Erick Erickson and St. Peter

Erick Erickson Declares Minimum Wage Workers are “Mostly People Who Failed At Life”

No.  Really.
And then he doubles down here.

Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig remarks:

Remember when it used to be good enough for conservatives that people were doing honest work? Not anymore. You have now “failed at life” if you work for minimum wage and try to secure better working conditions for yourself. The devil owns Erickson’s tongue, but I’ve said that for a long time.

For a sense of what Abraham, in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich man called the “great chasm” between this gospel of mammon and the actual gospel of Jesus Christ, consider this:

A thirty year old manual laborer, unmarried, living at home with his mom till he started wandering around talking about religion, with no place to lay his head, and so poor he has to borrow a coin when somebody asks him a question about paying taxes. Hangs around with whores and parasitic government bureaucrats who bleed hardworking people dry. Demands productive commandment-obeying citizens give away their hard-earned money to “the poor”. Yet when one of his own female groupies wastes a bunch of ointment on him and flatters his vanity, this limousine liberal has no use for their plight. Preaches dangerous kumbayah turn-the-other cheek garbage that would leave the people of his country prostrate before illegal alien invaders, instead of calling for second amendment rights and strong military budget. Yet he hypocritically goes on some kind of violent rampage against distinguished business leaders in the community while respectable people are trying to pray. Says class war stuff like “Blessed are you poor” and “woe to you who are rich” and tells nasty stories about shiftless street people going to heaven and Job Creators going to hell. This peace-and-lovenik gins up a mob of Takers against the Makers by calling them “blind guides” and “whited sepulchres”. Is it any surprise this dodgy loser then runs afoul of the law, poses as some kind of revolutionary leader and suffers capital punishment for treason as good conservatives demand he should? Total failure in life.

Tying somebody’s value and worthiness to live to their economic productivity (which is what “minimum wage workers are failures in life” means) is *precisely* what undergirds the whole “life unworthy of being lived” ethos that authorizes everything from exterminations of “useless eaters” to the abortion of “unwanted” children to the euthanasia of people who “no longer have a place in this life”. I don’t use language like “satanic” lightly, but I do here without hesitation. Erickson, of course, is not a Catholic and therefore cannot be held to the standards of the fullness of the gospel. But Catholics are Catholic and *must* be held to the standards of the full gospel. And I have already been instructed by “faithful conservative Catholics” that Erickson’s language is all perfectly compatible with “conservative Catholicism”.

That may be so. But it is not in the slightest compatible with Catholic faith. I used to be a convert from Evangelicalism to conservative Catholicism. Now I consider myself a convert from conservative Catholicism to the Catholic faith. I’m sick of cafeteria Catholicism, both left and right. I prefer All You Can Eat Catholicism–including “blessed are you poor” and “woe to you who are rich”.

And I regard it as my duty to say so:

The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, speak to your people and say to them, If I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from among them, and make him their watchman; and if he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows the trumpet and warns the people; then if any one who hears the sound of the trumpet does not take warning, and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, and did not take warning; his blood shall be upon himself. But if he had taken warning, he would have saved his life. But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes, and takes any one of them; that man is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand.

“So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked man, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way; he shall die in his iniquity, but you will have saved your life. (Eze 33:1–9).

On the bright side, Erickson’s conscience does appear to be pricking him:

In the past several months there have been three incidents that have solidified for me that my faith and my politics are starting to collide. While I am a firm believer in the idea of a conservative populism, I see a dangerous trend within the mix of unfortunate shrillness and hostility. That trend is playing out in the comments here at RedState and on social media.

To start, Christian conservatives were roundly assailed by other conservatives for daring to provide aid and comfort to children whose parents had shipped them across the border. Some could not distinguish between giving a child a teddy bear and supporting Mexican drug cartels. It was all one or all the other. In fact, many Christians, myself included, want expedited deportations and a secure border. But we also want to make sure the children, some victims of human trafficking, were taken care of, fed, and comforted.

But to some on the right, that is aiding law breakers. The anger and hysteria directed at conservativesengaged in private charity had all the makings of a leftist police state making us care about how wechoose to spend our own money.

The second was bringing Dr. Brantly and his co-worker back to the United States. The number of angry calls into my radio program from well meaning conservatives, comments across social media, opinion columns, agreement thereto, etc. really boggled my mind. Here are two Americans risking their lives to help others and we are supposed to turn our back on them, leave them there, or criticize their decision to go in the first place? That’s not the America I know or love. The level of outright anger, fear, and bitterness over the decision to take care of American citizens and the lack of knowledge and understanding that formed the foundation for the anger, fear, and bitterness really left me wondering what is going on.

The last is the present situation in Ferguson, MO. The rush to win a fight and lay blame instead of mourning a loss and praying for a situation just leaves me perplexed. The rush to “change the narrative” with bad facts to replace bad facts by some folks who keep the ichthys on their car unsettles me.

I’m a conservative before I’m a Republican. I was once even an elected Republican. But before I’m a father or husband, I am a Christian.

That Erickson must increase and Social Darwinist Erickson must decrease.  Not many in the conservative commentariat have had the moxie to stick their head this far outside the bubble. If Peter can go from speaking divine revelation to uttering the words of Satan, this guy can certainly ride the same whipsaw. So I think we owe him our prayers that he continue to listen to his conscience and stop mouthing the inhuman platitudes of the prince of this world. If he’s in the EIB bubble, he’s under enormous pressure to conform and will require a lot of grace to break with the inhuman cult of the Thing That Used to be Conservatism in its Limbavian manifestations to find the freedom of the gospel. Let us pray he find the grace to not go away sad, having many possessions, but rather to embace the fullness of the revelation of Christ and defy this inhuman philosophy of men that seeks to supplant the gospel.