Bishop Barron wrote a piece a while back on Grace and Karma<\/a>:<\/p>\n A karmic approach says that, by a cosmic spiritual law, we are punished or rewarded according to our moral activities. If we do bad things, we will suffer, either in this life or a life to come. And if we do good things, we will be rewarded, again either here or in the hereafter. Karma might not be immediate, as is the law of gravity (remember John Lennon\u2019s playful song \u201cInstant Karma\u201d), but in the long run, people are rewarded or punished according to merit. And this satisfies our sense of fairness and justice.<\/p>\n Now a religion of grace is different. It teaches that all people are sinners and hence deserving of punishment, but that God, out of sheer generosity, gives them what they\u00a0don\u2019t<\/em>deserve. Think of one of the most popular lines in Christian poetry: \u201cAmazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.\u201d In terms of a karmic religion, wretches deserve a wretched fate, and it would be unfair for wicked people to be given a great gift. But devotees of a religion of grace exult in this generosity. Think in this context of the parable of the workers hired at different times of the day or the story of the Prodigal Son. Those make sense only in a religion-of-grace context.<\/p>\n Now lest Christians become self-righteous about espousing a generous religion of grace, we must keep in mind that there is a serious objection indeed to such a construal of religion. If grace is a gift, and if there is no real warrant for the gift, then how come only some get it and others don\u2019t? How could it possibly be fair that some people receive the gift of eternal life\u2014through no merit of their own\u2014and others don\u2019t? This complaint becomes even more acute when we realize that the Bible\u2014from beginning to end\u2014presents a God who chooses. God selects Abel and not Cain, Abraham and not Lot, Jacob and not Esau, David and not Saul. In fact, one of the most basic truths of the Biblical revelation is that Israel itself is a\u00a0chosen<\/i>\u00a0people, a holy nation, a people set apart. And God insists\u2014just to make the point clearly\u2014that Israel was not chosen because it was the greatest, most just, most accomplished of all the peoples of the world, just the contrary. So again, is any of this fair? In response to this charge, Christian thinkers have tended to say that no one deserves anything and therefore we should never complain about inequities in the distribution of free gifts. Still. Still.<\/p>\n In order to resolve this dilemma, it might be useful to look at a couple of Biblical texts, one from the Old Testament and one from the New. No one could ever accuse the prophet Isaiah of underplaying Israel\u2019s importance or the fact that Israel is the specially chosen people of God. But listen to these words from the 56th<\/sup>\u00a0chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah:<\/p>\n \u201cThe foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, loving the name of the Lord, and becoming his servants\u2014all who keep the Sabbath free from profanation and hold to my covenant, them I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house of prayer\u2026for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Israel was indeed chosen, singled out, uniquely graced\u2014but precisely for the world and not for itself. What is grace? Gift! But when you cling to a gift, hoarding it for yourself, you undermine its nature as gift. The whole point of receiving the divine life is to give it away in turn. If you hoard it and make it your private prerogative, you undermine it; it turns to ashes. But when you give it away, it is renewed within you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I think of that as I read Kevin Williamson, who is intensely critical of Trump\u2019s fanboi.\u00a0 You\u2019d think I\u2019d agree with Williamson, and I do to a degree.\u00a0 He writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n The manners of the white underclass are Trump\u2019s \u2014 vulgar, aggressive, boastful, selfish, promiscuous, consumerist. The white working class has a very different ethic. Its members are, in the main, churchgoing, financially prudent, and married, and their manners are formal to the point of icy politeness. You\u2019ll recognize the style if you\u2019ve ever been around it: It\u2019s \u201cYes, sir\u201d and \u201cNo, ma\u2019am,\u201d but it is the formality of soldiers and police officers \u2014 correct and polite, but not in the least bit deferential. It is a formality adopted not to acknowledge the superiority of social betters but to assert the equality of the speaker \u2014 equal to any person or situation, perfectly republican manners. It is the general social respect rooted in genuine self-respect.<\/p>\n Its opposite is the sneering, leveling, drag-\u2019em-all-down-into-the-mud anti-\u201celitism\u201d of contemporary right-wing populism. Self-respect says: \u201cI\u2019m an American citizen, and I can walk into any room, talk to any president, prince, or potentate, because I can rise to any occasion.\u201d Populist anti-elitism says the opposite: \u201cI can be rude enough and denigrating enough to drag anybody down to my level.\u201d Trump\u2019s rhetoric \u2014 ridiculous and demeaning schoolyard nicknames, boasting about money, etc. \u2014 has always been about reducing. Trump doesn\u2019t have the intellectual capacity to duke it out with even the modest wits at the New York Times, hence it\u2019s \u201cthe failing New York Times.\u201d Never mind that the New York Times isn\u2019t actually failing and that any number of Trump-related businesses have failed so thoroughly that they\u2019ve gone into bankruptcy; the truth doesn\u2019t matter to the argument any more than it matters whether the fifth-grade bully actually has an actionable claim on some poor kid\u2019s lunch money. It would never even occur to the low-minded to identify with anybody other than the bully. That\u2019s what all that ridiculous stuff about \u201cwinning\u201d was all about in the campaign. It is might-makes-right, i.e., the politics of chimpanzee troupes, prison yards, kindergartens, and other primitive environments. That is where the underclass ethic thrives \u2014 and how \u201csmart people\u201d came to be a term of abuse.<\/p>\n This involves, inevitably, a good deal of fakery.<\/p>\n The man at the center of all this atavistic redneck revanchism is a pampered billionaire real-estate heir from New York City, and it has been something to watch the multi-millionaire populist pundits in Manhattan doing their best impersonations of beer-drinkin\u2019 regular guys from the sticks. I assume Sean Hannity picked up his purported love for country music in the sawdust-floored honky-tonks of\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0Long Island.<\/p>\n As a purely aesthetic enterprise, none of this clears my poor-white-trash cultural radar. I\u2019m reminded of those so-called dive bars in Manhattan that spend $150,000 to make a pricey spot in Midtown look like a Brooklyn kid\u2019s idea of a low-rent roadside bar in Texas. (There\u2019s one that even has Lubbock license plates on the wall. I wonder where they got them \u2014 is there some kind of mail-order dive-bar starter kit that comes with taxidermy, Texas license plates, and a few cases of Lone Star? Maybe via Amazon Prime?) The same crap is there \u2014 because the same crap is everywhere \u2014 but the arrangement isn\u2019t quite right.<\/p>\n The populist Right\u2019s abandonment of principle has been accompanied by a repudiation of good taste, achievement, education, refinement, and manners \u2014 all of which are abominated as signs of effete \u2018elitism.\u2019 The populist Right\u2019s abandonment of principle has been accompanied by a repudiation of good taste, achievement, education, refinement, and manners \u2014 all of which are abominated as signs of effete \u201celitism.\u201d During the Clinton years, Virtue Inc. was the top-performing share in the Republican political stock exchange. Fortunes were made, books were sold by the ton, and homilies were delivered. The same people today are celebrating Donald Trump \u2014 not in spite of his being a dishonest, crude serial adulterer but because of it. His dishonesty, the quondam cardinals of Virtue Inc. assure us, is simply the mark of a savvy businessman, his vulgarity the badge of his genuineness and lack of \u201cpolitical correctness,\u201d and his pitiless abuse of his several wives and children the mark of a genuine \u201calpha male.\u201d No less a virtue entrepreneur than Bill Bennett dismissed those who pointed out Trump\u2019s endless lies and habitual betrayals as suffering from \u201cmoral superiority,\u201d from people on \u201chigh horses,\u201d and said that Trump simply is \u201ca guy who says some things awkwardly, indecorously, infelicitously.\u201d<\/p>\n Thus did the author of The Book of Virtues embrace the author of \u201cGrab \u2019Em By the P***y.\u201d<\/p>\n We need a Moynihan Report for conservative broadcasters.<\/p>\n The problem, in Bennett\u2019s telling (and that of many other conservatives), isn\u2019t that Trump is a morally defective reprobate but that he is aesthetically displeasing to overly refined \u201celitists.\u201d That is a pretty common line of argument \u2014 and an intellectual cop-out \u2014 but set that aside for the moment. Let\u2019s pretend that Bennett et al. are correct and this is simply a matter of manners. Are we now to celebrate vulgarity as a virtue? Are we to embrace crassness? Are we supposed to pretend that a casino-cum-strip-joint is a civilizational contribution up there with Notre-Dame, that the Trump Taj Mahal trumps the Taj Mahal? Are we supposed to snigger at people who ask that question? Are we supposed to abandon our traditional defense of standards to mimic Trump\u2019s bucket-of-KFC-and-gold-plated-toilet routine?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now I enjoyed this takedown of the moronification of Right Wing Virtuecrats as much as the next Trump-loathing, heartbroken person who once saw himself as a member of the Christian Right.\u00a0 You cannot land enough punches on this disgusting gaggle of whores as long as they refuse to repent and go on posturing as America\u2019s Moral Arbiters while they worship and adore this lying dumbell of a sex predator as the New Constantine.\u00a0 These are people so low and vile as to make up defaming lies against brave soldiers who sacrificed their lives for their racist skins, just to defend this vile Commander-in-Chief in his war on that soldier\u2019s grieving family.\u00a0<\/a> Fight them each and every day, say I.\u00a0 Shout from the rooftops what disgusting liars and cowards they are. They have it coming till they repent.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the thing: I really do believe in grace. And that\u2019s where Williamson and I part ways.\u00a0In Scripture, the punishments and rebukes of God are ordered toward redemption and the fiercest words God offers are always tinged with hope. Williamson believes in something that looks a lot more like Survival of the Fittest with the weak being killed without mercy.<\/p>\n This is manifest in several ways.\u00a0 Most infamously, in his call for post-abortive women to be hanged.\u00a0 Yes, that\u2019s right.\u00a0 Hanged.<\/a><\/p>\n Not for Williamson is all that wussy stuff about abortion having two victims: one dead and one wounded.\u00a0 Rachel\u2019s Vineyard<\/a> is right out.\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 Post-abortive women should be killed, according to Williamson.\u00a0 Pity for the weak and victimized is not part of his vocabulary.\u00a0 Women terrified and under pressure to abort deserve the noose.<\/p>\n Williamson\u2019s Social Darwinism goes for all the weak.\u00a0 In another take on the white underclass who adore Trump, he dishes more ruthless, graceless karma<\/a>:<\/p>\n The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump\u2019s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn\u2019t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.<\/p>\n If you want to live, get out of Garbutt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And if they can\u2019t? Then the hell with them.<\/p>\n That is why, in the middle of his tirade against Trump voters, Williamson cannot resist dragging in a contemptuous reference to Elizabeth Bruenig, a serious, committed Catholic (prolife and everything, but committing the *real* mortal sin for conservative Catholics of being a self-described socialist.<\/p>\n Well-heeled children of privilege such as Elizabeth Bruenig condescend to speak on behalf of people and communities about whom they know practically nothing \u2014 people who have not, let\u2019s remember, asked the well-scrubbed sons and daughters of the ruling class to speak on their behalf. When they were asked, they chose Donald Trump by a very large margin, but then the poor make poor choices all the time \u2014 that\u2019s part of why they\u2019re poor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Never mind the fact that no less a figure than Pope Benedict XVI sees democratic socialism as often deeply compatible with the Faith<\/a>:<\/p>\n In Wilhelmine Germany, too, Catholic groups felt closer to democratic socialism than to the rigidly Prussian and Protestant conservative forces. In many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of a social consciousness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Bruenig\u2019s crime is that her wussy Christian compassion is fouling the gene pool with losers who should die. As Mencken once complained of certain liberal or ex-liberal thinkers, \u201cThey have come to realize that the morons whom they sweated to save do not want to be saved, and are not worth saving.\u201d<\/p>\n To this, Chesterton replied<\/a>:<\/p>\n The Catholic theology has nothing to do with democracy, for or against, in the sense of a machinery of voting or a criticism of particular political privileges. It is not committed to support what Whitman said for democracy, or even what Jefferson or Lincoln said for democracy. But it is absolutely committed to contradict what Mr. Mencken says against democracy. There will be Diocletian persecutions, there will be Dominican crusades, there will be rending of all religious peace and compromise, or even the end of civilization and the world, before the Catholic Church will admit that one single moron, or one single man, \u201cis not worth saving.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In Mr. Williamson\u2019s reading, Trumpism is just the new opiate of the masses, along with actual opiates. People who indulge in such opiates, he deems, deserve to die. He despises Bruenig for the crime of wanting to save people he deems unworthy of salvation. His Social Darwinist conservatism, having spent decades talking about the ability of the Ordinary Man to Make it in America, now declares them worthy of death for failing to stop themselves from being fleeced by social Darwinist conservatives and the great Con Man himself, Donald Trump. And so he declares, \u201cIf the poor be like to die, they had better do it and help decrease the surplus population.\u201d They are too stupid to see Trump for the fraud he is, so screw \u2019em.<\/p>\n Call me crazy, but I\u2019ll take Bruenig\u2019s redemptive Christian will to save over Williamson\u2019s nihilist vision any day. Especially since she writes in response to Williamson\u2019s contempt for her<\/a>:<\/p>\n Williamson is right that my immediate family has done well financially\u200a\u2014\u200aespecially my father, who is a private person whose privacy I want to respect, but I would be remiss in not mentioning his hard work and generosity. I am grateful for the fortune of being his daughter. But that is luck\u200a\u2014\u200aonly luck, and no virtue.\u00a0Studies of social mobility in the United States<\/a>\u00a0suggest there are millions like me, comfortable by fortune, not merit. Williamson knows poverty because he grew up poor, so let me let him in on something about the well-to-do:<\/p>\n\n