You don't want to end up on the wrong end of his invective. Schlichter may be the contemporary master of this mode of discourse. There is a place for invective in this fallen world although I sincerely wish invective were not needed.
"Resist not the evil doer" and "Turn the other cheek" make sense only within a loving community of the like-minded. In the wide world, however, practice of these precepts will soon lead to the demise of your loving community of the like-minded.
The American Catholic Bishops and others whose hustle is Religion, Inc. are blind to these truths.
I have a good post that deals with some of the issues in the vicinity: Machiavelli, Arendt, and Virtues Private and Public.
It begins as follows:
An important but troubling thought is conveyed in a recent New York Times op-ed (emphasis added):
Machiavelli teaches that in a world where so many are not good, you must learn to be able to not be good. The virtues taught in our secular and religious schools are incompatible with the virtues one must practice to safeguard those same institutions. The power of the lion and the cleverness of the fox: These are the qualities a leader must harness to preserve the republic.
The problem as I see it is that (i) the pacific virtues the practice of which makes life worth living within families, between friends, and in such institutions of civil society as churches and fraternal organizations are essentially private and cannot be extended outward as if we are all brothers and sisters belonging to a global community. Talk of global community is blather. The institutions of civil society can survive and flourish only if protected by warriors and statesmen whose virtues are of the manly and martial, not of the womanish and pacific, sort. And yet (ii) if no extension of the pacific virtues is possible then humanity would seem to be doomed in an age of terrorism and WMDs. Besides, it is unsatisfactory that there be two moralities, one private, the other public.
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