Rod Dreher's Blog, page 527

Christianity & The Crisis Of Politics

I’ve often said (and can’t say it often enough) that Mars Hill Audio Journal has shaped my thinking about Christianity and culture more than any other source. It’s funny, but when we Mars Hill subscribers run into each other, discovering by happenstance that we both listen to the Journal, we inevitably remark on how crazy it is that more Christian intellectuals don’t know about it. If there’s a better resource for understanding the times and what it requires to be faithful in them, I don’t know what it is.

If you’ve never sampled the Journal, or if you’re a fellow subscriber, listen to the interviews Ken Myers has posted on a special page about Political Theology. Or, get them via podcast through iTunes.  Ken wrote me to say why he decided to create the page:

This passage from Michael Hanby’s recent First Things article inspired me to do this:

The fate of Christian freedom, then, does not hinge on political power, which can neither give this freedom nor take it away, but on the renewal of the Christian mind. More than once in the history of the Church, moments of great crisis have been occasions for purification and renewal. But the purification required of us in this moment is intellectual as well as moral, perhaps more intellectual than moral. Needless to say, this makes the growing anti-intellectualism within the Church deeply worrisome. . . .

Generations of cultural assimilation and comfortable living, saccharine liturgies and therapeutic homilies, have left us unprepared in mind, in heart, and in our deeply compromised and decaying institutions, for the coming time of trial and the enormous labor necessary to weather it.

By “political theology,” Ken is not talking about whatever the Republican or Democratic parties might say to religious voters to turn them out for certain candidates on election day. Here’s, from the introduction to the Political Theology series, is what he means:

In their book The Politics of Virtue, John Milbank and Adrian Pabst offer a compelling explanation for the increasing sense of chaos within global political institutions. They argue that “the whole liberal tradition faces a new kind of crisis because liberalism as a philosophy and an ideology turns out to be contradictory, self-defeating and parasitic of the legacy of Greco-Roman civilization and the Judeo-Christian tradition, which it distorts and hollows out.” This distortion includes placing a greater emphasis on the Fall than on Creation. This greater emphasis renders violence and vice (Hobbes’s “war of all against all”) as more salient factors in shaping political institutions than is the given goodness of Creation, a goodness which images the loving character of the Triune Creator in whom we live and move and have our being. Liberalism defines individuals principally as beings who require protection from each other, protection which the State provides more and more comprehensively.

Because the understanding at the heart of liberalism “goes against the grain of humanity and the universe we inhabit,” our political theories and practices are increasingly felt to be dehumanizing, even when political actors work with the best intentions. Milbank and Pabst ominously claim that the sense of political pessimism widely felt is a sign that this flawed view of human nature “is starting to be revealed in its full nihilistc scope.”

The campaign leading up to the U.S. presidential election of 2016 may be seen as symptomatic of this “metacrisis.” Against the disturbing backdrop of social and cultural fragmentation, the two principal candidates for the office seem to be equally divisive, so that whoever wins in November, Americans are certain to be living through a time of further discord and discontent. Meanwhile, American Christians have been perplexed about how to situate themselves in what seems to be an increasingly unwelcoming setting. With this in mind, Peter J. Leithart has asked “Are campaigning and voting the be-all and end-all of Christian political action, or are we better off diverting some of those dollars and hours to less flashy projects that have the potential to leaven political culture over the long haul?”

That long-haul leavening is the rationale for the interviews featured below. MARS HILL AUDIO has selected a number of thoughtful philosophers, theologians, and political theorists to talk about the long-term trajectory that brought about our present condition, and the sorts of redefinitions, reconfigurations, and repentance necessary to navigate our future. We are especially interested in thinking about politics unapologetically as Christians, not as make-believe Deists or agnostics. Christians have often succumbed to the claim that they need to check their deepest convictions at the door before engaging in conversation about public life. We believe that one of the ways in which we should love our neighbors is to recognize the true nature and source of their dignity, and that to abandon that recognition compromises our love for them.

Here’s the link to the Journal’s Political Theology page. The featured interview at the moment is Ken’s terrific, challenging conversation with theologian Oliver O’Donovan. Ken is going to be updating it over the next few weeks with fresh interviews discussing the current campaign.

I believe that now, perhaps more than at any other time in living memory, Christians must think deeply and radically about politics. What makes this moment different from the past? Liberalism — meaning the system of government under which the United States has been living since its founding — is in crisis. Can it be saved? Should it be? How can thoughtful Christians make sense of this crisis?

I hope you’ll bear with me a moment, but this is something close to my heart. People who are interested in the Benedict Option need to subscribe to the Journal. If you find those interviews interesting, please subscribe to the Journal.  I say that in part because of yesterday’s news that the Evangelical journal Books & Culture is closing down after 21 years. How is it that there are not enough Christians in this country to support endeavors like Books & Culture, Mars Hill Audio Journal, Image Journall, and other intellectually serious Christian magazines and media? As Image Journal editor Gregory Wolfe puts it rather more pointedly:

Future historian: “American Christianity in the 21st century produced God’s Not Dead 2 but could not sustain Books & Culture.”

— Gregory Wolfe (@Gregory_Wolfe) October 11, 2016

Race, Crime, & Double Standards

The autopsy on Terence Crutcher, the Tulsa man shot to death by a police officer, came back — and they found that he was zonked on PCP at the time:

An unarmed black man shot dead by a white police officer after his car broke down on a city street last month was high on the hallucinogenic drug PCP in when he died, according to toxicology tests released by a medical examiner Tuesday.

Terence Crutcher, 40, had “acute phencyclidine intoxication” when he died Sept. 16. Officer Betty Jo Shelby was charged with first-degree manslaughter after his death, with a prosecutor saying she reacted unreasonably when Crutcher disobeyed her commands.

Medical literature says PCP, also known as Angel Dust, can induce euphoria and feelings of omnipotence as well as agitation, mania and depression.

Dr. Matthew Lee, a physician and pharmacist who also works for the Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office, said the 96 nanograms per milliliter of PCP found in Crutcher’s system is more than enough to cause someone to be uncoordinated, agitated and combative.

“It’s on the high side, relative to causing some sort of impairment or intoxication,” Lee said.

Well, I’m sure that will add some perspective to the discussion, and that everybody will realize that situations aren’t always black and white. The officer who shot Crutcher said she recognized him as someone on PCP, which meant she feared for what he might do, given that suspects on PCP are known to act maniacally, with superhuman strength. She is now charged with manslaughter. I don’t know if she is guilty of manslaughter; the judge or jury will decide that. What I do know is that this is not simply a case of a racist cop executing a black man who was just going about his business.

But that fact doesn’t fit the preferred narrative, so it’s going to be downplayed.

In other race-related violence, police in Alabama have arrested four black men on suspicion of beating the hell out of a white high school kid known for his pro-police “Blue Lives Matter” sympathies:

Four former Sylacauga High School students have been arrested today in the assault of 17-year-old Brian Ogle, officials say.

Ogle was reportedly beaten by a group of people the night of Sept. 30th in the parking lot of Old Ace Hardware. His mother told us he was attacked because he made pro-police statements on social media, and says she thinks it is a hate crime. Ogle was found bleeding from his head on Friday around 10 p.m. He was transported to the Coosa Valley Medical Center and later transported to UAB by helicopter. He reportedly suffered skull fractures and internal bleeding.

Sylacauga Police Chief Kelley Johnson says all four that were arrested are between the ages of 18 and 20, and former SHS students.

20-year-old Quartez Lamar Walker, 19-year-old Bobby Ronchea Brown, 18-year-old La Noah Grant Ealy Jr., and 20-year-old Daveon Shamareya Nix were all arrested by Sylacauga Police and charged with assault.

Here’s a report with more detail about what happened:

Brandi Allen told Fox affiliate WBRC that her son, Brian Ogle, suffered a skull fractures in the brutal attack following a Friday-night football game.

“Apparently he was hit with something — what is presumed to be the butt of the pistol on his face,” she said. “He has stitches and he’s got bruising, real bad bruising on his shoulder. There’s a lot of wounds on the back of his head from being hit as well.”

“Instead of us planning for his 18th birthday, we’re here. Why? Because he made a statement that he backs the blue,” Allen told the news station.

“I’m trying to understand how anyone — I don’t care the color of their skin — could do this to another human being.”

Does anybody have the slightest doubt that if this were a case of a gang of Alabama white boys charged with beating a black boy so badly over his Black Lives Matter sympathies that it fractured his skull and put him in intensive care, that this would be a national crisis requiring the full deployment of Anderson Cooper to the scene? That there would be a media vigil on the hospital lawn, with a long line of Experts™ trying to help viewers discern whether this incident meant that Alabama had reverted to the days of slavery, or merely Jim Crow?

Does Brian Ogle’s life matter? The way we are allowed to talk publicly about race and crime in this country is so dishonest.

Deconstructing Racist Gourds

This is an actual academic paper:

The Perilous Whiteness of Pumpkins

Abstract

This article examines the symbolic whiteness associated with pumpkins in the contemporary United States. Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte, a widely circulated essay in McSweeney’s on “Decorative Gourd Season,” pumpkins in aspirational lifestyle magazines, and the reality television show Punkin Chunkin provide entry points into whiteness–pumpkin connections. Such analysis illuminates how class, gender, place, and especially race are employed in popular media and marketing of food and flavor; it suggests complicated interplay among food, leisure, labor, nostalgia, and race. Pumpkins in popular culture also reveal contemporary racial and class coding of rural versus urban places. Accumulation of critical, relational, and contextual analyses, including things seemingly as innocuous as pumpkins, points the way to a food studies of humanities and geography. When considered vis-à-vis violence and activism that incorporated pumpkins, these analyses point toward the perils of equating pumpkins and whiteness.

This is also an academic paper:

Leakey Performances: The Transformative Potential of the Menstrual Leak

Abstract

In this essay I bring fluids into scholarly dialogue with theories of performance, liminality, and femininity to argue for a new, positive cultural understanding of menstruation. Invoking Victor Turner’s theory of liminality, I ponder the source of our fear and subsequent control of feminine leaks in a patriarchal world. Operating on three increasingly abstract levels of leakage, I examine how fluids disrupt our socially constructed binaries and reflect on the positive potential of (menstrual) leaks to create a space for alternative, sanguine epistemology and ontology. I aim toward a scholarly view of menstruation as a positive phenomenon worthy not only of exploration, but also of celebration, and argue the need for more fluid scholarship.

This is how I found out about such admirable scholarship:

Crisis in higher education? What crisis? https://t.co/l3eED80Gfz

— Patrick Deneen (@PatrickDeneen) October 11, 2016

What kind of bubble do you have to live in to believe that any of this matters? I mean, honestly, can you imagine the fruit of years of academic study is obsessing about the meaning pumpkins, and periods?

UPDATE: However, lest you think these crazy people are benign,. Excerpt:

Last week, several news outlets reported that a student at the University of Tennessee (UT) received a zero on a quiz—a grade his professor justified because he viewed an answer as sexual harassment under Title IX. Now he’s being investigated by campus officials after unidentified faculty saw the absurd interpretation being mocked by entertainment website Total Frat Move.

How might one violate Title IX on a quiz? The first question on the quiz asked “What is your Lab instructor’s name?” and invited students to “make something good up”—that is, a joke—if they don’t remember his or her name. The student, Keaton Wahlbon, couldn’t remember his lab instructor’s name, so he wrote a generic first name, Sarah, and a common last name, Jackson. Writing Sarah Jackson—an altogether ordinary name—landed Wahlbon in hot water with his lab instructor and his professor. In fact, the quiz was returned to Wahlbon with the word “inappropriate” next to his Sarah Jackson answer.

As it turns out, Sarah Jackson happens to be the name of a Canadian actress and lingerie model. It is also a name shared by thousands of other people across the world. Wahlbon tried to explain to his professor that he wrote what he thought was a generic name on the quiz and did not intend to be crass. According to an email screenshot obtained by Total Frat Move, his professor wrote:

I have no way of determining your intention. I can only consider the result. The result is that you gave the name of Sarah Jackson, who is a lingerie and nude model. That result meets the Title IX definition of sexual harassment. The grade of zero stands and will not be changed.

Basically, when the whole damn thing falls apart, it will be an improvement.

Blaspheming Against Black Lives Matter

In all the Trump-Clinton noise, you might have missed an important event at the University of Virginia. An adjunct faculty member, a white male, compared Black Lives Matter to the KKK on somebody’s Facebook feed. All hell broke loose. Now the man is on leave. More:

Douglas Muir, an adjunct lecturer for the university’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, made the comment on Oct. 4 in response to a Facebook post by a real estate agent attending an event featuring Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza.

“Black lives matter is the biggest rasist [sic] organization since the clan,” Muir replied. “Are you kidding me. Disgusting!!!”

Muir’s response, which has since been deleted, prompted a flurry of criticism online, where some noted the misspelling in his original post, and from university officials who said it raised “serious concerns” about the school’s commitment to inclusion.

“While free speech and open discussion are fundamental principles of our nation and the University, Mr. Muir’s comment was entirely inappropriate,” university officials said in a statement. “UVA Engineering does not condone actions that undermine our values, dedication to diversity and educational mission.”

Muir, who teaches entrepreneurship in both the university’s School of Engineering and Darden School of Business, has “agreed to take leave” from the school and is preparing to release his own statement, university officials said.

Wait … what?! I think Muir’s comparison is wildly overstated, but Black Lives Matter is now so holy that you cannot even criticize the group without being sent away for blasphemy?! A reader who is within the Darden School community writes that last week was “Diversity Week” at the school. More:

On Tuesday, students were asked to wear black to “fight against racial injustice.” The student association included pictures of students from other top business schools doing the same thing. Notably, BLM signs were present in those pictures.

This morning people within the school received the below email. I have included it and the attachments. Basically, a professor here had the gall to call out BLM and liken its race baiting to that of the Klan’s. Naturally, this cannot stand. “We…simply will not stand for anything that poses a threat to this mission.” The student association, along with the black students’ association, is demanding that the university, a public one at that, clamp down on dissident speech. Look how this is framed – the University needs to address this to “demonstrate its commitment to enlightenment and intellectual honesty.” The student association is showing that there is no room for alternative views.

Some of the signatories in the DSA statement are going to work in blue chip companies. They will undoubtedly be successful. But it shows the convergence between Big Business and the Left. My vote for Trump next month gets easier all the time.

The reader sent this before the Friday Trump tape drop. I don’t know what his vote will be now. Here’s the e-mail cover letter:

Darden Community,

As many of you are aware, a Darden faculty member recently made remarks on social media that stand in stark opposition to the views and values of our school. Both the Darden Student Association (DSA) and Black Business Student Forum (BBSF) are working closely to urge the University of Virginia to demonstrate its commitment to enlightenment and intellectual honesty by addressing these false remarks. Official statements from DSA and BBSF are attached to this email.

During this time, we also encourage our community to continue to come together as One Darden, as demonstrated so powerfully earlier this week (Why We Wear Black). We remain committed to creating an environment that celebrates and elevates diversity and inclusion and simply will not stand for anything that poses a threat to this mission.

-DSA and BBSF

Here’s the text of the accompanying letter from the DSA:

Darden Community,

It is of serious concern to us that one faculty member – Douglas Muir – has taken it upon himself to publicly express views which are factually and historically inaccurate and which are undeniably intolerant.

The DSA has worked hard in collaboration with student clubs, community stakeholders, faculty, staff, alumni and the broader Darden community to foster and promote a culture which elevates and celebrates diversity and inclusion. Diversity Week has been a tremendous celebration of this spirit and a marquee week in the DSA calendar. We are proud of our community, and the grace with which it has worked to foster and maintain Darden’s core values.

The values of our community exist in striking opposition to Doug Muir’s stance. We vehemently disagree with his statement and we call upon the University of Virginia and the Darden School of Business to respond swiftly to uphold our values of inclusion, equality, and a dedication to truth and accuracy.

It is the mandate of the DSA to represent the best interests of the Darden student experience. We take this mission extremely seriously and will not stand for intolerance which directly affects our classmates and those around us.

-The Darden Student Association

Molly Duncan, President

Graeme Birrell, Executive Vice President

Sydney Hartsock, Vice President for Diversity

And here’s the attached letter from BSSF:

On October 4th, 2016, Douglas Muir, adjunct Professor at the Darden School of Business and the University of Virginia, posted the following message to Facebook: “Black lives matter is the biggest rasist organisation since the clan. Are you kidding me, Disgusting!!!”.

This comment does not in any way reflect the Darden community. However, mindsets like these have the potential to significantly impact the positive community we seek to foster and protect. Presumably, the statement was in response to the recent presence of Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, as a speaker on grounds at the University of Virginia.

Mr. Muir’s statement likens Black Lives Matters’ decision to exercise their First Amendment right to gather to the actions of the Ku Klux Klan – an organization which has bombed churches, murdered men, women, and children, and violently protested such proposals as the integration of schools and the extension of the right to vote to African Americans.

Mr. Muir’s comparison of Black Lives Matter to the Ku Klux Klan is outrageous. Black Lives Matter was founded as an expression of Ms. Garza and others’ justified discontent with the experience of many African Americans. The Ku Klux Klan is an organization with a 100+ year history of murder, racism, and intimidation of innocent people. No protest can compare to the terror which the Ku Klux Klan has inflicted upon citizens of our community.

This week was a monumental week for diversity at Darden. Not only did we have great attendance at our event on racial injustice, but we also stood together as One Darden and wore black to represent solidarity. This progress will not be overshadowed and discredited by the comments of one faculty member. The kind of inaccurate and offensive comments made by Mr. Muir threaten to damage the inclusive community that the student body, alumni, Dean Beardsley, and the faculty and staff of Darden have worked hard to foster.

The ignorance of Mr. Muir’s statement speaks for itself. Our goal is to urge the University of Virginia to respond to its own faculty member’s expression of blatantly incorrect views and demonstrate its commitment to enlightenment and intellectual honesty by correcting this false message. This is an opportunity for Darden to stand behind its commitment to an inclusive community.

How Darden reacts from an administrative level will have a huge impact on how students view their experience at Darden. We believe in what Darden represents and we would hate for Mr. Muir’s actions to damage our unique and welcoming community. Mr. Muir is entitled to his opinion, no matter how ignorant it is. He is not entitled to his own facts. We are hopeful that the actions that the University of Virginia takes in response to Mr. Muir’s comments will reflect its commitment to truth and an inclusive environment.

This is insane. Muir’s remark was dumb, but the idea that a university can compel a professor to take a leave of absence for stating a political opinion (however ill-considered) is terrifying. The idea that these righteous, righteous students have no sense that free speech (even offensive speech) ought to be protected, especially within the bounds of a university, is also terrifying. At least the UVA local Charlottesville newspaper gets it. Excerpts from its editorial:

“For here,” said Thomas Jefferson about his beloved University of Virginia, “we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”

Well, no. Not entirely.

Error will not be tolerated if it is unduly offensive.

The editorial denounces Muir’s comments as “stupid,” but also denounces the university for pressuring Muir to take a leave of absence — and calls b.s. on the pieties pronounced by university officials to justify their abandoning free speech values in a university to placate the Social Justice Warriors at Darden:

UVa said the leave of absence does not infringe upon free speech or academic freedom.

“While free speech and open discussion are fundamental principles of our nation and the university, Mr. Muir’s comment was entirely inappropriate,” a statement from the engineering school said. “UVA Engineering does not condone actions that undermine our values, dedication to diversity and educational mission.”

Sorry, but — in context of the “leave of absence” — what this says is that free speech is tolerated only when it is “appropriate.” Instead of being “fundamental,” it is subservient to other values.

UVa Provost Tom Katsouleas did a little better. He said that the university’s position “against racism and social injustice of any kind … in no way squelches academic freedom, which welcomes dissent and encourages the voices of others whose perspectives may differ from ours — thereby adding new insights to our own. But statements such as Mr. Muir’s do not foster intellectual exploration, nor do they encourage the voices of others.”

These college administrators are lying — to the public, or to themselves, or maybe to both. They are establishing a protected class on campus, or at least a protected organization: Black Lives Matter. And these SJW students are declaring by their actions that no criticism of BLM will be tolerated. True, they might say that it wasn’t the fact of Muir’s criticism that was the problem, but the inflammatory language in which he made it. I don’t believe that for a second. If you were a student or professor today teaching at UVA, would you feel at liberty to utter a single word of criticism of Black Lives Matter, even in polite and respectful language?

Look, people who support BLM ought to have criticized Prof. Muir, and made arguments for why what he said was wrong. That’s what we do in a liberal democracy. Who knows, maybe they could have reasoned with Muir and showed him why comparing BLM to the KKK is wrong. We will never know now, though. Shoot one, teach a thousand: everybody on the campus of the University of Virginia is now on notice that to criticize Black Lives Matter at all — on Twitter, on Facebook, anywhere — could bring onto oneself a world of trouble. So much for Mr. Jefferson’s university. Reason is not allowed into the arena to combat error. It’s only about power now.

These student Jacobins and the gutless college administrators who have no principle but placating them are turning college into puritanical seminaries of the secular left. I do wish that the University of Virginia administration would publicize a list of minority groups, organizations, and causes that members of the UVA community are not allowed to criticize publicly at all, in any way, without serious consequence. It would be a service to scholars, students, and staff at UVA to know where the boundaries of heresy lie, so they can avoid risking their careers being burned at the stake. And it would also be a service to parents getting ready to send their kids off to college, and who don’t want to set them up to be vilified if they happen to say the wrong thing, or voice an unpopular opinion. Plus, it would be a service to parents who don’t want their children to have their minds and characters formed by this campus culture of conformity. If the leadership of a university will not protect one of its professors if and when he utters an unpopular opinion, then they are creating an atmosphere of intellectual fear. The whole university becomes an “unsafe space” for anyone who dissents from the ruling class’s ideology.

I have a friend, a Christian professor who is the soul of gentleness, compassion, and integrity. He suffers constant attack within his college faculty circles over Christian books he has written, even though they are within his discipline. SJW professors keep gunning for him. He’s voting for Trump, not because he likes or has any respect for Trump, but because he lives every day with the vengeful fury of SJWs, and fears what will happen to people like him if Hillary Clinton wins.

UPDATE: As a reader points out, the Vice Mayor of Charlottesville, a black man, has taken to social media to call for the citizens of the city to boycott restaurants owned by Prof. Muir:

vicemayorwesb

On another note…I will NEVER frequent @Bellasrestaurant again. I met Doug Muir for the first time a couple of weeks ago at the @tomtomfestival…and I didn’t expect this from him, but if this is how he feels, he doesn’t have anything else to say to me. I would encourage everyone in the city to boycott the restaurant. I would also implore the @theuniversityofvirginia and the Darden School of Business@dardenmba (One that’s celebrating Diversity Week) to address this issue immediately. The notion that#BlackLivesMatter can be comparable to the Klu Klux Klan is not only incredibly misguided, but goes to show the lack cultural awareness that still plagues many professors at our Universities across the country. An organization, a movement, a collective body that aims to empower Black People, and rally allies is not a terroristic organization, but one that aims to collective bring people together to address systemic oppression and racism, amongst other things, is here to stay. If #blacklivesmatter✊

The End Of Movement Conservatism’s World

The moral collapse of movement conservatism is nearly complete. The Washington Post reports this afternoon:

“It’s every person for himself or herself right now,” former senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said. “The nominee for president is so destructive to everyday Republicans.”

Here’s David French:

In the last three days, we’ve heard “conservatives” loudly justify a man’s bragging about committing sexual battery as nothing more than “locker-room talk.” Even worse, we’ve heard them say — out loud — that this is just how men behave. Judging from the avalanche of pro-Trump tweets over the weekend, his supporters have reached the point of arguing that if you haven’t been around this kind of conversation you’re not a real man. Bizarrely, Laura Ingraham even suggested last night that it’s time for Republicans to put on their “big-boy pants” and get behind the nominee.

We’ve now reached the point where you must plainly lie about men and masculinity in order to justify your support for Trump. A generation of conservative efforts to persuade the culture that there’s nothing inherently “toxic” about masculinity is being undone in a matter of days because a fading reality-TV star must be carried into the White House. Now you’re only wearing your “big-boy pants” if you embrace the masculinity of campus-feminist fever dreams, where every guy is a frat boy and every fraternity runs a rape room. I first started playing team sports when I was in elementary school. I played in school and community basketball leagues for decades. I joined the Army eleven years ago. I served in Iraq with an all-male combat arms unit. I know “locker-room talk” better than the average person, and in all those years I’ve heard lots that is crude and crass. But I’ve never heard a man brag about assaulting a woman, grabbing her whether she wanted it or not. Typically, the man’s point was to boast about how much women wanted him. A sexual predator was a creep and a criminal. He was most definitely not wearing “big-boy pants.”

More:

The Westminster Shorter Catechism begins by asking, “What is the chief end of man?” The answer is simple: “To glorify God and enjoy him forever.” In Trump’s GOP, the chief end of man is “winning,” taking up a cross is for suckers, and the last shall just be last. Better to reign in Washington than serve anywhere else. That’s Trump’s party, glorying in its own shame.

And so it is with leaders of the Religious Right. Who among them is sticking behind Trump despite the revelations in Friday’s tape?

Jerry Falwell Jr.

Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins. 

Gary Bauer, James Dobson.

Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas.

And today, Pat Robertson defended Trump’s p-ssy-grabbing remarks, dismissing them as Trump’s merely trying to be “macho.” Read the Washington Post account, which has embedded video. Robertson concludes in that clip by saying that Trump speaks to “adoring crowds wherever he goes” — as if that were a defense.

That, brethren and sistren, is the end of the Religious Right as we knew it. Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore, who has stood up to people in his own denomination to oppose Trump, writes the obituary. Excerpt:

These evangelical leaders have said that, for the sake of the “lesser of two evils,” one should stand with someone who not only characterizes sexual decadence and misogyny, brokers in cruelty and nativism, and displays a crazed public and private temperament — but who glories in these things. Some of the very people who warned us about moral relativism and situational ethics now ask us to become moral relativists for the sake of an election. And when some dissent, they are labeled as liberals or accused of moral preening or sitting comfortably on the sidelines. The cynicism and nihilism is horrifying to behold. It is not new, but it is clearer to see than ever.

There is good news, though, behind all of this, regardless of how this election turns out. The old-school political Religious Right establishment wonders why the evangelical next generation rejects their way. The past year is illustration enough. The evangelical movement is filled with younger, multiethnic, gospel-centered Christians. They are defined by a clear theology and a clear mission — not by the doctrinally vacuous resentment over a lost regime of nominal, cultural “Christian America.”

The people who have used the gospel to sell us politically cynical voting guides have done damage. But they are not replicating themselves in the next generation.

The old-guard is easier to engage in politics, because they find identity in a “silent majority” of Americans. The next generation knows that our witness is counter to the culture, not just on the sanctity of life and the stability of the family but, most importantly, on the core of the gospel itself: Christ and him crucified.

Amen and amen.

Small-o orthodox Christians are politically homeless now. The Republicans are largely corrupt and useless (watch how they roll over for Big Business on religious liberty). Democrats despise us and want to punish us; besides, they are led by a cynical woman and her cynical followers who tried to shut up and even destroy women who were sexually assaulted by her lecherous husband. As David French puts it, the core supporters in both parties are happy to turn a blind eye to men sexually assaulting women, as long as it means winning. Remember Nina Burleigh, the prominent liberal feminist journalist who, when asked by the Washington Post in 1998, said this:

“I would be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their Presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.”

This is not a happy place for us to be in, but it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We are going to have to learn the art of what Vaclav Havel called “antipolitical politics.” As I told folks gathered at this past weekend’s Front Porch Republic meeting at Notre Dame:

Havel, who died in 2011, preached what he called “antipolitical politics,” the essence of which he described as “living in truth.” His most famous and thorough statement of this was a long 1978 essay titled “The Power of the Powerless,” which electrified the Eastern European resistance movements when it first appeared. It is a remarkable document, one that bears careful study and reflection by orthodox Christians in the West today.

Consider, says Havel, the greengrocer living under communism, who puts a sign in his shop window saying, “Workers Of The World, Unite!” He doesn’t do it because he believes it, necessarily. He simply doesn’t want trouble. And if he doesn’t really believe it, he hides the humiliation of his coercion by telling himself, “What’s wrong with the workers of the world uniting?” That’s how ideological fear keeps the system in place. Fear keeps the system in place. Fear allows the official ideology to retain power — and eventually changes the greengrocer’s beliefs. Those who “live within a lie,” says Havel, collaborate with the system and compromise their full humanity.

Every act that contradicts the official ideology is a denial of the system. That’s why people who may not really believe in it behave as if they do: to avoid standing out, to avoid suffering for their convictions. Those who “live within a lie,” says Havel, collaborate with the system and compromise their full humanity.

What if the greengrocer stops putting the sign up in his window? What if he refuses to go along to get along? “His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth” — and it’s going to cost him plenty.

He will lose his job and his position in society. His kids may not be allowed to go to the college they want to, or college at all. People will bully him or ostracize him. But by bearing witness to the truth, he has accomplished something potentially powerful. Writes Havel:



He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth.

Because they are public, the greengrocer’s deeds, are inescapably political. He bears witness to the truth of his convictions by being willing to suffer for them. He becomes a threat to the system – but he has preserved his humanity.

And that, says Havel, is a far more important accomplishment than whether or not this party or that politician holds power. He writes, “A better system will not automatically ensure a better life,” Havel goes on. “In fact the opposite is true: only by creating a better life can a better system be developed.”

Such as? Havel gives a number of examples. Think of teachers who make sure kids learn things they won’t get at government schools. Think of writers who write what they really believe, and find ways to get it to the public, no matter what the cost. Think of priests and pastors who find a way to live out religious life despite condemnation and legal obstacles, and artists who don’t give a rip for official opinion. Think of young people who decide not to care about success in society’s eyes, and who drop out to pursue a life of integrity, no matter what it costs them.

The answer, then, is to create and support “parallel structures” in which the truth can be lived in community. Isn’t this a form of escapism, a retreat into a ghetto? Not at all, says Havel; a countercultural community that abdicated its responsibility to reach out to help others would end up being a “more sophisticated version of living within a lie.”

I’ll have a lot more to say about this concretely in The Benedict Option when it comes out in March. We will have to do a lot of rebuilding, with no models in the modern Christian conservative experience to guide us.

But know this: within the community of politically engaged religious conservatives, younger Christians are refusing to post the Religious Right equivalent of the greengrocer’s sign. The values voters of the world are not uniting behind the Republican candidate, and the leaders of the past who speak for no one now but themselves and an aging donor base. In the Benedict Option book, I offer this quote from Christian philosopher Scott H. Moore’s The Limits of Liberal Democracy as the heart of the next conservative Christian politics:

Politics is about how we order our lives together in the polis, whether that is a city, community or even a family. It is about how we live together, how we recognize and preserve that which is most important, how we cultivate friendships and educate our children, how we learn to think and talk about what kind of life really is the good life.

This. It’s coming.

UPDATE: You cannot make this up. You cannot. Here is Ralph Reed, speaking today at a Liberty University convocation, according to a news release from Liberty. Excerpt:

Reed expressed his hope to see political discourse become more positive and issues-centered.

“There is so much negativity in politics,” Reed said. Quoting Philippians 4:8, he added: “I believe we should focus on the true, and the honorable, and the right, and the pure, and the lovely, and anything that is of excellence and worthy of praise; we should be cheerful, we should be winsome, and we should always be prepared to defend our faith unapologetically.”

After his message, Reed sat down with Falwell for a brief Q & A, sharing more thoughts about the election and advising students to stand firm in their faith amidst resistance. He encouraged them to fight to help keep America morally grounded. Without a solid foundation, Reed warned, the country will crumble.

“The thing that makes America great isn’t its money or its wealth or its cities or its power,” Reed said, “it has been its moral goodness — and if we lose that, we are lost.”

And people be like:

UPDATE.2: I thought Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” remark was despicable. But yeah, this guy, he’s deplorable. What is wrong with people like this?

This guy, at the rally with his wife and three kids, in his "She's A Cunt, Vote For Trump" shirt. pic.twitter.com/NDQMz1uteG

— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) October 11, 2016

Paul Ryan Gives Up On Trump

Well, now we have evidence of just how horrible the fallout from Friday’s Trump tapes is: NBC/WSJ poll taken over the weekend has Hillary with a double-digit lead over Trump. And:

As Republicans grapple with how to hold on to control of the House and Senate despite the Trump campaign’s woes, Democrats overall now have a seven-point advantage on the question of which party voters want to see in control of Congress.

Forty-nine percent of voters say they’d like to see Democrats in power on Capitol Hill, compared to 42 percent who chose the GOP.

That’s up from a three-point advantage for Democrats (48 percent to 45 percent) last month, and it’s the largest advantage for Democrats since the October 2009 government shutdown.

House Speaker Paul Ryan now says he won’t campaign for or appear with the GOP presidential nominee any longer, and has told House Republicans to do whatever they have to do regarding Trump to save their seats. Protecting their Congressional majority is the most important thing for Republicans now.

But look at this, from the NYT:

But in a potentially ominous sign for the party, Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, also offered a note of warning for Republicans fleeing Mr. Trump. Mr. Ryan, she noted on television, had been booed by Trump fans over the weekend in Wisconsin after asking Mr. Trump not to attend a political event in his home state.

Ms. Conway also repeatedly indicated that she was aware of Republican lawmakers who had behaved inappropriately toward young women, and whose criticism of Mr. Trump was therefore hypocritical.

Trump is going to drop those names. You watch.

I still believe that Trump showed better than Hillary did in last night’s debate, but I concede that it wasn’t remotely enough of a performance to make up for what he lost with the disclosure of that tape.

The best the GOP can hope for out of this catastrophe is that it will prove in the long run to have been a Goldwater year: a definitive rejection of the party’s nominee, but the beginning of the nominee’s ideas starting to change the GOP mainstream. As it is, I don’t think Trump has any real ideas, only intuitions, but on the anti-globalist, nationalist front, he’s right about them. I expect that we will see more and more Republican candidates at the grassroots running on them. On the other hand, it’s hard to figure from where they will get the money, given where corporate funding is likely to go.

And, people who campaigned for Goldwater were not disgraced by his loss or their affiliation with him. That’s not going to happen this time. Nor will the Trumpsters be eager to make nice with the GOP establishment. Drumpfstoßlegende!

Fear & Trembling In Tbilisi

That is an Georgian Orthodox priest, Father Seraphim, and his choir chanting Psalm 53 in Aramaic, when Pope Francis visited the cathedral in Tbilisi earlier this month. He is of Assyrian descent; there is an Assyrian population in Georgia. This chant is astonishingly beautiful. As you listen to it, keep in mind the text of Psalm 53. These are the words they are chanting in Aramaic:

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good.

God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God.

Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread: they have not called upon God.

There were they in great fear, where no fear was: for God hath scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee: thou hast put them to shame, because God hath despised them.

Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! When God bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.

Here, in a vastly more humble setting, is Father Seraphim and a smaller choir singing the Trisagion hymn in Aramaic. The words mean: “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.”

Yes, Trump Has Destroyed The GOP

Sure, I thought Trump won last night’s debate, but I still believe he’s going to lose this election, and that the Billy Bush tape over the weekend sealed it. And I agree with Damon Linker that Trump has destroyed the Republican Party. 

If Trump wins, he will remake the party entirely in his image. But because he cannot govern himself, he cannot govern the country. By the end of his presidency (whether it comes via impeachment or voter rejection in 2020), the GOP will be a smoking ruin.

If Trump loses, he won’t go away. It will be all-Dolchstosslegende, all the time (Drumpfstosslegende?) He will be a constant presence on the public scene, hectoring the Republican Party, denouncing its leaders for betraying him, and keeping his base riled up. Because of his big mouth and gift for self-promotion, he stands to make himself, not Congressional Republicans, the voice of opposition to President Hillary Clinton. If he can manage to recruit candidates in his image to run in GOP primaries nationwide, he stands a chance of building a movement. This is not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of us (I am one) sympathize with much of what Trump stands for (versus the present-day GOP), but reject him because of his character and temperament. Trump doesn’t have a coherent philosophy, but there are others who do have a coherent, plausible, and persuasive alternative to the neoliberalism of the Democratic and Republican parties. Trump may well have prepared the way for them, in the same way that a bomber squadron prepares the way for a shiny new factory by bombing the old one to rubble.

Back in May, Michael Lind penned what I still think is the most insightful essay describing what’s happening, and what is going to happen, in US politics after this year. With the Left having won the culture war, the parties of the future will be a nationalist GOP vs. a multiculturalist, globalist Democratic Party. Excerpt:

The outlines of the two-party system of the 2020s and 2030s are dimly visible. The Republicans will be a party of mostly working-class whites, based in the South and West and suburbs and exurbs everywhere. They will favor universal, contributory social insurance systems that benefit them and their families and reward work effort—programs like Social Security and Medicare. But they will tend to oppose means-tested programs for the poor whose benefits they and their families cannot enjoy.

They will oppose increases in both legal and illegal immigration, in some cases because of ethnic prejudice; in other cases, for fear of economic competition. The instinctive economic nationalism of tomorrow’s Republicans could be invoked to justify strategic trade as well as crude protectionism. They are likely to share Trump’s view of unproductive finance: “The hedge-fund guys didn’t build this country. These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky.”

The Democrats of the next generation will be even more of an alliance of upscale, progressive whites with blacks and Latinos, based in large and diverse cities. They will think of the U.S. as a version of their multicultural coalition of distinct racial and ethnic identity groups writ large. Many younger progressives will take it for granted that moral people are citizens of the world, equating nationalism and patriotism with racism and fascism.

The withering-away of industrial unions, thanks to automation as well as offshoring, will liberate the Democrats to embrace free trade along with mass immigration wholeheartedly. The emerging progressive ideology of post-national cosmopolitanism will fit nicely with urban economies which depend on finance, tech and other industries of global scope, and which benefit from a constant stream of immigrants, both skilled and unskilled.

Finally, when the recriminations on the Right begin after Election Day, it will be fascinating to see which narrative prevails. Did Trump destroy the GOP? Of course he did. But you could also argue that the Bush family did, first by the presidency of George W., and then by the fact that Jeb Bush, early in the primaries, blew a fortune in donor cash to destroy Marco Rubio. Rubio not only may have been the only Republican who had a chance at beating Trump, but it’s also true that money spent to annihilate his candidacy was money not spent on stopping Trump.

After Liberalism

Ross Douthat had a good column yesterday talking about the anti-liberal, or at least post-liberal, trends at the margins of Left and Right. Excerpts:

The Western system — liberal, democratic, capitalist — has been essentially unchallenged from the inside for decades, its ideological rivals discredited or tamed. Marxists retreated to academic fastnesses, fascists to online message boards, and Western Christianity accepted pluralism and abandoned throne-and-altar dreams.

The liberal system’s weak spots did not go away. It delivered peace and order and prosperity, but it attenuated pre-liberal forces – tribal, familial, religious — that speak more deeply than consumer capitalism to basic human needs: the craving for honor, the yearning for community, the desire for metaphysical hope.

More:

Now, though, there is suddenly resistance. Its political form is an angry nationalism, a revolt of the masses in both the United States and Europe. But the more important development may be happening in intellectual circles, where many younger writers regard the liberal consensus as something to be transcended or rejected, rather than reformed or redeemed.

Douthat goes on to talk first about the different strands on the Left, collecting them under the name “New Radicals”. Then he turns to the Right, and the “New Reactionaries”.

More:

Then finally there is a third group of post-liberals, less prominent but still culturally significant: Religious dissenters. These are Western Christians, especially, who regard both liberal and neoconservative styles of Christian politics as failed experiments, doomed because they sought reconciliation with a liberal project whose professed tolerance stacks the deck in favor of materialism and unbelief. Some of these religious dissenters are seeking a tactical retreat from liberal modernity, a subcultural resilience in the style of Orthodox Jews or Mennonites or Mormons. But others are interested in going on offense. In my own church, part of the younger generation seems disillusioned with post-Vatican II Catholic politics, and is drawn instead either to a revived Catholic integralism or a “tradinista” Catholic socialism — both of which affirm the “social kingship” of Jesus Christ, a phrase that attacks the modern liberal order at the root.

Whole thing here. If you click on the link that says “tactical retreat,” you will go to the Benedict Option FAQ page. “Subcultural Resilience” is going to be the name of the Ben Op techno band.

Anyway, last week David Brooks wrote on a similar theme: “The Age of Reaction”. Excerpts:

Reactionaries, whether angry white Trumpians, European nationalists, radical Islamists or left-wing anti-globalists, are loud, self-confident and on the march.

Reactionaries come in different stripes but share a similar mentality: There was once a golden age, when people knew their place and lived in harmony. But then that golden age was betrayed by the elites. “The betrayal of elites is the linchpin of every reactionary story,” Lilla writes.

Soon, they believe, a false and decadent consciousness descended upon the land. “Only those who have preserved memories of the old ways see what is happening,” Lilla notes. Only the reactionaries have the wisdom to turn things back to the way they used to be, to “Make America Great Again.”

“Reactionaries are not conservatives,” Lilla continues. “They are, in their way, just as radical as revolutionaries and just as firmly in the grip of historical imaginings. Millennial expectations of a redemptive new social order and rejuvenated human beings inspire the revolutionary; apocalyptic fears of entering a new dark age haunt the reactionary.”

Reactionaries are marked by a militant, apocalyptic mind-set, a crisis mentality. They are willing to take extreme, violent action to turn back the clock. In their narcissism, they think they alone understand the crisis and are in a position to reverse the trends.

>More:

The belief systems that used to reinforce a faith in progress have become less influential. First there was moderate religiosity, the belief that God is ultimately in control, that all things are ultimately fashioned toward the good and that the arc of history bends toward justice. This was the mind-set that made Martin Luther King Jr. fundamentally optimistic, even in temporarily dark times. Then there was humanism, the belief that people are learning more and more, inventing more and more, and so history is a steady accumulation of good things.

As humanism and moderate religion have withered, gloom has pervaded that national mind. It doesn’t matter how much living standards rise or the poverty rate falls, it makes you seem smart and woke to be alarmed and hypercritical. Every dour attention-grabber wants to claim that the elites are more corrupt than ever.

Read the whole thing. 

I read that, trying to figure out where the Benedict Option fits in. Let me think out loud for a second here.

I don’t believe there was ever an era of perfect harmony, not since Eden.
I don’t believe our crisis situation today is the fault of elites. I’m worried about corruption in high places, but I’m much more concerned about corruption in our own hearts, and communities. By “corruption,” I mean the lies most of us have come to tell ourselves about the way things are in the world, and are supposed to be. It is a philosophical and theological corruption as much as a moral one, and even a moral corruption because it’s a philosophical and theological corruption.
My aspirations for the Benedict Option are far more modest than what Lilla describes as a “redemptive new social order.” I only want to strengthen the Christian church, and Christian culture, against forces that are dissolving it, and with it the possibility of the encounter with Jesus Christ, “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” That’s enough for now.
I do believe we are entering into a new Dark Age, and in fact already have. I define a Dark Age as a falling away from faith, and with it the memory of who we are, and what makes us human.

Where my real disagreement with Brooks’s column lies is in the last two paragraphs I quoted. I do believe that God is in control, and that all things are ultimately fashioned towards the Good. That is the source of Christian hope. But as I keep saying, hope is not the same thing as optimism. The Whiggish optimism  of Brooks’s “moderate religiosity” and “humanism” is not on solid ground, in my view, though Brooks is certainly right to identify these things as at the core of the traditional American worldview.

Now, if you believe that the proper measure of progress is the accumulation of material improvement (more and better goods, improved health care, etc.), then there can be no doubt that we have been and are progressing towards that end. But income stagnation challenges this narrative, and the fact that ordinary Americans are facing the truth that their children may not live as well materially as they did shakes one’s confidence in material progress as an inevitability of American life.

If you see the expansion of liberty (understood as maximizing personal choice) as a measure of progress, then yes, we have been headed upwards. But the expansion of choice, especially sexual choice and economic choice, has greatly destabilized the social order. Deep forces at work in our culture for generations have atomized us, and are increasingly atomizing us. For a long time we lived off the interest generated from the principal deposited in our civilizational bank account over the course of many centuries. Now were burning our way through the principal. This can’t go on forever.

This is beyond the scope of the column, but at the heart of the Benedict Option: if you measure social and civilizational progress by the degree to which a people have a living, transformative relationship with the God of the Bible, then you cannot possibly be optimistic about the direction of the country. Again, there hasn’t been a perfect society since Eden. Every age has its sins and failings, some of them terrible indeed. The church always needs reform. All of that is true.

Yet in our time and place, the West is losing the most precious thing it has: knowledge of God. Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. He’s talking about us. For Christians who think eschatologically — and all Christians must — no amount of material improvement can compensate for the loss of God. The moderate religiosity of civic religion is not strong enough to withstand the solvent of modernity, not anymore.

Free will is a divine gift, but people are free to choose badly. Societies, like individuals, can choose vice or virtue. Most societies do both at the same time, but it’s probably fair to say that they tend more to one than the other. The fact that something is chosen does not make it good. Our society, for example, has been since the 1960s choosing to tear down the family. Now that’s going into overdrive, and we are lately even attempting to destroy even the idea of male and female. This is not progress. In fact, it’s barbarism, and we are going to pay a terrible price for it.

Liberalism gives us many, many good things, but what’s before us now is the prospect that liberalism by its very nature has shorn us of the most important thing of all. And therefore, we who want to hold on have to build structures and habits that will help us keep that vital lifeline to God through the Dark Age upon us. Hence the Benedict Option.

In his column, Ross Douthat characterizes the Ben Op as essentially defensive. He’s right, mostly, but I don’t see a necessary contradiction between the defensiveness of the Ben Op and the stance towards offense embraced by the tradinistas (orthodox Catholic socialists) and Catholic integralists. In fact, I imagine the Ben Op will contain both within its big tent. If they want to be able to achieve social reform through their engagement with the world, though, they are going to have to take on Benedict Option practices, and build Ben Op structures, within which to grow in faith, hope, and love, so they can do what they believe God has called them to do outside in the world.

I understand fully that the State may not let us get away with this. A reader sends this account based on a story that appeared in Germany’s Die Welt newspaper. Excerpts:

Researchers of “extremism” have identified friendly, environmentally-conscious families living in the German countryside as likely dangerous radicals, and warn that rural living itself “is linked with racism”.

Marking country-dwellers with right-wing views as a problem, self-styled “antifascists” are hoping to get large numbers of migrants sent to rural settlements and have established welcome initiatives in preparation.

Welt informs readers that extremism researchers caution that “Volkisch families” pose a threat to the country. The term “Volkisch” relates to the German interpretation of populism and carries connotations of folksy and organic living.

Introducing Volkisch families, the daily newspaper writes: “They belong to no party, no union, and no organisation. They have no [political] voice and get no handouts. The term therefore [refers to] family groups who live in the countryside and are outwardly exemplary but internally right-wing.”

Describing a scene in which men, women, and children in traditional dress dance around a meadow, the newspaper warns that while such people look “basically quite harmless, they are not”.

Völkische families, Welt informs readers, are “friendly neighbours” who “grow vegetables and raise animals, keep bees, and produce electricity from photovoltaic systems”.

Other indicators to watch out for, it continues, are people who “show up as ‘greenies’ and engage in agriculture and crafts, argue against the planned highway 39 in their region, and they have a lot of children. The women bake cakes and get involved in parents’ meetings.”

Dear God, they are proto-Nazis! More:

The controversial Amadeu Antonio Foundation cautions that there is “a link between rural life and racism”. In a report commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs, the foundation wrote: “The objective of [Volkisch families] is to affect everyday culture and build a self-sufficient economic network.”

“While at first glance the men and women seem just to be engaging in cultural and traditional activities, they don’t accept migrants, refugees, democrats, and homosexuals in their society,” the publication cautions.

It is true that National Socialism evolved out of the Völkisch movement of the early 20th century, so these antifascists are not making things up. But good grief, to fault Germans for moving to the countryside and restoring farmhouses and celebrating German culture and building up self-sufficient economic networks — it’s insane. The reader who sent that warns that this is how the US state will treat any Ben Oppers who try this. This is a concern, of course, though I think we are a long way from that now in America. Still, it’s a reason to keep active to a certain extent in conventional politics. Besides, we can’t stop ourselves by worrying what might happen. If the left-liberal State does crack down on us in harsh ways, then we will need the Ben Op practices and networks more than ever, in the same way that the Polish people needed their churches to hold them together during communism, and to get them through it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a book to finish rewriting. This is the last week I have to work on The Benedict Option. The final push!

Unbelievably, Trump Won

I did not see this coming. Did anybody? Trump won this thing fairly decisively, I thought. I expected him to spontaneously combust. He did not. The first 20 minutes or so were excruciating, with him flailing about his so-called “locker room talk,” and ripping into her about Bill Clinton’s sexual past.

(I tell you, though, for both Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, to have their wives and children in the room when their disgusting behavior towards women is discussed on national TV — it’s unthinkable. Disgraces, both of them.)

Incredibly, though, Trump got much better after that, and hammered Hillary hard on e-mail, on Syria, on just about everything. She’s such a terrible candidate. This should have been the night she put Donald Trump away, and not only did she fail to do that, he actually bested her. Look, I’m not saying he was good; I’m saying that he did much better than she did. And because he was widely expected to blow himself up tonight, this is a win for him.

The TV talking heads seem to think his disagreeing with Mike Pence on Russia and Syria is a big gaffe, or something otherwise terrible. It’s not. Trump simply said he disagreed with his running mate. And I was glad to hear Trump say it.

But the real news is this: how on earth could Hillary Clinton have failed to deliver a knockout blow to Trump tonight? Honestly, I’m shaking my head. I guess she will have to depend on leaked audiotapes from Hollywood to carry her over the finish line. Trump’s performance tonight is going to make it harder for Republicans down the ballot and in the Washington elite to decide if they’re going to stick by him or not.

You know, I really think Donald Trump still has a chance — not much of one, but a chance — to win this thing. I did not expect to be saying that after this debate. Just one more damn surprise this crazy political year has brought us, like a house cat dropping bloody varmints at the foot of our beds.

I agree with this:

The Republicans get what they deserve: He did well enough that they’re definitely stuck with him.

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) October 10, 2016

And did you hear what Clinton’s foreign policy spokesman tweeted tonight? Patrick Deneen had the best riposte ever:

Yale or Georgetown grad? https://t.co/aazUZlWWGC

— Patrick Deneen (@PatrickDeneen) October 10, 2016

Your thoughts on the debate?

UPDATE: I’m glad a couple of readers brought this up: Trump’s promise to turn a special prosecutor loose on Hillary if he’s elected is revolting stuff. A Third World dictator move.

UPDATE.2: On second thought, he did say, “You’d be in jail.”