Thank God for the First Amendment

Silverfiddle Rant!

Much of society is now a hooting nuthouse full of unhinged inmates trampling logic and common sense, and indifferent or even hostile to traditional religious beliefs. This is where the Christian admonition kicks in: Be in the world but not of the world.

The culture war is over - Conservative Christians lost

Traditional western jurisprudence has much of its roots in Biblical morality, but voters, elected representatives, and judges are rejecting those moral foundations, and the change has been rapid.

In 1986, the Supreme Court cited Blackstone to uphold Georgia's anti-sodomy law that outlawed homosexual sex. (Bowers v. Hardwick).  In 1991, the Supreme Court declared anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional.  (Lawrence v. Texas).  Gay marriage followed in 2015. (Obergefell v Hodges) 

Blackstone's compendium of western law explicates a nuanced approach to abortion, as does Jewish teachings.  People who want an absolute abolition of the practice must first acknowledge that they hold an extreme and minority position. I don't mean that as a pejorative.  True Christianity is uncompromising and not for the faint of heart. 

Coercion or Persuasion?

Religious right Republicans could win the House, Senate and White House and launch a farrago of revanchist federal laws including prohibitions on abortions and gay marriage, etc, but they would trigger their own version of one person, one vote, one time.  Voters would throw them out and banish them for a generation while the newly-elected would re-enshrine those rights.  Cramming laws down the throats of people who don't want them is a form of dictatorship.

Politics aside, imagine the torrent of ramifications flowing from such laws, and the impact on society. 

We are living in a neo-pagan age, and Christians are now in the realm of moral persuasion. The Lord's work will not be done in our legislatures and court houses, so roll up your sleeves, hoist high the First Amendment banner, and get to work.

Fight to Win

Silverfiddle Rant!

"Chris Rufo is doing something so spectacularly unconservative, he may need to update his political affiliation: he’s winning." (Abigail Shrier, Want to Save America? Don't Act Like a Conservative)


Abigail Shrier says Chris Rufo is showing conservatives how to fight:

And while academics and other pedants quibble over whether “Critical Race Theory” is the right term, Rufo is out there identifying the problem, alerting the public, and sounding all available alarms.

Rufo is neither a blowhard loose cannon "owning the libs" nor a milquetoast Mitt Romney trying to get on their good side. He steers a middle course "clear of the Scylla and Charybdis conservatives so often pinball against: hyper-polite fecklessness on one side of the boat and chest-thumping ignorance on the other."

How did Rufo do it? By gathering evidence and pointing out the glaring harm in clear, unapologetic (but never crass or rude) language. He speaks not to the elites, but to Americans, and he makes an intelligible argument: “Anti-Racism” is just racism in progressive clothing; it’s teaching our kids to hate themselves and each other.

Rufo engages with the culture in the straightforward manner of a gentleman soldier. He neither grovels to the intellectual class nor strains to fit his arguments into the warped mold of their lingo. And he doesn’t pick fights for their own sake.

Conservatives have an Opportunity

Conservatives were handed a political gift they did not win and do not deserve—the disaster of the Left’s ascent. The activist Left’s policy agenda is widely disliked. Its positions veer between unreasonable (Defund the Police), unlivable (indulge looters, larcenists, and vandals), unsustainable (open the borders), and untenable (transwomen are women). Almost no one actually agrees with any of this.

Shrier explains how to win this battle. Spoiler Alert! It won't be won by rightwing insults and pseudo-macho bombast, and it sure as hell won't be won by treating "Leftist ideologues like quirky out-of-town guests arriving for brunch," when actually, "the Woke are not zany guests. They are home-invasion robbers."

We can all Play a Role...

Speak up, respectfully, to those you disagree with, often in the form of questions. You are not going to win a direct confrontation, but if you can plant a seed of doubt in someone, or make one cogent counter-point and then let the whole issue go, you just might have planted a mighty oak 

Communicate to the loudmouth pundits and politicians on "your side" who enjoy playing to the peanut gallery.  Tell them you don't appreciate their clown act and that you will turn them off if they cannot learn how to argue in a way that attracts others to the cause.

Speak to those around you with clarity and charity. Keep in mind most are on the fence or afraid to commit a WrongSpeak crime. Again, you can ask questions.  Rhetorical ones appealing to common sense are often more effective because they hit home but do not put people on the spot: "Can you imagine your mother referring to herself, or to her mother as a birthing person?"

I don't want to ban the woke pogroms and neo-maoists. I want to defeat them fair and square in the marketplace of ideas.

What say you?