The institutional Right in America is at least as sick as it's been for the last eight years

 What started as an infection has become a state of sepsis.

We cannot predict, here in late winter 2023, whether Donald Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee next summer, but that still seems seems the most likely scenario as of now.

That right there is enough to substantiate the header of this post. To anyone not willfully choking down his or her most basic sense of decency and humanity, it's obvious that Donald Trump was far and away the worst president the United States has ever had, that he only ever entered politics to find a new arena for self-glorification, that he regards meanness as a virtue, and that he has no understanding of actual conservatism. 

But he may not be the institutional Right's biggest problem now. 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is now not only happy to give Marjorie Taylor-Greene committee assignments, he says of the Georgia representative "If you're going to be in a fight, you want Marjorie Taylor-Greene in your foxhole . . . I will never leave that woman. I will always take care of her." 

My state, Indiana, seems like a nice, clean-living, flyover kind of place, right? The kind of place where Republicans are not only sensible but occasionally icons of conservative leadership:

When former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels (R) announced he was exploring a 2024 bid to succeed Sen. Mike Braun (R), who is running for governor, Republicans should have been elated. Daniels (a Post Opinions contributing columnist) was a whirlwind of reform in the governor’s mansion. He ended collective bargaining for state employees, privatized Indiana’s toll road, established one of the country’s largest school choice program for low-income students and created a conservative alternative to Medicaid that gave citizens more control over their health-care choices. He inherited a $700 million deficit but left the state with a $2 billion budget surplus — achieved while he implemented the biggest tax cut in Indiana history. Then, as president of Purdue University, he earned a reputation as the United States’ most innovative college president. Daniels rejected vaccine mandates and covid lockdowns, replaced full-time dining hall employees with student workers, scrapped the vast fleet of university-owned buses in favor of a private contractor and froze tuition for 10 years.

In other words, Daniels is exactly the kind of bold, thoughtful conservative reformer voters flocked to in 2022. And he was well positioned to win the GOP nomination. A December poll showed him leading Rep. Jim Banks — a Trump loyalist who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election — by 22 points.

But, smart guy that Daniels is, he saw what a sewer his party had become and gave a pass to a possible Senate run:

Then came the RINO hunters. The Club for Growth released an adexcoriating Daniels as a tax-and-spend “old-guard Republican clinging to the old ways of the bad old days.” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted “The establishment is trying to recruit weak RINO Mitch Daniels” to run for Senate, adding that “he would be Mitt Romney 2.0.”

Will county-wide party organizations around the state shun Banks? Hell, no, they'll invite him to their dinners, luncheons and various other events with enthusiasm. Candidates for more local offices will proudly pose for photos with him.

And because Indiana is reliably red, the US Senate will have yet another election denier in its ranks. 

There are now two Republican presidential candidates, the most recent being Nikki Haley.

I was once impressed by Haley. She put in a solid stint as state representative and South Carolina governor (with laudable positions such as being pro-life and for school choice), but where she really came into her own was as the US representative to the UN. She fiercely defended Israel, pointed out that Russia was blocking the International Atomic Energy Agency from seeing that Iran was complying with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and brought attention to the plight of the Uyghurs in China. 

But she, like McCarthy, made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago weeks after the January 2021 debacle (but not until after she'd given a February 2021 interview saying that the Very Stable Genius "went down a path he shouldn't have" and that Republicans "shouldn't have followed him"), establishing a pattern which she's now continuing as a presidential candidate. On Wednesday of this week, she told the Fox & Friends hosts that "President Trump is my friend, I'm not going to kick sideways in this race." She's also signed on to be a speaker at this year's CPAC, an event that has gone from being the premier gathering for principled, coherent conservatives to a complete sewer. (You know who's giving the Reagan address? Kari F---ing Lake.)

On the media front, it has come to light that the most ate-up MAGA hosts on Fox News are utter phonies, as evidenced by their among-themselves reactions to the VSG's election-fraud claims in the aftermath of his defeat:

On the night of Jan. 6, 2021, Fox News host Tucker Carlson referred to then-President Donald Trump as “a demonic force” in a text to his producer after Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol that day.

It was one of many revelations in a filing by Dominion Voting Systems, which is suing Fox News for defamation and seeking $1.6 billion in damages.

At issue are claims Fox News hosts and guests made shortly after the 2020 presidential election. Some of them suggested or stated outright that Dominion’s machines were part of a scheme to steal the contest from Trump, who claimed the election was rigged.

Two days after the 2020 election with the result yet to be determined, Carlson fumed via text about Fox News calling Arizona for Joe Biden. Dominion’s filing notes the network was taking heavy criticism from conservatives at the time. According to a text in the filing (page 19), the Arizona call seemed to cause consternation among the network’s biggest stars:

Fox Hosts Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity immediately understood the threat to them personally. Carlson wrote his producer Alex Pfeiffer on November 5: “We worked really hard to build what we have. Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.” He added that he had spoken with Laura and [S]ean a minute ago and they are highly upset,” Carlson noted: “At this point we’re getting hurt no matter what.” Pfeiffer responded: It’s a hard needle to thread, but I really think many on our side are being reckless demagogues right now. Tucker replied: Of course they are. We’re not going to follow them.” And he added: What [Trump]’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”

Two months later, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building to overturn the election while Congress was inside certifying the results.

The filing includes a text from Carlson to his producer  later that day (page 43) in which the Fox News host calls Trump “a demonic force”:

After January 6, trying to thread the needle between the truth and pressure from his viewers and sponsors became even more difficult. Late on January 6, Carlson texted with Pfeiffer that Trump is “a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us.” On January 26, Carlson invited his leading sponsor Mike Lindell on his show, where Lindell spouted these same conspiracies on air after previewing them for Carlson’s staff during a pre-interview.

On his show, Carlson has downplayed the Capitol riot and even referred to it as an “election justice protest.”

Elsewhere in the filing is a text where Carlson tells Sean Hannity that Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich should be “fired” over a fact check of Trump’s election lie.

“Please get her fired,” he said. “Seriously.”

This kind of two-facedness was seriously stressing out at least one Fox star's producer:

An exasperated producer for Laura Ingraham texted a Fox News executive shortly after the 2020 election to say the host was not heeding his warnings that claims of voter fraud were “bs.”

As votes were still being tabulated in the days after the election in November 2020, then-President Donald Trump falsely claimed the contest was being stolen from him. Several Fox News hosts followed suit and also platformed a slew of election deniers. In particular, Dominion Voting Systems came under heavy scrutiny from the network’s talent, who suggested the company’ machines were part of a conspiracy to steal the election from Trump.

Dominion is suing Fox News and seeking $1.6 billion in damages.

A filing by the company on Thursday includes texts from Tommy Firth (pages 29-30), a producer for The Ingraham Angle. Firth tells a Fox News executive that Ingraham insists on pushing “bs”:

By November 12, Dominion became a focal point of discussion within multiple shows at Fox. Spurred by the November 8 Bartiromo broadcast, the wild Dominion allegations entered the mainstream. That day, Ingraham’s producer Tommy Firth texted Ron Mitchell, one of the Fox executives responsible for overseeing Ingraham’s show. Firth bluntly captured the dilemma: “This dominion shit is going to give me a fucking aneurysm–as many times as I’ve told Laura it’s bs, she sees shit posters and trump tweeting about it–[REDACTED] Mitchell responds, “This is the Bill Gates/microchip angle to voter fraud.” Firth replies [REDACTED]. Later in the day, Ron Checks in: “How’s it going [with] the kooks?” 

Laura concluded that the s--- posters were her bread and butter. 

What kinds of signs might there be out there that responsible conservatism is mounting a countervailing force to this rot?

The Principles First summit coming up in early March offers some encouragement. The lineup of speakers includes some truly admirable folks: Arthur Brooks, Tom Nichols, Adam Kinzinger, Denver Riggleman, Geoff Duncan, Sarah Isgur, Alyssa Farah Griffin. I'm a little wary of the fact that the list is rather top-heavy with Bulwark folks, though. There's still some principled conservatism to bet found there on occasion. I know the likes of Mona Charen and Charlie Sykes are seriously in search of a workable definition of conservatism for our time. But co-founder and editor-at-large Bill Kristol has completed a drift completely away from the right side of the spectrum: 

You may recall him as the former gatekeeper of Republican orthodoxy and much of its intelligentsia; architect of neoconservative foreign policy; adviser to US presidents; pundit; smooth-talker; operator. Now hugely popular among MSNBC Democrats, alert to racism and sexism and homophobia, Kristol has, these last few years, performed a spectacular ideological self-reinvention that makes J.D. Vance look like a man of unflinching consistency. And he has never even attempted to explain why.

And Jonathan V. Last- he who thinks Mike Pence deserves some kind of hero status for merely fulfilling his constitutional duty on January 6, 2021 - is also on the roster.

Heath Mayo, the Principles First founder, kind of stepped out of his lane last year when he decided, on Twitter, to castigate congressional Republicans for giving the thumbs down to  the Respect for Marriage Act. His grounds for doing so were that our society needs to foster stable marriage no matter what it looks like. So much for the definition of marriage to which all of humankind had adhered for thousands of years until five minutes ago.

So Principles First is going to run up against the rabid attacks of the far more numerous Neo-Trumpists for being squishy. And the latter will have a point, insofar as all the PF defense of election integrity, support for Ukraine, and fealty to bedrock American institutions does not hide the gaping hole in the PF vision for conservatism's future. Where's the understanding that tradition and transcendent order are key to the conservative enterprise?

So the thoroughly infected institutional Right is going to continue to prevail on that side of the spectrum.

The rot on the Right is one of the two pieces of political-level evidence that our civilization is past its peak and drained of all its nobility and humanity. 

The other, of course, is the Left, which is equally poisonous. 

Take your pick, post-Americans: identity politics militancy, climate alarmism and wealth redistribution, or completely unhinged nuts, cowards and sycophants. 

 

 

 

Two heartening developments on a bleak landscape

 My latest at Precipice is on a familiar theme there:  our culture’s increasingly entrenched view that Christian faith is irrelevant - to anything. I'd say the nutshell paragraph is this:

We have to make the ordinary post-modern American see that he or she has a need for something beyond the self. To the self-defined and validated self, the whole notion of sin and redemption is utterly foreign. I repeat, utterly foreign.

The post begins with a mention of an Atlantic piece by pastor, theologian and apologist Tim Keller in which he expresses optimism about a way to reverse this set of circumstances. His prescription is three-part: the escape from political captivity, a union of "extraordinary prayer," and there distinguishing of the Gospel from moralism.

The rest of my piece is about how it seems to me that there has to be a step before these, some way to reach those who find a way to get away from anybody who brings Jesus into any kind of conversation.

Alas, Keller himself is continuing to look at this challenge, and to that end has founded the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, an organization within the Gospel Coalition. 

It's new, but its plans include getting unprecedentedly systematic about finding out why people have left the church, sharing best practices regarding how to welcome the modern secular citizen into it, and taking an apologetics crafted to speak to such a citizen to where he or she hangs out.

If anyone is qualified to head up such a daunting undertaking, it's Keller, the author of The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism and Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical. 

I look forward to staying abreast of the Center's activities. 

Another development that deserves encouragement is the Global Methodist Church.  It was formally established last May, principally with the guidance of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, which has been around for a few years and came into being as the tensions - primarily, but not exclusively, over the matter of human sexuality - in the United Methodist Church were approaching fever pitch. The WCA created a Transitional Leadership Council. The Council's 16 members come from North America, Africa, and various parts of Asia.

The GMC intends to renew focus on worship of the triune God. It's too early to try to size up which worldwide body, the GMC or the UMC, is going to be more influential, but the enthusiasm with which the GMC is being launched is encouraging to see.

In a world starved for the truth, both of these phenomena deserve our prayers. As they flourish, may they glorify the God that gave rise to them.

Saturday roundup

 An essay entitled "Three Cheers for Gradualism" at Persuasion (which, by the way, is a great site) merits wide discussion. It's taken from a new book by its authors, Greg Berman and Audrey Fox, entitled Gradual: The Case for Incrementalism in a Radical Age. The main point is that we would perhaps get more constructive stuff done if we weren't driven by grandiose ambition:

What are the alternatives to incremental reform? For some people, the answer is that government should do nothing. But even those who are completely satisfied with the status quo should recognize that change is inescapable. As Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, the Italian author of The Leopard, once wrote: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” Others advance utopian schemes, such as prison or police abolition, that generate buzz on the internet but have almost no chance of real-world implementation.

But perhaps the most seductive alternative to gradual change is what Charles Lindblom, a political science professor at Yale and one of the leading theorists of incrementalism, called the “synoptic” approach, which seeks to fashion comprehensive solutions to problems, often driven by centralized planners. The fundamental weakness of this approach is that it requires access to high-quality information, agreement about underlying values, and effective decision-making on the part of government planners. In the real world, these conditions rarely, if ever, exist. Much more common are the opposite: bad data, furiously competing interests, and flawed decision makers subject to the same cognitive biases as the rest of us.

There are numerous advantages to gradual reform, in contrast to utopianism and comprehensive planning. Instead of pursuing broad, revolutionary change in a single master stroke, incrementalism focuses on addressing concrete problems in a piecemeal fashion. Following the scientific method, incremental reform allows for new ideas to be tested, evaluated, and honed over time.

Crucially, gradualists know how little they know. Anyone trying to understand a given problem these days is necessarily missing crucial information because there is simply too much information to process effectively. Gradualists acknowledge that, inevitably, errors happen. Building on this insight, an iterative, incremental process allows for each successive generation of reformers to learn from, and improve upon, their predecessors’ efforts.

Paul Kingsnorth's Substack The Abbey of Misrule is fast becoming a must-read for me.  His latest post there - and indeed, his overall output there - explores the same theme that drives my writing at Precipice: How long can the West be recognizably Western without a spiritual lodestar?

My readers will know, whether they want to or not, that over the last few years I have become an Orthodox Christian. This has, as it is designed to, re-orientated my entire worldview. I’m able to see things now that I couldn’t see before; and one of those things is that no society in human history, anywhere, has ever survived for any length of time without a religious core. 

I’ve circled back to this theme several times over the last couple of years, perhaps most directly in this essay. I think that every culture has a throne at its heart, on which sits its deity. We have dethroned the deity that built the West - that would be Christ - and you don’t have to be a Christian to understand that a culture with an empty throne at its heart is headed for a spiritual crisis, which will echo up through every aspect of its everyday life. This is where we are. 

I thought about this a few days ago as I read this new essay by Sebastian Milbank in The Critic magazine, exploring the implications of the end of Western Christendom. It’s worth a read whatever your beliefs. ‘Post-Christian Western civilisation,’ writes Milbank, ‘is increasingly unable to articulate what it believes in, ever more subservient to its direst foes and rivals, able to find moral purpose only in deconstructing its own ideals and achievements.’ He’s spot on. That ‘Christian civilisation’, though, is not coming back any time soon: so where does that leave us? And what of the faith that founded it, which so often today seems exhausted, corrupted or simply irrelevant? How should a Christian respond to the dangerous spiritual vacuum of the times?

I’ve attempted my own small version of an answer this week in a new essay in First Things magazine on the need for a ‘wild Christianity’. Followers of my essays here will have heard me say some of this before, and you can be sure I’ll be saying it again … but this is my most focused attempt so far to argue that in order to go forward we first need to go back: back to the roots (literally) of the old faith here in the West. Back before the might of medieval Rome, back before ‘Christendom’ and all of its worldly trappings. Back to the woods and the caves and the islands that formed the Christianity of the ‘green desert’ of the early warriors of the faith. 

At Nature and Grace (I'm sharing a lot of Substacks today, aren't I?),  Joel Carini reviews the book The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory by Abbigail Favale: 

Favale’s knowledge of the specific disciplines of sexuality and gender studies, philosophy, and theology, and her apt literary and mythological references reflect the fruit of the kind of bookish wisdom we partisans of the liberal arts continue to believe in.

Consider her reference to Ovid’s Metamorphoses:

We are living in the Age of Pygmalion, that master artist from Ovid’s Metamorphoseswho wants a wife but despises real women. He picks up his hammer and chisel and constructs his ideal out of stone. He lusts after her; his image of woman is more desirable than the reality. In the original myth, Pygmalion wants to marry her, to bring her to his bed; in our time, Pygmalion wants to be her. Instead of a sculptor’s tools, he works with scalpel and syringe. Instead of stone, he carves his fantasy into his own flesh. (159)

I am speechless. We are living out errors that were adequately addressed and cautioned against by ancient mythology, and not only the secular public but even the Christian church is ignorant.

Natasha Crain lays out "7 Problems With the He Gets Us Campaign":

The Jesus of this campaign is nothing more than an inspiring human who relates to our problems and cares a whole lot about a culturally palatable version of social justice.

Some bracing findings from the American Enterprise Institute's Survey Center on American Life in a report entitled "From Swiping to Sexting: The Enduring Gender Divide in American Dating and Relationships":

The January 2023 American Perspectives Survey sheds some light on dating preferences, experiences, and perspectives. The national survey of more than 5,000 adults age 18 and older, including nearly 800 single adults, finds that Americans have strong dating preferences when it comes to living at home, being unemployed, and smoking. These are especially salient considerations for women. Politics is another important consideration for many Americans, especially committed partisans. Most Republicans and Democrats say they would be much less interested in dating those of the opposite political persuasion.

Dating practices that frequently grab headlines, such as ghosting and sexting, are not all that widespread, and, in the case of sexting, it may occur less frequently today. Generation Z is significantly less likely than millennials are to report sending sexually explicit images of themselves to someone they are dating.

The survey also finds that infidelity is a disquietingly common experience, especially for women. Nearly half of women say that a partner or spouse has been unfaithful, including more than six in 10 black women.

The new survey also reveals that, despite the growing popularity of online dating sites and apps, many users feel ambivalent about what they have to offer. Among the roughly one in four Americans who have ever used an online dating platform, experiences are mixed. Roughly as many users report a positive experience as a negative one. Women are especially critical of online dating, reporting significantly more negative experiences than men.

Even as online dating has made it easier than ever to become romantically involved with a complete stranger, younger Americans appear increasingly interested in dating people they already know. Young adults are more than twice as likely as seniors to report that they were friends with their partner or spouse before they started dating. Most older Americans say their spouse or partner was once a stranger.

The Rise of Single America

No social change has altered the fabric of American life so profoundly as the decline of marriage. In 2021, only about half of Americans, with slightly more men than women, report being married. The US Census Bureau reports a steady decline in marriage rates going back 50 years.[1]

Reasons for marriage’s decline abound. As professional opportunities for women grew over the past few decades, they became more financially independent, reducing the immediate economic necessity of marriage. Shifting views about gender roles and legal changes to divorce law also contributed. National economic disruptions that disproportionately affected working-class men have also been cited as a factor.[2] Additionally, growing suspicion of—and in some cases outright opposition to—traditional social arrangements among young adults may reduce interest in marriage. A rising number of young people raised by divorced parents may have contributed an overall feelings of skepticism about marriage as well.

Marriage is also facing increasing competition from other types of social arrangements such as cohabitation. The number of Americans cohabitating with their romantic partner has more than doubled over the past three decades.[3] It has become a widely accepted practice, particularly among younger Americans. Nearly six in 10 younger Americans report having cohabitated with a romantic partner.[4]

Nowhere is the decline of marriage more evident than in the lives of young adults. Overall, more than one in three Americans have never been married. Only 25 percent of younger adults (age 18 to 34) are currently married, a dramatic decline over the past few decades. In 1978, younger adults were almost twice as likely to be married (59 percent).[5]

Although more Americans today have never been married, many do not describe their relationship status as single. More than three in 10 (35 percent) Americans have never married, but only about one in five (21 percent) are currently single. What’s more, many Americans who have never married have been in committed relationships for years. Over half (53 percent) of Americans who have never been married and are currently living with their partner have been in the relationship for at least five years. Nearly one in three (32 percent) Americans living with their partner have been together for at least 10 years.

Another report full of bracing findings can be found at Nextgov. The title tells us much:  "Large Numbers of Americans Want a Strong, Rough, Anti-democratic Leader." A taste of what it reveals:

In our study, we asked about behaviors that foreshadow the early stages of democratic decline. For example, we asked citizens whether they thought that “the only way our country can solve its current problems is by supporting tough leaders who will crack down on those who undermine American values.” We also asked about explicit violations of democratic principles, like shutting down news organizations and “bending the rules to get things done.”

By design, some of these questions allow citizens to use their own interpretations of actions like “crackdowns” and “bending the rules.” These types of practices can take a number of different specific forms, as the cases of Venezuela, Turkey and Hungary illustrate. Our aim was to determine whether citizens were inclined toward leaders who seek power by promising retribution toward some groups and benefits for others, because this rhetorical strategy is often a precursor to explicit violations of democratic institutions.

Likewise, the phrasing of our questions is designed to allow respondents to rely on their own ideas about the meaning of “American values,” and “people like you.” Our interest was in what people would enable leaders to do to protect their idea of America and the Americans with whom they identify.

We found that people who want this type of protective but anti-democratic style of leadership were by far the most inclined to want leaders who would take uncompromising, decisive action. These people did not merely want their side to win a political competition for power. They were literally willing to say they would “bend the rules” to do it, a clear violation of the democratic ideal that everyone must follow the same rules.

For each item, we found that at least a third of the people we polled agreed or strongly agreed with these subtle or explicit violations of democratic norms. 

Here are my three most recent essays at Precipice. 

"The Part You Have To Do All On Your Own" is about the moment of reckoning, which is a moment of solitude. Your family, friends and church won't be standing beside you when you face your Creator.  

"And Then What?" considers what might happen when the dog finally catches the car - that is, when the progressive revolution is complete and all other worldviews are stomped into the dust. 

"All I Know Is That We'll Have to Lead With Love"  implores Christians to be candid about what effective evangelizing can possibly look like in a world that generally doesn't give a diddly about the Gospel message.

The obvious moral imperative for the West to see that Ukraine wins

 Opposition to Western help for Ukraine is interesting in that it spans the ideological spectrum. And the Neo-Trumpist Right, the neo-Chomskyite Left and the Kissingerian Realists have one big reason in common for their position: the risk of escalation to a NATO vs. Russia nuclear level is just too great. The MAGA folks also claim that support Ukraine ignores the voice of the American people, who, polls say, are more concerned with inflation and the crisis at the southern border. The moral-equivalence types stress their position that the US and the West generally have to get used to the idea of a multipolar world in which Russia, China and Iran are going to have a say equal to that of the West in how things go on the world stage.

But they're all wrong, because they have an amoral basis for coming to their conclusion.

Ukraine had a corruption problem for much of the first two decades of its post-Soviet independence, but its cultural flourishing made it clear that it had a Western orientation.

Consider the comedic films and comedic television that were coming out during that time. And consider the high profile of one Volodymyr Zelensky in those genres.

And before any of the above-mentioned opposition-to-supporting-Ukraine types attempt to dismiss Zelensky as a lightweight, let them be reminded he also has a law degree, and that his father was head of the Department of Cybernetics at Kryvyi Ric State University, and that his mother has engineering credentials. His wife is an architect, pianist and co-founder, with him, of the television entertainment company Kvartal 95. 

It's pretty clear from photographs and interviews that they and their kids comprise a solid family that likes to have fun.

He was so popular that when he registered Servant of the People as the name of a political party in order to prevent anyone else from using the name of his sitcom in that fashion, a groundswell of support for him actually running for president happened. 

He was proving himself as a president of integrity even prior to the Russian invasion. Recall the poise with which he handled Trump's I'll-send-the-already-authorized-aid-if-you'll-help-me-find-dirt-on-the-Bidens phone call. 

And he's taking measures to address the above-mentioned corruption.

Who can say that, should the current invasion get resolved in a way that allows Ukraine to start healing and rebuilding, Zelensky will still be the right guy at the helm? The Brits, after all, did not re-elect Churchill as prime minister mere months after he'd helped achieve victory in the greatest global conflagration in history. 

But he's exactly the right man for the moment.

He says repeatedly that Ukraine will settle for nothing less than restoration of all lands seized by Russia since 2014 to status as Ukrainian territory. That includes Crimea. 

This is why he's been so insistent that the West supply tanks, armored personnel carriers, air-defense systems and other serious weaponry, which the West is now doing. The military support may even include fighter jets; some groundwork is already being laid for such a move. 

 While the Crimean peninsula's status has been up for grabs throughout history - its annexation by Russia in 1783, the victory over Russia of a Western-Ottoman alliance in the 1850s war for it, and the 1954 transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by the Kremlin, and the granting of a fair amount of political elbow room since the fall of the USSR - it's pretty clearly in Ukraine's orbit. 

More fundamentally, the way Russia went about disputing that - invading and taking over - ran counter to the generally recognized rules of the world order of the last 70-plus years, as codified in the documents of various international organizations. 

And then came the exponentially more flagrant violation of those rules in February 2022.

Defense of an international consensus that nations' sovereignty ought to be held sacrosanct or discussed in proper governmental channels is what is really at stake in the Ukraine situation. To compromise on any square foot of seized territory would be to set a precedent.

And what of the specter of nuclear escalation?

Well, here we get to a very large philosophical question. Is it better to dodge that bullet and live to see another day's prospects for a better world, or to have the eternal record book show that one did the right thing? That really depends, it seems to me, on whether one believes in an actual eternal record book. 

And that's why I can't take anti-support types of either the Right or the Left seriously. They're fine with some kind of legitimization of what Putin has done. What kind of argument that's not coldly utilitarian justifies that?

I've written before about the moral parallel between this situation and that faced by the inhabitants of the Alamo in the 1830s:

I will say that if you've never spent much time in Texas, or specifically in San Antonio, don't mess with booking your hotel room in some chain place or swanky modern place. Get a room at the Menger Hotel, which was built in 1859, just as San Antonio was becoming a city and beginning to surround the Alamo area. 

And then go to the Cinemax across the street and watch the re-enactment movie about the Alamo massacre. 

In 1836, when the battle took place, people - yes, of Northern European extraction - had been settling into the compound called the Alamo that had originally been established as a religious community for many years. Davy Crockett, from Tennessee, had been among them. After Mexico's securing of independence from Spain in 1821 and the subsequent rise of the dictator-general Santa Ana, that land had become an expansionist victory for the newly established nation-state. But at that point, there was not much but wilderness around the compound, and the people within had come to develop a strong sense of it being home.

Scouts from the Alamo went out and came back with reports that Santa Ana's forces were coming northward, and were within a couple of weeks of reaching where they were. 

Things came to a head after one guy in the Alamo community, William Barrett Travis, called all the men into the courtyard after dinner one evening. He took his sword out of its sheath and drew a line in the dirt. All those who were with him were to so indicate by coming over the line. He said that if anyone had a problem with the collective decision to defend the walls of the Alamo, he would respect that decision, and no hostility would be shown to that man. One man took that position, and the community wished him well as he walked away. 

There is a statue of Travis unsheathing his sword in the Menger Hotel lobby. 

What happened when Santa Ana's forces arrived was a complete bloodbath. Literally, as in blood flowing down the walls. Not a single man defending the Alamo survived. 

Mexican forces rounded up the women and children and huddled them in an inner chamber. 

The whole Mexican victory soon became moot, however, as Texas won a territory-wide victory and became an independent nation for nine years, and then part of the United States of America.

At this point, the Alamo, in the 1830s a lone outpost surrounded by wilderness, is in the middle of downtown San Antonio.

The world needs to ratchet down its level of cynicism and icy-heartedness, and this is where that effort needs to begin. Ukraine was just sitting there, being a sovereign country, with all the issues and foibles attendant to any and all earthly nations comprised of fallen human beings, when it got invaded by a neighbor, pure and simple. That's not right, and letting a wrong persist runs counter to God's design for His universe. 

A subject about which no one will speak plainly

 First, some thoughts on the State of the Union address more broadly.

I didn't watch it, and all reportage I've come across about it today confirms my decision.

It also confirms the likelihood that I'll once again sit out the election next year. The essence of each of the major US political parties in their present forms was brought into sharp relief: The Democrats remain the party of wealth redistribution, climate alarmism, and identity politics militancy. The Republicans are a collection of cowards, sycophants, nuts and out-and-out zoo animals. 

But I want to discuss a Washington Examiner piece by Tiana Lowe that deserves wide readership. It's short, and it's some bracing straight talk about that perennial third rail: Social Security.

She starts by recounting what President Biden had to say about it last night:

"So tonight, let’s all agree to stand up for seniors," Biden said. "Stand up and show them we will not cut Social Security. We will not cut Medicare. Those benefits belong to the American people. They earned them. If anyone tries to cut Social Security, I will stop them. And if anyone tries to cut Medicare, I will stop them."

Lowe point out that this is a lot of sound and fury over something that ain't even happening:

But not only is Biden arguing against a straw man here — sadly, no sitting Republicans actually are pledging to cut entitlements — but he is also forgetting that doing nothing is tantamount to a massive cut of Social Security benefits!

Why is that the case?

Absent a major reform from Social Security, the program will become insolvent in a little more than a decade. Upon insolvency, benefits will be slashed by 20% to 25% across the board.

Okay, nobody is talking about cutting benefits or structurally reforming the program. Well, where do we look next to face our country's debt-and-deficit precipice?

If Republicans wish to balance the budget within the decade without touching entitlements or defense spending, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects Congress would need to slash 85% of the rest of the budget.

Could tax hikes fill in the void of the Social Security Trust Fund once insolvency hits? Maybe — if Democrats and Republicans were comfortable with jacking up the payroll tax by 25%.

This is what happens when enough people adopt the mindset that government ought to be about the task of ensuring that people can age gracefully.  

 

 

 

The thorniness of extricating the nugget of truth from the tangle of other considerations

 This post is about two people I simultaneously find gravely problematic and admirable. They are Rod Dreher and Ron DeSantis.

Dreher is editor of The American Conservative and has a record of penning ringing defenses of that which is inarguably defensible. He distilled his concern about what the marginalization of Christianity was going to mean for practicing believers into an important 2017 book, The Benedict Option.  He wrote the introduction to Carl Trueman's The Rise of the Modern. Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism and the Road to Sexual Revolution, an exhaustive analysis of how we got to a point at which transgendered bathrooms were considered as something to which there was a right. 

But he has become enamored of this flimsy notion of a "national conservatism," to the extent of not only expressing admiration for Victor Orban, but moving to Hungary. This move really mars his standing as an articulator of he good, right and true.

Good Rod shows up today in a piece for his magazine in which he properly lauds Florida governor Ron DeSantis for serving notice that that state's educational system will not brook DEI or an African American Studies curriculum driven by the thought of Robin G. Kelly and Keeyanga Yamahtta Taylor. 

Dreher effectively conveys the significance of DeSantis's stance:

I can hardly believe that a leading Republican politician actually has backbone in the fight against wokeness. But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is the real deal. Fresh news out of the Sunshine State:

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a series of proposals for Florida’s public universities at the State College of Florida on Tuesday.

One aspect of the proposal would eliminate all Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) “bureaucracies” at public universities.

DeSantis said his administration will propose core course requirements that are “focused on giving them the foundation so they can think for themselves” and will be grounded in “actual philosophy that has shaped western civilization.”

“We don’t want students to go through, at taxpayer expense, and graduate with a degree in zombie studies,” he said. “And so this is gonna make a difference.”

Watch the video of his announcement here.

It's happening. It's actually happening. The Bad Guys are going to scream bloody murder, but finally -- finally -- we have a political leader who is taking a hard stand against these woke commissars. DEI bureaucracies at American universities have exploded in recent years, in part because the woke cartel has intimidated state legislators and others by calling them bigots who don't care about "marginalized" students if they resist. Are these bureaucracies actually making campuses better, or are they making schools more conformist by instituting programs and policies that reinforce a sense of grievance, and intimidate dissenters into silence? Would the ton of money spent on these apparatchiks' salaries be better spent hiring more teachers, or raising the salaries of professors? Finally, DeSantis's move is going to force these militants to justify their existence. 

He offers a taste of the screaming of bloody murder to which he alludes:

Expect more garbage like this New York Times op-ed slandering DeSantis's ban on the AP African American History course. The author fumes:

An unrelenting assault on truth and freedom of expression in the form of laws that censor and suppress the viewpoints, histories and experiences of historically marginalized groups, especially Black and L.G.B.T.Q. communities, is underway throughout the country, most clearly in Florida. The state’s Department of Education recently rejected a pilot Advanced Placement African American studies course from being offered in Florida’s public high schools.

Under Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “Stop WOKE” law — which would limit students and teachers from learning and talking about issues related to race and gender — Florida is at the forefront of a nationwide campaign to silence Black voices and erase the full and accurate history and contemporary experiences of Black people.

Bullsh*t. I'll tell you why in a second. One more quote from the essay:

It’s no coincidence that these attacks are targeting not just historically marginalized people but also our very experiences of intersectionality. Mr. DeSantis recently rubbished the inclusion of “queer theory” in the A.P. African American studies course that was rejected, seeming to deny the need for future generations to learn about the contributions of queer Black American icons like Pauli Murray, Bayard Rustin, Audre Lorde and James Baldwin. Florida’s H.B. 1557, more widely known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, also limits conversations about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms and, like “Stop WOKE,” makes clear that the State of Florida seeks to suppress and target people’s identities.

Why is it BS? Because DeSantis clearly said the other day, when he announced his ban on the course, that he is not going to allow the AP course to propagandize Florida students for tendentious, highly ideological reads on black history, under the guise of teaching about black history (which he fully supports). The lie here is that if you don't give these ideological culture warriors everything they want, then you must be a BIGOT. In fact, DeSantis is doing his job: making sure that the public school students of Florida aren't forced to read neo-Marxist propaganda as history. 

He ends by sharing this encouraging development:

UPDATE: Well now!:

One of Governor Ron DeSantis’ most vocal critics supports the state’s decision to reject the College Board’s AP African American Studies course for high schoolers. When asked his thoughts on the recent controversy, Leon County Commissioner Bill Proctor [who is black -- RD] blasted the course as “trash,” according to Tallahassee Reports.

“There is grave concern about the tone and the tenor of leadership’s voice from the highest spaces in our state being hostile to teaching of African American history. Well frankly I’m against the College Board’s curriculum,” Proctor said.

“I think it’s trash. It’s not African American history. It is ideology,” he continued. “I’ve taught African American history, I’ve structured syllabuses for African American history. I am African American history. And talking about ‘queer’ and ‘feminism’ and all of that for the struggle for freedom and equality and justice has not been no tension with queerness and feminist thought at all.”

We're seeing a display of Good Ron as well as Good Rod.

But there's the governor's other side as well. He intends to eke out his political future within the framework of what the Republican Party has become. This was most evident last fall when he campaigned for Doug Mastriano and Kari Lake and Blake Masters. 

This kind of drag-our-brand-over-the-finish-line politicking muddies the waters to a disturbing degree. Increasingly, the general public conflates MAGA yay-hoo-ism with actual conservative principles because that's just about the only arena in which one sees those principles being defended.

Many of those who have undertaken the self-appointed task of upholding an alternative - that is to say, rooted in an embrace of heritage - vision of conservatism are apparently uninterested in this whole area of our national life. You won't find an essay like this in The Bulwark. It doesn't appear to be on the Principles First radar. Adam Kinzinger is now a private citizen, It would be nice to see him weigh in. 

I'm afraid that the reason for reticence on the part of these people and outlets is that they don't want to endanger the big-tent premise on which they're inviting people to gravitate toward their project. Culture-war issues strike them as too icky to address.

And then there's the fact that DeSantis, should he jump into the presidential race, is going to be increasingly drawn into a nasty standoff with the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump. I'm not sure I can see DeSantis having the chops to remain elevated above Trump's style of political combat. 

Truth won't cease being truth, no matter what happens. But its ability to get an airing continues to diminish  as we move further into the age in which nihilism reigns.