian Pentecostals, and how inspiring he finds them. I get that, and share his view. I don’t think I always would have gotten that.

Having been Orthodox now for 13 years — the same length of time I was Catholic — I can say that the biggest difference that losing my Catholicism made for me personally was that it created in me a fundamental disposition of gratitude. I wish I had not had to suffer the pains of that loss to reach this place, but I’m glad it all happened. Had I remained Catholic, I might have found my way here, but it’s far more likely that I would have become an embittered, angry monster, or an atheist. To be clear, if you want to know what God has done for me through Orthodoxy, I am happy to tell you. The other night in Sydney, I spoke with several converts to Orthodoxy, and we were sharing with each other what we have found in the faith. But unlike the arrogant man I was before the shipwreck of my Catholicism, I would share the good news with you as one beggar telling another where he found bread.

The whole time I was in Australia, I kept thanking God for the people I met, and what they were doing with their lives. In fact, that’s almost the only prayer I had, but I had it a lot — on planes, in hotel rooms, walking down the street, all the time. It was the same prayer I had in Slovakia a couple of weeks before. This is new to me. Once upon a time, I would have thought of someone like myself as child-like, and actually kind of embarrassing, because not intellectual enough, and not willing to argue about faith. What is it about some of us men that makes willingness to fight over something the only credible proof of one’s fidelity? Being cured of that was a severe mercy. Being able to say glory to God for all things, and to mean it (well, most of the time), is a gift that I was only able to receive after being smashed to bits.

In Australia, I discovered the poetry of the late Les Murray, the country’s greatest poet. He was a convert to Catholicism as a teenager, but not a triumphalist. Still, this little poem of his spoke to my heart. It is called “Distinguo”:

Prose is Protestant-agnostic,

story, explanation, significance,

but poetry is Catholic;

poetry is presence.

My Catholicism was about story, explanation, significance; my Orthodoxy is about presence. It is possible, in the Murray sense, to be a Protestant-agnostic Catholic — I was one — or a Protestant-agnostic Orthodox. It is also possible, using Murray’s framing, to be a Catholic Orthodox, or a Catholic Protestant, or even a Catholic agnostic. It’s about your disposition towards the world, I think, and towards God, the Giver.

Don’t get me wrong, I still believe that story, explanation, and significance is a necessary, undeniable part of the Christian faith — but first comes presence. Sometimes, we need to be knocked flat on our back to be able to see the wonder of the stars for the first time.

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The Sunlit World Down Under

Well, that was one long sleep. Got home last evening, went to bed at nine, woke up at six this morning thinking, “Hey, no jet lag!” Then went to lie down again to take the edge off … and woke up at half past noon.

The journey to Australia will take a lot out of a soft middle-aged man. But a journey to Australia will give far, far more than it extracts, though. I find myself almost drunk with gratitude for this past week. As ever, the best thing about these Benedict Option-related travels is the people you meet. I’m sure that a lot of different things will be coming out over the next few days on this blog as I recall the things I did and the people I met. I tried to keep up somewhat with it here while I was abroad, but my days were very full. I can say, though, that I’ve grown up in a culture that regarded Australians as cheerful, straightforward and friendly. Every Aussie I’ve ever met was exactly that. And now that I’ve been there, well, it’s true. You don’t meet a stranger in Australia. I know that I had a selective experience, and I know also from reading the poetry of the great Australian Les Murray that there are less savory aspects of the Australian character. I’ve also discovered from this journey — from the seismic political events there last weekend, and in learning more about Cardinal George Pell’s unjust conviction — that the same vitriol and spite one sees among certain progressive elites in the US also exists in spades in Australia.

But my experience of the country and its people was something close to exhilarating. I mean that. As I told someone at dinner the other night, I spend most of my days in front of my laptop, monitoring the decline and fall of Western civilization, and thinking hard about it. And then I go out into the world and meet people like the Slovak Catholics I was with earlier this month, and like the Aussies who took such good care of me this past week, and I realize that, in Russell Kirk’s phrase, “the world remains sunlit despite its vices.”

It really is beyond my powers to articulate how much hope and inspiration I take from being with ordinary Christians who see things more or less as I do, but who persist in joy and hope, through the fog. I found many Catholics to be somewhat demoralized, in part because of the rising tide of anti-Christianity in their country, and in part because of the shocking way Cardinal Pell has been scapegoated. But I also found them to be hopeful, and not in a sentimental way. I sat next to Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney at dinner last week, and though it would be rude to repeat what we talked about, let me assure you that he is utterly undeceived about the grave challenges the Church faces, both externally and internally, and that he struck me as a good man doing his best to rise to those challenges.

For me, though, one great cause for Christian hope in Australia is Campion College. It’s a small Sydney institution that’s the country’s first liberal arts college. It’s a Catholic Great Books school on the St. John’s model. Go to the website and look at the course outline.  What an astonishing place! Though my family is not Catholic, we are traditional Christians who are deeply committed to the Western tradition. Besides, my children have also benefited from a classical Christian education in elementary and high school, and their mother and I have seen how this countercultural form of learning forms their hearts as well as their minds. If we were Australian, we would eagerly and gratefully send our children to college at Campion. It wouldn’t even be a second thought.  

I strongly encourage my Australian readers — Catholic and other tradition-minded Christians — to go visit Campion, and meet with professors and students. The maturity of these young adults, and their intellectual sharpness, is striking. We hear a lot of complaining these days about the deficits and weaknesses of this student generation — how entitled they are, and how snowflakey (that is, unable to deal with ideas that distress them). Not at Campion. Those undergraduates are confident, intelligent, and engaging and — dare I say it? — joyful. I came away thinking that Campion is to 21st century Australia what the early Benedictine monasteries were to Dark Ages Europe: a stronghold of faith, learning, and formation that is a light in the darkness, an outpost of civilization, and a blessing to all touched by the prayer and work of its people.

If Christianity is going to survive in the West, it is going to need educational institutions like Campion College. I’m not exaggerating. The crisis is just that serious. All Christians in Australia — not only Catholics — who care about the faith and the intellectual, artistic, and cultural patrimony of the West should rally to Campion College. The Christian future depends on institutions like Campion College more than many of us know. Pray for Campion. Send your college-age children to study there (they accept international students too). Support it with your donations, as it receives no money from the state. Campion is not a monastery, to be sure, but a Christian institution that forms young minds for life in and service to the world. Nevertheless, I think of it in the same words St. Benedict, in his Rule, used to describe the monastery: “a school for the Lord’s service.”

When I was in Australia, I told audiences about the Tipi Loschi, the astonishing community of lay Catholics living in a small city on the Adriatic, and living out their Christian faith in joyful community. The Tipi Loschi show what all of us Christians can accomplish with faith, love, and a dedication to being creative minorities in a post-Christian culture. Well, so does the Campion College community. As I told Aussies about the Tipi Loschi, “They’re all traditional, conservative Catholics — but they’re not angry about it.” That’s because they’re Chestertonians in love with the romance of orthodoxy.

I got the same feeling with the Campion crowd. The senior leadership of institutions like this sets the tone. A small, religiously-oriented school like this could be a place of rigidity, characterized by a siege mentality. That’s not Campion, not at all. Dr. Paul Morrissey, the theologian who is the college’s president, gave the past week to traveling with me up and down Australia’s East Coast. He hosted me for dinner twice in his family home — he and his wife have a big family of delightful children — and was a wonderful travel companion. The generosity of this man’s spirit made a tremendous impression on me, and made me confident that the young people entrusted to the care of him and his team are led by men and women who don’t just talk the Christian talk, but who walk the Christian walk. In a world like ours, that is a blessing beyond price.

With Campion College president Paul Morrissey, in Melbourne

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Against The Mob

I read from The Collected Poems of Les Murray on my long flight home today — a gift from one of my new Australian friends. This poem really hit me hard. Murray was terribly bullied in his teenage years. Kids taunted him by making fun of his weight. I was bullied too, though surely not as bad as Murray was. Anyway, Murray articulated in this poem, “Demo,” why I have never, ever wanted to join a demonstration, even when I agree with the cause. I never quite understood why until I read this verse:

Demo

by Les Murray

No. Not from me. Never.

Not a step in your march.

not a vowel in your unison,

bray that shifts to bay.

Banners sailing a street river,

power in advance of a vote,

go choke on these quatrain tablets.

I grant you no claim ever,

not if you pushed the Christ Child

as President of Rock Candy Mountain

or yowled for the found Elixir

would your caste expectations snare me.

Superhuman with accusation,

you would conscript me to a world

of people spat on, people hiding

ahead of oncoming poetry.

Whatever class is your screen

I’m from several lower,

To your rigged fashions, I’m pariah.

Nothing a mob does is clean,

not at first, not when slowed to a media,

not when police. The first demos I saw,

before placards, were against me,

alone, for two years, with chants,

every day, with half-conciliatory

needling in between, and aloof

moral cowardice holding skirts away.

I learned your world order then.

Funny, but reading this Murray poem brought to my consciousness one reason why I was so undone by the church abuse scandal: the bishops, as it turned out, were a bunch of bullies, their “aloof moral cowardice” condemning families and their children — often children of the poor and working class, or even the son of a faithful Kansas farm family — to be ground to dust for the sexual pleasure of corrupt priests, and to save the reputation of a rotten system. I learned their world order then, and have never been able to forget it.

(It is not just the order of the institutional church. As Murray knew, it is the order of the world. To see it manifest within the church, though, is the worst thing. The corruption of the best is always the worst.)

Here’s a related snippet from an Image Journal interview with Murray, who died recently at age 80:

In the sixties there was a kind of bohemian revolution which was about one molecule thick lying on top of an ancient ocean of force. It changes all the time because of impulses from below. It’s glittering too. It’s pulling people toward it. Dangerous. Absolutely untrustworthy.

Well, from that, you can deduce that I’ve never been handsome. People who are handsome and socially successful never notice these things, because they’re riding on them.

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Home From Oz

Finally got back to the Great State this evening — bone-tired, but full of great memories of an unforgettable week. The family loves all the gifts I brought. As predicted, chicken salt was a great hit (that’s my daughter Nora). Thanks, Chong and Dan! The security agent at LAX pulled my bag aside and ran onsite chemical tests on the chicken salt. “What is chicken salt?” he asked. I would have asked the same thing a week ago.

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Unsafe Spaces For Aussie Conservatives

As you know, the governing Coalition led by the Liberal Party (which is what the right-of-center party is called in Australia) pulled of a shock win in last weekend’s national election. For the past three years, every poll has predicted a Labor Party victory. In Australia, Labor’s loss has hit the left with the same force that the Trump victory hit the US left. Some are freaking out in ominous ways. For example:

If you work with a Liberal voter, be nice but keep a diary of what they say. When you have the evidence, go to HR and get them fired. We have not yet made it sufficiently unsafe to be a right-wing #payback #auspol

— carol mcallister (@carolmcalliste2) May 19, 2019

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Now, think about that: Carol McAllister hates her fellow citizens who don’t share her politics so much that she encourages leftists to spy them and try to get them sacked. Sacking conservatives over what they say is a favorite pastime of Australian leftists, it would seem: ask Christian rugby player Izzy Folau. I’ve read McAllister’s Twitter feed, and she’s so far to the left that hers almost — almost — seems like a parody account. I wouldn’t take her as normative among the angry left. Still, it strikes me as entirely plausible that some on the left would undertake exactly this kind of strategy.

In Dante’s Inferno, the lowest level of Hell is populated by traitors. There’s an interesting historical reason for this. In Dante’s lifetime — the late 13th and early 14th centuries — the walled cities of Tuscany were frequently at war with each other. When the city gates were closed at night, citizens had to be able to trust in the loyalty of each other. If a traitor in their midst opened the gates under cover of darkness, they could be invaded and defeated. Social life depended on trust and loyalty. Those who destroyed the ability of people to trust each other were the worst kinds of sinners, in Dante’s ordering.

I often receive e-mails from readers who tell me what it’s like in their workplaces, and how they keep their heads down and their mouths shut out of fear of their fellow employees, and of woke Human Resources departments, and Diversity offices. On my last night in Sydney, someone who came to my talk told me about a situation at one of the local universities in which every academic department staged a photo to declare its members’ support for the gay marriage initiative. If you didn’t want to be in the photo, you identified yourself in the eyes of your colleagues as being an anti-gay bigot. It was a sorting mechanism, this photo.

Expect more of them. And never vote for the candidates and the parties that support this totalitarian politicization of daily life.

Relatedly, I want to quote from Miranda Devine’s post-election column in Australia’s Daily Telegraph. Alas, it’s behind a subscriber paywall, but I’ll quote from it here. There’s relevance to US politics, and our 2020 election.

Devine, one of the country’s top conservative columnists, points out that the Labor Party’s social policies — specifically its attack on religious liberty — played a role in bringing about the Liberal Party-led Coalition’s shock victory in last weekend’s national election (in Australia, the Liberal Party is the name of the right-of-center party). Devine points out that Labor leader Bill Shorten said that the 40 percent of Australians who voted against legalizing same-sex marriage in the national plebiscite were “haters (who) crawled out from under a rock.” Devine writes that Shorten made a big mistake in the final days of the campaign, when he tried to tie opponent Scott Morrison, a Pentecostal, to the controversial remarks of rugby superstar Israel Folau. Folau, a fundamentalist, was sacked by the league for posting to social media his view that homosexuals were going to hell. Writes Devine:

Even if few people shared Folau’s views, the episode crystallised a fear that the identity agenda had become a totalitarian threat to freedom of speech and religious belief.

Australians don’t appreciate being told what to believe, how to think or, for that matter, what to drive.

This was the drumbeat playing through the campaign.

Devine goes on to talk about how Australia’s socially conservative immigrant communities turned on Labor. “In western and south-western Sydney, safe Labor seats with a high Christian and Muslim migrant vote also swung towards the Coalition.”

Devine says that Labor’s “existential crisis” has been laid bare. The party has pushed out its social conservatives, she said. In 1980, ethnic Democratic voters flipped to Ronald Reagan, and the Reagan Democrats were born. Seems to me that this election created ScoMo Laborites in Australia. As Devine notes, about socially conservative Labor members:

If they didn’t sign up to abortion, same sex marriage, gender fluidity, and the rest of the hard core identity agenda embedded in Labor’s national platform, they weren’t wanted.

Australia is not America, sociologically or politically. Nevertheless, Republicans running for re-election next year ought to push hard on exposing the radicalism of Democratic identity politics. I am at a loss to explain why Republicans don’t hit this theme harder, aside from fear of being called bigots by the media. Guess what: they’re going to call you bigots no matter what you do. That’s the nature of identity politics. If you stand up against it from a commonsense point of view, voters will rally to your side. Normal people do not want to live in Woke World.

That said, I don’t know how to stop the workplace Stasi agents like Carol McAllister and her allies in HR departments. HR departments love nothing more than “team-building” initiatives — but they also create a culture of snitching and silencing. If I were working in most offices today, I would trust no one, and I would watch every single word I said. It’s a terrible way to live, but that’s what progressives have done to us.

 

UPDATE: Hey errbody, I’m home. The consensus seems to be that Carol McAllister is a parody account. I hope so, but honestly, who can tell anymore?

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View From Your Table

Los Angeles, California

Breakfast in the LAX American Airlines Flagship Lounge, en route to home from Sydney.

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View From Your Table

Sydney, Australia

Scallops at the Opera Bar. That’s the Sydney Opera House in the background. It was impossible to stage a VFYT that could both get a great image of the building and exclude full faces of the diners. But man, I tell you, what a scene.

About to board the plane back to the US. I’ll write more about Australia, maybe from the flight if I get wifi. Power about to go out on this laptop. This Aussie trip has far exceeded my expectations (which were pretty high anyway). I just cannot say enough good things about the Australian people. I found out from my wife that a friend from my hometown just announced on Facebook that she’s moving to Australia. My first thought: “Good — they’re going to take good care of her.”

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‘Les Murray Is Australia’

The other day I was in Sydney, thinking about this Alan Jacobs post about the recently deceased Australian poet Les Murray, and this 2015 essay by Jacobs about Les Murray. In it, Jacobs wrote:

The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has argued that France produces, from time to time, a peculiar kind of figure whom he calls the “consecrated heretic.” Voltaire is one example; Rousseau another; Sartre a third. The consecrated heretic is an artist or intellectual who plants his feet firmly in the riverbed and faces the social current upstream, refusing to be carried along by it. He mocks conventional wisdom; he scandalizes ordinary people by what he believes, what he says, how he acts. Of course, many people do this, but only a tiny handful are celebrated for it, are seen as indispensable threads in the social fabric. The passionate earnestness of these few is acknowledged; they are clearly dedicated in their own perverse way to the common good. Eventually the nation’s major institutions seek to bestow high honors on such heretics, who of course turn aside disdainfully, which makes them treasured all the more. Les Murray is the chief consecrated heretic of Australia.

One thing that made Les Murray a heretic in Australia is that he was a convert to Catholicism, a real believer who dedicated most of his books “To the glory of God.”

Alan put up this old Australian tourist ad featuring Les Murray. It’s really something; it consists of lines from one of his most well-known poems, “The Dream Of Wearing Shorts Forever”:

So, I went to a big bookstore in Sydney looking for a volume of Les Murray poems so I could see what the big deal was. They had nothing — I’m guessing because Murray died last month, and they sold out.

This morning having coffee with some new friends in Melbourne, I mentioned how much I had hoped to buy a book of Les Murray poems while here. One of them — I believe it was one of them, but I’ve talked about Murray with several people these past days — said to me, “Les Murray is Australia.” Tonight, one of those friends delivered to me a hardback copy of the Collected Poems of Les Murray, the cover of which is above. I was so grateful, and so touched. It’s hard for me to overstate how much I like Australians, who are exactly what you expect: bold, big-hearted, and kind.

Tonight in the Uber returning from dinner, I was talking with my Australian friend Paul about the big book, which I held in my lap like a treasure chest. He said that his favorite Les Murray poem is called “The Last Hellos.” He explained that Murray had a complicated and painful relationship with his father. Here is the poem. It is a thing of rough beauty.

THE LAST HELLOS

Don’t die, Dad —

but they die.

This last year he was wandery:

took off a new chainsaw blade

and cobbled a spare from bits.

Perhaps if I lay down

my head’ll come better again.

His left shoulder kept rising

higher in his cardigan.

He could see death in a face.

Family used to call him in

to look at sick ones and say.

At his own time, he was told.

The knob found in his head

was duck-egg size. Never hurt.

Two to six months, Cecil.

I’ll be right, he boomed

to his poor sister on the phone

I’ll do that when I finish dyin.

*****

Don’t die, Cecil.

But they do.

Going for last drives

in the bush, odd massive

board-slotted stumps bony white

in whipstick second growth.

I could chop all day.

I could always cash

a cheque, in Sydney or anywhere.

Any of the shops.

Eating, still at the head

of the table, he now missed

food on his knife side.

Sorry, Dad, but like

have you forgiven your enemies?

Your father and all of them?

All his lifetime of hurt.

I must have (grin). I don’t

think about that now.

*****

People can’t say goodbye

any more. They say last hellos.

Going fast, over Christmas,

he’d still stumble out

of his room, where his photos

hang over the other furniture,

and play host to his mourners.

The courage of his bluster

firm big voice of his confusion.

Two last days in the hospital:

his long forearms were still

red mahogany. His hands

gripped steel frame. I’m dyin.

On the second day:

You’re bustin to talk but

I’m too busy dyin.

*****

Grief ended when he died,

the widower like soldiers who

won’t live life their mates missed.

Good boy Cecil! No more Bluey dog.

No more cowtime. No more stories.

We’re still using your imagination,

it was stronger than all ours.

Your grave’s got littler

somehow, in the three months.

More pointy as the clay’s shrivelled,

like a stuck zip in a coat.

Your cricket boots are in

the State museum! Odd letters

still come. Two more’s died since you:

Annie, and Stewart. Old Stewart.

On your day there was a good crowd,

family, and people from away.

But of course a lot had gone

to their own funerals first.

Snobs mind us off religion

nowadays, if they can.

Fuck thém. I wish you God.

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