2024-07-24T16:57:30-04:00

Democrats are giddy with excitement about their presidential candidate Kamala Harris.  She is one of their own, an unabashed woke progressive. Now concerns about age that led to President Biden’s stepping down can be reversed against Republicans and their 78-year-old candidate.  Though there were doubts about her popularity at first, now a poll has her beating Trump.

Lots of voters would like a fresh start after the polarization and controversy of the Trump-Biden years.  Conservatives can feel that impulse too, especially Reagan-style small-government free market Republicans whose ideology is being repudiated by the “big government conservatives” who now dominate the party.  Pro-lifers who resent the party they helped put in power for so long dropping its anti-abortion plank may well feel that neither party is pro-life and that they might as well vote for the Democrats.  And many conservative Christians would be glad to have a president without the moral baggage of Donald Trump.

But an article by Erika Ahern at Catholic Vote entitled President Harris? What Catholics need to know should give Harris-considering Reaganites, pro-lifers, Christians, and all-of-the-aboves pause.  She reminds us of Harris’s track record and concludes that “Harris surpasses even Biden in one key metric: she is without question one of the most aggressively anti-Catholic career politicians in American history.”  Non-Catholics, though, don’t escape her aggression.

Knights of Columbus Bigotry

You may recall the Democrat who opposed one of Trump’s judicial nominations because he was a member of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic laymen’s organization known mostly for sponsoring fish fries during Lent.  That was Senator Kamala Harris, who asked Brian Buescher this:

Since 1993, you have been a member of the Knights of Columbus, an all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men. In 2016, Carl Anderson, leader of the Knights of Columbus, described abortion as “a legal regime that has resulted in more than 40 million deaths.” Mr. Anderson went on to say that “abortion is the killing of the innocent on a massive scale.” Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?

She followed that up by asking Judge Buescher if he was aware that the Knights of Columbus “oppose marriage equality” and whether he would pledge to quit that organization if he were confirmed.

For Harris, the Knights of Columbus is a sinister organization because it is “an all-male society” consisting of Catholics who hold  anti-abortion and anti-same sex marriage.

For Kamala Harris, belonging to a church men’s group, such as the Men’s Club in many of our Lutheran churches; adhering to the beliefs of one’s church; believing that abortion kills human beings;  and opposing same-sex marriage are all morally repugnant, enough to disqualify someone from public office.

Harris’s bigotry against the Knights of Columbus is why Ahern considers her “anti-Catholic,” and she is surely right.  But her antipathy for anyone who is pro-life or questions same-sex marriage applies far more broadly.

Forcing Pro-Lifers to Promote Abortion

It was Kamala Harris, according to Ahern, who, as California’s Attorney General, pushed through a law requiring Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers to post advertisements for free or low cost abortions in their waiting rooms.

The very text of the law called the existence of pro-life alternatives to abortion a “problem,” which conflicted “with California’s proud legacy of reproductive freedom.”

After three years of litigation, the Supreme Court threw out that law.

Protecting Planned Parenthood

Harris has a perfect score on Planned Parenthood’s Congressional Scorecard.  And when David Daleiden exposed the abortion provider’s lucrative trafficking in organs and body tissue from aborted children, Attorney General Harris sent agents to ransack his home seeking evidence against him, an effort that culminated in her successor Xavier Becerra, now serving in the Biden-Harris administration as Secretary of Health and Human Services, to file 15 felony charges against him.

Ending Religious Exemptions for Pro-Life Healthcare Workers, Requiring Them to Perform Abortions

As Senator in 2019, Kamala Harris introduced the “Do No Harm Act,” which would stop the Religious Freedom Restoration Act from being applied to healthcare workers, thus requiring pro-life medical professionals to perform abortions and transgender surgeries despite any religious objections that they might have.

Ending Religious Exemptions for Those Who Reject Gender Ideology

Senator Harris also pledged to enact the “Equality Act,” which would stop the Religious Freedom Restoration Act from being applied to issues of gender equality.  This would force Christians and their  institutions to accept transgenderism.

I don’t know if Kamala Harris is, as Erika Ahern says she is, “one of the most aggressively anti-Catholic career politicians in American history.”  That may well be.  I would say, however, based on Ahern’s evidence, that Harris without question is one of the most aggressively pro-abortion and anti-religious liberty career politicians in American history.

 

Photo by Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

2024-07-24T07:51:52-04:00

No sooner had I written about J. D. Vance, posted yesterday, that I read a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled J.D. Vance and the Rise of ‘Postliberalism.’ with the deck, “Trump’s vice-presidential nominee brings philosophical heft to Trump’s attack on the progressive elites and the ‘deep state.’”  It was written by Graedon H. Zorzi, a professor at Patrick Henry College (after my time there).  He gives a very cogent explanation of “Postliberalism.”

In the article (which is behind a paywall), Zorzi quotes Trump consiglieri Steve Bannon as saying Vance is “the St. Paul to Trump’s Jesus—the zealous convert who spreads the gospel of Trumpism further than Trump himself.”  Using less problematic language, Zorzi describes Vance as one of the intellectuals–such as Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule,  Charles Taylor, and Alasdair MacIntyre–who have been articulating a new political theory that Trump has embodied.

Here are some features of “postliberalism”:

Its clearest articulation is in Mr. Deneen’s 2023 book, “Regime Change,” which calls for the replacement of political elites with new ones more closely aligned with the interests of the people. Those new elites will, the hope goes, be guided by a “common good” conservatism focused on virtue, family and community. . . .

The postliberals share the concern with building strong communities, which helps explain their interest not only in traditional marriage and family but also in protective economic policies that may help to restore communities torn apart by the offshoring of manufacturing jobs. . . .

The “post” in postliberal comes in part from the claim that today’s social and moral problems are the inevitable result of the liberal regime set up by the Founding Fathers. Some postliberals, including Mr. Schindler, argue that the founders made a critical philosophical mistake: Baked into the American system is a wrong-headed rejection of an objective standard for goodness, truth and beauty. Postliberals therefore talk openly about the need to create a new blueprint for an American society centered on virtue and the common good. In this they differ markedly from other Trump-era Republicans.

Zorzi points out that the desire to build stronger communities is quite consistent with traditional “liberal” conservatism.  He refers to scholarship that shows the founders did believe in objective standards for the true, the good, and the beautiful.  And he cites Deneen himself who concedes that his concerns do not require the actual overthrow of liberal democracy and our Constitutional order.  “As Mr. Deneen put it, in the envisioned ‘postliberal order,’ the ‘existing political forms can remain in place’ as long as they’re informed by a healthier ‘ethos.’”

I am all for this ethos.  I agree with the need to build up community and the institution of the family.  And I am a big supporter of the true, the good, and the beautiful.  But Postliberalism seems to be an idealistic fantasy.  Just how will the current self-interested elite be replaced by a new elite devoted to virtue and the common good?

Today’s elite is already preoccupied with virtue–the virtues of transgenderism, homosexuality, abortion, diversity, equity, and inclusion–to a self-righteous, coercive fault.  They think that promotes the common good.  What protects Americans from such elites if not the “liberal” system of liberty, individual rights, and the Constitutional rule of law?

And what qualifies someone to be a member of this new elite?  Birth? Wealth? Education?  Those have already been tried and found wanting.  Shouldn’t a true communitarian system be built around Americans who are not elite?  As in “liberal democracy”?

My sense is that postliberalism might be quite a good thing, as long as it is an “ethos” or a matter of short term policy.  But as some kind of longterm alternative political order it should be rejected.  In the longterm, elites and leaders will arise who are not virtuous and who are not devoted to the common good.  We dare not create a system that would empower that sort of government even more.

 

Photo:  J. D. Vance by Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

2024-07-16T21:21:19-04:00

Back in 2016, I read Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance and I’ve blogged quite a bit about it (e.g., this).   His memoir of growing up in poverty in dying rural towns and rust belt cities–with their broken families, opioid addiction, and shutdown factories–is a compelling account of the plight of today’s white working class, the most unchurched demographic in America.

Vance paints an honest picture, not drawing back from the woes that so many of his friends and family brought on themselves–their habits of dependence, passivity, and failure to take responsibility for their actions–but it is affectionate nonetheless.  He himself learned self-discipline when he joined the Marines and served in the war in Iraq.  Afterwards, he defied his background by going to college on the G.I. Bill and making it into Yale law school, leading to a successful career.

Little did I imagine when reading this book that the author would be selected by Donald Trump to be the Republican Vice Presidential nominee.   I’m sure at the time that he didn’t either.

Vance put into words the alienation, desperation, and neglect that Donald Trump tapped into and that elected him to the presidency.  Vance became one of the thinkers who saw in Trump’s victory a new model for conservatism.

Here at this blog we’ve discussed the schism in American conservatism.  One one side is  the Reagan ideal of small government, free market economics, and a commitment to individual rights and liberty, all of which are hallmarks of “liberal [that is, freedom enabling] democracy” as embodied in American constitutionalism.  On the other side would be the various versions of “national conservatism” with its big government, protectionist economics, and communitarian (as opposed to individualistic) ideals.  Vance, I believe, considers himself “postliberal.”  An extreme form of this would be the “illiberal” conservatism of the integralists who would be glad to set up a state (Catholic) church.

Vance has become a spokesman for this “New Right.”  Ian Ward wrote back in March,

In certain conservative circles, Vance has emerged as the standard-bearer of the “New Right,” a loose movement of young, edgy and elite conservatives trying to take the ideological revolution that began under Trump — including his overt embrace of nationalism, his hard-line stance on immigration, his vocal opposition of U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts like Ukraine and his overt skepticism toward certain liberal democratic principles — in an even more radical direction. Unlike Trump’s more conventional Republican followers, Vance’s New Right cohort see Trump as merely the first step in a broader populist-nationalist revolution that is already reshaping the American right — and, if they get their way, that will soon reshape America as a whole.

Politico’s Victoria Guida concludes in the words of the title of her article, The Trump-Vance Ticket is a Repudiation of Free-Market Conservatism. “Few Republicans have been more vocally critical of the party’s modern economic conventions than Vance,” she writes, “who has embraced not just tariffs, but also policies like a higher minimum wage and increased barriers to corporate mergers — even openly praising President Joe Biden’s aggressive antitrust chief, Lina Khan.”  And “He is uninterested in traditional small-government priorities.”

Vance, a recent convert to Catholicism, is, though, strongly pro-life.  To the point that Democrats hope to hit him hard on the issue.  And he takes his faith seriously in his politics.  Matthew Schmitz of First Things describes him as “He is perhaps the most eloquent champion of a new Christian approach to politics—one that is less conventionally conservative, and more populist.”

The approach Christians have been taking, says Schmitz, has been uncritical adherence to Republican conventional wisdom:  “For at least a generation,” he says, “the phrase ‘religious right’ has evoked a style of politics marked by hortatory rhetoric, foreign-policy interventionism, and support for the free movement of people and goods.”  But Vance has a different vision of Christian conservatism.  He told Schmitz:

“When we think about Christian conservatism, we think of sanctity of marriage, sanctity of life,” he tells me. “Of course these things are important and I certainly believe the Church’s teachings on all of these things. And yet, there’s an entire Christian moral and economic worldview that is completely cut out of modern American politics, and I think it’s important to try to bring that back.”. . .

Vance extends this emphasis on stability to other areas of economic and social life. “The core Christian insight into politics is that life is inherently dignified and valuable,” he says. “If you actually believe that, you want certain legal protections for the most vulnerable people in your society, but you also want to ensure that workers get a fair wage when they do a fair job. You want to make sure that people don’t have their town poisoned because they happen to live next to a railway line”—a reference to the rail disaster in East Palestine, Ohio.

I like Vance, and I appreciate his concern for common folk.  I have no problem with his broader and deeper Christian approach to politics, one that attends to the problems of people in need and is not just uncritically pro-business and pro-military intervention.

But I remain more of a Reagan-style conservative, suspicious of big government, worried about the deficits, and protective of individual liberty.  A big government led by good people might do some good, but what makes anyone thinks such power will always be in good hands?  And if the big government goes into the business of enforcing morality and establishing a religion, what morality will that be?  And what kind of religion?  If Christianity, what theology will it follow?  The state by its nature can only be concerned with law and obedience.  If religion is brought in to assist with that, the religion is bound to be legalistic and anti-gospel.

As has been said here, we need a political system that protects us little people from our government.  Our Constitution manages to do that.  Some alternative “illiberal” system of government will not.

So I have mixed feelings about Vance, not so much as Vice President–what harm can he do?–but, since that office is often a springboard to something more, as Trump’s heir apparent.

Help me out here.  What do you think?

 

Photo:  J. D. Vance by Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

2024-07-14T16:33:21-04:00

For the last ten Republican National conventions, covering a span of 40 years, the party platform has included a plank opposing abortion.  Not this time.

Here is what the 2024 Republican Party Platform says on the subject:

4. Republicans Will Protect and Defend a Vote of the People, from within the States, on the Issue of Life

We proudly stand for families and Life. We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights. After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People. We will oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).

The party now protects and defends not the right to life, but the right of states to decide whether or not to permit abortion.  This is not nothing, as we’ll discuss below, but it’s a response to the apparent unpopularity of anti-abortion laws when put to popular referendums and to Democrats’ plans to campaign on the pro-abortion cause.  But this change in the Republican platform, made at Donald Trump’s behest, is still a significant shift in the party.

Catholic columnist Kenneth Craycraft says, in an article with this title, For the First Time, Neither Party Is Pro-Life.

The 2024 Republican Party platform confirms that neither major national political party — nor their respective presidential candidates — is pro-life. In the sole place the Republican platform does discuss abortion, it is incoherent mumbo jumbo. Abandoning the issue to state legislatures, the platform displays alarming ignorance of the meaning and purpose of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. And it expressly endorses procedures that always lead to the destruction of prenatal life. . . .

In its attempt to distinguish itself from the Democrats, the Republican platform proclaims, “We proudly stand for families and Life.” (All quotations preserve the helter-skelter capitalization of the platform.) But as a statement of principles, the platform is certainly not pro-life. Let’s not mince words: under the influence of Donald Trump, the national Republican party has abandoned its pro-life, anti-abortion principles, and has embraced the moral legitimacy of widespread destruction of unborn human life.

The plank, in effect, “abandons moral opposition to abortion, reducing it to mere policy choices in the states.”

Here is the take of conservative thinker Robert George, writing on Facebook:

Every four years since 1984, socially liberal Republicans, such as the late Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, have sought to remove from the Republican Party platform its plank committing the Party to work for national legislation protecting the constitutional right of unborn children to the equal protection of the laws. The pro-life movement successfully protected the plank every time, fighting off efforts to remove or weaken it, thus ensuring that the Republicans remained a pro-life party.

Donald Trump has now, however, succeeded where liberal Republicans of the past failed. He has made Arlen Specter’s dream a reality. The plank has been removed from the Republican platform. It has been replaced by the claim that abortion policy is entirely the business of states who may, if they wish, permit abortion up to birth.

There is a promise to “oppose late-term abortion” (undefined), though not by federal law, and an incoherent reference to the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment as permitting states (not the federal government) to legislate against abortion. (The relevant clause of the 14th Amendment is actually the Equal Protection Clause–which goes unmentioned–and the 14th Amendment expressly authorizes Congress, not the states, to enforce its substantive guarantees.)

What a mess. And then the new platform pledges to protect–presumably by federal law–IVF and contraception.

It is true that the thoroughly transactional Donald Trump appointed justices who provided the votes necessary to overturn Roe v. Wade. He kept his bargain with the pro-life movement on that one. But now Mr. Trump sees our cause–the protection of unborn children–as a political liability. He knows that seriously pro-life people cannot in conscience vote for Joe Biden and the Democrats, so he has no reason not to throw the pro-life cause under the bus. And, predictably, that is what he had now done.”

Pro-life leaders have no leverage, and so will be tempted to go along with this without public complaint in order to retain some standing and influence in the future Trump administration. They may even claim that it is somehow a victory. In truth, it’s the opposite of that.

So if neither party is pro-life, does that mean that pro-life Christians might just as well vote for the Democrats?  I know of quite a few pro-lifers who are liberals in their economic and political beliefs but who have been voting for the Republicans just because they rightly see opposition to abortion as their major priority.  If Republicans are not going to oppose abortion either, they may well feel free to release their inner liberal.

But Republicans are still more pro-life by far than the Democrats.  The Republican platform would let the states decide, but that leaves room for some states to ban abortion, as some have.  The Democrats are campaigning for the national legalization of abortion on demand, which would involve nullifying the laws of states that have banned or restricted abortion.  The Republican position, as of now at least, would allow for pro-life laws; the Democratic position would not.

Besides, many Republican lawmakers and officials are still pro-life, despite what their standard bearer has decreed for the platform to say.  They still deserve support from pro-lifers.  This is especially true on the state level, where, for better or worse, the battles for life will be waged.

George is right, though, that the Republican Party as a whole has thrown pro-lifers under the bus and that pro-lifers have lost their leverage.  And that they have nowhere else to go.

Perhaps they could regain some of that clout as they work on the state level, where the battle will be joined, withholding their support from pro-abortion Republicans and waiting to be wooed by candidates of any party who will give support to their cause.  With such grass roots activism, they may be able to work their way up the party hierarchies and regain some political influence.

 

Photo: Photo by Philip Cohen via Flickr,  CC by SA 2.0

 

2024-07-15T10:14:31-04:00

 

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump.  Also, Republicans have their convention, and Generation Z takes politics way too seriously.

The Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump

The would-be assassin’s bullet grazed his ear, meaning that Donald Trump escaped death by a fraction of an inch.  “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening,” Trump said after the shooting, and he was surely right.

The video of the shooting showed Secret Service agents shielding Trump with their bodies and forming a human shield around him as they ushered him away, a moving example of self-sacrifice in vocation, since, as far as they knew, there may have been more incoming shots.  Then again, some of their colleagues may have failed in their vocation in not securing the rooftop of the building and possibly even ignoring bystanders’ warnings that they saw a man with a rifle on the roof.  Agents eventually killed the shooter.

A member of the crowd, fire fighter Corey Comperatore, was also shot and killed when he shielded his wife and daughters with his body when the bullets started flying.  He really did take a bullet for them.  This is a moving example of a father’s self-sacrifice in vocation.  “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).  Two others in the crowd were critically injured.

Trump’s reaction when he was shot was especially stirring.  Pumping his fist in defiance as blood streamed down his face.  Talk about being bloody but unbowed.  A photograph taken by A.P. photographer Evan Vucci captured the moment–a bloody Trump surrounded by solicitous Secret Service agents, lifting his fist, with the backdrop of an American flag.  The photo, in its composition and in its emotional impact, is a brilliant work of art, showing not just what something looked like (which is the most that amateur photographers like me are capable of), but what it felt like and what it means.  Give Evan Vucci a Pultizer Prize for photojournalism.  Nico Hines of the liberal, anti-Trump Daily Beast, praised the photo and called it, in the words of the title of his article about it, “One of the Most Iconic Photos in U.S. History.”

The shooter was 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks.  As of this writing, we don’t know whether he was ideologically driven or was an mentally unstable young man driven over the edge by the hysterical rhetoric of the campaign–that Trump would destroy democracy; that he would impose a fascist state; etc.  At any rate, it seems clear that the strategy of demonizing your opponent and raising apocalyptic fears about him risks provoking political violence.  It’s telling that President Biden, to his credit, pulled all campaign ads for the moment, which suggests that this is what they consisted of.

I appreciate what an editorial in the Wall Street Journal said about the shooting and what it means for the country:

The shooter alone is responsible for his actions. But leaders on both sides need to stop describing the stakes of the election in apocalyptic terms. Democracy won’t end if one or the other candidate is elected. Fascism is not aborning if Mr. Trump wins, unless you have little faith in American institutions.

We agree with former Attorney General Bill Barr’s statement Saturday night: “The Democrats have to stop their grossly irresponsible talk about Trump being an existential threat to democracy—he is not.”. . .

The photo of Mr. Trump raising his fist as he was led off stage by the Secret Service with a bloody face was a show of personal fortitude that will echo through the campaign. No one doubts his willingness to fight, and his initial statement Saturday night was a notable and encouraging show of restraint and gratitude. . . .

The near assassination of Donald Trump could be a moment that catalyzes more hatred and an even worse cycle of violence. If that is how it goes, God help us.

Or it could be a redemptive moment that leads to introspection and political debate that is fierce but not cast as Armageddon. The country was spared the worst on Saturday and this is a chance to pull out of a partisan death spiral.

UPDATE:  Trump is reportedly going to change the tone of the convention in light of his  near-death experience, away from whipping up his followers to instead promote national unity.  He said that he had originally planned to hammer President Biden in his acceptance speech:

He said that his address would focus on unity and bringing the country together in light of what happened.

“It is a chance to bring the country together. I was given that chance,” he said. “This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago.”

The Washington Post reported earlier on Sunday that someone close to the president said that Trump was almost “spiritual” about the assassination attempt.

Republicans Have Their Convention

The Republican National Convention gets underway today in Milwaukee.  Donald Trump has virtually all of the delegates, so his nomination is assured.  The biggest question is who Trump will pick for his vice-presidential running mate.

Pro-lifers are reportedly angry that the Republican Platform, at Trump’s behest, says little about abortion, being content to leave the issue up to the states instead of pushing for a national ban.  Cultural conservatives don’t like it that porn star Amber Rose is slated to give a speech.  This doesn’t sound like the victory of Christian nationalism to me, but expect Democrats and their media allies–desperate to switch the nation’s attention away from President Biden’s disabilities–to raise an alarm to that effect.

For the schedule of events, go here.  The overall theme will be, of course, “Make America Great Again.”  On Monday, the theme will be “Make America Wealthy Again.”  Tuesday, the theme will be “Make America Safe Again.”  On Wednesday, it will be “Make America Strong Again.”  On Thursday, when Trump will formally accept the nomination, the theme will be “Make America Great Once Again.”

You can stream the convention at YouTube, X, Facebook Live, Rumble, Amazon Prime, Twitch, Direct TV, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website.  Fox, PBS, and CNN will offer extensive coverage.  CBS will offer primetime coverage from 8:00-11:00 ET each night.  NBC will devote two hours on Monday and Tuesday (9:00-11:00 ET) and three hours on Wednesday and Thursday (8:00-11:00 ET).  ABC will devote just an hour each night to the Republicans, 10:00-11:00 ET.

Much more interesting will be the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 19-22.  If Biden steps down, the convention will have to pick a new nominee, and who knows who that might be?  If Biden continues to stay in the race, the Democrats who have loudly proclaimed that he is incapable of running against Trump and being president will be hung out to dry.  On top of all of that, anti-Israel demonstrators are vowing to disrupt the proceedings.

Generation Z Takes Politics Way Too Seriously

Young adults of Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, are limiting friendships and their dating possibilities on the grounds of politics.  This is especially true of young women.

From Dace Potas of USA Today, Gen Z’s widening gender divide has turned political. It’s ruining our relationships:

In America, 40% of young women in America identify as liberal compared with only 25% of their male peers. On the other hand, 29% of young men identify as conservative compared with 21% of their female peers. . . .

Polling suggests that more than 70% of college Democrats wouldn’t go on a date with a Republican, whereas the opposite is just 31%. Thirty-seven percent of young Democrats wouldn’t even be friends with a Republican. Women are much more likely to take this position, with 59% of women from both parties saying they would not go on a date with someone who voted opposite them.

2024-07-12T08:58:52-04:00

More insights from the Somali-Dutch-American critic of radical Islam, the ex-New Atheist, Christian convert Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  In Three Paradoxes of Feminism, she shows that today’s progressive feminism–what she calls “luxury feminism”–is actually working against the interests of most women.

This is due largely to woke ideology, which has distorted the women’s movement by imposing three paradoxes.

Paradox no. 1: Race trumps sex

Because of the dogma of intersectionality, which creates a hierarchy of oppression and victimhood, luxury feminists tend to be silent in the face of Islamic misogyny or sexual assaults upon white women by immigrants of color.

Hirsi Ali tells of the practice of “Taḥarrush jamāʿī,” meaning collective sexual assault, which is considered a legitimate form of “plunder” in Islam, especially against non-Muslim women.  In the Islamic world, mobs of men will sometimes assault and rape women, and this has been happening also in Europe with Muslim immigrant men attacking Western women.  Hirsi Ali cites examples of this and other kinds of sexual violence against women practiced by Muslim immigrants, such as “honor killings” connected with forced marriages.  But “Luxury Feminists” say nothing about these kinds of violence against women because to criticize immigrants is to be considered “right wing” and they must show solidarity with oppressed people of color.  Hirsi Ali explains:

In the hierarchy of victimhood, white people can never be victimized by people of color. To say otherwise is a feature of imperialism, or white hegemony, or white cisheteropatriarchy (it seems that feminists have recently grown tired of the vagueness of their terms so have resorted to inventing German-style neologisms). Luxury feminism is, first and foremost, a political opposition to conservatism: Whatever the latter says, the former must revile. When immigration proves harmful to women (both women in the West and within immigrant communities), feminists turn a blind eye out of political allegiance. Taken to its extreme, this feminism considers the wanton acts of extreme sexual violence by Hamas on October 7th as either “resistance by any means necessary” or simply “made up” by Israel – or, somehow, both.

Paradox no. 2: Transgenderism as a luxury belief

Feminism, observes Hirsi Ali, has taken away male-only spaces.  Now luxury feminism is taking away female-only spaces in the name of transgenderism.

The basis of transgender activism is the luxury feminist belief that trans people are the new gay people. Since they are the new marginalized group, they must be defended at all costs. . . .Womanhood loses all meaning under the law of self-identification. Any man with feminine inclinations, or an autogynephilic fetish, can claim womanhood for himself. On the flip side of the coin, young women experiencing the strife of puberty and female embodiment are encouraged to reject their womanhood altogether.

Again, there is a connection to radical Islam:

Increasingly, young gay men and boys with feminine characteristics are presented with the notion that they are actually women. Activists celebrate their “gender journeys” in spite of the abject horrors and permanently damaging, even life-shortening, effects of “bottom surgery” which increasing numbers of gay men solicit. Under which regimes are gay men refashioned into “straight women?” Islamic countries like Iran inflict transgender “reassignment” surgeries onto gay men in an effort to erase homosexuality. Encouraging the view that gay men are, or should be, women is a kind of progress: The dystopian kind.

Paradox no.3: “Sex work is work”

Luxury feminists demonize feminists like Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling who do not accept transgenderism as TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists).  Another derogatory acronym they use for feminists who protest the exploitation of women in prostitution and other forms of sex trafficking is SWERFs (sex worker exclusionary radical feminists).  Luxury feminists have adopted the notion that “sex work is work,” that selling sex, whether from prostitution or pornography, is a legitimate way for women to earn a living.

Despite MeToo’s obsession with consent and its punishment of men for minor sexual misconduct, one modern feminist myth is that sex work – both online in the form of OnlyFans and in the porn and prostitution industries – is empowering. There is even a “sex worker inclusive LGBT+ Pride flag” featuring a red umbrella, the international symbol of sex workers. In 2001, Venetian activists took to the streets with red umbrellas to protest inhumane working conditions, while at the same time defending the legitimacy of such work.

Hirsi Ali surveys the exploitation and abuse that are commonplace in the “sex industry.”  That includes Only Fans, the website that allows women to turn themselves into porn stars for their subscribers. Only a few women, she says, make much money from the site, but the pictures and videos they post remain on the internet forever, at the cost of their reputation and their prospects in the professional world.  Once again, luxury feminism ends up harming women.

What Is the Path Forward for Women?

Hirsi Ali also criticizes the old-fashioned “radical feminists” who, to their credit, are TERFs and SWERFs, but who demonize men.  She has praise for a new “realist feminism” that has arisen in the UK.  Also, “There is a growing ‘postliberal’ movement which brings together this kind of feminism with more conservative, pro-family and often pro-Christian views.”

She recommends retiring the “feminist” label altogether. She advocates bringing back both all-female spaces and all-male spaces, such as social clubs, emphasizing the importance of marriage, and increasing social and financial support for mothers. She closes on a personal note, with wide applicability:

One of the reasons I fled to the West was to have the freedom to marry for love. Here, we take it for granted that marriage is not just a self-serving contract or a tribal agreement between families, but a loving union of equals who possess complementary virtues. A happy marriage is the fundamental unit of a healthy society. For a marriage to be happy and fulfilling, it must be cooperative. For the health of the body politic, marital cooperation has to be reflected on a large scale. Only then will families grow and flourish, birth rates stabilize, and the collective mental health crisis ease.

 

Photo by Charles Hutchins from London, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

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