Bannon, etc.

As mentioned in the previous post, Facebook is now the place where I put in most of my blogging-type energy. This means that many of my FB "friends" and many of their "friends" already know in excruciating detail and at great length what I think of the Steve Bannon flap, while anybody who knows my ideas on political topics only through Extra Thoughts will have to guess. It also means that by this time I'm practically weary of the subject and hate to say it all over again.

So I won't say it all over again, just most of it. What I have to say here may not come as much of a surprise to those who know what I think of the alt-right.

Steve Bannon, as near as I can gather, is an enabler of the alt-right, and knowingly so. This doesn't mean that he is personally racist or anti-semitic. If I had to bet I would bet that those aren't amongst his (strong) ideological, personal commitments. However, he is entirely reckless about both racism and anti-semitism inasmuch as he has been willing, knowingly and deliberately, to give (as he said himself) a "platform" to the alt-right and to let Breitbart be turned into a gateway drug for the alt-right.

In fact, though he has just this past weekend stated that he has "zero tolerance" for racism, this is patently and even laughably untrue. To give just one example, over a year ago Alex Marlow said that he and Steve Bannon were thinking of giving Breitbart writer Katie McHugh a weekly column after reviewing some extremely racially "edgy" anti-Mexican tweets of hers, including one that referred to Mexicans' "retard dysfunction," to which a liberal news organization had drawn their attention. This sort of insouciant doubling down is as far as possible from "zero tolerance" and is, in fact, quite typical of alt-right modus operandi.

It is not that Breitbart is anything like as nasty a site as a hard-line alt-right site (at least, if one ignores the comboxes at Breitbart). But it is a roadway and a platform for fellow travelers (such as the despicable Milo) and a breeding ground for a variety of nasty alt-right attitudes and ideas. It was Breitbart that published this, to my mind damningly laudatory, "guide" to the alt-right. The article normalizes "human biodiversity theory" and even the allegedly humorous use of neo-Nazi imagery, as long as (you know) it isn't done with real hatred in one's heart. Presumably we are to depend upon Milo and co. to guide us as to which swastikas are tweeted with real hatred and which ones are done by the "joyful" and "fun" "meme team." The article attempts to make the alt-right sound sexy, brilliant, amusing, and cool.

The trouble is that people have short attention spans, and so all that the left can shout is that Bannon himself is personally an anti-semite, which is not strongly supported and even has some evidence against it. At that point those on the right who want to believe that Trump is going to do some good simply stop listening, thinking that this is another case where the left is smearing a good man. In all of this, the complex danger that the ruthless and unscrupulous Steve Bannon actually poses to conservatism goes by the boards, and we get repeated, shallow whitewashes at conservative publications, like this one, for example, by John Zmirak, which makes no attempt to address legitimate concerns about both Bannon and neo-nationalism. (For more on what Zmirak actually knows and is pushing under the rug, see the discussion below.)

The appointment of Bannon has already done harm to conservatism, because the debate over Bannon has motivated people to engage in all sorts of mental gymnastics and to separate themselves from reality.

Hardcore alt-right denialism

--The most extreme example of the proposition that the alt-right literally does not exist that I have seen showed up on Facebook on Thanksgiving Day: Someone on a FB friend's wall seriously floated the conspiracy theory that Richard Spencer and his group of Nazi-saluting kookballs are a hoax, paid for by George Soros to make conservatism look bad. Pointing out that he has a history and a web site and has been around for years did not elicit a mea culpa.

--A similar view I've seen expressed or implied is the proposition that there is no alt-right movement at all and that the word was invented by the left-wing news to smear conservatives. This is often accompanied by a proud display of ignorance as argument: "Well, I've never heard of it before this week!" Well, that's a knockdown argument. It does not seem to dawn on the one making this claim that, in the age of the Internet, a great many sociological movements could be going on their merry way, involving thousands of people, without his ever having heard of them. One of course tries to refute this sort of nonsense by naming some sites (which I would have thought could be found quickly enough using Google): VDare, American Renaissance, Vox Day, Radix Journal, and others have obviously existed a lot longer than this week. For this I've occasionally gotten an, "Okay, thanks, I'll check it out" (that's a triumphant moment for me, because at least it represents a move in the right direction) but have never had anyone come back and say, "I was wrong. This really is a movement, and it's been around for a while. I just didn't happen to know about it before."

Softcore alt-right denialism

--The proposition that "the alt-right" is so incredibly diffuse and diverse a set of people and includes so many different sub-groups and is so unofficial and Internet-y that it should not be thought of as a movement at all and (this is crucial) no ideas, especially no bad ideas, should be attributed to it. Nothing is a movement, apparently, without membership cards, a mailing address, peer-reviewed journals to which one can make footnotes, and elected officials.

--If one sends the doubter to some actual alt-right site, such as VDare or Vox Day, and he sees bad stuff there that is clearly accepted as the core ideas of a movement, he may shift to saying that almost nobody could possibly be influenced by or believe this stuff just because it is so bad and crazy. A version of this actually said to me was, "Isn't that guy some kind of Nazi? Well, who listens to him?" The fact that (as comboxes show) apparently quite a number of people do listen to "this guy" does not move the doubter.

Downplaying

--If one finally convinces a person that yes, this is real, yes, there really are these sites, yes, they've been around for a long time, no, this isn't just a dream in the fevered brain of the left-wing media, and yes, this movement does really coalesce around these various really bad ideas, the next move will often be to say that they can't really do any harm. Usually this takes the form of saying that there can't be all that many alt-rightists, so why talk about them at all or worry about them? Sometimes it takes the form of saying that they are "mostly on the Internet" or are probably mostly youthful losers "living in their parents' basements," so they can't really hurt anybody.

At this point, of course, one should bring up David French , Bethany Mandel, Erick Erickson, and the other journalists French names who have received vile harassment and death threats. One should also mention that SWAT-ing and doxing can be carried out remotely. And apparently some enraged Trump supporters got out of their parents' basements and ended up on Never Trumper Erick Erickson's lawn. And it doesn't bloody matter if they aren't there anymore right now. (I was actually asked, as if to gauge whether the movement is really dangerous, if they're still on his lawn.) How would you like it if they showed up on your lawn?? Erickson shouldn't have to live in a state of literally permanent siege for the rest of his life for ostrich-headed conservatives to admit that we have a problem.

I want to say a word here about threats. The Internet, Twitter in particular, has done something extremely bad to our common life: It has made us blasé about threats. There is a reason why threats are not protected by the First Amendment and are, in fact, illegal. But given that law enforcement would be overwhelmed if it tried to investigate every death threat or rape threat conveyed by Twitter and e-mail as well as those conveyed by phone, text, physical letter, etc., a lot has to go uninvestigated. Law enforcement has to triage. We have to try to guess which threats are likely to result in action. But it shouldn't be that way. Nobody should have to play Russian roulette with his and his family's safety by guessing whether a death threat or a rape threat is "credible" or "serious." In a sense, they are all serious, and all the people who make all of them would be behind bars if things were as they should be.

It is truly sad to see conservatives starting to use phrases like "on the Internet" to downplay the danger and harm caused by threatening and vile harassment. The fact that an electronic means was used to convey the threats and vile harassment that these men and women have received doesn't change the semantic content of the communication. "These people are mostly on the Internet" makes it sound like they literally live in another dimension of reality, as opposed to "These people used a vast network of computers anonymously to convey their evil, threatening, and cowardly communications."

The saying (attributed to Elie Wiesel) goes that, if a man tells you he wants to kill you, you should believe him. That shouldn't have a little asterisk next to it that goes to a footnote that says, "Unless he says it on the Internet. Then he's probably just some loser in his parents' basement, and you shouldn't worry about it."

Whitewashing by redefinition

--This is what Bannon himself is doing directly, and others are joining him. Bannon is now openly redefining the term "alt-right," and here is what he says is his personal meaning for it. "Our definition of the alt-right is younger people who are anti-globalists, very nationalist, terribly anti-establishment."

Even if there were a stable form of being "very nationalist" and "terribly anti-establishment" somewhere in America that was not racist and harassing, the alt-right ain't it. You can't just redefine a term for an existing social movement in order not to have to apologize for giving a platform. (See Ben Shapiro on the redefinition move here.)

Moreover, it has proven incredibly difficult in the U.S. for any group to be very nationalist and very anti-establishment and very anti-globalist while having no problem whatsoever with some form of racialism. Even those who have tried to split those particular hairs have always had to be eternally vigilant--both concerning themselves and concerning their readers and followers. I know whereof I speak, having been for several years a reader and sometimes commenting at the site of the late Lawrence Auster, View from the Right. Eventually I took it off my sidebar for good and sufficient reason. Not that I didn't actually like and even pray for Auster. I also knew that he was genuinely trying to create a forum in which racial issues could be frankly discussed from what might be considered a "far right" viewpoint, without actual racial animus. But the problems proved nearly insuperable, and I decided that the site was actually having a bad effect upon me even as a somewhat detached reader.

The potential problems are not just with active racial animus but also with openness to pseudo-scientific biological racial theories as well as unhealthy obsession with racially motivated crime. For anyone who thinks that there is a great gulf between the ideas of today's alt-right and the ideas of yesterday's paleoconservatism, this speech by the paleoconservative Paul Gottfried is instructive. Gottfried has some claim to have coined the phrase "alternative right." In a speech in 2008 he explicitly dubs VDare and Takimag as the future of the paleoconservative ("alternative right") movement that he founded! He also explicitly bemoans any move toward racial egalitarian ideas in the movement and urges the movement to keep hold of its racialist past:

They [older paleoconservatives] were also preoccupied with sociobiology, a discipline or way of thinking that had influenced them deeply. Today the paleo camp looks markedly different as well as much older, and it shows little interest in the cognitive, hereditary preconditions for intellectual and cultural achievements. And the despair about American society among paleos may be pushing some of them toward the liberal immigrationist camp, providing they’re not already there. Others of this group have become so terrified by those on their left that they pretend not to notice the stark fact of human cognitive disparities. This quest for innocuousness sometimes takes the form of seminars on educational problems centering on endless sermons about values and featuring rotating lists of edifying books. Presumably everyone would perform up to speed if he/she could avail himself/herself of the proper cultural tools. The fact that not everyone enjoys the same genetic precondition for learning is irrelevant for this politically motivated experiment in wishful thinking.

The main difference, then, between Gottfried's preferred "sociobiology" and today's alt-right is that Gottfried was genteel and presumably wouldn't have wanted anyone harassed with crude insults or threatened. But it's not as though the older paleoconservative movement, as envisaged by Gottfried and co., had no problems whatsoever with racialist ideas!

Bizarrely, John Zmirak himself must know this, for he himself engaged in a back-and-forth with Paul Gottfried on this very subject of race in that very year (2008). Zmirak wrote in Takimag, and Gottfried eventually responded (to Zmirak, inter alia) in none other than American Renaissance, a blatantly racialist publication, where Gottfried praised the racialist leader of the alt-right, Jared Taylor! Gottfried specifically insisted, in response to and disagreement with Zmirak, that blacks are genetically deficient in their "capacity to produce culture, science, and civility..." Are these the "Jacksonian nationalists" Zmirak wants everybody to keep calm and hang out with? Zmirak even recounted a few months ago that he once got trapped by attending a paleocon conference with an openly white nationalist speaker. He knows the dangers and the lack of clear demarcation lines full-well, and has known them for years, yet in this most recent piece he writes as if no such problem exists!

The association among nationalism, anti-globalism, and racialism is perhaps something of an historic accident in the U.S., but it is a sociological fact nonetheless, and to pretend otherwise is to be wildly irresponsible. There is not some bright line, some hard and fast sociological distinction, between those groups of people who are "very nationalist" and those who are at least in danger of if not openly flirting with racialism. For that very reason anyone who is going to be an immigration hawk (as in fact I generally am myself) or who is going to use "very anti-globalist" language, much less "nationalist" language (as opposed to patriotic language, which is not the same thing) needs to be on guard rather than dismissive of these concerns.

Such a purported distinction coming from Bannon, of all people, is especially a joke, since he himself has scarcely made an effort to make any such distinction in practice. (See the story about Katie McHugh, above.)

Bannon's appointment is, as the Zmirak article itself illustrates, going to increase this type of whitewashing by redefinition and by pretending that hard and fast distinctions exist where they do not. This encourages conservatives to be reckless precisely where they should be careful.

Alt-right anti-establishmentarianism and harassment

Finally, I want to discuss further the way that Bannon's association with the alt-right harms conservatism through the alt-right's ideas about harassment, aside from contentful ideas about race, etc. This, again, is difficult for people to grasp who are focused entirely on a question like, "Is Steve Bannon a racist/anti-semite?" The greater problem is that he's ruthless and vindictive and hates many ordinary conservative politicians and pundits. It is here that his affinity to the alt-right is greatest--in methodology and deliberately cultivated hatred for anyone on the conservative side deemed "establishment." This, I think, explains his liking for the alt-right and his wanting to normalize and continue to associate with it. Both Bannon and his alt-right associates hate conservatives who aren't as edgy as they are, conservatives who have been defined as enemies, Never Trump conservatives, and allegedly "establishment" conservatives (even those who were previously Tea Party candidates).

This article is especially illuminating in this regard. Bannon reveals himself here to be an ideologue in his own right and, simultaneously, to care deeply about tearing down the existing Republican party as an end in itself. This destructive tendency is typical of the alt-right. I had one alt-right commentator at W4 tell me that the booing of Ted Cruz at the RNC was an accomplishment of their movement! In other words, they care far more about destroying those they have dubbed enemies than about positively advancing conservative causes or candidates, even the most brilliant and valuable (like Cruz). Bannon may well (for all I know) have started out with a legislative agenda for the Tea Party that I would have at least partly agreed with. But it looks like he decided he needed to attack the Republican establishment as a means to the end of advancing that agenda (which may have had some strategic truth to it) and eventually came to a) have an extremely expansive concept of "the establishment" and b) consider tearing down this widely defined "establishment" as a goal in and of itself. This latter approach is deeply wrong and deeply disturbing.

Indeed, the greatest practical danger (aside from the ideological dangers) that Bannon poses right now to conservatism is that he will influence Trump away from cooperating with Paul Ryan and the Republicans in the Senate ("establishment") to pass conservative legislation.

Beyond that, Bannon's praise for what he calls being "terribly anti-establishment" is dangerous to the soul of conservatism. Consider the way that the alt-right carries out its project of being "terribly anti-establishment." The cases of David French and Erick Erickson are at the top of the list here, but now I'm going to talk about Ben Shapiro, because he is connected to Breitbart and Bannon: After Ben Shapiro left Breitbart and began criticizing it, he received a lot of vicious anti-semitic and racial harassment. This included a vile tweet from Breitbart's Milo upon the birth of Shapiro's son. That tweet, stating that Shapiro's son was "half-black," alluded to the meaning of the disgusting insult that the alt-right has invented for conservatives they hate. Nonetheless, camp followers of the alt-right will sometimes try to tell you that that isn't the meaning of the insulting term and that there isn't anything wrong with the term. De Nile isn't just a river in Egypt. A camp follower of the alt-right recently told me on Facebook that Milo has never said anything racist (!), and then, after I pointed out this example, began angrily fuming that the only people who object to what Milo says are those who are oversensitive and manipulated by the media. Never mind the fact that I had just refuted his false claim. This is the corruption of conservatism: Vileness isn't vileness. Racist abuse isn't racist abuse.

When Bannon was interviewed at the Republican National Convention, after this abuse of Shapiro had been publicized, he referred to Shapiro as "a whiner." This was the same interview in which he complacently stated that he had made Breitbart a platform for the alt-right. The criticism of Shapiro as a "whiner" (presumably for objecting to the anti-semitic abuse he received) is revealing. This is classic alt-right behavior: When a hated, non-alt-right conservative (or an "SJW") receives abuse and has the gall to mention it, revile him as a whiner, as "playing the victim," etc. Insinuate that either he deserved what he got (because reasons) or that (because reasons) he shouldn't talk about it. That's "whining." Or say both. This same behavior can be seen in other anti-establishmentarians (neo-reactionaries, etc.) who say things such as, "I have little sympathy for David French," blaming French and the others for having the gall to write political commentary under their own names, because abuse and threats are just expected in that case. Actually, no, they aren't. And are we now going to withhold sympathy from anyone who writes political commentary under his own name as being at fault for any subsequent abuse he and his family receive? Or is appalling callousness and victim-blaming reserved for those we disagree with? This "I have no sympathy" attitude both reveals and eggs on the wicked spirit of the bully. Sneer at people who complain about abuse. Portray them as weaklings. Verbally kick them while they're down. Blame the victim. Breitbart published a piece along exactly the same lines, saying that Shapiro was "playing the victim," mocking him, and even containing the breath-taking falsehood, "No one hates Jewish people." Bannon didn't personally write that piece (I assume). But it fits perfectly with his personal, ruthless dismissal of Shapiro as "a whiner."

This bullying, vindictive spirit, this sneering normalization of abuse, is a grave danger to conservatism. It would be entirely possible for Bannon not to harbor personal racism or anti-semitism while being (as he clearly is in the case of Shapiro) a bully who doesn't give a damn about racist and anti-semitic abuse so long as it is directed at those he deems his enemies, the "establishment," that which he wants to burn down in his "Leninist" project. That destructiveness is the spirit of the alt-right (and for that matter, the spirit of neo-reaction), and Bannon appears to have adopted it to the hilt.

The Machiavellians among the alt-right may realize that various forms of alt-right denialism, even the most extreme, work to their advantage. They can do whatever they want, in plain view, and the extreme denialists will still conclude that there's nothing to see here. ("I never heard of it before this week. Probably just an invention of the left.") Moreover, the move within a given person from outright denialism to softcore denialism to downplaying to whitewashing is also to their advantage when it occurs. The end state is a person who thinks in some vague way, "The alt-right isn't so bad after all" or "There is good in the alt-right, and we should appreciate it" or "I guess I'm alt-right" and is thus ripe for being further drawn in and becoming a camp follower of the movement itself. Ben Shapiro talks about this strategy helpfully here. And the process can be begun at one time and picked back up and continued later on. Someone who got as far as, "It's just some losers in their parents' basement being tough on the Internet" or "Who listens to Nazis anyway?" on one day may, if sufficiently motivated (motivated to disagree with the media, motivated to defend Trump and/or Bannon and/or Milo), come back another day and glom onto the dubious "distinction" between the bad, racist alt-right and the allegedly interesting and harmless "nationalist, anti-globalist" alt-right. Or may move to, "Well, people should know better than to criticize the alt-right using their own names. I have no sympathy for them. They should stop whining."

Of course, a given person may settle into one of the states I have described here and never move to another, but that is still a problem, because it represents a disconnection from reality in one way or another.

How many conservatives and erstwhile conservatives will become inured to, shrug off, and even support harassment and abuse of the c---s, the Never Trumpers, and the "establishment"? How many will support evil-doing toward leftists? How many more will turn a blind eye to support for harassment among their fellow conservatives or lend a platform for it? And how much will the divisive appointment of Bannon, and Bannon's influence on Trump, interrupt any opportunity that a Republican presidency would otherwise present for passing conservative legislation? Some of these harms have already begun, and I have witnessed them. Remember when the Never Trumpers said that the greatest harm of a Trump win lay in the damage it would do to conservatives themselves? He isn't even president yet, and it is already happening. How far all of this will go as time goes on remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, if the sunshine treatment will help, I'm quite willing to cooperate in shining the light.

Thanksgiving Day, 2016

This year the only Thanksgiving post I "wrote" was actually a reprise. Over at W4 I have re-posted this from Passion Sunday on the connection between the death of Jesus Christ and our earthly blessings.

This has been a rough year for Extra Thoughts in several ways. For one thing, Facebook has consumed virtually all of the time that I would otherwise have spent blogging. Over on Facebook I am constantly pouring out content, often on other people's "walls" and in response to their "friends." It's much like debating in blog comboxes, only it isn't readily available to the public at large, unless the post in question is public. Maybe that's just as well sometimes!

For another thing, the political scene has been extremely grim, and especially grim in the divisions among conservatives. This has been depressing. Sometimes it has meant that I'm too busy involved in the hurly burly of these divisions on social media (see previous point) to post here. Sometimes it has meant that I'm too "down" to want to take the energy to post here about the political topics that are occupying not only much of my mind but much of the mental energy of my friends as well.

Nor does it seem that that is going to change very much post-election. Now that Donald Trump has won the election, the beat goes on with debates among conservatives about his appointees, his advisers, and their associates and opinions. I don't imagine that Extra Thoughts will remain untouched by these debates; in fact, I'm sure it won't. But sometimes it may just be quiet altogether for a while.

Meanwhile, as usual, it will remain eclectic. In between political posts, I expect to put up or cross-post devotional thoughts, hymn meditations, and apologetics. It just will (probably) be slower, or sometimes slower, or more inconsistently paced, than it used to be.

As has been true year after year since I began this personal blog, I am blessed far beyond my deserts and far beyond my capacity for proper gratitude. In heaven I hope to be capable of sustaining and pouring forth the full measure of gratitude owed for all the mercies of heaven, in things both small and great.

First Old Testament undesigned coincidence post--Hezekiah's treasure chamber

First of all, update on my forthcoming book Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts.

DeWard Publishing is gathering "blurbs" right now, having sent out advance reading copies. I'm doing a last read through for typos or other errors and have found a handful. I've been having a nice, peaceful, nerdy time indexing the book. It is going to have three indices (I know they are usually called indexes, but I kinda like "indices")--a Scripture reference index, an index of authors and modern names, and a subject index.

Right now the hope is for a spring release, with "spring" somewhat ambiguous, depending on how quickly we get endorsements. I hope that before too long the book will be available for pre-order on DeWard's site.

Meanwhile, I have been carefully re-reading John James Blunt's Old Testament section in Undesigned Coincidences in the Writings Both of the Old and the New Testament. I got started doing this both because it seemed intrinsically interesting and also partly because I'm so ornery. I have a good friend who, every time the name of Blunt comes up in conversation, will pause to say that he thinks the OT coincidences are not as good as the NT coincidences.

Now, granted, the OT coincidences are less densely packed than the NT coincidences, and they often lack the interesting characteristic of involving multiple accounts of the same event. Occasionally one does get that characteristic when the same incident is told both in Chronicles and in Kings. But for the most part, the OT coincidences are of different kinds. They may concern facts or social conditions rather than specific events, for example. The one I will be discussing in this post does involve several different books that tell about events surrounding the same event--namely, Sennacherib's attack upon Jerusalem and King Hezekiah's sickness and recovery.

Anyway, I went through the OT sections of Blunt and made notes about many of the coincidences that I thought worthwhile, and I'm excited to start gradually blogging about these.

For this coincidence, there is some ambiguity as to which books are involved in it and how. Blunt takes the account of Hezekiah's showing his treasure house to Babylonian envoys from Isaiah 39 and puts it in the prophecy section of his book. However, the same passage occurs almost word for word, with very little indication of independence (in that passage) in 2 Kings 20:12ff. One of the only differences is a variant in the name of the king of Babylon, but in the main these two accounts really do look literarily dependent somehow. How, exactly, they are dependent depends on numerous other questions, such as when 2 Kings was written and when Isaiah was written.

However, happily, even if we regard Isaiah/2 Kings to lie on one side of the coincidence, the other part of the puzzle occurs in 2 Chronicles, which is definitely by a different author than 2 Kings (by all accounts) and which does not have this identical passage at all, though it does allude in quite different terms and much more briefly to the visit of the Babylonian envoys.

What all of this means is that this coincidence may not be able to play one role that Blunt wanted to assign to it--namely, supporting the earliness of the book of Isaiah.

The coincidence does, however, tend to support the historicity of the events, and it goes like this:

In both Isaiah and 2 Kings we are told, after the account of Hezekiah's sickness and recovery and the prophecies and sign attending it (Isaiah 38, 2 Kings 20:1-11), that envoys came from Babylon bringing letters and a present from the king of Babylon to King Hezekiah to congratulate him on his recovery. Hezekiah shows them his treasure house, "the silver and the gold and the spices and the precious oil and the house of his armor and all that was found in his treasuries." Isaiah is not amused. He chides the king for this vain display and prophesies that Hezekiah's offspring will be carried off captive to Babylon. At this time (circa 700 B.C.), Babylon would not have been considered a danger. As we shall see, Assyria was the great danger to Hezekiah. Hezekiah's response to this dire prophecy is rather selfish and yet all too human: He is just relieved that he can infer that there will be peace (at least from Babylon) in his own time.

Both the account in Isaiah and that in 2 Kings imply that Hezekiah's sickness occurred at the time of the invasion of Judah by Sennacherib and before the issue of that invasion was decided, although the actual account of his illness comes in the books just after the account of the destruction of Sennacherib--a flashback. Both say that, when Isaiah assured Hezekiah that he would live, he also promised that God would deliver the city from the Assyrians (2 Kings 20:6, Isaiah 38:6). So the envoys apparently came after Hezekiah recovered, after the danger from Assyria was averted, and after word had gotten back to Babylon of Hezekiah's sickness and recovery.

Now here is an interesting thing. We have an apparent contradiction at first, because in 2 Kings 18:13-16 the chronicler says that Hezekiah attempted to buy off Sennacherib with a tribute. It's unclear whether Sennacherib knew that he would try to take Jerusalem anyway and was being devious all along or whether he changed his mind after taking the tribute. But it was a very heavy one in any event:

So the king of Assyria required of Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. Hezekiah gave him all the silver which was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasuries of the king’s house. At that time Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord, and from the doorposts which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.

So here, either during Hezekiah's sickness or at least around the time of that sickness, his treasury is completely empty to try to satisfy the voracious appetite of Sennacherib. Hezekiah is reduced to scraping the gold from the doors and doorposts of the Temple. To no avail, as the invasion continues.

How, then, could he have had a full treasure house not long after, when he received envoys from Babylon who came to congratulate him on his recovery? A treasure house so full that he shows it to them with much pride?

The point about the extorted tribute is not found in Isaiah, and neither Isaiah nor 2 Kings (both of which tell of the envoys' visit) explains this apparent discrepancy. Although the problem arises in 2 Kings (since 2 Kings tells of the tribute), that chronicler doesn't bother to explain how the treasure house was replenished.

The explanation is found in 2 Chronicles. There, after the story of the destruction of Sennacherib's forces (found in all three books, in near-identical wording in Isaiah and 2 Kings but in different terminology in Chronicles), there is this unique verse:

And many were bringing gifts to the Lord at Jerusalem and choice presents to Hezekiah king of Judah, so that he was exalted in the sight of all nations thereafter. (2 Chronicles 32:23)

This, then, solves the apparent discrepancy. After word got out of the salvation of Jerusalem from Sennacherib (the Bible says by the miraculous intervention of the angel of the Lord), the nations around thought it would be a good idea to send gifts to Hezekiah the king of Judah. The "many" may also refer to Jews in other parts of Judah who were sending gifts both to the Lord and to Hezekiah. Thus, by the time that the Babylonians heard of his recovery and decided to send a gift and congratulatory letter of their own, he had a treasure house full of goodies to show them. And we can guess that he was perhaps all the more eager to do so because of the contrast between this state of wealth and his previous financial and military humiliation.

The historian of 2 Chronicles doesn't mention the humiliating tribute. The historian of 2 Kings mentions the tribute and the later fullness of the treasure house but not the gifts from other nations that account for its replenishing. The author of Isaiah does not tell of the tribute nor of the gifts but does tell of the vain display of the treasures.

There is one other rather interesting verse in 2 Chronicles concerning the envoys, of which 2 Chronicles gives no full account:

Even in the matter of the envoys of the rulers of Babylon, who sent to him to inquire of the wonder that had happened in the land, God left him alone only to test him, that He might know all that was in his heart. (2 Chronicles 27:31)

It is unclear whether "the wonder that had happened in the land" is meant to refer to the death of the armies of Sennacherib or the sign (described in 2 Kings and Isaiah as the sun's shadow moving backwards) given to Hezekiah that he would recover. I would be inclined to guess the former, but the author of 2 Chronicles is cryptic on this point.

The facts that fit together here in the way that marks an undesigned coincidence are a) the emptying of Hezekiah's treasury to try to stave off the Assyrians, b) the subsequent fullness of the treasury when he shows it to the envoys and is rebuked by Isaiah, and c) in between these, the preservation of Jerusalem followed by celebratory and/or congratulatory gifts sent to Jerusalem.

This is a very nice coincidence that connects and confirms 2 Kings (with Isaiah) and 2 Chronicles. Blunt would not want me to omit that the central event that turns things around from despair and an empty treasury to an overflowing treasury is a miracle--the destruction of Assyrian army by God.

It would be even more satisfying if the account of the full treasure house were unique to Isaiah, showing some sort of unique access by the author of Isaiah to events in the court of Hezekiah. Of course, if we could date the writing of Isaiah with confidence prior to the end of 2 Kings, then Isaiah would be earlier and hence not based on 2 Kings. But at this point I'm not prepared to wade into the waters of the precise dating of the book of Isaiah. Regardless, someone seems to have known about the visit of the envoys, and I'll leave it at that.

I hope to put up more posts, probably jumping around the OT as the whim takes me, in subsequent weeks and months.

This heraldic season

Why is autumn so often thought to be quiescent and patient? The colors alone refute that characterization.

Autumn is shouting and heraldic. The red, gold, and blue go up to the heavens like a cry of exultation.

Nor does the shout of autumn go only upward, from earth to heaven. It comes down as well, from heaven to earth.

The blue of the sky at its zenith breaks upon the senses like a thunderclap. The shockingly red tree stands up and laughs heartily, like a joyous giant, at the idea that he is nothing but a felicitous arrangement of carbon atoms. For in this atmosphere of bedazzlement reductionism cannot live long.

The flaming leaves come down in a whirl, calling out, "A message! A message!" And the shuffling of feet through the fallen rondels of gold repeats the same in a whisper: "A message! A message!"

For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. (Isaiah 55:12)

Who shall change our vile body

This was part of the epistle reading for today at church, from Philippians 3:

17 Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample.18 (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)20 For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.

Just above that, the Apostle Paul has warned the Philippians against those who preach that Gentiles must be circumcised. But he doesn't sound too worried. The Philippians, unlike the Galatians, don't seem to have been inclined to follow that particular teaching.

This passage makes me think that the more I read Paul, the more I think of the "old perspective" on Paul. I gather one of the points of the "new perspective" is to avoid all this talk of "going to heaven" and talk instead about "covenant relationship." Well, there's nothing wrong with covenant relationship, but Paul was all about going to heaven, and never more so than in Philippians. In fact, one of his emphases here is that the false teachers he is warning against are too focused on this world; he wants his followers to be thinking more of the next world, the afterlife, and the second coming of Jesus.

Not that this is at all a gnostic, anti-physical emphasis. On the contrary, part of what Paul is emphasizing is that in the end we will have new bodies, like Jesus' glorious resurrection body. The phrase "vile body" is translated in more modern versions by phrases such as "lowly body" and "body of our humble state."

I don't know what all the things were that the Apostle Paul had in mind when he thought of our "vile body" or our "lowly body," but it occurs to me that one of the annoying things about being in this earthly state is the sense that one is constantly distracted and unsure precisely what one should be doing. The times when one transcends this, the times of pure focus, are (I believe) precursors of the heavenly state. So athletes and musicians when they are "in the groove" or a man sunk in reading a great book, feeling that he is really there as the action unfolds, are freed for that time period from one of the most annoying aspects of our "humble state," and especially our modern "humble state"--that never-ending twitter of the voices in the head telling you that, whatever you're doing, you should maybe be doing something else. "Distracted from distraction by distraction," as T.S. Eliot said. Only, for those of us with an overdeveloped sense of guilt, one doesn't enjoy or even really want that distraction. Instead, one feels guilty about it.

It is one of the wonders of the story of salvation that the Almighty God can and does use poor creatures like ourselves as tools in his plan. Even when not actively malicious, we are twitching little piles of worries, neuroses, sense data, conflicting impulses, and selfishness.

It might be easy to think that the problem is that we are embodied at all, that it is the body with its sensory inputs, its passions, and its desires that distracts us from a pure focus of mind and will--on God or great thoughts, for example. But that isn't true. For one thing, some of the greatest moments of focus come through the bodily senses, with music being a prime example. An insuperable theological objection to the idea that the body is the problem is the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. In our end-state, the state for which God always intended us, we will be both embodied and enjoying the beatific vision. So the problem lies not with "the body" per se, meaning any body, but with the specifics of our embodiment, with our feebleness and insufficiency in our current situation. But one day, that will all be different. Our Lord Jesus suffers from no such feebleness and insufficiency, and one day we shall be like him.

This is a very great promise. God knows our state. He remembers that we are dust. He knows what it is like for us to be fretting about conflicting duties, unsure that we are "doing the best thing," finding it difficult to rest easy and confident and to focus on the task in front of us. And he promises that part of our glorified state is that we will be saved from all of that. Our Savior Jesus Christ will return and, at the resurrection, change the body of this lowly state to make us what we were intended to be--strong, focused, confident, perfected, and loving God with all our hearts, minds, and souls.

So let us look toward heaven and await that blessed hope.

Just a coincidence, I'm sure

In some correspondence recently I was told by a camp follower of the alt-right that the c---servative word, so beloved of the alt-right, really has nothing to do with p*rnographic ideas or imagery. That's just a slur perpetrated by critics of the alt-right. Really?

Then I guess the vileness of exactly that type sent to David French is just a coincidence.

Just a coincidence, folks. Move along, nothing to see here.

All but the willfully blind know: This is the alt-right.

In the words of Gildor Inglorion to Frodo: They are servants of the Enemy. Flee them. Speak no word to them.

If you are looking for a role model of consistent, courageous, conservative culture warring, you couldn't do much better than David French himself. And guess what? He does it without needing any pointers from the vicious alt-right. All he gets from them is abuse.

God bless French and his family and keep them safe.

A toxic meme

There's always more and more badness to say about the corruption of good people by the Trump candidacy, and the most recent part of the campaign season has provided the most opportunities of all. Anybody who says, "Corruption? What corruption?" simply has his eyes closed.

I suggested the hashtags #gauntlet and #realmendontTrumptalk to protest and counteract the despicable downplaying of Trump's behavior. And that was before the most recent allegations that he has, in fact, acted as he bragged.

The meme I want to talk about in this post is particularly harmful because it represents the intrusion of vicious, misogynistic, manospherian attitudes into something more like mainstream culture. It's this one. The text goes, "If American women are so outraged at Trump's use of naughty words, who in the hell bought 80 million copies of 50 shades of grey?" I've seen it on my wall, sadly, either shared or "liked" by a friend or two. (But only a couple. I have more sensible FB friends than that, for the most part.) I've learned that it's based on a tweet by an ex-Congressman (and I gather current radio show host) whom I'd never heard of before named Joe Walsh who saw fit to add "Grow up" as a further charming injunction, presumably to all those outraged American women. I dunno, does he also think outraged American men should "grow up" and be un-bothered by Trump's despicable behavior, or just the women? I really don't want to think too much about what this tells us about what Joe Walsh thinks a grownup man is like.

There's so much to say about how bad this meme is that I don't think I can say it all. So here are just a few comments:

1) It starts off with more of that down-playing language: "Use of naughty words." Yeah, that's what it's about. Use of "naughty words." Couldn't possibly have anything to do with bragging about grabbing unwilling women by their private parts and getting away with it because one is a "star," could it? Nope. It's about "naughty words."

And by the way, if anybody you know has approvingly shared this meme, do not lie to yourself and to others by saying, "I haven't seen a single person excusing what Trump said." Yes, you have. Because this is. Downplaying the downplaying is itself a kind of downplaying. It's being the "hear no evil, see no evil, say no evil" monkeys while others sit around telling us this is no big deal and Trump isn't so bad and all men do it and blah, blah.

2) It tries to set women and men against each other, as if it's just or chiefly women who are disgusted. "If decent people are so outraged" wouldn't have started off nearly as well, would it? This furthers the idea that women just "don't understand" that "men are like this" (so it's really no big deal) and hence that women, but not men, are disgusted. Well, that's not true. A lot of men are disgusted, too. But it's standard manospherian tactics to try to pit men and women against one another.

This also indirectly furthers a despicable and destructive view of masculinity. See, it's the women who are outraged. We boys know better. David French skewers this well:

We’ve now reached the point where you must plainly lie about men and masculinity in order to justify your support for Trump. A generation of conservative efforts to persuade the culture that there’s nothing inherently “toxic” about masculinity is being undone in a matter of days because a fading reality-TV star must be carried into the White House. Now you’re only wearing your “big-boy pants” if you embrace the masculinity of campus-feminist fever dreams, where every guy is a frat boy and every fraternity runs a rape room.

3) It makes sweeping, negative, implicit generalizations about women. This, again, is standard manospheric practice. Women in general are sluts. Women in general are bad. Women in general are out to emasculate men. Just as man-hating feminists make despicable generalizations about men, manospherians (their mirror image) make despicable generalizations about women. This meme does the same. The implication is that all the women who are outraged about Trump's disgusting behavior are the same women who reveled in sado-masochistic literary p*rn. The scorn and distaste is quite evident: All you wwwwwiimmmin who are so outraged are the wwwwimmmin who were out there reading smut, right, right?

Well, no. There are plenty of women who don't read any smut and would never read that smut. And many of them are outraged about Trump's disgusting behavior.

4) It shows no concern for the actual well-being (including the spiritual well-being) as people of those women who did read that wicked piece of p*rn. Is it really better for people who read and view p*rn to come to approve of or shrug off, in real life, the practices they fantasize about? Is that what we want them to become? Is that what we demand of them? If someone (male or female) is so warped as to fantasize about degradation, should we tell him to "grow up" and accept actual degrading practices in the real world?

Would it not be better for such a person to be in a sense "inconsistent"? Certainly, it would be far, far better not to read p*rn, but the last thing we should be telling people is to harden their hearts and accept p*rn*graphic attitudes and behavior from our leaders. Maybe this event will even serve as a wakeup call. We can hope anyway.

But the desire to be snarky was just irresistible. The comment sounded clever, so Joe Walsh presumably never thought about the fact that he's more or less telling women that they should accept having the whole world turned into "50 Shades IRL" if they read the book.

This is an extremely dangerous and false notion of a fake virtue of consistency. We shouldn't actually want abortionists to be killing born babies as well. And we shouldn't actually want men and women together all to get down into the gutter and shrug their shoulders when a man runs for President who is such a slave to his own lusts that he boasts about using women he has just met as nothing other than objects for his own sexual gratification. When so-called "conservatives" are sharing a meme that calls for that kind of world, instead of opposing both p*rn and p*n*graphic culture in real life, we have a major problem.

5) The meme is sadistic. Let's open up our ears. This meme snarls at women that they deserve to be treated rough because women (generally) supposedly read and enjoyed an S & M p*rn novel. "This is what they want! So give it to 'em and see how they like it. Ha!" The snarl of combined contempt and glee is barely concealed. And if you were too deaf to hear it the first time, go back and think about it again.

And if that isn't toxic for our culture, I don't know what is.

Don't tell people to harden their hearts

I like Dr. Michael Brown a lot. And he's very rightly put up a video absolutely decrying the despicable "all men talk like that" defense, particularly from Christians, of Donald Trump's despicable conduct. He throws in a few disappointing phrases about hoping that Trump has changed and what-not, which make him sound very naive, but the bulk of the video is right on the money. Dr. Brown has heard Christian men blustering that, "We all talk like that," and he is disgusted and is giving them a talking-to. I applaud that. I also applaud (in some ways) Dr. Brown's article, in the wake of this latest scandal, rightly taking to pieces the nonsense comparison between Donald Trump and King David, of all people. My only criticism of that piece is, again, the silliness of thinking for a moment that Donald Trump might yet (now) repent like David, even before the election. Brown really shouldn't be holding out hope for a Trump change of heart, especially not in the short run, but Brown's own heart and head are to a very large extent in the right place, and I do not write this column to belittle him at all.

But around the same time this piece came out in The Stream, also by Dr. Michael Brown, about the Trump tapes. It repeats a meme that I'm seeing a lot from people who either are planning to vote for Trump or, like Brown, are still making up their minds but gearing themselves up to be willing to vote for him. The way this goes is something like, "But we already knew he was like this. So this audio tape shouldn't change anything. We should already be making our decision in the full knowledge that he's sleazy."

Here are some quotes to that effect from Brown's article:

Instead, I’m writing this to ask those who once supported Trump, like my highly esteemed, Christian brother Wayne Grudem, a fellow-professor and theologian, why the video tape changed things.

[snip]

My purpose in writing is to ask those who once backed Trump but do so no longer: Why the surprise at his past conduct? Weren’t his weaknesses and flaws shouting aloud to the nation over the last year via tweet and spoken word?

I never for a moment bought into the “Saint Donald” rhetoric, questioning other Christian leaders who embraced him as such. (I don’t mean to deny that he has helped people privately and has a compassionate, caring side. I simply mean that to present him as a wonderfully Christian man is to be self-deceived.)

And I understand the convictions of the NeverTrumpers, although I have never identified with this group. (I once used the hashtag in a tweet but decided not to do so again.)

My issue is with the political leaders and Christian leaders who endorsed Donald Trump and who worked to help elect him but are now distancing themselves from him in shock and dismay. Who did you think you were dealing with?

[snip]

But if you’re going to endorse him, do so with your eyes wide open, or don’t endorse him at all.

[snip]

But he did not renounce his past or change his public ways, because of which, the only issue with the 2005 tape should not have been the tape itself but rather how he responded to it today.

I have colleagues who believe that God is raising up Trump the way He raised up Cyrus, pointing out that Cyrus was used by the Lord although he was a pagan king who did not know the God of Israel (see Isaiah 45:1-6, and note carefully the phrase “although you do not know Me” in v. 5-6).

I have no problem with this concept at all. As the old saying goes, let God be God (in other words, let Him do what He chooses to do in His way and for His purposes). So be it. As I’ve written before, I personally hope it’s true.

But for those who are having cold feet about Trump now, I ask again: Wasn’t it clear from day one that this was the man you were endorsing?

For all of us, then, from here on in, the lesson is simple and clear: Whatever we do, let’s do it with our eyes wide open and with our trust in God alone.

Again, there are some things to commend in these passages. For example, there's the emphatic point that Trump has done nothing to show true change or repentance of heart.

One could even view this as just Brown's expression of exasperation with Dr. Grudem's recklessness in having endorsed Trump without doing due diligence. Though frankly, if that's all it is, I don't think it was worthy of publication. If we're going to talk about being forgiving, then the person we ought to be forgiving is Wayne Grudem, since he really has manned up and fully admitted that he was irresponsible. Good for him! This isn't the time to be giving him a hard time, for goodness' sake.

That's one of the first oddities about this Stream post by Brown. (After the title. But I don't blame Brown for the title. Anyone who writes for someone else's publication knows that somebody else often chooses the title.) Brown is explicitly writing to and about Grudem, yet he asks a question that Grudem has already answered. Brown wants to know why this video changed anything for Grudem. Grudem already told us that he hadn't done due diligence, hadn't seen the Howard Stern show filth that was already out there, and hadn't realized that Trump was like this. So why is Brown going on and on? Grudem admitted that he should have done his homework and should have known better. Why rub it in?

But the further oddity is the general idea, which I have seen others express more concisely and even harshly than Brown, that consistency in endorsement is very nearly an end in itself. Brown expresses it as, "If you're going to endorse him, do it with your eyes open, or don't endorse him at all," and he pretty strongly implies that, if you once really do that, you won't change your mind later.

But that way of talking and thinking is not really taking seriously the possibility that endorsing Donald Trump is objectively wrong.

Suppose, for a moment, that it is objectively wrong. If so, isn't it better for people to waver about it and to change their minds than to "endorse with their eyes wide open" and then stick to it?

Consider an analogy: Suppose that a woman has had an abortion and later regrets it because she sees pictures of aborted babies or an ultrasound. We would never tell her, "What did you think you were doing? You knew you were killing a human being! Why does this video change anything? You need to make your choices with your eyes wide open, lady, and then you won't have any reason to regret them!" That would be a terrible thing to say. The last thing we want is for women to be so fully committed to killing a baby that they are later incapable of (or unwilling to entertain the possibility of) regret and repentance. The last thing we want to do is to chide or mock a woman for changing her mind and turning back.

If you don't like that example, because it concerns what is clearly an intrinsically wrong act, consider this example of an act that lies in a grey area: Suppose that a general has ordered a military strike against a certain location and that there is some outcry that this was unethical because it was not a military target but a civilian target. The general had a lot of statistics and facts showing precisely this question, showing why this question arose, but he still chose to order the strike despite the doubts. Later, he sees pictures of the children who have died in the airstrike, precisely as predicted by the statistics he had available to him about the civilian population at that location. He is filled with remorse and offers a deep statement of grief and repentance. We should certainly not say to him, "You had the statistics in advance. You knew that it could plausibly be regarded as a non-military target. What did you think you were doing? Why do these pictures change anything? You should make your decisions with your eyes wide open or not make them at all!"

We know perfectly well that sometimes people have a notional commitment to doing a particular action but then have their minds and hearts changed by being viscerally confronted with the reality of what they have chosen. And this is not a bad thing but a good thing. It is on the many subtle interactions between conscience and the real world that our hopes for repentance often turn. We should not want it any other way. We should not want people to choose wrong things in such an "eyes wide open" way that they are then callous even when evidence emerges that makes it especially clear that this was a bad choice. That is something that the Holy Spirit can use, something our consciences cue to, something that softens our hearts. We want to be the kind of people who can repent and change course if we have indeed chosen wrong.

Does this mean that conscientious people are often on the rack, filled with misgivings about what they have done or with indecision about what they are considering doing? Yes, it does. But is that always bad? As long as we humans cannot be certain that we have done right or are headed right (which often, we can't be), it's better to be on the rack than to be given over to hardness of heart.

My concern with this response that says, "Why should this change anything?" is that it, no doubt unintentionally from Dr. Brown, encourages hardness of heart. I've seen it expressed more nastily from other people in such a way that is quite intentional: "Put on your big boy pants!" "Man up!" "You weren't endorsing this guy to be your best friend!" These sorts of expressions frankly make a virtue out of hardness of heart. I'm sure that Dr. Brown, of all people, doesn't really want to have that effect on people. But in fact, that is the effect: "Once you really realize that you're endorsing a sleazeball, it shouldn't bother you anymore or change anything when you get more and more evidence that he's a sleazeball."

But is that true? Why shouldn't it make a difference? Maybe some particular piece of sleaziness will convince the person that, after all, he shouldn't be endorsing a sleazeball.

Since Dr. Brown is respectful of the Never Trump position, he should be holding this open as a real possibility. But in that case, the fact that vividness often results in an epiphany in ethical matters answers his question. Why should this make a difference? It might just make a difference, Dr. Brown, because it makes us see reality more clearly.

#realmendontTrumptalk #gauntlet

This will be short. I plan to write more later on the despicable defenses of Trump's behavior. But for right now let me just say that the defense that "all men talk that way" comes straight from the pit of hell.

It normalizes evil and the degradation of women and of sex. If you are a non-Christian man with relatively mediocre standards of discourse and behavior, I point you to the pithy comment of Iowahawk. If you have a higher standard of behavior and discourse, either because you are a Christian or belong to some other religion that doesn't normalize such things or because you are a noble pagan, then you will be even more disgusted, and not only because of the assault aspect.

And in both cases, you should be outraged at the shrugging claim that everybody talks like this.

In the olden days, when one man insulted another's honor or integrity, the second man challenged him to a duel. Therefore, I suggest a metaphorical challenge in response to this gross insult to all decent men. You can throw down this challenge by posting

#gauntlet

on Facebook or Twitter.

If you want something self-explanatory, post

#realmendontTrumptalk

Or both!

Yes, you should do this even if you are (hopefully reluctantly) voting for that particular lizard.

Because real men don't Trump talk. Whoever you are, whomever you are voting for, resist the corruption that this candidacy is producing in our concept of manhood.

He Who Would Valiant Be

I was much encouraged by this hymn this morning.

He who would valiant be
'gainst all disaster,
let him in constancy
follow the Master.
There's no discouragement
shall make him once relent
his first avowed intent
to be a pilgrim.

Who so beset him round
with dismal stories
do but themselves confound
his strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might;
though he with giants fight,
he will make good his right
to be a pilgrim. 

Since, Lord, thou dost defend
us with thy Spirit,
We know we at the end,
shall life inherit.
Then fancies flee away!
I'll fear not what men say,
I'll labor night and day
to be a pilgrim.

Why do the heathen rage?

Sweet Cakes By Melissa has officially announced that it is closed for good, just a few days ago on the bakery's Facebook page. See here and here.

Around the same time the New York Times decided to run this story, following up on an elderly Christian couple forced out of the wedding venue and B & B business by the homosexual mafia. Do they really have the slightest genuine sympathy for them? They manage to create a sympathetic-sounding story, but it's the Times, so they'd probably run them out of business again if necessary. Nothing personal. Just a matter of business.

Meanwhile, I can get no further information about Mennonite missionary to Nicaragua Timothy Miller, about whom I wrote here. Is he still held there in limbo? We can only pray.

Psalm 2

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying,

Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.

Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.

Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

Psalm 37

Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.

For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.

Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.

Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.

And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.

Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.

Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.

For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.

For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.

But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth.

The Lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming.

The wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy, and to slay such as be of upright conversation.

Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken.

[snip]

I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree.

Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.

Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.

But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off.

But the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord: he is their strength in the time of trouble.

And the Lord shall help them, and deliver them: he shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him.

Signaling importance

It's correct in some cases to say that society can show its disapproval of some evil actions only by reacting to those actions in certain ways.

Take slavery, for example. If someone says, "I'm personally opposed to enslaving people, but I think it should be legal," then we know that he doesn't really think enslaving people is all that bad. The same with abortion. It's not possible to affirm the full humanity and full personhood of the unborn child while holding that abortion should be "a choice left up to the mother and her doctor."

But sometimes people get odd and incorrect ideas in their heads about how society must signal the importance of some evil.

Take, for example, federalizing crime. There is an idea out there that is both constitutionally and morally incorrect that says that, if you really think that some crime is truly bad and truly important, you will hold that it must be punished at the federal level. Often this statement will be made by an earnest pro-lifer with abortion in mind. When someone says that kind of thing, I will point out that pretty much all heinous crimes are still (rightly and constitutionally) punished at the state level rather than at the federal level. It is not signaling a disregard for the evil of rape and torture that a rape and torture that doesn't involving crossing state lines or any of the other "triggers" for federalization (e.g., certain firearms) is a state crime and is tried and punished at the state level. It's not as though the only way to show proper moral outrage for heinous crime is to have a federal police force and to federalize all serious crimes! And in fact it would be highly imprudent to do so.

But most people who say such things about abortion haven't thought of that.

What I think they really mean is something like this: If abortion is really the murder of an unborn child, then states should be required somehow, perhaps by the Constitution, at least to have laws against abortion rather than declaring it "open season" on unborn children, Well, that gets us into all sorts of fascinating issues such as the correct interpretation of the "nor deny to any person the equal protection of the laws" clause in the 14th amendment. I have an old post on that here that I still think makes some good points about equal protection and how its jurisprudence went off the rails. Then there's the question which Robert Bork addressed long ago as to whether the framers of the 14th amendment or their audience would have regarded the unborn as "persons" for legal purposes--a point that is going to be relevant to originalists.

But if someone wants to have that discussion about constitutional protections and state laws, it would be much, much better not to say, "If we really think abortion is murder, then it should be prohibited by the national government." That just doesn't follow. The murder of most 50-year-old people is prohibited at the state rather than the federal level. It isn't a necessary form of "evil signaling" to federalize a crime.

Another kind of importance signaling, in an (admittedly) totally different area, is dragging some subject in all over the place, even where it is not obviously relevant. For example, I saw someone on Facebook launch into a long discussion of sexual abuse in Christian churches and try to tie it to the Target boycott somehow, implying that people would do better to direct their energies at opposing church sexual abuse rather than at worrying about the evils of transgender-friendly store policies.

Sexual abuse of children in churches is a very serious matter, and in no way am I downplaying it. But it has precisely zip to do with boycotting Target and with opposition to Target's transgender policy. If this isn't obvious, I can spell it out further in the comments. But for the moment I'm going to take it as obvious and note generally this tacit mistaken idea: If X is a really serious problem, then it's always relevant to bring it up and connect it with any other topic or use it to downplay the importance of some other topic that people are concerned about.

Well, no. It's not as though the seriousness of X means that X can never be a hobby horse, can never be ridden to death, can never be dragged into a discussion where it doesn't make sense, can never give rise to an apples and oranges comparison. And I'm afraid that sexual abuse of children is the kind of X that causes people to get a blind spot about this, presumably because it is such a bad thing.

How much time one spends talking about something is going to be a matter of personal taste and personal motivation. Even, perhaps, personal calling, if that is not too grand of a word. I confess to being subject to the temptation that almost everybody in the social media age is probably subject to: The temptation to tell people who are chattering about Y that they should be worrying or talking about X instead, that they need to be getting a sense of perspective, that they're making a big deal about something that isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. I do that, too. Or I feel like doing it. I suppose that's what the hashtag "firstworldproblems" is all about. "Oh, poor baby, your espresso machine isn't working? Try being a Christian refugee about to be crucified by ISIS. Sheesh."

Not that anyone is likely to think it's his personal calling to complain about his espresso machine.

But I think one should admit that the transgender agenda is a big deal in its own right and that fighting it is an important thing. It's not the cultural equivalent of a broken espresso machine. Hence, people who boycott Target have a legitimate concern. That's not to say that everybody has to boycott Target. Boycotts aren't always effective, sometimes you might legitimately need something at Target that you can't find elsewhere or that is too expensive elsewhere,  etc. Boycotts are almost never morally obligatory. But it is one perfectly legit way to show that Middle America knows when Target is giving it the middle finger and that Middle America is not pleased about that.

This particular type of "importance signaling" (telling people they should be talking about X instead of Y) really results from underlying political and moral differences of opinion. And it can go in both directions. If I as a pro-lifer feel annoyed when progressives, especially progressive Christians, are agonizing over veganism but never talking about abortion, that's because I think that veganism is (frankly) ridiculous and that nobody should be agonizing about it. It's also because I think human beings are more valuable than animals, that vegans really often do have a lack of a sense of the relative importance of these matters, and that the combo of veganism and not talking about abortion is probably symptomatic of a failure to appreciate the relatively greater importance of mankind, made in the image of God, over animals.

What I tend to notice sometimes (not always) when it comes to importance signaling is that, when it is coming from the somewhat more progressive side, there is a sort of tortured attempt not to come out and say this about underlying differences of opinion. Instead of saying, "I think Christians who are somewhat more socially conservative than I am are just plain wrong in their assessment of the evil and importance of the transgender agenda," they have to say something else. Something (for example) about comparing the odds of a child's being molested at Target to his being molested in a church youth group. So it's hard to get to argue about the real underlying difference of opinion--namely, the importance or unimportance of Y. Because the attempt to do this is seen as denying the importance of X. But X and Y may be non-comparable in their importance.

It isn't always the case that a person who has a hobby horse about X really disagrees with other people about the importance of their issues. There is such a thing as a "pure" hobby horse that just gets ridden on any and all occasions. I don't want to overgeneralize. But a hobby horse can be a symptom of an underlying political difference, and it can be useful to get that out into the open.

If X is bad enough, there's a fear of appearing to downplay X by accusing someone of having a hobby horse about X. And of course there's no need to start fights all over the place. Social media is unpleasant enough without recklessly losing all your friends that way! But I do think it's important not to be so intimidated by certain concerns that we let them turn into a kind of collective hysteria. And I fear that the issue of child abuse in the church is in danger of becoming precisely that sort of hysteria-inducing issue, leading even to the loss of concepts like due process and the danger (and possibility) of bearing false witness.

Importance signaling can increase this sort of hysteria if not challenged, so just occasionally, it's not a bad idea to challenge it.