So, yet again, we have encountered -- in the wild and in full bloom -- that rare and fragile flower, "Your tolerance must tolerate my intolerance." This statement is not an argument. It's not even a statement. It is, rather, as Lenore Beadsman describes it, "... a sort of joke. A what do you call it. An antinomy." It's Not Good when someone mistakes this joke for a substantial argument. Read more
That big idea is this: Some people are legitimate Americans and other people -- regardless of citizenship -- are illegitimate and not really real Americans at all. That is the big idea that drove Trump's initial foray into national politics as the King of the Birthers. And that is the idea that shapes his every policy, statement, agenda and decision as a candidate. On any subject, Donald Trump's position will be the one that affirms the legitimacy of white Americans while denying the legitimacy of everyone else. And if any subject is not in some way directly linked to that big idea, the he's too bored to bother with it. Read more
Donald Trump is not a single-issue candidate, he's a single-idea candidate. That single idea is all that matters to him and all that animates him. To the extent that Trump has policy priorities or positions on issues, it's all in service of that single idea. This is clarifying. Read more
"You shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing ... you shall not side with the majority so as to pervert justice. ... You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt." Read more
It's difficult to reconcile LaHaye & Jenkins' view of a uniquely sovereign United Nations with the actual reality of the UN, but L&J's view is not derived from looking at actual reality. Their view, rather, is retroengineered from what they think they know about the future. In the future, they are certain, there will be One World Government ruled by an all-powerful monarch and structured just like the feudal system described above (or rather, not coincidentally, like the Roman Empire under some of its first-century tyrants). And since they believe the present is made up entirely of a series of small, inexorable steps toward that preordained future, the UN must be a stalking horse for the Antichrist's future OWG. Read more
This granting of permission is welcome, even if it is at the same time deeply troubling. The very form and fact of the essay does as much to reinforce the dynamics of such permission-granting as it does to deal with any of the substance of the thing being permitted. That assertion of control and entitled legitimacy is as much the theme of the essay as anything it has to say about the secondary matter of what such control is now being expanded to include, and that can make the whole thing a bit hard to swallow. Read more
That multi-car accident of a sentence starts with the reaffirmation of "mainstream white evangelical leaders" as the only right, proper, legitimate and acceptable authority, and it ends with a not-so-subtle, baldly pragmatic panic about financial survival amid changing demographics, and in between it pauses to relitigate all the current culture-war hot-buttons and to reaffirm their priority over that of racial justice. That's ten pounds of framing for a 2-ounce statement. But if we just focus on that statement -- ignoring, for now, all the ways that framing utterly undermines and contradicts it -- it says this: "Racial justice is now a core concern." And that's good, right? Read more
I'm not interested here in what's "savvy," or in playing some kind of 11-dimensional chess game. I'm thinking here, instead, of all the Very Nice People I know in white evangelicalism, Republicans all, who find themselves at a crossroads -- forced to choose whether they will follow this path even all the way to Donald Trump. I am not thinking here in the abstract, but of very specific individuals -- people I know and like, people I respect despite our deep political disagreements, people I've learned from and people I admire. I'm thinking of friends, relatives, neighbors, church-members, teachers, authors, writers and correspondents. Read more
I'm back from an impromptu mini-vacation down the shore -- tan, rested and ready for September (once I go out and buy a new Trapper Keeper). Here's some stuff I came across on my spotty Wildwood wifi, including: RIP Gene Wilder; the Family Research Council's white supremacy spokesmodel; and what we can learn from press coverage of Colin Powell's charitable foundation. Read more
"For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'" Read more
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