Quick takes on four matters currently on the nation's plate

 Elon Musk/Twitter - With staff ranging from comms people to critical systems engineers bailing by the thousands and by the hour, one is seeing a lot of been-nice-mutually-following-you-here-here-are-my other-social-media-platform-addresses tweets. 

Some are arguing that the Musk takeover is exactly what was needed at Twitter, that it was just classic fat-trimming. But he set about steering the company toward the most toxic organizational culture he could have. He sure got a decisive response to his if-you're-on-board-with-our-new-hardcore-work-pace-respond-by-5 PM ultimatum. 

I've just really had it with arrogant rich guys swaggering into business situations and upending everything just to stroke their own egos. The world needs less bullying, not more. 

Ukraine - Within a week, the country went from the jubilation of liberating Kherson to experiencing the most sustained missile attack from Russia since the invasion began. With a moment of hair-raising drama for the West, with the missile explosion in Poland. Zelensky is still insisting that the circumstances of that aren't decisively determined, but I think that's because he, quite understandably, is inclined to smell the hint of a threat in any development. Let us hope Western support for this valuable ally doesn't waver.

Trump's announcement - The actual event in the gilded Mar-a-Lago ballroom was underwhelming. All the photos I've seem of him stepping off the stage afterward show him scowling. What's up with that? 

From the better-late-than-never file, some evangelical leaders who have supported the Very Stable Genius are considering that it was a bad bet.  

Donors are bailing.

Ivanka telling her dad that she's not going anywhere near this 2024 campaign is an interesting development. She's long struck me as far less prone to ate-up-edness than her brothers - the ones with the same mother as her. 

It's not 2016 anymore. 

The new House majority's intentions - Oh, sheesh. It hasn't taken any time at all for incoming committee chairs to signal plans to launch investigations, with Hunter Biden first and foremost among them. Look, it's no secret that Hunter's been an unsavory character. His laptop is an undeniably juicy piece of electronics. But with inflation still raging, crime out of control in way too many cities, a southern border more porous than ever, and with questions about how involved - or not - the federal government should be in eduction surrounding that issue's red-hot current status, this looks like a squandering of a ripe opportunity. One does hear House Pubs speaking of working to steer energy policy in a common-sense direction and some other initiatives that have actual relevance to national wellbeing, but they are sullied by this zeal for investigations.

Respect for Marriage Act - Dems' bundling of interracial marriage with same-sex "marriage" allowed them to be disingenuous about situations like that of Mitch McConnell, who voted against it, even as he's married to a Chinese woman. Saw what you did there.

There's a supremely dismaying piece at Christianity Today that takes the hey-we-just-have-to-acknowledge-that-this-is-now-the-lay-of-the-land attitude that I decried in a recent Precipice post. One v can be so into what is that one decides that what should be is not worth pursuing. And I have to wonder why new CT editor Russell Moore was cool with running a piece that asserts that "in a morally pluralistic society, a few concession yield a win for the common good." That's tacitly granting that the United States is a fundamentally different country from what it was fifteen years ago. 

The basic architecture of the universe is apparent not only in the way human families have formed over the course of our history's species, but in the sexual behavior of every other species defined by the male-female dichotomy. We are trying to define what is beyond our capacity to define. It will not end well. 

Just because we find Trump unfit doesn't mean that we can forget that the Left wants to eat us for lunch

I have not had much use for The Federalist of late, but there is an important piece up at that site right now. It raises the need for consideration of several levels of the present societal dynamics before us.

It's by Glenn T. Stanton, and is a response to a New York Times piece by Peter Wehner and Jonathan Rauch, two public intellectuals who are friends despite coming at many issues from decidedly different perspectives.

Wehner is one of those figures who has irritated me many times over the years, but not enough for me to write him off. He has some solid conservative credential. he served in the Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 administrations. He wrote a book with Arthur C. Brooks on why the free market makes us more moral. He's pro-life and advocates a resolute foreign policy He's currently with the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He's concerned about seeing that Christian faith is able to thrive in our undoubtedly increasingly secular society, which is a good thing. He understands that Trump has been horrible for conservatism.

Still, he has exhibited more than a touch of what I call Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome - a condition similar to being a RINO, I suppose - over the years.

Rauch has characterized himself as an "unrepentantly atheistic Jewish homosexual." He's an interesting mix of traits. Edmund Burke and James Madison are among his first-tier objects of admiration. He firmly believes that two people of the same gender can be married. On the other hand, he opposes hate-crimes laws, or at least did in a 1991 New Republic article.

Anyway, Stanton takes on the argument the two of them make in the NYT:

Rest easy, orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The New York Times wants you to know there is no reason to fear your conscience protections being steamrolled by the juggernaut that is the queer politics machine.

In a hopeful op-ed titled “We Can Find Common Ground on Gay Rights and Religious Liberty,” with the rest-assured subtitle “It does not have to be all or nothing,” Jonathan Rauch, whom I value as a long and deeply respected friend, and Peter Wehner say the Supreme Court’s recent Bostock decision provides a golden opportunity for religious conservatives and gay activists to “make a deal.” They speak hopefully of mutually beneficial compromise, with both sides attaining their desired freedoms and protections.

While I trust their talk of compromise is well-intentioned, it is profoundly naïve. Both men are intimately aware of the way the queer movement’s leadership has framed the issue and how dutifully their media and elite partisans have carried their water for decades. Their message? Gay rights are civil rights. Full stop.

This truth claim is not a statement of fact. It is one of faith, ideological conviction, and rhetorical strategy. It is aspirational. The mission is for all to adopt this belief and condemn anyone who doesn’t as a hateful bigot. There is no middle ground.

The call of the day used to be “live and let live,” but no more. Now the call is, “You will respect and affirm everything about my new understanding of sexuality and gender, or else.”

This script has been most effective. But if gay and trans rights really are civil rights, their proponents know the first rule of civil rights is that you don’t negotiate them. True justice dictates you demand them, and don’t quiet down until you’ve attained the fullness of every last one. 

About the enthusiasm that Wehner and Rauch share for the Fairness for All Act, Stanton says this:

When a bill’s rosy title signals that if it is passed, all will be right with the world, it’s a good sign someone’s putting rouge on a pig. First, when you negotiate carveouts for religious protections — a first freedom — you give up, not gain, ground.

The Fairness for All Act provides protections for religious schools, colleges, and charities, but these are tremendously narrow and few given the breadth of possible encroachments that will occur as sexual and gender options continue to expand. This will leave not only religious organizations seriously vulnerable, but also medical and social-service professionals whose work is informed by religious convictions. 

What is unsettling about the terrain that Rauch and Wehner share is that it provides fodder to the Trumpists who say, "You pointy-headed think tank dweebs really have no clue how rabid the Left is, do you? How late the hour is, the kind of fight we must mount in the culture war at this stage."

It's a little tricky, because, yes, a fight must be mounted, but Trump's juvenile insults are supremely ineffective weapons.

Two things must be kept in view at all times: the Left's ferocity, and Trumpism's inadequacy as a countervailing force.

Friday roundup

What a way to re-enter the broadcast journalism fray: Megyn Kelly has the exclusive interview with the person, who worked for ABC, moved on to CBS and then got fired for being suspected of handing to Project Veritas Amy Robach's hot-mic moment about ABC squelching the goods on Epstein, Clinton et al three years ago.

Matt Walsh at Daily Wire distills the story to stress its significance:

To review: A woman at ABC discovered that the network was protecting a serial rapist and sex trafficker. She blew the whistle on the scandal and left the company. ABC then tracked the woman down and enlisted CBS to fire her on its behalf. Both of these networks, who colluded to punish a whistleblower, have spent the last many months and years breathlessly extolling the virtues of whistleblowing and the evils of collusion.

Why did the US become the world's first automotive giant in the 20th century, while the auto industries in other countries lagged behind for decades? Because the US didn't saddle itself with tariffs like they did.  

Hal Brands of the American Enterprise Institute says that the best way for NATO to reduce the risk of nuclear confrontation over the Baltic states is to bolster its conventional forces there.

Katy Faust, founder and director of the children's rights organization Them Before Us, writing at The Federalist about how Christian doctrine concerning marriage and family is essential to children having a sense of real belonging as they grow up:

As a pastor’s wife and a children’s rights activist, I have a great deal of patience for nonbelievers and my LGBT friends who have questions about my support for traditional marriage. I have clocked numerous hours conversing at the coffee shop in an effort to help them understand how I can love them wholeheartedly and reject gay marriage. If this is your first time to the child’s rights party, let me throw you a bone — it’s because the scriptural and historical purpose of marriage is child-centric, and gay kids need their moms and dads, too.

But Christian leaders who get sex and marriage wrong? Get off my lawn. Whether approaching the issue from a natural law perspective where male and female complementarity features prominently, or considering the most widely ratified treaty in human history outlines a child’s right to be known and loved by their mother and father, or through the lens of scripture where God joins together man and woman in life-long union because he is seeking “godly offspring” (Malachi 2), Christian leaders have no excuse for getting marriage wrong.

Ammo Grrrl (the nom de plume of a blogger who guest posts weekly at Power Line) has an interesting and amusingly written account of being stung in her Arizona kitchen by a scorpion while reaching for a roll of paper towels.

Erick Erickson writes a discomfortingly raw post at The Resurgent which starts with a bit of rambling, the way my "Back From Circumstantially Imposed Hiatus" post here at LITD yesterday did. He talks about his career and money issues, having to cancel the conference he was organizing, bailing on seminary, and his wife's ongoing cancer. It obviously took a level of courage and honesty we don't see much from pundits of any stripe these days:

See, here’s what I’m realizing — I don’t have all the answers and I’m not sure I have a lot of confidence in the answers and abilities I do have these days, but I know I don’t want to be entangled to a lot of other interests that might restrict me from being able to say what I think when I think I get to the answer. I get all sorts of people around me trying to sell me stuff and make money off me and I don’t know that I’m the guy to make myself rich, let alone other people. I just want to write and talk into a microphone and make sure other people know they aren’t alone.

I just don’t have all the answers people seem to think I do and we’re at peak paranoia where any deviation from tribal orthodoxy is met with suspicion and presumption that there must be something more there. The reality is I hate all the tribes these days. They are all run by a bunch of dimwits who just want power or to be adjacent to power. They’ve got no ideas, few principles left, and rely on a bunch of bullies on social media to keep everyone else in line. To hell with that. I don’t have enough time in the day to be that devoid of independent thought and have no desire to have people I disagree with shut up, censored, taken off TV, or hounded off Twitter by a mob.

As an aside, it is really just garbage to have a bunch of friends hate each other online these days so much that you’d prefer to have nothing to do with any of them lest you get dragged into middle school drama. If I wasn’t isolated enough before, this makes me kind of glad to be in Middle Georgia away from pretty much everyone I know outside of my immediate family.

They're eating their own in the communication studies field over identity politics.  

Let's review some basics

1.) It's impossible by definition for there to be a right to health care.

2.) It's impossible by definition for there to be a right to a job.

3.) Until the last 20 years, no culture anywhere in the world defined marriage in such a way as to include the union of two people of the same sex.

4.) Gender is not fluid.

5.) The global climate is not in a state of crisis.

6.) A good or service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it is worth. Allowing any other party to be part of that agreement distorts the value that buyer and seller have agreed upon.

7.) Appeasement of rogue states and rogue regimes invites continued hostile behavior directed at the nation-state doing the appeasing.

Why the concept of public accommodation does not apply to the current situation regarding Christian wedding-service providers

I've had my disappointments with Bookworm of late - namely, her enthusiasm for Trump to the point of saying flat out that she doesn't care about his sybaritic dalliances, and that she's come to find a certain charm in his rough edges. Still, she has a sharp mind and occasionally makes truly valuable contributions to a current national conversation.

Such is the case with the way she demonstrates that  the concept of public accommodation does not apply to the current situation for Christian wedding-service providers.

The QueerBorg, to advance its demand that all surrender before it, is trying to frame its battle as a civil rights battle and to liken Phillips’ refusal to bake a cake to the closed doors a black man would face in the Jim Crow South when he tried to rent a room for the night or dine in a restaurant. The way in which Congress broke that monopoly of closed doors was through the notion of “public accommodation,” something it enshrined in Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The relevant language states as follows:

(a) Equal access All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.

(b) Establishments affecting interstate commerce or supported in their activities by State action as places of public accommodation; lodgings; facilities principally engaged in selling food for consumption on the premises; gasoline stations; places of exhibition or entertainment; other covered establishments Each of the following establishments which serves the public is a place of public accommodation within the meaning of this subchapter if its operations affect commerce, or if discrimination or segregation by it is supported by State action:

(1) any inn, hotel, motel, or other establishment which provides lodging to transient guests, other than an establishment located within a building which contains not more than five rooms for rent or hire and which is actually occupied by the proprietor of such establishment as his residence;

(2) any restaurant, cafeteria, lunchroom, lunch counter, soda fountain, or other facility principally engaged in selling food for consumption on the premises, including, but not limited to, any such facility located on the premises of any retail establishment; or any gasoline station;

(3) any motion picture house, theater, concert hall, sports arena, stadium or other place of exhibition or entertainment; and

(4) any establishment (A)(i) which is physically located within the premises of any establishment otherwise covered by this subsection, or (ii) within the premises of which is physically located any such covered establishment, and (B) which holds itself out as serving patrons of such covered establishment. (42 U.S.C. § 2000a.)

The most obvious distinction between the LGBYOB+ and African-American situations, of course, is that the statute is directed at “race, color, religion, or national origin.” That’s why there’s such a big push on the Left to enact The Equality Act, which would raise sexual orientation and claims about gender to the same legal level of protection afforded race, color, religion, or national origin. The Equality Act, though, is another post entirely, and not a subject I wish to explore here. Instead, I’m interested in the monopoly of closed doors.

Keep in mind that, as I noted in passing above, the Civil Rights Act did not arise in a vacuum. It was a direct response to a very specific problem: The fact that Jim Crow laws in the South, backed by the personal preferences of bigoted people all over America, meant that places ostensibly held open for walk-in customers could arbitrarily refuse customers based upon the customers’ race (or color, or religion, or national origin). Under this all-encompassing regime, blacks theoretically could travel throughout the South without ever being able to obtain either food or lodging. (As the recent movie Green Book shows, blacks responded to this monopolistic denial of service by identifying hotels, restaurants, and other “open to the public” establishments that would serve them, but it was an imperfect solution and one that was both deeply offensive to human dignity and antithetical to the promise of our Declaration of Independence.) 

In other words, that portion of the Civil Rights Act relating to Public Accommodations was intended to break a monopoly that was driven by culture and backed by legislation. The legislation, of course, was the real kicker. As Milton Friedman famously noted, had Jim Crow not been legislated, it likely would have died away as hoteliers, restaurateurs, and the owners of entertainment establishments ended up competing for the only color that mattered: the lovely green of dollar bills. However, legislation, backed by societal prejudice, created an insupportable hurdle to free market sources, and created a monolithic wall that blacks could not breach.

Jack Phillips clearly does not fall into the category of a monolithic monopoly on all institutions open to the public. First, no one can deny that he held his doors open to all customers who walked into his store and sought to buy any of the products on display. He reserved only the right to withhold his services from specific ceremonies (not customers, but ceremonies) that offended his religious sensibilities. Second, Phillips was/is anything but a monopoly. The LGBTQLMAO+ community in Colorado has a lot of choices when it comes to custom baked goods prepared for QueerBorg ceremonies. 

Her mention of what Milton Friedman had to say on the subject is pretty much what I've said for some time. The free market and shifting zeitgeist were conspiring by 1965 - certainly by 1967 - to relegate boneheaded we-don't-serve-your-kind-here-ism to the dustbin of history. A few well-placed television commercials showing a black couple and a white couple enjoying a restaurant meal together would have finished it off. Alas, though, there were, as Bookworm says, bigoted laws on the books, so legislation was necessary.

And she understandably didn't want to muddy the waters with a digression into this Equality Act that is currently on the nation's plate, but that is as poisonous an idea as has come down the pike in some time and must be resolutely extinguished.

What is the way back from our societal atomization?

In the course of a Dennis Prager column on causes of mass shootings (in which he admirably points up how Barack Obama's disdain for the country he used to preside over was on full display recently), he enumerates the basic societal changes that have not only been a precipitating factor in those, but a number of other ills as well:

. . . wouldn't the most productive question [to ask about why the number, by decade, of them has gone from few than 10 before the 1970s to the number we have now] be what, if anything, has changed since the 1960s and '70s? Of course it would. And a great deal has changed. America is much more ethnically diverse, much less religious. Boys have far fewer male role models in their lives. Fewer men marry, and normal boy behavior is largely held in contempt by their feminist teachers, principals and therapists.

And the numbers for each societal change bear him out:

Regarding ethnic diversity, the countries that not only have the fewest mass murders but the lowest homicide rates as well are the least ethnically diverse -- such as Japan and nearly all European countries. So, too, the American states that have homicide rates as low as Western European countries are the least ethnically and racially diverse (the four lowest are New Hampshire, North Dakota, Maine and Idaho). Now, America, being the most ethnically and racially diverse country in the world, could still have low homicide rates if a) Americans were Americanized, but the left has hyphenated -- Balkanized, if you will -- Americans, and b) most black males grew up with fathers.

And

Regarding religiosity, the left welcomes -- indeed, seeks -- the end of Christianity in America (though not of Islam, whose robustness it fosters). Why don't we ask a simple question: What percentage of American murderers attend church each week?

And

Regarding boys' need for fathers, in 2008, then-Sen. Obama told an audience: "Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools; and 20 times more likely to end up in prison."

Yet, the Times has published columns and "studies" showing how relatively unimportant fathers are, and more and more educated women believe this dangerous nonsense.

Then there is marriage: Nearly all men who murder are single. And their number is increasing. 

In a City Journal essay, Kay Hymowitz discusses a study released by the insurance company Cigna and a UN World Happiness Report showing that the US and the West generally, as well as Japan, which is a fairly Westernized Asian nation, are beset by rampant loneliness. The bulk of the essay is an inquiry into why that is so:

Certainly, some voguish explanations for the crisis should raise skepticism: among the recent suspects are favorite villains like social media, technology, discrimination, genetic bad luck, and neoliberalism.

Still, the loneliness thesis taps into a widespread intuition of something true and real and grave. Foundering social trust, collapsing heartland communities, an opioid epidemic, and rising numbers of “deaths of despair” suggest a profound, collective discontent. It’s worth mapping out one major cause that is simultaneously so obvious and so uncomfortable that loneliness observers tend to mention it only in passing. I’m talking, of course, about family breakdown. At this point, the consequences of family volatility are an evergreen topic when it comes to children; this remains the subject of countless papers and conferences. Now, we should take account of how deeply the changes in family life of the past 50-odd years are intertwined with the flagging well-being of so many adults and communities.

Parallel with Prager's point much?

She discusses a concept I wasn't previously acquainted with, but which makes a great deal of sense: the Second Demographic Transition:

 (The first transition occurred around the time of the Industrial Revolution, as the high death and birth rates that had been humanity’s default condition since the Neanderthals declined dramatically, leading to rapid population growth.) Mostly associated with the Belgian demographer Ron Lesthaeghe, the SDT (the unfortunately evocative acronym) is a useful framework for understanding the dramatic rupture between the Ozzie and Harriet and Sex and the City eras.

The SDT began emerging in the West after World War II. As societies became richer and goods cheaper and more plentiful, people no longer had to rely on traditional families to afford basic needs like food and shelter. They could look up the Maslovian ladder toward “post-material” goods: self-fulfillment, exotic and erotic experiences, expressive work, education. Values changed to facilitate these goals. People in wealthy countries became more antiauthoritarian, more critical of traditional rules and roles, and more dedicated to individual expression and choice. With the help of the birth-control pill, “non-conventional household formation” (divorce, remarriage, cohabitation, and single parenthood) went from uncommon—for some, even shameful—to mundane. Lesthaeghe predicted that low fertility would also be part of the SDT package, as families grew less central. And low fertility, he suggested, would have thorny repercussions for nation-states: he was one of the first to guess that developed countries would turn to immigrants to restock their aging populations, as native-born young adults found more fulfilling things to do than clean up after babies or cook dinner for sullen adolescents.

The disruption of family life caused by the SDT in the U.S. has been rehearsed thousands of times, including by this writer, but the numbers still startle. In 1950, 20 percent of marriages ended in divorce; today, it’s approximately 40 percent. Four in ten American children are now born to unmarried mothers, up from about 5 percent in 1960. In 1970, 84 percent of U.S. children spent their entire childhoods living with both bio-parents. Today, only half can expect to do the same.

There have been reverberations:

 (The first transition occurred around the time of the Industrial Revolution, as the high death and birth rates that had been humanity’s default condition since the Neanderthals declined dramatically, leading to rapid population growth.) Mostly associated with the Belgian demographer Ron Lesthaeghe, the SDT (the unfortunately evocative acronym) is a useful framework for understanding the dramatic rupture between the Ozzie and Harriet and Sex and the City eras.

The SDT began emerging in the West after World War II. As societies became richer and goods cheaper and more plentiful, people no longer had to rely on traditional families to afford basic needs like food and shelter. They could look up the Maslovian ladder toward “post-material” goods: self-fulfillment, exotic and erotic experiences, expressive work, education. Values changed to facilitate these goals. People in wealthy countries became more antiauthoritarian, more critical of traditional rules and roles, and more dedicated to individual expression and choice. With the help of the birth-control pill, “non-conventional household formation” (divorce, remarriage, cohabitation, and single parenthood) went from uncommon—for some, even shameful—to mundane. Lesthaeghe predicted that low fertility would also be part of the SDT package, as families grew less central. And low fertility, he suggested, would have thorny repercussions for nation-states: he was one of the first to guess that developed countries would turn to immigrants to restock their aging populations, as native-born young adults found more fulfilling things to do than clean up after babies or cook dinner for sullen adolescents.

The disruption of family life caused by the SDT in the U.S. has been rehearsed thousands of times, including by this writer, but the numbers still startle. In 1950, 20 percent of marriages ended in divorce; today, it’s approximately 40 percent. Four in ten American children are now born to unmarried mothers, up from about 5 percent in 1960. In 1970, 84 percent of U.S. children spent their entire childhoods living with both bio-parents. Today, only half can expect to do the same.

The upshot? Millennials and those after them place a higher priority on career than on marriage and family:

The challenge is to find ways to communicate that need to coming generations before they make decisions that will further fragment their lives and communities. So far, that’s not happening. Millennials and their younger brothers and sisters say that they would like to marry and have children, but only 30 percent see a successful marriage as one of the more important things in life. About half shrug off single parenthood as a nonissue; in their view, cohabitation is fundamentally the same as marriage. Though the overall share of American babies born to unmarried mothers has declined a bit in the past few years, the majority of births to millennials are to unmarried women. So far, younger kids—Gen Z, as they are sometimes called—don’t look as though they’re ready to rebel from the nonchalance of their older siblings. In a 2018 survey of attitudes of 10- to 19-year-olds by PerryUndem Research and Communication, three-quarters rated having a successful career as “very important.” Fewer than a third said that marrying or having children mattered that much. Notably, boys and girls had almost identical answers.

Hymowitz's essay, as you can see from these exceprts, is an important deep dive, but she doesn't include any appreciable examination of something that was front and center among Prager's points: religion - specifically of the Judeo-Christian variety.

Given that God designed marriage and family, it only makes sense that home environments that neglect or exclude Him are more likely to see their cohesion fray.

Without the connection of kinship, we assume we can invent ourselves. We chart paths of ambition, achievement and amusement to no discernible end. And "meaning" begins to seem like a meaningless  thing to contemplate. And it's not far down that slope to the question of why it matters that a few dozen people get shot up in a public place. After all, we no longer attach any stigma to forms of self-mutilation such as tattoos and piercings and "gender reassignment" surgery.

All kinds of consequences flow from having no one expecting you to be home for dinner or to be in your own bed when dawn breaks. And, ultimately, there's no reason for that kind of accountability once no one sees that God insists on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The price of rebellion is always going to be darkness

"You are not your own."

- Paul, in his first letter to the church at Corinth

Do you ever come across a book, essay or article that really sticks to your ribs and then, over the course of a few days, run into some other reading matter with which it exquisitely dovetails, leading to a thought process that won't let you go?

That has just happened to me, and, of course, I've been compelled to write an LITD post as a result.

I'm going to start with the second of the two writings, though.

It's your must-read for today, this weekend, this month, maybe this year. I'll be amply excerpting from it here, but do check out the entire thing.

It's an Anthony Esolen essay at Public Discourse entitled "When Reason Does Not Suffice: Why Our Culture Still Accepts Abortion." His basic point is that abortion is ultimately one aspect of a larger spiritual-cultural dilemma that humanity must resolve if it is to survive.

He begins by asking why there is still significant public support for abortion, even though all the excuses for it have been debunked.

We have known that it is never medically indicated to kill a late-term child rather than to deliver it alive by Caesarean section. We have made the moral arguments to distinguish abortion from medically necessary procedures that save a mother’s life but that have as an unintended side effect the death of the fetus. We have met the objection that we care only for the life of the newborn and not for the mother and the growing child, by establishing and funding all kinds of crisis pregnancy centers (which the pro-abortion people have tried very hard to shut down), homes for unwed mothers, and adoption agencies (which the pro-gay-marriage people have threatened with destruction, unless we subordinate our faith and our reason to their passions sexual and political).

There's something deeper at work than the levels on which these arguments are put forth and addressed. It is, in its essence, the fact about us as humans that I have put in boldface. It's a little jarring on first reading, so go over it a few times and let it really sink in.

“Our problem is to achieve detachment,” says Leclerq, because “worldly goods are a tyrant,” especially when, as in the modern west, “the whole existing civilization centers on productive labor.” But “love of money is a mortal sin, because it alienates the mind from God.” We are terrified of the freedom that real poverty holds forth to us. We fear even the freedom that detachment offers. It feels better to be a slave with good meals every day, a job with a fancy title, and a cavernous home not smudged by the fingers of many playful children than to be free and in the hands of God.

Here Leclerq connects the high voltage with the steel pole: “We must note the connection between poverty and humility . . . that virtue by which man acknowledges his dependence as a creature on his creator.” That acknowledgment is easy so long as we keep it theoretical. When it makes demands on us, to renounce our attachment to things, then do we behave like the rich man in Jesus’ parable, who builds his barns as big as he can. “The rich and powerful trust in themselves,” says Leclerq, “and feel no need to turn to God for help.”

Poverty begetting freedom? Wow, is that ever the exact opposite of the message with which we're generally inculcated.

Rants against materialism are not at all uncommon. In fact, they're so dime-a-dozen that we've become inured to them. But maybe a reason for that is that what we should be rather than materialistic is so seldom discussed with any specificity.

And abortion does not exist in a vacuum. It's not a "social issue" to be placed on a checklist, but rather one manifestation of our willful divorce from our humanity.

Every time a man and woman go to bed together to do the child-making thing, the question is present, because they may make a child. To say, “You may not kill the child you make,” is to imply, “You have no business doing this thing in bed, if you are in no position to care for a child.” To imply that is to imply that we are not the lords of our bodies. The earth heaves from beneath us.

For then the entire “culture” of sexual autonomy is to be rejected. Feminism, which is based on a separation of woman’s interest from man’s interest, and of either interest from that of the child, is to be rejected. Man’s use of woman for sexual release, without reference to the family, is to be rejected. The nightmare world of pharmaceutical and surgical mutilation, to try to squeeze the body into the phantasmagorical molds of the imagination, is to be rejected. Sodom and Gomorrah are to be rejected, Seattle and Portland, Hollywood and Wall Street, Yale and Princeton, insofar as they build upon sexual autonomy as allowing for, and lubricating the quest for, avarice in all its forms, are to be rejected. Man is for woman, and woman for man, and both together for the child.

Then let the pro-life movement be advised. We are really asking for a moral revolution. If the child lives, the mother’s life will not be the same, because if we accept the principles that allow the child to live, none of our lives can be the same. There is no way to guarantee, as some pro-life people seem to want us to do, a world safe for the unborn child that is also a world of total sexual and economic autonomy. In any world in which autonomy is the highest ideal, the child—that incarnate sign of our dependence and existential poverty—must go. 

Now, the other piece of writing referred to above is a book I was given as part of a swag bag at a luncheon I attended last week. The luncheon featured a speaker, Kevin DeYoung, whose topic was Biblical Complimentarianism. The talk was part of the three-day national convention of The Gospel Coalition, of which DeYoung is the board chair.

The book is Men and Women: Equal Yet Different by Alexander Strauch. I've been reading it since last Thursday, and it's bringing up my stuff.

I'm still new enough to real Christianity that some doctrinal tenets just hit me like sour musical notes. I spent so many decades in the secular-agnostic trenches, sort of adhering to a quasi-Eastern, all-is-one spiritual outlook, yet refusing to relinquish my intellect's role as the captain of my journey through life, that I still have to occasionally wrestle with "because the word of God says so" as the answer to anything I come across.

So I've found myself on the verge of playing gotcha with Strauch and his argument.

Early on, he points out that the two main approaches to man-woman relations within a Christian framework are complimentarianism, which he espouses, and feminist evangelism, which posits that there were no specific gender roles prior to the fall depicted in Genesis, so that pre-fall state is what we should aspire to. And I'll be candid; I've found myself thinking that the latter had the better argument.

I've found myself thinking, in response to the assertion made plain in his book's title, "Mister, you say that, and then you spend the rest of your book stressing that men are to lead and women to submit."

He helps a guy like me inch toward being convinced Chapter Three, when he says

Christian marital submission does not mean that

• The wife is inferior
• The wife is to be passive or surrender all independent thought
• The husband is to stifle the wife's creativity, gifts or individuality
• The wife is to do everything the husband demands or that the husband is to oppress the wife
• The wife is to enable the husband's sin or irresponsibility
• The wife is to live with a psychologically dangerous  or abusive man

Still, how can one possibly say that these two genders are equal if one leads and one submits? A bit further on, he reminds us that the point of a man and woman getting married is to become one flesh. It is the same principle one sees regarding the right arm and left arm, or, probably more to the point, head and heart. Distinct body parts, yet mutually dependent and also part of one organism. This marital unit exists for a purpose, a purpose designed by God: to further His Kingdom and glorify Him

Strauch also alludes to a broader argument, one that I have discussed here at LITD as I've grappled with this matter. The world is constructed patriarchally. Most heads of kingdoms, empires, and nation-states have been men, as have their generals. Most scientists, discoverers, philosophers and artists have been men. The founders of the world's great religions have all been men. That last point brings us back to a spiritual level of delving into this. Jesus Christ, the Word Made Flesh, was a man. He spoke at great length about his Father.

And it is to that Father that a husband and wife are to be looking, with eyes affixed Heavenward in unison.

The union itself was designed by Him, for His purposes. Marriage is not for economic or social advantage, or to maximize the quality of any children's genetic stock, or even because we've found someone who is fun to hang out with. It is to deepen our humanity by submitting (there's that word again) to the bond that gives us our best glimpse at what relationship with Him looks like.

And, to come full circle, this is not abstract theology. It has real-world implications for the wholly innocent and wholly needful babies that one creates either by engaging in physical marital love or by engaging in recreational sex.

Esolen ends his piece with this line:

The serpent says we shall be as gods. That is the argument we must defeat.

Exactly so. The serpent basically argued to Eve, "Oh, come on, do you see any difference between this apple tree and the others? Aren't you the least bit curious as to whether the fruit is any different? And, besides, when was the last time you saw Him?"

I imagine her as putting up at least a feeble argument along the lines of, "No, He said not to eat of that one tree."

But the serpent got to her. It convinced her that she could be her own deity. She decided she could choose any way she pleased.

That she did not have to submit.

 We all still do that.

And then all Hell breaks loose.

Hey, toots, if you really think your latest paramour is America's future, knock yourself out

This strikes me as par for the course:

Kimberly Guilfoyle is reportedly leaving her job at Fox News to join Donald Trump Jr. on the campaign trail for the 2018 midterm elections.

Although a timeline on her departure is not clear, three sources familiar with the matter said that Guilfoyle and Trump Jr., who are dating, will be hitting the GOP campaign trail together, Vanity Fair reported on Twitter.

According to CNN, one of the people familiar with the plan said Guilfoyle plans to take a job at America First Policies, which is a nonprofit that promotes the policy agenda of President Trump.

Vanessa Trump filed for divorce from Trump Jr. in March of this year after 12 years of marriage, and reports that Guilfoyle began dating the eldest Trump son emerged a month later. 

They deserve each other.

Guilfoyle, who had an undeniably good career as a prosecutor (and who, it bears noting, worked her way through law school as a Victoria's Secret model), had no better relationship sense than to marry Gavin Newsom in 2001. Newsom also had an undeniably impressive run in business, parlaying a wine store into a chain of restaurants and retail stores. During his first term as San Francisco mayor, which coincided with his marriage to Guilfoyle, he gave the impression of being a centrist, but it didn't take long for him to publicly go all in for universal healthcare and same-sex "marriage." They divorced in 2005, citing the insurmountable challenge of bicoastal careers. Guilfoyle went on to have a child during her second marriage.

She actually showed some reasonably good conservative chops in her early days on the Fox network, but quickly demonstrated she'd gone Trump after DJT Sr. entered the presidential race.

Donald Jr., who spent a number of years in party-boy dissolution, and who didn't speak to his father for a year after Sr. left Jr.'s mother, married a beautiful model, just like dear old dad. In fact, it was Sr. who spotted her across the room at a 2003 fashion show and walked up to her with Jr. in tow and introduced himself and his son to her.

Five children result from the marriage, but Jr. is not around much. Rumors of Vanessa's loneliness surface.

But one of dad's lawyers also figures into factors making the marriage difficult, as does a Celebrity Apprentice contestant named Aubrey O'Day:

 . . . around 2013, when Us Weekly thought they had a credible source to report on Donny’s affair with Aubrey O’Day, a Danity Kane alum who met the young Trump while appearing on Celebrity Apprentice, all Cohen had to do was yell a lot. According to The Wall Street Journal’s source, Cohen—the Luca Brasi to Don Sr.’s Don Corleone and Don Jr.’s Fredo—called Us Weekly to threaten legal action, likely after staffers called Trump Jr.’s representation for comment.

Legal threats against unflattering stories are not unusual in the publishing universe, especially when it comes to the famously litigious tabloid subject Donald Trump. But the anonymous Us Weekly staffer told the paper Cohen was more ridiculous than most lawyers trying to bury a story about one of their clients. He was “one of these New York characters” swearing at the writers and acting “totally over-the-top threatening.” They put him on speakerphone and occasionally muted when the hollering became too much.

And consider the timeline presented in the above report about Guilfoyle leaving Fox. Does anyone think that they didn't have their first date until the ink was dry on Jr.'s divorce papers?

Oh, and speaking of Cohen and Trump-family extramarital dalliances (and penchant for beautiful models), this news item surfaced today:

President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer secretly recorded a conversation with him discussing a payment to Playboy model Karen McDougal, according to a report in the New York Times.

The article cites lawyers and others who are familiar with the recording saying that it was seized by the FBI during a raid on Michael Cohen’s office earlier this year and includes Trump discussing payments to McDougal.

Current Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani confirmed the existence of the tape to the Times but said that it exonerates Trump because nothing in it suggests that Trump knew about the payment in advance and the payment was never made.

McDougal says she had a nearly yearlong affair with Trump in 2006. She sold the rights to her story for $150,000 to the National Enquirer, which is run by Trump ally David Pecker. She then spoke out shortly before the election when the tabloid did not run the story.

In April, McDougal settled a lawsuit against American Media Inc., owners of the Enquirer, which allowed her to keep the money and now speak publicly about the affair.

Mr. Giuliani, while you may be able to make the case that it exonerates the Very Stable Genius on narrow technical grounds, I think it adds to the sum total of confirmation that the VSG did indeed have this affair with McDougal. But, given your (Giuliani's) track record as a crappy husband, I doubt that you care to discuss that.

My overall point in all this is this: What kinds of values are any of these people qualified to espouse, given their cavalier attitude to the social unit most essential to the formation of any values - namely, the family?

Is it too much to ask that we get a political class that is not so top-heavy with cads and cad-ettes?

I understand that making it to the top levels of career fields such as politics, entertainment, or even business or law requires certain personality traits that don't exactly spell warmth and devotion, but one can cultivate those traits and still enjoy career success.

Now, however, few seem to require such qualities in order to admire public figures. All that seems to be expected is that the figure in question champion some kind of  - well, really, just what? Seriously.

These people are of utterly no use in the real struggle going on here - the hour-by-hour rot of our very civilization.

 

 

They're relentless

How far will the jackboots go in eradicating normalcy and fealty to God's law?

Ask the Tennes family of Michigan:

The Tennes family has been farming in Michigan for generations.

They grow all sorts of crops at the Country Mill Farm– organic apples, blueberries, pumpkins, sweet corn.

And for the past seven years, Steve Tennes and his family have sold their produce at the farmer’s market owned by the city of East Lansing.

But this year – city officials told the devout Catholic family that their blueberries and sweet corn were not welcome at the farmer’s market – and neither were they.

Last year, someone posted a message on Country Mill’s Facebook page inquiring about whether they hosted same-sex weddings at the farm.

Tennes told the individual they did not permit same-sex marriages on the farm because of the family’s Catholic belief that marriage is a sacramental union between one man and one woman.

City officials later discovered the Facebook posting and began immediate action to remove Country Mill from the Farmer’s Market – alleging the family had violated the city’s discrimination ordinance.

"It was brought to our attention that The Country Mill's general business practices do not comply with East Lansing's Civil Rights ordinances and public policy against discrimination as set forth in Chapter 22 of the City Code and outlined in the 2017 Market Vendor Guidelines, as such, The Country Mill's presence as a vendor his prohibited by the City's Farmer's Market Vendor Guidelines," read a letter the city sent to the family.  

It also did not seem to matter to city leaders that the farm is located 22 miles outside the city limits – and had absolutely nothing to do with the business of selling blueberries at the farmer’s market.

“We were surprised and we were shocked,” Steve told me. “My wife and I both volunteered to serve in the military – to protect freedom now we come home and the freedom that we worked to protect – we have to defend in our own backyard.”

The family has enlisted the services of Alliance Defending Freedom, so they're not taking this lying down. I know the Left seems to have coopted the term "resistance," but this evil must really be resisted.

It's very late in the day in post-America, but the light has not completely flickered out.

 

Tuesday roundup

Not that it's going to lead to a reversal of the referendum's outcome, but the codification of the changes to the Turkish constitution that Turks voted on Sunday, while now pretty much a done deal and sealing Erdogan's status as a dictator, appears to be fraught with fraud:

Article 94 of Turkey’s Election Law states that election tabulators cannot count envelopes and votes inside not carrying the official stamp of the election. The rule was enacted to prevent ballot-stuffing. Yet, an hour after the ballot boxes were opened, the High Electoral Council reversed its decision.

Then, in Turkey’s southeast where the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) dominates, observers were removed from the balloting room for “security reasons” so only the government-appointed officials in the room counted and tallied results. Fraud in this process alone may have changed the results. This isn’t just theoretical: In Urfa, a Facebook video emerged showing ballot stuffing.

The Republican Peoples Party says it is filing objections involving 2.5 million votes. If only one-fifth of that total changes, the final result will change as well.

The de-fanging of the EPA is already bearing marvelous fruit. The coal industry is coming back strong:

Buried in an otherwise-humdrum jobs report was the jaw-dropping pronouncement by the Department of Labor that mining jobs in America were up by 11,000 in March. Since the low point in October 2016, and following years of painful layoffs in the mining industry, the mining sector has added 35,000 jobs.

And coal companies with which to get those jobs are once again more numerous:

There's more good news for the coal industry. Earlier this month, Peabody Energy -- America's largest coal producer -- moved out of bankruptcy, and its stock is actively trading again. Its market cap had sunk by almost 90 percent during Barack Obama's years in office. Arch Coal is also out of bankruptcy.

Okay, so that's one for the good-move side of the ledger, and here at LITD we duly - indeed, heartily - note those. But consider some realities regarding Trump the man and Trump the president that Kevin Williamson at NRO enumerates:

No fighting China on currency, no wall, no NATO reform. Add a few more items to the list: Janet Yellen was definitely out before she wasn’t; our relationship with Russia was “great” during the campaign but today is a “horrible relationship” that is “at an all-time low” (he may not know about the Cuban missile crisis); the president could not make war on Syria without congressional approval (“big mistake if he does not!”) until he could. The Affordable Care Act remains the law of the land. Steve Bannon of Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn of Goldman Sachs, Steven Mnuchin of Goldman Sachs, and Dina Powell of Goldman Sachs are firmly ensconced in their various roles throughout the Trump administration. The alt-right basement-dwellers and sundry knuckleheads beamed that Trump was going to be a “nationalist,” and that he would give the boot to coastal elitists, moderates, and Ivy League snoots. In reality, Trump is a New York Democrat who is being advised by other New York Democrats — Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner prominent among them — who are more or less the sort of people who brought you the Obama and Clinton administrations: business-friendly corporate Democrats, people who think of themselves as post-ideological pragmatists, consensus progressives who are much more interested in opening up backdoor channels to Planned Parenthood than they are in the priorities of people they consider nothing more than a bunch of snake-handling rustics and talk-radio listeners stockpiling gold coins and freeze-dried ice cream in their basements. Trump was a Clinton donor and a Chuck Schumer donor, and he is acting like one.

  Surprise.

Williamson mentions "business-friendly corporate Democrats, people who think of themselves as post-ideological pragmatists," but even if they think of themselves that way, they are in fact moral cowards hoping the climatista alligator eats them last, as Rick Moran discusses at PJ Media:

Despite the talk from climate hysterics about greedy corporations opposing efforts to combat global warming, the facts tend to speak for themselves.

International corporate giants have been on board the climate-change bandwagon for more than a decade. Their reasons have nothing to do with science and everything to do with reading the writing on the wall. If the world is going to go off half-cocked and suck the life out of the industrialized economies combating climate change, big business wants to be in a position to influence what happens to them.

It's no different than hiring another lobbyist in Washington or Brussels. Whatever expense there is in supporting the climate hysterics will be more than offset by savings in guiding the debate in ways that keep them operating.

So the question is, will corporations use their influence on President Trump to urge him to accept the Paris climate accord?

The smart money is saying yes.

Axios:

To varying degrees, most major companies producing coal, natural gas and oil either explicitly back sticking with the 2015 climate deal struck in Paris, or they're opting not to lobby against it, a dramatic shift from just a few years ago. They're not necessarily cheering global efforts to address the issue, but the decision not to oppose it has the same effect as tacit backing.

The reasons corporate America is uniting on global climate policy are many and often depend on the products made and how global a company's operations are:

• Consumer-facing companies like Starbucks and Pepsi, have long prioritized policies to cut carbon emissions because they don't sell products that directly contribute to the problem. They also have more direct interaction with consumers who like to buy from green-minded corporations.
• C ompanies that generate electricity have said, for much of the past decade, that they're moving away from coal toward cleaner burning sources of power, including natural gas and renewables. The Edison Electric Institute, the trade association representing investor-owned utilities, held a reception last year honoring the Paris climate deal after its conclusion, even though it officially doesn't have a position on the deal.
• Companies with huge global footprint s, like General Electric and ExxonMobil, know that pulling out of one diplomatic deal can only weaken the U.S. standing on other geopolitical issues, which could hurt their operations around the world.
• Publicly traded fossil-fuel companies are facing growing calls from their investors to address climate change, or at least to not fight such policies. This is a newer trend that's gained influence over the past couple of years.
• Major oil companies, like ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, have increasingly invested in natural gas, which emits 50% less carbon than coal when burned. Companies with big natural gas portfolios will gain with climate policies that accelerate a shift already underway to replace coal with natural gas. ExxonMobil, which bought big natural-gas producer XTO Energy in 2010, sent a letterto the White House in March urging Trump to stay in the deal. That letter followed a tweet by the company's top lobbyist just hours after Trump won the election expressing support for the accord.

"When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use," Joseph Stalin reportedly said. The corporate mindset is entirely predictable, based as it is on the simple concept of maximizing profits given the realities in which they exist. Any claim to morality or "good citizenship" is true only as long as it serves that overriding goal.

So yes, it's a great PR move to play along with climate-change hysterics, all the while working as hard as they can to keep the devil from their door.  

Jared Dobbs at The Federalist provides one of the best explanations of why Christians objecting to participating in same-sex weddings is not bigotry LITD has come across.