We offer a hat-tip to Nick Land for exhuming this two-year-old passage from John Glanton at Social Matter:
You have to admire the Left for its clarity of vision. It has identified its enemies, and it does what it can to drive them from the field. The recent fireworks in Indiana are a perfect illustration. Team blue knows that Christians are hateful homophobes, and so it goes to bat for the right of homosexuals to sue them over wedding cakes. The Right, with its characteristic acumen, mistakes this bushwhack for a principled stand. “Ah!’ they say, “But if you support the right of a gay man to force a Christian to make a cake then you must support the right of the KKK to force a black baker to make a cake!’ The average liberal couldn’t imagine a more irrelevant rejoinder. They aren’t making any such proposition at all. In their calculus, Christians (of the Not-fans-of-Pope-Francis type at least) are the bad guys and thus their interests are hateful and invalid and must be opposed. The KKK are bad guys and thus their actions are hateful and invalid and must be opposed. You attack bad guys. You don’t attack good guys. Whence the confusion?
The fact that they have such a clearly defined enemy is, incidentally, why the Left can mobilize effectively despite being a creaky, Frankenstein mass of mostly incompatible interest groups. Mexicans will ethnically cleanse blacks when their territories run afoul of one another, but they both vote for the same party. Homosexuals don’t always enjoy the gentlest of treatment from their Muslim friends, but they nevertheless routinely support Democratic politicians who promise more immigrants and “refugee resettlements’ from all the vibrant corners of Africa and the Middle East. The Democrat coalition is organized not around a coherent vision of the future but a shared opponent.
See also the late Lawrence Auster on the Unprincipled Exception.
3 Comments
Then it is possible that in the near future, current Progressive Christianity can give way to an older version of Christianity? Or more plainly put, a Christianity more traditional with a distinctive edge to it. Meaning, no more turning of cheeks or anything else. It may become “un Christian” in order to preserve Christianity. “Onward Christian Soldiers” is an old hymn that can take on a more militant meaning for a while.
Robert,
I think you are on the right track, though I am just an amateur Christian (I have learned a few things from my wife). It seems to me that one approach would be to adopt the Jewish version of the Golden Rule.
Christianity’s version is: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
Judaism’s version is: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow”.
Note the important distinction — Judaism reserves the right of redress.
Henry, well, I was raised up-my Mother would have said “yanked up”- in the Methodist Church and am still an amateur Christian. Judaism allows redress. Christianity allows the Just War….I think it is. Personally, if it comes to it, I never needed much excuse at all. It might be heritage over religion.