There are two disturbing points of view being put forth on conservative - respectable conservative - websites today. Challenging them is a daunting task, because they offer compelling reasons to sign on.
The first is Patrick Poole's piece at PJ Media on how the UK is indeed rotten with jihadists, and how that is the main point, not Trump's retweets of videos first put up by Britain First. He only takes three paragraphs to dispense with Theresa May's outrage at the retweets (in the course of which he acknowledges that one of the three videos is indeed not of a Muslim youth beating up a handicapped person), and then launches into admittedly exhaustive documentation of the sheer numbers involved in the influx, as well as some recent terrorist activity - as if most PJ Media readers didn't already know and feel alarm about the jihadist flood. They do. But May's point - and the point of others in Parliament, as well as stateside opinion outlets, including this blog - is indeed the main point. Trump used material generated by an organization that "conducts “Christian Patrols” of neighborhoods, [and that] send[s] groups of thugs to invade mosques."
He used the most inflammatory way to get across the point that Britain is imperiled by a jihadist influx, and it damaged what credibility and goodwill there was extended to him by the current British government.
Of course, Trump's blindly devoted base has shown up immediately in the comment threads of columns and blog posts about this, saying that we finally have a real fighter unafraid of political correctness and effete British sensibilities. As always, the base zealots are willing to bulldoze over anyone and anything with no regard to strategic considerations.
For crying out loud, even Paul Joseph Watson at Infowars suggested that Trump back away from this tactic.
The same principle can be seen in the other opinion referenced above. It is yet another attempt at justifying Alabamians' votes for Roy Moore. The author's credentials are impressive. He's a professor of philosophy at Ouachita Baptist University, and a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division. He's writing at The Federalist.
Tully Borland (the author) is willing to concede that Moore is a "dirtbag." Even on this point, though, he equivocates, going to the argument we've seen elsewhere, that Southern culture has traditionally looked at the pairing of grown men and teenage girls as a benign convention.
(And the drawing of a parallel to George S. Patton is a telling touch of yee-haw-ism, a nod of admiration for those who are " profane and foul-mouthed, [and] often an embarrassment to [their] more well-behaved and refined chain of command.")
But it's the even-if-all-the-allegations-are-true-it's-the-moral-thing-to-do-to-vote-for-him conclusion that contributes to the contemporary self-poisoning of the conservative movement.
Yes, Doug Jones cavalierly supports the extermination of fetal Americans, even those who are seconds away from being delivered. He's also resolutely left-of-center generally.
But here, as with the first example (it's worth it to retweet material from a hate group in order to make the point that Britain's jihadist problem requires a sense of urgency), we are back to the binary-choice argument that delivered so many formerly admirable opinion leaders on the right into the camp of Trump during last year's campaign.
One argument that the binary-choice crowd trots out to justify its position is that scripture is full of examples of God using decidedly flawed people for grand missions. King David is usually among those cited.
What must be remembered is that it was God doing the choosing, not human beings. It's also worth noting that figures so selected by God began to show some humility and awe about what was planned for them. You get none of that from the likes of Trump or Moore.
So what does one do in these cases?
You keep a steady-as-she-goes perspective. You do not sign on to anything that you will acknowledge is morally flawed. You just don't.
In the first case, you keep making the clear distinction between the use of a toxic source for the argument that Britain has a jihad crisis, and the jihad crisis itself. And you refuse to be cowed by those who would say that you're making too much of the matter.
In the second case, if you are an Alabama voter, you stay home on Election Day. And if you are a citizen of some other locale, you keep your mouth shut about matters in which the truth is not unmistakably clear. Everyone agrees there are crucial facts we do not know, so everyone needs to zip it. (Although, at the very least, there is the pretty well established fact that he liked to date teens when he was in his thirties.)
It's a steep and narrow path, but that makes it all the more imperative not to be sloppy about embarking on it.
If you want to talk about a binary choice, at every moment, each of us is faced with one. One decision furthers the advance of God's kingdom, and the other maintains the brokenness and confusion of this world.
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