Rod Dreher's Blog, page 529

The Problem Of Lazy Men

A reader sends a link to this George F. Will column about idle men. Excerpts:

The “quiet catastrophe” is particularly dismaying because it is so quiet, without social turmoil or even debate. It is this: After 88 consecutive months of the economic expansion that began in June 2009, a smaller percentage of American males in the prime working years (ages 25 to 54) are working than were working near the end of the Great Depression in 1940, when the unemployment rate was above 14 percent. If the labor-force participation rate were as high today as it was as recently as 2000, nearly 10 million more Americans would have jobs.

The work rate for adult men has plunged 13 percentage points in a half-century. This “work deficit” of “Great Depression-scale underutilization” of male potential workers is the subject of Nicholas Eberstadt’s new monograph “Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis,” which explores the economic and moral causes and consequences of this:

Since 1948, the proportion of men 20 and older without paid work has more than doubled, to almost 32 percent. This “eerie and radical transformation” — men creating an “alternative lifestyle to the age-old male quest for a paying job” — is largely voluntary. Men who have chosen to not seek work are two-and-a-half times more numerous than men who government statistics count as unemployed because they are seeking jobs.

Note well: he’s not talking about men who want work but can’t find it. Will points out that for most of these men, it’s not a matter of there being no jobs:

Only about 15 percent of men ages 25 to 54 who worked not at all in 2014 said they were unemployed because they could not find work.

Read it all.

The reader adds:

I live in what the elites would consider a “white trash” neighborhood in Massachusetts — Northern Hillbillies if you will. I would estimate that 50% of the men don’t work in my neighborhood. Some are mooching off their girlfriends; many others are on federal disability. The sheer number of men on disability where I live truly shocks me.

And it’s a major social problem. Idle men without work spell trouble. Men with too much time on their hands turn to drink, drugs, fighting. They may fear work, but they are forever restless.

It reminds me of an episode of the great sitcom “King of Queens” when the main character Doug Heffernan (Kevin James), a parcel delivery driver, goes on strike. At first he is enthused by all the household projects he’s going to get done with his free time but soon he winds up on the couch overeating all day and then even worse, as the strike drags on, he and his fellow driver Deacon, and even his father-in-law (played by Jerry Stiller) start reverting to adolescent delinquent behavior.

This is a real problem where I live and apparently all over America. At one time being out of work voluntarily was unthinkable for any adult. These days in many places it is the norm.

If someone has a real disability I’m all for them being supported. But have we gone too far?

It certainly seems that we have. But how do you rebuild a culture of self-respect in these idle men? To what extent does this have to do with the loss of the working man and father as an icon in American life? When and how did we lose the stigma on able-bodied men choosing not to work if there were jobs available? When and why did we stop calling them lazy bums? Thoughts?

I’ll say this: I don’t blame a woman for not wanting to marry an idler.

Am Yisrael Chai!

Yisrael Kristal, like many a bar mitzvah boy before him, celebrated the event last weekend, reading the Torah and enjoying the company of his family, who danced, sang and threw candies.

But Mr. Kristal was surrounded at the ceremony in southern Israel by his two surviving children, nine grandchildren and 30 great-grandchildren. He is 113, and he had to wait a century to mark the occasion.

“My father is a religious man, and it was his dream his whole life to have a bar mitzvah,” his daughter Shulamith Kristal Kuperstoch said by telephone from her home in Haifa, Israel. “It was a miracle after everything that he has been through in his life. What else can you call it?”

When Allied troops liberated Auschwitz in 1945, she said, Mr. Kristal weighed 82 pounds. He was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.

His family says Mr. Kristal is a simple man who has prayed every day of his life. More:

Mr. Kristal’s granddaughter Liat Bashan, a 32-year-old social worker, said that seeing her grandfather at his bar mitzvah ceremony, in a room spilling over with relatives and loved ones, had left her overcome with joy — and mindful of all those who perished in the Holocaust.

“All those people from one person,” she said. “Imagine how many rooms could be filled if six million had lived.”

She added: “Every time I see my grandfather, I want to make a blessing.”

It is a blessing to humankind. The darkness did not overcome this man’s light, nor steal God from his heart.

The Courage Of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

We are so accustomed these days to one Christian church or ministry falling by the wayside when it comes to Christian orthodoxy on sexual matters. So it comes as a shock when one — especially a major one — takes a firm and uncompromising stand for orthodoxy. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship has done just that. Excerpt:

One of the largest evangelical organizations on college campuses nationwide has told its 1,300 staff members they will be fired if they personally support gay marriage or otherwise disagree with its newly detailed positions on sexuality starting on Nov. 11.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA says that it will start a process for “involuntary terminations” for any staffer who comes forward to disagree with its positions on human sexuality, which holds that any sexual activity outside of a husband and wife is immoral.

Staffers are not being required to sign a document agreeing with the group’s position, and supervisors are not proactively asking employees to verbally affirm it. Instead, staffers are being asked to come forward voluntarily if they disagree with the theological position. When they inform their supervisor of their disagreement, a two-week period is triggered, concluding in their last day. InterVarsity has offered to cover outplacement service costs for one month after employment ends to help dismissed staff with their resumes and job search strategies.

More:

InterVarsity has more than 1,000 chapters on 667 college campuses around the country. More than 41,000 students and faculty were actively involved in organization in the last school year, and donations topped $80 million last fiscal year. The group is focused on undergraduate outreach, but it also has specific programs for athletes, international students, nurses, sororities and fraternities, and others. InterVarsity also hosts the Urbana conference, one of the largest student missionary conferences in the world.

Read the whole thing.

Given how hostile colleges are, and how strongly young adults feel about this issue, taking this stand is likely to be very, very costly, but InterVarsity recognizes the stakes for the integrity of the Christian message. God bless InterVarsity for its impressive courage and steadfastness! As Denny Burk said:

We live in a day when this is news: https://t.co/oWE3RxqbDr

— Denny Burk (@DennyBurk) October 7, 2016

UPDATE: A reader writes that InterVarsity has posted this on its Facebook page tonight:

You may have seen this evening’s article in TIME about InterVarsity.

We’re disappointed that Elizabeth Dias’ headline and article wrongly stated that InterVarsity is firing employees for supporting gay marriage. That is not the case. In fact, InterVarsity doesn’t have a policy regarding employee views on civil marriage.

We know that LGBTQI people have experienced great pain, including much caused by Christians. We also know that we ourselves each need Jesus’ grace daily. So we attempt to walk humbly in this conversation.

We do continue to hold to an orthodox view of human sexuality and Christian marriage, as you can read in our Theology of Human Sexuality Document at the bottom of the article.

That said, we believe Christlikeness, for our part, includes both embracing Scripture’s teachings on human sexuality—uncomfortable and difficult as they may be—as well as upholding the dignity of all people, because we are all made in God’s image.

Some will argue this cannot be done. We believe that we must if we want to be faithful followers of Jesus.

Within InterVarsity and elsewhere in the Church, there are LGBTQI people who agree with this theology, at great personal cost. We are learning together to follow Jesus.

Another reader, a lawyer and a liberal, writes:

This is a smart legal move on their part. Federal law makes it pretty much impossible to take a stance along the lines of, “This is what we believe, but out of compassion and pragmatism we’re willing to be flexible for a certain amount of time, with certain people, and/or in certain situations.” Either you have a blanket policy that applies to all people in all instances, or federal courts will rule that you don’t “really” have a principled position and invalidate the broader policy because of the exceptions. Personally I think that’s unfortunate, because it encourages polarization and an unyielding one-size-fits-all approach to disagreement. But InterVarsity is certainly making the right decision here based on how its commitment to its values and beliefs will be judged in court.

I appreciate this comment for its honesty. I’ve talked to people in religious schools, both Catholic and Protestant, who are being advised by their lawyers to draw clear, bright doctrinal lines right now, and enforce them. If they don’t, the lawyers advise, they are going to have a hard time in court if they get sued. One headmaster I spoke with said his school is facing a hard choice in this regard. When I spoke with him, there was a student in his Christian school whose parents were a lesbian couple. This was irregular in that theologically conservative school, to say the least, but the school had no intention of asking the student to leave, if only because they wanted to provide a loving witness to this student. But the school’s lawyers were warning them that they had better be very careful about this, because if the student and her parents decided they wanted to sue the school for any reason (e.g., it wouldn’t let the girl bring a female date to the prom), their failure to draw a clear policy and enforce it no matter what would count against them, and they could end up being forced by the court to liberalize — this, because they had not clearly enunciated and enforced a clear doctrine. I could tell this headmaster, a conservative Christian, was grieved by this, because he saw a one-size-fits-all, zero-tolerance policy compromising the ministry of that Christian school. But the litigious culture around gay rights was backing his school into a corner. It’s doing it with all Christian churches, schools, and ministries, forcing them to take stands they don’t want to take, or put everything they have at risk from aggressive gay plaintiffs. I am sure that InterVarsity did not want to take the hard stand it has taken, but I am also sure that its lawyers told its leaders that they had no choice.

#NeverUtopia

Here’s a fascinating New Yorker book review essay by Akash Kapur, on the topic of the American weakness for utopianism. In it, he says that after falling badly out of favor in the 20th century, utopianism is making a comeback, at least on the Left. Excerpt:

Now the tide may have shifted. As the literary Marxist Fredric Jameson observes, “In the last years, utopia has again changed its meaning and has become the rallying cry for left and progressive forces.” A slew of books have arrived to celebrate the utopian spirit, notably two on the history of utopia in the United States. Erik Reece’s “Utopia Drive” is a travelogue through the ghosts of America’s nineteenth-century intentional communities. In Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts, Reece visits the remains of a handful of utopian settlements and towns, mining their histories to reflect on the present. Chris Jennings’s “Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism,” a historical account of five utopian projects, is more firmly rooted in the past. Both books seek to capture the spirit of what Jennings calls “a long, sunny season of American utopianism”—a period of about a century, roughly bookended by the optimism of American independence and the butchery of the Civil War.

Neither author is blind to the shortcomings of his subject. Jennings is attuned to the latent “terror and repression” in the utopian project. Reece has a sharp eye for the contradictions of communities that condemn the capitalist economy but are sustained by vibrant commercial enterprises. The founders of these communities—a colorful cast of prophets, dreamers, and narcissists—preach against private property and possessions as they jealously guard their own. “One thing we can say about the seductive visionaries who led the utopian movement in America,” Reece notes dryly, “is that they did not lead the most self-examined lives.”

Despite the caveats, the over-all tone of both books is enthusiastic, even laudatory. Set against the general opprobrium that has tarred utopia in the twentieth century, these are works of intellectual and political rehabilitation. Jennings laments “a deficit of imagination” in our era, and argues that, “uncoupled from utopian ends, even the most incisive social critique falls short.” Reece likewise ends his travels convinced “that things will only get worse if we don’t engage in some serious utopian thinking.” For Reece, in particular, the process of rehabilitation is an explicitly political project—an attempt to exhume the lessons of the past in order to frame an alternative to the economic, environmental, and political despair of recent times. Sitting in a hammock in the intentional community of Twin Oaks, in Virginia, he reads More’s “Utopia” and thinks of Bernie Sanders. Driving toward what remains of the community of Modern Times, on Long Island, he decries “Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Agra, Big Pharma” and the “corporate vandals” who “pollute the commons.” Although their books are formally about nineteenth-century intentional communities, both Reece and Jennings tap into an altogether more contemporary strand of post-crisis (i.e., post-2008) economic and political discourse.

A rejuvenated Marxism underlies much of this thinking.

The dream never dies:

Over all, though, the biggest problem—at least, in any attempt to harness these nineteenth-century projects to twenty-first-century reforms—is one less of evil than of ineffectuality. A spectre hangs over these places—the spectre of failure. In 1879, under external and internal pressures to conform, Oneida voted to adopt traditional marriage practices. The next year, it abandoned the principle of collective ownership, converting itself into a joint-stock company that went on to become a major silverware manufacturer. Shares in the company were allocated according to members’ initial contributions (as well as time spent in the community), in a stroke undoing the equality that had originally characterized communal life. Noyes was in exile at this point, having fled threatened legal action over the community’s sexual practices. A mere three decades in, the dream was effectively over.

Virtually all these utopian communities met the same fate. Reece ends his book with a cry to action: “We can head out today toward the utopia of reconstruction. We can build the road as we travel.” Readers of these books might be forgiven for thinking that this road is something of a dead end. None of the five places that Jennings writes about remain in existence.

Read the whole thing. You’ll learn something.

As I’ve been working on the Benedict Option project, one of the biggest obstacles I’ve had to face is the impression others have of its supposed utopianism. I can’t say it often enough, apparently: I do not believe there is any way to build a utopian community, and those who believe it’s possible set themselves up either for tyranny or heartbreak, often both. There can be no utopia because mankind is not perfectible.

However, I believe many people are quick to call things like the Benedict Option “utopian” as a way to avoid having to think critically of the problems with the way we live today, with regard to community and social life. In cases like this, a proper skepticism of the allegedly utopian project becomes (unwittingly, I’m guessing) a self-justifying excuse not to have to take the “utopian” critique seriously.

It’s hard to walk a responsible, realistic line between utopianism and cynicism. But it’s necessary. I am disappointed to read that utopianism is making a comeback on the Left, though to be honest, I don’t think it ever disappeared. The Left’s utopian idea that all will be well with us when we finally tear down all barriers to sexual and gender freedom has been wreaking havoc in America since the 1960s, and it shows no sign of abating. Similarly, many on the Right regard the free market in ways that strike me as utopian. One reason we have Donald Trump this year is that far too many conservative leaders are dazzled by free-market utopianism, and failed to appreciate the down side of globalism.

It’s easy for us to look at communes and other intentional communities and see them as failures. But the everyday utopianism that shapes our lives in the so-called real world is more destructive, don’t you think? Regarding the Benedict Option, my intention with that project is to convince conservative Christians that we cannot keep living the way most of us do, and that there are things we can and must do wherever we are, and whatever our circumstances, to build up the practices and institutions that will allow us to be more faithful under rapidly changing conditions. And not only more faithful, but more resilient in our faith. There are no safe places to hide from the challenges of post-Christian America. Perfection this side of heaven is a pipe dream. But we can make places in which it is easier to be faithful, despite our brokenness.

Memphis Man’s Inhumanity To Man

It’s bad enough that two people overdosed on heroin right on the sidewalk in Memphis. What is truly horrifying is the gawkers who stood around watching them, laughing — especially Courtland Garner, the monster who livestreamed this video on Facebook. You can hear him laughing and making fun of them. If you watch the video, be warned: there’s lots of profanity in it, including this fool video’ing the thing speculating about having sex with the old woman who is on her knees. It’s NSFW, at least with the audio on.

“I’m gon’ book these folks for a show,” Garner tells the camera. “These folks draw a crowd.”

Garner told a reporter that he didn’t think it was any of his business to try to help those two. This clip he posted is an example of depraved indifference. Every single bystander ought to be deeply ashamed of themselves. Sickos.

UPDATE: Let me say to scandalized readers that I am not after clickbait here. I think this video makes a very strong point about the moral state of our country. You have two people — not young people, but older people — overdosing on heroin on a public sidewalk. This draws attention to this godawful opioid epidemic sweeping the nation (and if you think this is only something that affects the working class and the poor, you really, really need to read Sam Quinones’s great and devastating book “Dreamland”). Second, it shows the moral degradation of the community in which the two junkies collapsed. How can people just walk by and not try to help them, if only just to call 911 and remain with them till paramedics arrive, to make sure nobody hurts them? And the clown filming them for Facebook and laughing about it! There is something very, very wrong with a community that produces people who become junkies, and a community that produces people who walk by people dying in the streets like that, or worse, turn it into a social-media spectacle.

As one reader commented below, if the two junkies had been black, and the people walking past them and/or mocking them and enjoying their suffering had been white, the media would have us all having a very different conversation about the symbolism here.

No matter what the race or income level of the particular society, a society in which more and more people are getting strung out on heroin, and a society in which more than a few people find the shocking suffering of those junkies to be fodder for entertainment and mockery — both are depraved societies. This is a form of depravity, of despair, that politics cannot ultimately address.

What is wrong with us?

Fun With Paranoid Philosophers

‘Bring me the head of the Ivy League epistemologist!’ said no one, ever (Jeff Cameron Collingwood/Shutterstock)

The Yale Daily News has published a short piece about Yale’s troubled philosophy professor Jason Stanley and the controversy over his vituperative outburst. You will likely not be surprised to discover that Stanley, who once portrayed two Yale colleagues who had been set upon by a mob of student Jacobins as the real bullies in the matter, believes that a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy is out to get him because he speaks truth to power. Try to read this without laughing:

Stanley said the recent reprisal is framed as offense caused by his language on Facebook, but is in fact the design of his “powerful enemies” who he claimed have attacked him in recent years, in retaliation for his open disapproval of their actions. For example, Stanley said, he openly took issues with the Templeton Foundation — one of the most prominent donors in the field of philosophy where Dreher worked as publications director — for what he described as disproportionate funding for religious philosophy and negligence towards studies on racism or homophobia.

Um, golly. He’s apparently implying that the John Templeton Foundation is somehow behind my criticism of his publicly denouncing Christian philosopher Richard Swinburne and Swinburne’s defenders with the infelicitous phrase, “F–k you, assholes.”

That’s pretty funny. I haven’t worked for Templeton for five years, and was at JTF for only a year and a half. I had never heard of Stanley until his name came up over the Swinburne fiasco. After reading the story, I googled to find out what kind of dust-up Stanley had with JTF. Did this happen while I was there? I didn’t recall it. Turns out that Stanley’s bigoted denunciation of JTF for throwing money at philosophical projects of which he disapproves (because they might say something favorable about religion) came in 2013, two years after I left the Foundation. 

So he’s grasping for straws. Stanley is a professional philosopher. Surely he has heard of the concept of Occam’s Razor, which says among competing hypotheses, the simplest explanation should be favored. The truth is, I first encountered Jason Stanley’s name when a reader sent me a link to this piece on the philosophy blog Rightly Considered.  No doubt it flatters Prof. Stanley’s self-image to see himself as the victim of a dark fascist conspiracy, but it just ain’t so. He shot his mouth off and got called on it. Simple as that. I know that scary clowns are terrorizing college campus on the East coast right now, but I promise, none have been dispatched to New Haven to defend the heteropatriarchy from a Yale philosopher.

You know, it’s kind of pitiful to observe a grown man portray himself in the pages of his campus newspaper as the victim of “powerful enemies.” Such self-dramatizing paranoia! But more charitably, it just goes to show that the professor has a rich inner life.

The Yale paper reached out to Richard Swinburne in Oxford for comment. He said he would leave it to others to defend him, but he did say this:

“Philosophers usually argue rather than use expletives,” Swinburne said. “But I’ll leave your readers to decide whether this was the suitable response from a philosopher.”

The YDN reports that “Stanley is currently teaching ‘Language and Power’ and a philosophy section of Directed Studies.” Seems like this whole embarrassing affair ought to have taught him a valuable lesson in how foul, abusive language is usually an expression of weakness. 

 

Elk County Benedict Option

I’m very, very pleased to present to you this piece by Sam MacDonald, who says that Catholics seeking the Benedict Option should consider moving to his part of the world: Elk County, Pennsylvania. Check it out:

One of the primary obstacles to Rod Dreher’s proposed Benedict Option is the question of community stability, especially with regard to economics. How are all these orthodox Christians going to support themselves? You can move near the Benedictine monks at Clear Creek Abbey, sure, and that might be spiritually rewarding, but your kids can’t eat Gregorian chants.

Ideally, you’d have a critical mass of deeply Christian people who are entrepreneurial and technically astute, who could employ a wide range of people at a wage high enough to support traditional families. People would be like-minded enough to foster a strong sense of community, but not close-minded and unwelcoming. It would be self-sufficient enough to keep the worst of popular culture at bay, but self-confident enough to engage with the world.

Yeah, right. Like you can just build something like that.

You probably can’t, but don’t worry; somebody already did. I live there. And we need 10,000 of you to come join us.

Seriously. I live in Elk County, Pennsylvania. If you are interested in the BenOp, you need to stop asking Rod how this can possibly work. You need to pack up a U-Haul and move here. I am guessing there are other places like it. But ignore those places. This place is better.

Elk County is rural, about two hours from Pittsburgh, two hours from Buffalo and two hours from Erie. We have a big elk herd, which is nice. A federally designated Wild and Scenic river runs through the town I live in. We are on the doorstep of the Allegheny National Forest and a wide variety of state forests and state parks and state game lands. It’s pretty. But again, pretty doesn’t get you to heaven, and it doesn’t pay your electric bill.

That’s OK, because Elk County also might be the most Catholic place in America. St. Marys was established in in the 1840s when a pile of German immigrants fled anti-Catholic persecution in Philadelphia and Baltimore by purchasing 35,000 acres of sheer wilderness. In the earliest days, shivering around a desperate campsite, a visiting priest from Pittsburgh had a vision:

Within the glare of the fire I saw a new city, the home of a Christian youth who would choose a more perfect life, and from whom God would choose Apostles for America. I saw thousands of Catholics around the cross, the symbol of true liberty, and I pictured to myself this oasis where many German Catholics would find comfortable homes, the true faith and the salvation of their souls.

Within a few years, the first Benedictine convent in America was established in St. Marys, and a BenOp community was born.

It’s still here. Today, St. Marys, Pennsylvania, is the largest community in Elk County, with about 13,000 residents. It has three Catholic parishes. There are four others serving the other 18,000 people scattered in little towns throughout the county. That’s a LOT of parishes for 31,000 people, but more than 70 percent of the local population is Catholic.

Just as important, the Catholic school system is great.

OK, I admit that I am the president of that school system, but consider these facts: We have enough kids that our Catholic high school still has a football team. (Our basketball team won states a few years back. So did our girls softball team. Our boys baseball team came in second.) We have the last marching band of any school in the Diocese of Erie, and the greatest art teacher in the state of Pennsylvania.

And we are CATHOLIC. The community demands it. About 20 percent of the local student population is in Catholic schools, which in an extraordinarily high capture rate. We recently transitioned St. Leo School, in Ridgway, to a full blown classical academy. St. Boniface, in Kersey, is structured as a multi-age school. The largest elementary school, in St. Marys, has a strong focus on STEM in order to feed local industry (more on that in a second) but it is also deeply committed to faith formation.

Unlike many Catholic schools that are geared toward the economic and financial elite, we are open enrollment. Tuition at the high school is about $4,500 per year. Tuition at the elementary and middle schools is around $3,000. A very high percentage of our dads come to school conferences in Carhartts and steel toe boots. Most of our kids go on to great things at competitive universities, but we have no desire to say that 100 percent of our graduates go on to college.

Why?

It just so happens that Elk County is the powdered metal capital of the world. That might not mean much to you, but if you have a car, a lawnmower or a toaster, there’s a 100 percent chance that something you own was made here. Ever read a Harry Potter book? You were holding paper made 10 miles from where I am typing this, from trees that were grown here. It’s also the black cherry capital of the world and we have a thriving oil and gas industry. We also have a gargantuan lightbulb factory. And …

Listen, we have a lot of factories, OK? And the biggest problem those factories face is not competition from Mexico or China, it’s a shortage of workers.

This does not fit “the narrative,” but it’s the truth. I recently joined a newly formed advisory council called Manufacturing Education, and Employment Advancement (MEEA). It consists largely of factory owners desperate to find qualified workers. They estimate that over the next decade they will need upwards of 10,000 bodies to replace retiring workers and staff their expansion plans.

Last week there was an ad in the paper for an entry level worker at one of the local plants. GED required. It started at $15.60 an hour. A greenhorn at the papermill can expect to earn upwards of $50,000 first year.

Cost of living? If you walked into Ridgway tomorrow and offered my mom $40,000 for the house she raised four kids in, she’d probably take it.

Not all the plants pay that much, but almost all of them have a path to middle-class living if you can show up, and show up sober. Of course, all of these factories are also in constant need of highly skilled engineers, accountants, HR administrators, etc. Recent efforts to take advantage of our natural setting and brand the region as “The Pennsylvania Wilds” have born real fruit. When I was a kid, the Clarion River was so dirty that the only fish you could catch in it was a sucker. But the paper mill in Johnsonburg made major environmental investments and now the Clarion is a nationally renowned trout stream. As such, we have a growing tourism industry as well.

Did I mention the Straub Brewery? It’s the best beer in America.

I make this argument because, honestly, we need people to move here. But not just any people. Our region was built for the express purpose of bringing people closer to God, in a safe, vibrant and thriving community. Sound familiar? I see so many people questioning Rod on the practicality of the BenOp proposal, and I see so many throwing up their hands because they feel like it simply cannot happen in America today. But it does happen. It is happening.

Will you have easy access to the opera and great research universities? Not locally. But let’s be honest, when was the last time you went to the opera? Penn State is just a little over an hour away from us. And really and truly, the Internet has made the world a smaller place.

Rod often worries about Christians making a living, and that’s legitimate. If you are a pharmacist, what will the law say about your refusal to be an “ally” in the fight for perceived LGBT rights? That’s an open question. But guess what? Nobody cares if the die setter is an ally. And you can make a great living as a die setter around here.

Do we accept outsiders? Well, there is a good chance that we will make fun of you as a flatlander for a few decades. We will scowl at you when you carry on about fancy beer and other evidence of city-living. But if you have any concerns I would direct you to Dr. Guillermo Udarbe, a doctor who moved to Ridgway from the Philippines in the 1970s. He’s the mayor now.

The Benedict Option is going to mean many things to many different people. Some will move next to the monks in Clear Creek and make a go of it. Others might set up shop near a deeply religious school in an urban area, like folks have done at St. Jerome’s in Hyattsville, Maryland. Others might actually go off the grid and build that proverbial walled compound in the mountains. Nothing will be right for everybody.

All I am saying is that people don’t need to get too caught up in how to invent a place that already exists. In fact, Elk County isn’t a place, it’s an era to which people insist we cannot return.

High paying industrial jobs that can support a large, single earner family? Affordable Catholic schools that take their faith seriously? A place where most of your neighbors go to church every Sunday? A place where seeing young families with five to eight kids isn’t all that weird? A place where you can walk to the woods and hunt with a rifle? Where people still build stuff? Where people leave the keys in their car ignition when they park it and night?

Yes. That is Elk County. And it is now.

Want to give it a look? E-mail me. I will put you in touch with the people who can put you to work and get you into a house. The community is just now realizing that we need to mobilize to sell what we have. Just as important, we are realizing that many thousands of people across America are desperately interested in taking refuge in a place like this.

sammacdonald@comcast.net

Help New Ideas Arise on the Right

There was a time, not long ago, when non-interventionists looked to the Trump campaign with enthusiasm, however guarded. Remember the GOP primary debate in South Carolina, when Donald Trump became the first senior-level Republican to say that the emperor had no clothes the Iraq War had been a costly failure?

Since then, Trump has become a normal Republican. The American Conservative’s contributing editor Andrew Bacevich filleted Trump on his foreign policy performance in the first debate—and Clinton’s too: “the real travesty of our predicament lies … in the utter shallowness of our political discourse, no more vividly on display than in the realm of national security. … The American people thereby remain in darkness. On that score, Trump, Clinton, and the parties they represent are not adversaries. They are collaborators.”

Think about how in last night’s vice presidential debate, Mike Pence came out as a Russia hawk, and Tim Kaine fell all over himself to out-hawk Pence. Collaborators indeed.

No matter which candidate moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in January, the national security policy of the US establishment is not likely to change. It will need to be challenged. If you appreciate TAC doing this from the Right, please contribute to our efforts by making a tax-exempt donation to us.

If you’re in the Washington area on November 15, a week after the election, please join TAC at our fall foreign policy conference. Jim Webb will be the keynote speaker. The conference registration page is here.

The American Conservative is a nonprofit publication that depends on the generosity of its readers and donors to keep going. If you like what you read here, please donate. If you don’t like what you read here on my blog, but like many liberals, love reading and participating in the civil and civilized comments section, please donate. And if you are a social or religious conservative who is interested in the Benedict Option, and eager to keep that discussion going as America moves swiftly into a post-Christian era, then please know that TAC really needs your help.

I was thinking the other day how the last three books I’ve written (including the forthcoming Benedict Option) emerged out of blogging here, and my interaction with you readers. A top journalist who is also a Christian told me that in his view, the Benedict Option is the only paradigm left for conservative Christians in America to consider. He meant that whether conservative Christians accept or reject the Ben Op, it will be the defining concept for us going forward.

I hope he’s right, but we’ll know only after the book is published in March. If he turns out to have been correct, then I think it’s important for you readers to recognize that the idea got traction in TAC. More concretely, J.D. Vance’s terrific Hillbilly Elegy, arguably the most important political book of the year, rose from obscurity to No. 1 bestseller status after my interview with him on this blog went viral.

My point is, The American Conservative is a place where new ideas for American conservatism arise. Please help us continue our work, and expand it, by donating.

Besides, if you don’t, how will I ever convince Dan McCarthy to give me a raise so I can afford to add a small wine cave to my Ben Op bunker? I ask you.

The Atlantic Endorses Clinton

OK, but who cares? Anybody? (Screenshot from The Atlantic.com)

For only the third time in its long history, The Atlantic magazine has endorsed a candidate for president. Actually, it’s not so much a “vote for Clinton” piece as a “vote against Trump” essay. Excerpt:

In its founding statement, The Atlantic promised that it would be “the organ of no party or clique,” and our interest here is not to advance the prospects of the Democratic Party, nor to damage those of the Republican Party. If Hillary Clinton were facing Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or George W. Bush, or, for that matter, any of the leading candidates Trump vanquished in the Republican primaries, we would not have contemplated making this endorsement. We believe in American democracy, in which individuals from various parties of different ideological stripes can advance their ideas and compete for the affection of voters. But Trump is not a man of ideas. He is a demagogue, a xenophobe, a sexist, a know-nothing, and a liar. He is spectacularly unfit for office, and voters—the statesmen and thinkers of the ballot box—should act in defense of American democracy and elect his opponent.

I think they’re basically right in their assessment of Trump’s character, so I’m not bothered by this endorsement, even though I can’t bring myself to vote for Clinton (I’m planning to leave that . Not bothered, but puzzled. Why would a magazine like The Atlantic do this? Again, it’s certainly their right to endorse, but isn’t it the case that the kind of people who would be influenced by this endorsement, or even know about it, are the people who are already #NeverTrump?

Question to the room: Do the endorsements of magazines or newspapers ever sway your vote? I can easily imagine that they would have done in the past, when the media had more authority, but today? I am likely to consult a newspaper for its guidance on how to vote on state and local races, and take it or not — but that’s it. How about you? Did they ever? If so, but they don’t now, what changed?

Question to any political professionals in the readership: Do candidates care about endorsements? Under what conditions do they care, and under what conditions do they not?

(Note to Readers: TAC does not endorse political candidates because we are a 501c3 organization. No commentary or images on this website should be taken as endorsement of any candidate or cause.)

Diversity McCarthyism

A reader in academia writes to say that Kennesaw State University, a large state school in Georgia, is looking for a new president. The hiring committee wants to consider hiring Sam Olens, the Georgia attorney general. “Ah, but you know what’s coming,” says the reader. More, from a local TV station’s report:

Olens defended Georgia’s gay marriage ban and sued the federal government over the transgender bathroom directive. That’s why students organized Monday afternoon’s protest and drafted a petition that has more than 5,000 signatures.

In the petition, students ask the Georgia Board of Regents to not appoint Olens as KSU’s next president.One student, who wouldn’t give 11Alive his name, said he’s disappointed.

“The support groups would probably be disbanded and not to mention the scholarships that are offered for people active in LGBT rights,” he said

After the rally ended, he stayed around to continue the protest.

“I feel it’s my duty. I’m a student here and I have to make sure the school is safe for me and students. If this place becomes unsafe, I’d have to leave,” he said.

Oh for pity’s sake, this snowflake thinks hiring the Georgia AG as the school’s president would lead to anti-gay pogroms? I hate the way this Orwellian “safe space” concept has become the cudgel with which campus progressives use to club the expression of opinions with which they disagree. Anyway, the reader comments:

Okay, a couple things. First, KSU gives scholarships for “people active in LGBT rights”? I’d love to know details on that. Second, note the alleged disqualification here: Olens defended the laws of his state — laws that were created by a democratically elected legislature. In other words, he did the job he is elected to do. But as you and I know, this now constitutes Thoughtcrime.

Leonard Witt, a KSU professor, wrote a column criticizing the choice in which he concludes: “Let’s, this time, show the world that Cobb County carries the torch for all its diverse communities.” Yes, diverse communities — as long as one of those communities isn’t Christians or people fulfilling the duties of their elected office.

Now, I should note that as a college professor myself I happen to agree with Witt’s other point: that a college president should be an academic, not someone plucked from business or politics. If I taught at KSU, I would oppose Olens for that reason. But this is something different: opposition to him because of something he believes, and because he did his job according to the constitution of the state of Georgia.

Eventually we’re going to have to call explanations like Witt’s the “Eich Maneuver,” as an homage to Mozilla’s preposterous explanation that they had to fire Eich because of how much they value diversity of viewpoint.

The reader says to be sure to note this reasoning from KSU’s Prof. Witt (what follows is a quote from Witt’s column):

Already the KSU LGBTQ community members are signing petitions. A headline in Project Q, a popular Atlanta blog, screams out “Gay marriage bigot Sam Olens to become KSU president.” Unfair? Perhaps, but how do we know,since the selection process is coming from the darkest corners of state government. As attorney general, Olens ardently opposed both gay marriage and now gender neutral bathrooms. Hence, the headline.

Given Cobb County’s history, try as the chancellor may argue otherwise, important national constituencies are going to be outraged­ about the secret meetings aimed at appointing a candidate who they know will infuriate the LGBTQ community and their allies at Kennesaw State, in Cobb County and throughout the state and nation.

The nation’s largest foundations that support higher education demand respecting diversity in all its forms. An active foe of gay marriage or transgender neutral bathrooms for KSU president? Cobb County again? We have better places to put our money. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Nike and just about every other major corporation may well openly or silently boycott Kennesaw State University. Plus, the tainted brand name will not exactly be a student resume builder.

Says the reader:

Echoes of Indiana and RFRA. If we don’t keep up with the LGBT agenda, no corporations will want to do business with us! And note the fear that we could “infuriate the LGBTQ community and their allies.” If I even mentioned to my academic colleagues that something could upset we Christians and our allies, I’d probably hear laughter.

We should be hearing Republican politicians, churches, and civic leaders calling this stuff out for what it is: diversity McCarthyism. Olens may or may not be qualified to run the university, but what these SJWs are attempting is frightening — or should be. Where does it stop?