Rod Dreher on (Loss of) Faith in Institutions

Here (emphases added)

I was pleased to see the all-Muslim city council in Hamtramck, Mich., stand up to the progressive sleazebags and say no, they are not going to fly Pride flags over city property. It’s against local moral standards, they say — and they’re right. More and more, we see Muslim parents standing up and doing the job of speaking out that Christians will not do. People who never read Michel Houellebecq’s controversial 2015 novel Submission think mistakenly that Muslims are the villains, because it’s about a democratic Islamist takeover of France. They’re not the heroes, but not villains either. The demoralized, secularized, gutless French are the villains. They are spiritually and morally exhausted, and surrender to Islamist government because they don’t know what else to do.

Me, I absolutely don’t want to live under Islamic government, but if I had to choose between living under the governance of the Hamtramck City Council or the Los Angeles city council (see below), that wouldn’t be a hard call. Twenty-two years after 9/11, I can hardly believe I typed that line, but here we are.

Why are we Christians so soft, and so uncaring about decadence? I don’t get it. I really did think that the Left going after kids to sexualize them was the bright red line that was going to make most people revolt against the sexual orientation/gender identity madness, but it hasn’t, not really. It may yet, but we’re going to have to sink even deeper into the filth before we hit bottom. We are still being lied to, constantly, by our government, by the medical establishment, and by the media about transitioning kids — and most people just chew their cuds and carry on. A federal judge in Arkansas just overturned the state’s ban on transing kids. Big Trans and its allies among elites are going to have their way — and most of us yawn and move on. It makes no sense. Do people ever think that their kids might end up on Pensacola beach, doing dildo ring toss with the dykes, or getting drunk and engaged in group masturbation?

Of the great religions, Islam is the worst, and Sharia law is antithetical to classical American values. BUT, if we need to make common cause with (moderate, non-terrorist) Muslims to defeat the utterly destructive, anti-civilizational Woke-Left and their globalist enablers, then so be it! I'll say it again: we need a broad coalition of the sane and the reasonable to defeat our enemies.  Hell, even the socialists over at The Militant are talking more sense than the wokesters!

Comments

[Vito B. Caiati]

While an alliance with those of the Left that reject Woke racism and totalitarianism may be hard to realize, the political utility of parallel currents of opposition should be acknowledged. In this regard, it was the Trotskyist World Socialist Web, anxious to defend a classical Marxist historical analysis, that played a leading role in exposing the outright lies and imbecility of the NYT 1619 Project. Beginning with an interview of the historian James McPherson, a leading scholar of the ante and post bellum United States, and then with the publication of a book of essays by McPherson and the prominent historians and political scientists Gordon Wood, Victoria Bynum, James Oakes, Richard Carwardine, Adolph Reed Jr., Dolores Janiewski, and Clayborne Carson, it was the WSW that exposed the imbecilities and overturned the falsehoods purveyed by Nikole Hannah-Jones and others of her ilk at the NYT. While the introduction of the 1619 Project into schools was not stopped, since the racist Woke have no regard for truth and no shame, the forthright assault on it by the WSW stripped it of any intellectual respectability. On this question, see: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/14/mcph-n14.html and https://mehring.com/product/the-new-york-times-1619-project-and-the-racialist-falsification-of-history/?pk_campaign=mehring-1619-project&pk_kwd=wsws-1619-inline

[BV]

Thanks, Vito. I am more interested in whether we can make common cause with Muslims against the wokesters, but you are right to point out that we can make common cause also with some leftists. But here's a thought: the conservatism of you and me is aligned to some degree with the anti-libertinism of Muslims whereas lefties in my experience tend to have a pronounced libertine 'wobble.' Agree? I assume that you understand what I mean by 'libertine' and that the term is not to be confused with 'libertarian.'

This is worth underlining:

>>A. The Civil War accomplished three things. First, it preserved the United States as one nation. Second, it abolished the institution of slavery. Those two were, in effect, permanent achievements. The United States is still a single nation. Slavery doesn’t exist anymore. The third thing the Civil War accomplished was a potential, and partial, transformation, in the status of the freed slaves, who with the 14th and 15th amendments achieved, on paper at least, civil and political equality. But the struggle ever since 1870, when the 15th amendment was ratified, has been how to transform this achievement on paper into real achievement in the society.

The people you’re talking about claim that it’s never gone beyond slavery, or that something almost as bad as slavery replaced slavery. The way I see it, while the bottle is not full, it is half full. I acknowledge that it is half empty. But it’s also half full. So with the abolition of slavery you have at least the partial achievement of a substantive freedom for the freed slaves.

Even though Jim Crow, segregation, disenfranchisement, lynching, all of these things became blots on the United States in the later 19th century, and well into the 20th, at least children couldn’t be sold apart from their parents, wives couldn’t be sold apart from their husbands, and marriage was now a legal institution for freedpeople. That’s a significant step beyond slavery as it existed before 1865. It’s the ancient question about whether the glass is half full or half empty. It’s both. And this is what the people who say the Civil War didn’t accomplish anything are missing. The Civil War did fill up half the bottle.<<

[BV]

Connor,

I edited out most of your long comment. You need to start your own blog and not use my site as a data dump. Your comments are way too long and off-topic. The topic is: how do we stop the depredations of the Woke-Left? We need a broad coalition. Can we work with Muslims as Dreher suggests? Can we work with socialists as Vito suggests?

No comments will be allowed to appear that do not address what I say or what I quote, and that do not demonstrate an understanding of what I say or what I quote.

[Vito B. Caiati]

I agree that this “libertine wobble” of many on old-style lefties is a potential problem, since it is reflected in their position on marriage, the family, and abortion, for example. For this and other reasons, “parallel currents of opposition” to the Woke Left by such persons is probably the most that we conservatives could hope to see.
As for Muslims who are religious but not bound to sharia law, I am more hopeful, since the former adhere to beliefs and practices on marriage, parental rights, sexuality, and religious freedom that conform, broadly speaking, to those advocated by social and cultural conservatives. Maybe you disagree with this Bill, but is it not true that these two groups, religious Muslims and social conservatives, religious or not, often share a natural law perspective, whether conscious or not, on these matters? I was, like Dreher, very happy to see Muslim and Christian parents protesting together against sexual indoctrination in schools. However, on other matters, such as immigration and social policy, the divergence of the two groups may be quite marked. These would have to be downplayed for an alliance against the Woke monsters to come into existence and endure.

Your analysis of the Civil War and Reconstruction seems essentially correct.

[Malcolm Pollack]

Churchill:

"If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."

If your enemy is a serious enough threat, then it is rational at least to consider making an ally of the enemy of your enemy. When the threat is existential, it can be foolhardy not to.