On the cusp of 2024, a snapshot of a desperately sick post-America

 I guess the task before me in this post is to prove that the title is not just sensationalistic clickbait. I know that New Year's Eve is particularly an occasion when we want to be in it's-going-to-be-fine mode. There's reflecting and partying and personal goal-setting to tend to.

But events confirm, in ever-more undeniable form, that the erosion of guardrails and foundations has reached a critical state:

I offer for your consideration two graphs from an article at The Conversation about an Allegheny College poll on how we - post-Americans - view the value of those guardrails and foundations:

and

 

There is no more important undertaking for the people of this country than to look into how we came to this state of affairs.

That's actually been the impetus behind LITD since 2012, and is baked into the mission statement at my Substack, Precipice:  

[The name] Precipice indicates that America, Western civilization and the world generally are close enough to a yawning abyss to see its terrifying vastness. It’s an abyss with cultural, political, economic and spiritual dimensions.

I so named it knowing the risk that it would come across like yet another Debbie Downer outlet in a world in which happiness is at a premium. But pointing out evidence of my premise is not the aim. The question before us is, on what grounds might we hope?

You won’t find pat answers. I consider myself a Christian - albeit a rather crummy one - but I don’t serve up platitudes, cliches about how since all is well in the eternal realm we needn’t fret about our current juncture, or attempts to recruit the uncommitted.

Rather, I invite you to join me on a journey, a search for genuinely solid ground, on which we can plant our feet and not feel perilously close to free fall. 

If our toes are truly gripping the edge of the precipice, is there time for such a search? 

I’d argue that there is no other sensible use of our time.

Peruse the archives and you'll see that I've zeroed in on various inflection points: the impact of Rouseau's state-of-nature framework, the Enlightenment veneration of rationality, the Romantic poets' turn the other way to the point of immersion in personal feelings, the thinkers behind the fin de siecle wave of Progressivism. I even did a post about turning 13 in the year 1968, titled "On Entering Adolescence During the Tectonic Shift."

I keep thinking about the money line from Kevin Williamson's December 16 Wall Street Journal column titled "You Asked For It, America."  He says, "Sometimes a country is doing so well it can afford a silly season. This is not that time and the US is not that country."

The devaluing of seriousness has serious consequences. In this instance, the consequence appears to be the completion of the squandering of our birthright. 

And here's a way to tell how badly infected you might be with this dismissing of seriousness: If you finish reading this and say, "That's exactly why we need to elect a majority of [pick one of the two major political parties]," you urgently need an antibiotic intervention. 

What we really need isn't remotely on the minds of most of us.

The Colorado Supreme Court decision - initial thoughts

 Let's start with the November ruling by Denver District Court judge Sarah B. Wallace that the Very Stable Genius could indeed appear on the ballot when Colorado has its primary.

She based her reasoning on something that, with my limited knowledge of constitutional law, looks pretty damn iffy:

In a 102-page ruling, Wallace accepted many of the plaintiffs’ core claims about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, and rejected arguments from Trump’s legal team that his messages to his supporters, including incendiary social media posts and a speech at the White House Ellipse just prior to the violence at the Capitol, were protected speech under the First Amendment.

“The Court concludes … that Trump incited an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 and therefore ‘engaged’ in insurrection within the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” Wallace wrote.

But because of this, she came to the conclusion she did:

But Wallace ultimately sided with a legal theory, put forward by several conservative scholars and cited by Trump’s attorneys, holding that Section 3’s reference to individuals who have “taken an oath … as an officer of the United States” does not include the presidency.

“After considering the arguments on both sides, the Court is persuaded that ‘officers of the United States’ did not include the President of the United States,” Wallace wrote. “It appears to the Court that for whatever reason the drafters of Section 3 did not intend to include a person who had only taken the Presidential Oath.”

The Colorado Supreme Court's opposing reasoning seems pretty straightforward to me: 

“President Trump asks us to hold that Section 3 disqualifies every oathbreaking insurrectionist except the most powerful one and that it bars oath-breakers from virtually every office, both state and federal, except the highest one in the land,” the court’s majority opinion said. “Both results are inconsistent with the plain language and history of Section 3.”

That said, it's worthy of note that the four justices in the majority were all appointed by Democratic governors. Also that the case was initiated by the decidedly left-leaning Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington. 

You can be sure that the drool-besotted leg-humpers are going to make sure those facts are front and center in the public's understanding. More generally, the Republican Party, as exemplified by Ronna McDaniel and Elise Stefaniak, as well as many of the also-ran presidential candidates, has already started beating that drum.

That, in turn, will join the Peter Strzok - Lisa Page saga, the pee tape, James Comey's inscrutability and undeniable mainstream media bias as MAGA-land substantiation that the long knives are out everywhere you look, and the figure at the center of it all will play it up to the hilt at his rallies and in his Truth Social posts.

It's going to be very interesting indeed to see how the federal Supreme Court handles this. It may be driven by the urgency of the deadline for Colorado printing its ballots. But it's important to remember that the Court, in its current makeup, is comprised mostly of serious originalists and textualists. They're not driven, the assertions of Acela Corridor pundits to the contrary, by an ideological agenda. For instance, Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization was not decided on the basis of an opportunity for a gotch, but rather on the fact that Roe v Wade had been decided on so-flimsy-as-to-be-extra-consitutional grounds. Legal scholars, such as John Hart Ely and Edward Lazarus at the time Roe was decided even said so. 

Then again, if SCOTUS upholds the Colorado Supreme Court ruling, look for other states to toss Trump off their primary ballots. 

What we can say about this situation is that it ought to brace us for a 2024 so raw, so ugly, so chaotic, that we may well look back on this year as a downright stable time.

 

Well, now; an interesting pickle Ohio Republicans have created for themselves

 The more popular of the two primary contenders for a US House seat is the pone the drool-besotted leg-humpers find problematic:

House Republicans are scrambling to fix a potential nightmare that’s unfolding in a must-win race in northwestern Ohio.

The GOP is eager to block J.R. Majewski from winning its nomination to challenge veteran Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur. Majewski lost his previous bid for Congress last year, after a news report on his military records indicated he lied about combat duty in Afghanistan.

Republicans turned to former state legislator Craig Riedel to beat Majewski in this cycle’s primary. But last week, an audio tape surfaced of Riedel calling Donald Trump “arrogant” and vowing not to endorse the former president. Now the primary looks poised to become a referendum on which is worse in today’s GOP: criticizing Trump or allegedly lying about one’s military valor.

Republican strategists don’t believe Majewski can win a general election against Kaptur, given his record and how purple the district is. Yet the audio of Riedel may have tanked his chances of defeating Majewski.

So Republicans in Ohio and Washington are in damage control mode, holding high-level discussions about trying to find a new candidate before the state’s Dec. 20 filing deadline, according to three people familiar with the effort who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Delicious.

Principle has not just taken a back seat to political "reality." It's been bound, gagged and stuffed in the trunk. 

This is now the party that daily fellates the runaway best-polling presidential candidate who sells trading cards and pieces of his mug shot suit.

Not exactly what the ex-Whigs in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854 had in mind. But Scoop Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan wouldn't recognize their party, either. 

 

 

The House hearing, the three university presidents, and the rot of post-American higher education on full display

 I've waited to weigh in on this, because there was assuredly going to be a first wave of reaction to the disgusting way presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth of MIT conducted themselves as they appeared before the House Education and Workforce Committee last Tuesday. And there was, from columnists, radio talk show hosts, cable-TV personalities and ordinary post-Americans conversing among themselves.

I probably don't have anything startlingly original to add to the discussion, but I know where on the landscape I want to position myself.

Let's start with the after-the-fact apology phenomenon. We see this a lot these days. The social climate in our country is such that there's not much regard for internal filters that might make someone think twice about taking a stance that allows one to indulge in self-congratulation, but that has a lot of opposition among people of influence. If President Gay's cocksure depends-on-the-context response to Representative Stefaniak's questioning about exhortations of Jewish genocide was one hundred percent sincere, then her walk-back has to be seen as full of ka-ka, does it not? 

Or is the reverse the case? There's at least a theoretical case to be made for that. After all, she was still dealing with the mid-November letter she received from 100 faculty members who did not at all care for the "Combating  Antisemitism" statement she issued in response to donors and alums speaking up about campus Jew-hatred. 

Either way, the only conclusion to be reached is that she's a phony.

And if these university presidents want to talk about context, we can gladly revisit the whole leftward drift of higher education over the past umpteen decades. We can trace the role of the Gramscian long march through the institutions by which 1960s radicals became tenured professors. We can point out the fact that William F. Buckley launched his career as an author with the 1952 tome God and Man at Yale, which examined his alma mater's complete secularization. Timothy Dwight, call your office.

I am also not the first to note that Gay, Magill and Kornbluth would have come down on similar calls for extermination of just about any demographic group other than Jews.

The "just about" qualifier was not thrown into the previous sentence idly. We all know which group would not incur their ire. 

And that's what this really comes down to, isn't it? A key component of the above-mentioned leftward drift is the assumption that there is something fundamentally problematic about being white. 

And there's a global dimension to this. Russia's Putin and China's Xi  are licking their chops at the prospect of a BRICS expansion that would bring its role as a voice for the "global south" into sharper focus. What an exquisitely effective way to nudge the West, and the United States in particular, out of their role as guarantor of the rules-based post-World War II international order.

So the ramifications of the way these three ladies conducted themselves last Tuesday are numerous.

It was one more confirmation that we've moved past the peak of human advancement and are descending back into the grim way human beings have treated each other for most of our species' history. 

The breathtaking uselessness of Antony Blinken

 Your tax dollars went for a whole lotta jet fuel in the service of an ill-conceived mission:

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned to the Mideast this week pressing for agreements to extend the Gaza cease-fire, step up the release of hostages held by Hamas and limit Palestinian civilian casualties if fighting with Israel resumed. He left Friday with his goals largely unfulfilled. 

Blinken wrapped up his third Middle East tour since the Israel-Hamas war started in October with decidedly mixed results. He watched as the seven-day cease-fire agreement collapsed under new Hamas attacks and Israeli airstrikes. 

And, it remained uncertain if Israel would follow through on commitments to protect Palestinian civilians from military operations in the southern Gaza Strip, as he warned they should, or whether Hamas would engage in future hostage negotiations. 

Blinken arrived in Israel on Thursday with hopes to see a further extension of the cease-fire agreement under which Israel had halted most military operations in exchange for the release of hostages held by Hamas.

Blinken said Friday that Hamas bore the blame for the failure while the U.S. would continue to push for extensions to release hostages and boost the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Yet, he also warned Israel that it must adhere to international laws of war as it prosecutes its campaign to eradicate Hamas.

And he's still, after Palestinians have given the thumbs-down to the 1937 Peel Commission proposal and the 1947 UN partition plan, and after the 2000 failure of the Ehud Barak-Yasir Arafat-Bill Clinton summit,  to name the three most noteworthy offers, prattling about an end goal of a Palestinian state:

“It is important for us to be talking about and thinking about every aspect of this challenge – not only today but also what happens the day after the conflict in Gaza is over,” Blinken said. “How are we thinking about what happens in Gaza itself? How is it governed? Where does the security come from? How do we begin to rebuild? And critically, how we get on a path to invest in lasting peace. And for us, of course, that has to result in a state for the Palestinians.”

Broaching that subject weeks after the Hamas assault of October 7 demonstrates that Blinken is considerably over his skis.

Don't we need to focus on more immediate concerns such as this? 

Four people were killed and five were wounded Thursday, one of them seriously, in a terror shooting attack claimed by Hamas at the entrance to Jerusalem, police and medics said.

One of those killed was a civilian who fired at the terrorists and was mistaken by other responders for one of the shooters.

The victims were named later as Livia Dikman, 24, Ashdod rabbinical judge Elimelech Wasserman, 73, and Hannah Ifergan, who was in her 60s. The civilian hit by friendly fire was named as Yuval Doron Castleman, 38.

According to police, at around 7:40 a.m., two Palestinian gunmen got out of a vehicle on Weizmann Boulevard at the main entrance to the capital and opened fire at people at a bus stop.

We can take some heart that voices of moral clarity can be found in some corners. To wit, this response to the Blinken-ist approach from Representative Mike Gallagher R-WI:

“In his press conference in Israel today, Secretary Blinken repeatedly emphasized that Hamas cannot retain governance of Gaza. He is wrong. Hamas cannot remain at all. This is an irrefutable point that was avoided throughout his entire speech. 

“It has been nearly two months since Hamas launched a barbaric attack against Israel, but rather than hold Hamas accountable for killing innocent Palestinians and Israelis, the Biden administration seems to spend more time publicly shaming the Israeli government for civilian casualties than punishing a murderous organization. This weakness will not only benefit Hamas but also do something I never believed was possible after the President’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan: worsen our reputation in the Middle East. 

“If this administration wants to 'create conditions for durable and lasting peace' for both Palestinians and Israelis, they must fully support the destruction of Hamas. Hamas's existence is incompatible with the 'two-state solution' they seek because Hamas believes any Jew's existence is incompatible with life. Rather than lay the groundwork for what appears to be the strategic withdrawal of or heavy conditioning of American support for Israeli military efforts, the Biden administration should be doing everything possible to ensure the swift and complete elimination of a terrorist organization that is happily murdering children and putting their citizens in harm's way to achieve more mass murder.”

Exactly so. 

Wobbliness in support of the obvious goal further erodes the US role as guarantor of a rules-based international order, which has been in worsening shape for some time.

 

 

The new Miss Universe is a Nicaraguan; that country's people are exuberant; the government, not so much

 A case of national cognitive dissonance if there ever was one:

Nicaragua’s increasingly isolated and repressive government thought it had scored a rare public-relations victory last week,” reported the Associated Press. Why did Daniel Ortega and his gang think that? Because Miss Nicaragua, Sheynnis Palacios, won the Miss Universe pageant. That is something for a dictatorship to take advantage of.

But there was a problem: Apparently, Señorita Palacios had taken part in pro-democracy demonstrations when a student.

In celebration of her victory in the pageant, Nicaraguans took to the streets, but not in the way the government would have wanted. As the AP said, they waved “the blue-and-white national flag, as opposed to Ortega’s red-and-black Sandinista banner.”

I’m glad that the Sandinistas have their own flag, their own symbol, leaving the national flag to other Nicaraguans.

Further from that AP report:

Vice President and First Lady Rosario Murillo lashed out Wednesday at opposition social-media sites — many run from exile — that celebrated Palacios’ win as a victory for the opposition.

“In these days of a new victory, we are seeing the evil, terrorist commentators making a clumsy and insulting attempt to turn what should be a beautiful and well-deserved moment of pride into destructive coup-mongering,” Murillo said.

Dictatorships want a nation to have no life outside the dictatorship itself. Remember the slogan of Mussolini and his gang: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

Félix Maradiaga is a Nicaraguan democracy leader and a former political prisoner. With other prisoners, he was released earlier this year. They were exiled to the United States, by plane. Let me quote from a piece I wrote about Maradiaga and his ordeal:

The plane was a charter from Omni Air Transport. When it took off, the prisoners — now ex-prisoners — sang the national anthem. And prayed. The moment was “bittersweet,” says Maradiaga. Sweet, because they were out of prison. Bitter, because it would be some time before they were allowed to return to their homeland. (If ever?)

Note something about the national anthem: It is illegal to sing it in Nicaragua. It is also illegal to raise the national flag. Why? Because the dictatorship sees both the anthem and the flag as symbols of the opposition.

Can't sing their actual national anthem or fly their actual national flag, because the Sandinistas want to supplant them with their own brand logo.

I found this noteworthy because the 1979 (highjacked) revolution in Nicaragua, and its impact on US policy toward Central America, was the issue that catalyzed my conversion experience. In the early 1980s, I was a clueless and aimless sort-of left-leaner. But I was taking an increasing interest in world affairs, and I became curious as to just what the Sandinistas were all about. So I read Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family by Shirley Christian. 

Shortly thereafter, I had occasion to hear a presentation by a guy from our local "peace fellowship" who had just returned from a "fact-finding' mission to Nicaragua and El Salvador. He unfailingly toed the Reagan-is-supporting-the-bad-guys-in-the-region line. I squirmed in my seat, awaiting the chance to bring some clarity to the Q&A session.

When the presenter called on me, I said, "Mister, you're leaving out the important part of the story. The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a hardcore Marxist-Leninist organization, and has been since its late-1950s founding by Carlos Fonseca and Tomas Borge. The same is true for the Salvadoran Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front in El Salvador, which, fortunately, has not so far taken over that country."

Gasps and looks of disbelief went up from those seated around me. They couldn't handle the injection of some reality into the proceedings. 

Of course, in the ensuing years, Daniel Ortega lost his gamble that the FSLN could win a fair and Internationally monitored election. Violeta Chamorro, the matriarch of the family that published La Prensa, the newpaper that had opposed the Samoza dictatorship and then the Sandinista regime, became Nicaragua's president. The country's fortunes rose and fell over the years, and in 2007, Ortega again assumed the presidency. But since then, the true nature of his ideology has been too on-display for the peaceniks to make gestures of support toward. He's universally seen as being on the level of Venezuela's Maduro and the regime in Cuba. 

Anyway, congratulations to Ms. Palacios. May she inspire her fellow Nicaraguan citizens to hold steadfast in their resistance to the grim nonsense their government has imposed. 

 

Ginning up climate alarmism is all about tyranny; now they're coming after what's on your dinner plate

 The United Nations is utterly worthless when it comes to calming actual global hot spots, such as Ukraine or Israel. However, it does seem to have the resources for this:

The world’s most-developed nations will be told to curb their excessive appetite for meat as part of the first comprehensive plan to bring the global agrifood industry into line with the Paris climate agreement.

The global food systems’ road map to 1.5C is expected to be published by the United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization during the COP28 summit next month. Nations that over-consume meat will be advised to limit their intake, while developing countries — where under-consumption of meat adds to a prevalent nutrition challenge — will need to improve their livestock farming, according to the FAO.

From farm to fork, food systems account for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions and much of that footprint is linked to livestock farming — a major source of methane, deforestation and biodiversity loss. Although non-binding, the FAO’s plan is expected to inform policy and investment decisions and give a push to the food industry’s climate transition which has lagged other sectors in commitments.

The guidance on meat is intended to send a clear message to governments. But politicians in richer nations typically shy away from policies aimed at influencing consumer behavior, especially where it involves cutting consumption of everyday items.

“Livestock is politically sensitive, but we need to deal with sensitive issues to solve the problem,” said Dhanush Dinesh, the founder of Clim-Eat, which works to accelerate climate action in food systems. “If we don’t tackle the livestock problem, we are not going to solve climate change. The key problem is overconsumption.”

Who's this "we" that has to "tackle the livestock problem"? Is I just the pointy-heads at your agency? Are you sure the world's cattle ranchers and pork producers are going to get on board? What's your plan for making this more effective than the feeble attempt to get China to stop building coal-fired power plants?

Here's a term to make one's hair stand on end: "road map [for a] shared direction of travel":

The plan will be rolled out in three parts over the next few years to eventually include country-specific recommendations.

The road map has the potential to offer a “shared direction of travel” for livestock companies and their investors, mirroring the role of the International Energy Agency’s net zero document for the energy sector, according to FAIRR Initiative, an investor network focused on intensive animal production.

“This road map is needed to bring clarity to both companies and investors so that they can plan for the transition,” said Sofía Condés, head of investor outreach at FAIRR. “The longer companies wait to act, the more drastic and potentially disruptive the transition.”

The FAO’s work is one of several food-focused announcements and pledges that are expected to come out of the COP28 summit in Dubai. While climate summits have tended to steer away from agrifood issues largely due to sensitivities over food security, this year’s organizers are trying to push through a number of initiatives outside the formal talks, said Clim-Eat’s Dinesh.

Anybody who has read LITD for any length of time knows I am most definitely not a MAGA type. That movement has employed the term "globalism" in a manipulative way to justify protectionist economic policy. But there is, on the other hand, a cadre of administrative dweebs who clearly hold the free market in disdain and are constantly devising ways to intrude into the personal lives and decision-making of people who live far from their ivory-tower offices and conference rooms. James Burnham first brought this to our attention in 1941 in The Managerial Revolution. 

My message to them is that when they start eyeing my grill, oven and dinner plate, it's getting real personal. 

This citizen of a sovereign nation - not of some kind of "global community" - says, resoundingly, "Like hell you will."

 

Mike Johnson is the most dangerous kind of Kool-Aid guzzler

 He seems to have had a working moral compass in 2015:

Years before he played a lead role in trying to help President Donald J. Trump stay in office after the 2020 election or defended him in two separate Senate impeachment trials, Speaker Mike Johnson bluntly asserted that Mr. Trump was unfit to serve and could be a danger as president.

“The thing about Donald Trump is that he lacks the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House,” Mr. Johnson wrote in a lengthy post on Facebook on Aug. 7, 2015, before he was elected to Congress and a day after the first Republican primary debate of the campaign cycle.

Challenged in the comments by someone defending Mr. Trump, Mr. Johnson responded: “I am afraid he would break more things than he fixes. He is a hot head by nature, and that is a dangerous trait to have in a Commander in Chief.”

Mr. Johnson, then a state lawmaker in Louisiana, also questioned what would happen if “he decided to bomb another head of state merely disrespecting him? I am only halfway kidding about this. I just don’t think he has the demeanor to be President.”

The comments came at a time when many Republicans who would later become loyalists of Mr. Trump were disparaging him and declaring him unfit to hold the nation’s highest office. Only later did they fall in line and serve as the first-line defenders of his most extreme words and actions.

But then both Johnson and the Very Stable Genius arrived in Washington and Johnson got to know the VSG personally and "grew to appreciate the person that he is and the qualities about him that made him he extraordinary president that he was."

And that conversion experience has led him to already make up his mind regarding who to endorse for 2024:

Speaker Mike Johnson said he's "all in" for former President Donald Trump's 2024 bid to return to the White House during a Tuesday morning appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

"I have endorsed him wholeheartedly," Johnson said, adding he was "one of the closest allies that President Trump had" in Congress during his first term as president.

This guy is the gatekeeper regarding what bills get consideration from the entire House, and he's third in line for the presidency.

This makes some judgement by two Christian intellectuals that I merely said was questionable in a post at Precipice the other day  look downright disturbing:

Currently up at the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s website are two pieces that bother me a fair amount. EPPC has long been a think tank that has particularly won my admiration, but these essays are causing me misgivings.

Of the two essays in question, Patrick T. Brown’s does the far better job of taking into consideration what Never Trumpers find objectionable about the selection of Mike Johnson as House speaker:

The MAGA wing of American conservatism often seems more unified by its enemies than what policies they share. They dislike globalists, a left wing they see as obsessed with race and gender, and Republicans who seem to care more about mainstream approval than “fighting” for conservative victories.

But which battles are worth fighting for can sometimes be nebulous. The right flank of the GOP applies its populist impulses in, at times, opposite directions — some want to protect entitlements, others to reform them. Some seek to dismantle the administrative state, others to use it to advance conservative principles. Some Republicans still talk about balancing the budget or ending the Fed, while others want to see investments in industrial policy or pro-family tax incentives.

This fluid swirl of priorities made the intense drama over replacing former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy largely about internal party dynamics rather than any meaningful policy disagreements.

But that doesn’t mean Rep. Mike Johnson’s elevation as speaker won’t have a significant impact on the priorities of the Republican caucus going forward. No one can question his bona fides as a conservative’s conservative — which may help different factions of the party feel like their concerns are being heard and keep the thin Republican majority in the House together.

Johnson, who represents the Shreveport, Louisiana, area was a relative unknown before this week, even to political insiders. But he has long been an ally of social conservative groups who see their mission as protecting the unborn from abortion and strengthening traditional family values.

His official website proclaims an appreciation for “free markets and free trade agreements,” and hits familiar notes around cutting spending and regulations, reducing the scope of government and ensuring America “remain[s] the strongest military power on earth.”

If McCarthy was willing to wear any number of new skins to position himself as leader of the Republican conference, Johnson can’t hide his spots even if he wanted to — a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who stands up for traditional Republican principles even if others in the party wish the GOP would evolve past them.

Just last month, former President Donald Trump was calling Florida’s six-week abortion ban, signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a “terrible thing” and suggesting he’d be willing to compromise on an issue many conservatives see as one of life and death.

National Review’s Noah Rothman reacted to news of Johnson’s selection by lamenting Republicans had nominated a speaker who “opposes same-sex marriage” (as do about two-thirds of self-described conservatives). Buckets of ink have been spilled about the party’s increasingly complicated relationship with free trade and limited-government economic policy.

Johnson’s selection — at a time when the relationship between social and religious conservatives, establishment-wing Republicans and the MAGA movement had shown signs of fraying — may prove to have long-lasting ramifications. He has introduced bills seeking to prevent public schools from teaching children under 10 about sexuality and “gender ideology,” to prevent minors from being taken across state lines to procure an abortion without a parent’s consent and to require men to pay child support during pregnancy.

But when Brown gets around to describing the crux of what disturbs non-MAGA conservatives, he does so with kid gloves:

As many politicians have, Johnson has made some statements that strike many today as tone-deaf. Like many Republicans, he played footsie with conspiracy theorists after the 2020 election and his policy stances on cutting government spending may not be popular with the median voter.

“Played footsie”? Really? 

He was up to his ears in culpability for what happened on January 6, 2021:

Johnson, who was the GOP caucus vice chair and is an ally of Trump, led theamicus brief signed by more than 100 House Republicans in support of a Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate the 2020 election results in four swing states Biden won: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The lawsuit, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, called on the Supreme Court to delay the electoral vote in the four states so investigations on voting issues could continue amid Trump’s refusal to concede his loss. It alleged that the four states changed their voting rules without their legislatures’ express approval before the 2020 election.

Johnson at the time sought support from his GOP colleagues for the lawsuit, sending them an email with the subject line “Time-sensitive request from President Trump.”

“President Trump called me this morning to express his great appreciation for our effort to file an amicus brief in the Texas case on behalf of concerned Members of Congress,” Johnson wrote in the December 2020 email, which was obtained by NBC News.

“He specifically asked me to contact all Republican Members of the House and Senate today and request that all join on to our brief,” he continued. “He said he will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review.”

. . . As rioters were overtaking the Capitol on Jan. 6, Johnson told Fox News in an interview that there was "nothing unusual" about Republican lawmakers' objections to the Electoral College certification and that "there’ve been many objections over the years.”

“I’m here as one of the advocates on the Republican side, stating our concerns about this election and the allegations of fraud and the irregularity and all that," he said.

The other piece, by Andrew T. Walker, disturbed me even more. Its tone is along the lines of well-well-guess-all-the-secularists-will-have-to-hold-their-noses:

The American project ended on Wednesday with the ascendency of Congressman Mike Johnson to speaker of the House.

That’s what the political left is telling the American people.

The carnival barkers who warn of so-called “Christian Nationalism” have fired up their presses to do what they always do—find yet additional justifications to ridicule and exclude conservative Christians (mind you, from the same crowd championing “inclusivity”). All this is done under the banner of “analysis,” and the “analysts” function as America’s self-appointed defenders of democracy.

The label “Christian Nationalist” has been invoked over and over again in the last few days to describe Speaker Johnson. Bill Maher compared Speaker Johnson’s prayer life to the same “voices” allegedly running through the Maine mass shooter’s head. So, it’s clear that our elites are very obviously reasonable and cool-headed in their analysis. It’s as though the Bat Signal alert has flickered, churning out the same talking points whenever conservative Christianity is brought into political discourse.

My disappointment is profound. Walker is an EPPC scholar I’ve particularly admired. He’s always demonstrated a healthy set of priorities, as well as depth of faith formation. But I cannot understand why Johnson’s election denialism isn’t the glowing red factor of most importance for him. It seems to run counter to what I’ve come to know of Walker through his whole body of writings. 

Wanted: some Christians able to resist any kind of glossing-over of cult thrall, much less the cult thrall itself. 

It is so effing late in the day.