In Search of the People (Part III)

(Part I, II)

While leftist revolutionaries around the world came to embrace third-world peasants, Arab nationalists, and even Islamists as manifestations of the People, Western revolutionaries had a problem as they lacked these groups at home. The United States never had a peasant class. In Europe, capitalism and the Industrial Revolution had eliminated the peasant class in a mostly bloodless fashion and, until the end of the twentieth century, Arab and Muslim migration were not significant issues. The solution was to turn to racial and later sexual minorities.

Mid-twentieth-century American radicals “discovered” blacks, a group that was honestly being oppressed. At a time when white workers were embracing the New Deal and its protections for unions and even going so far as to vote for Eisenhower, blacks stood out as a group whose problems could not easily be solved by lobbying for some changes to current laws. Blacks were up against the well-organized conspiracy of segregation that was passively facilitated by a wider white society that, even subconsciously, looked down on blacks and did not see their plight as a priority.

In the end, though, the mainline Civil Rights Movement proved a failure for leftist revolutionaries. The Civil Rights Movement succeeded in defeating formal segregation by pursuing a moderate path that was fundamentally unrevolutionary. It avoided violence and framed itself as being within the American tradition. For Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., blacks were Americans who, as Americans, were now coming to collect on the American promise. He succeeded precisely because he managed to convince white America that he was not a revolutionary but an American asking for perfectly reasonable American things. 

While the Civil Rights Movement itself proved distinctively unrevolutionary and, even more subversively demonstrated that a reformist movement really could bring about real change within a liberal democracy, it still ended up proving useful to the left. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, while well-intentioned and perhaps necessary under the circumstances, effectively eliminated the constitutional balance between the federal and state governments. Now the federal government can force any law upon a state simply by claiming that it is a matter of civil rights, leaving us with a dangerously overpowered federal government just waiting for leftists to take control and turn it to their own ends.

At the end of the day, the Civil Rights Movement did not solve the economic problems facing the black community. This caused many civil rights leaders, including Dr. King in the last years of his life, to drift toward a more revolutionary mindset. This did nothing to help actual black people. This should only be expected as the purpose of a leftist revolution is not to improve the lives of actual individuals. A group is only useful, and therefore only counts as part of the People, when their problems are not being solved. Thus, leftist revolutionaries have needed to keep blacks poor and blame American racism for it. One can see this most easily in urban policy and education, areas dominated by the left, that have utterly failed the black community economically but have kept alive a sense of grievance.   

The less plausible the charge of racism, in the conventional sense, has become, as Americans have become less racist, the more racism has needed to be redefined in ever more abstract frameworks. This has benefited leftists as it makes the case for revolution. If you are black and your goal is for white people to not hate you and conspire to keep you out of middle-class jobs or even murder you, there is no need for a revolution. If your goal is to not be an outsider in a culture created by white people for the benefit of white people, then the only solution is for there to be a revolution. This will tear down white American culture and place blacks as the People at the center of the new culture. White people will be stripped of any positive identity and left only with the option of being allies of blacks if they wish to not be oppressors. 

The most important leftist success of the 1960s was the sexual revolution. This was indirectly connected to the Civil Rights Movement. As Shelby Steele has argued, white American parents who were complicit in tolerating segregation and felt guilty about it were not in a position to challenge their children over whom they slept with and their kids knew it. Sexuality has long been a tool of revolutionaries as communities require rigid sexual rules to establish clear lines of kinship that place children within the group. Allow children to be born outside of clear families and their community becomes the non-community of the revolution. The Sexual Revolution has been particularly effective at maintaining blacks as a revolutionary class. It has inhibited economic growth within the black community. At the same time, anyone who points this out can be charged as a racist. Thus, blacks are more likely to assume that the source of their problems is racism, as manifested in bourgeois values like the nuclear family, and the only solution is revolution.  

The Sexual Revolution also created a new oppressed group that could serve as manifestations of the People for leftist revolutionaries, sexual minorities. It was leftist revolutionaries who decided that gay people were actually a group as opposed to simply individuals who pursued an action that should or should not be tolerated to various degrees. Furthermore, the fact that the sexual revolution made sexual repression a form of oppression rendered gays an oppressed group. Gays are an even better class of revolutionaries than blacks as accommodating them within a traditional society is even more difficult, hence gays are more likely to assume that their only solution is the revolution and will not be bought off by minor reforms such as the removal of anti-sodomy laws.

Furthermore, the fact that even considering gays as a group is an invention of leftist revolutionaries has meant that the gay community is intrinsically tied to the leftist revolutionary cause and cannot easily exist without it. It makes perfect sense for a black conservative to still want there to be a black community such as their presumably black families. It is hardly obvious why an Andrew Sullivan style conservative gay community would want to operate as a gay community as opposed to being a tolerated minority within their presumably heterosexual families and the wider community. Keep in mind that gays, unlike blacks, are usually not raised with their identity. This is something they consciously embrace as teenagers or later in life.  

Much as with blacks, the gay rights movement involves an act of motte and bailey duplicity. Now that the sexual revolution has happened, it makes sense to not stigmatize people for sexual acts between consenting adults. We might even take the next step and say that government should recognize same-sex marriage. None of this, in itself, would be particularly revolutionary. On the contrary, accommodating homosexuals in such a fashion lessens their ability to serve as revolutionaries and risks their status as a manifestation of the People.

The revolutionary doctrine would be to say that the sexual acts of homosexuals give them authenticity as a manifestation of the People that heterosexuals lack, particularly if they submit themselves to traditional morality. Heterosexuality does make one part of the People but their oppressor. As such, heterosexuals need homosexuals to redeem and make them part of the People. This is done by allowing heterosexuals to become allies and share in the task of tearing down society and rebuilding it around homosexuals.

Homosexuality requires someone to do, or at least desire to do, something that most people would find repulsive. This limits the number of people who can be gay. The solution is for sex education that will encourage more people to overcome any predispositions against engaging in gay sex so there can be more gay people. Alternatively, there are the bi-sexual and queer identities that anyone can embrace. Thus, the LBTQ+ identity has the ability to become a larger group than African Americans and thus a better claim to being the American People. And since LGBTQ+ identity really means nothing more than rejecting traditional sexual norms, this manifestation of the People can be relied upon to truly embrace the revolution as their very identity is meaningless otherwise.  

More recently, as homosexuality has gained mainstream acceptance and lost its revolutionary edge, we have seen the rise of a transgender identity, which furthers the revolutionary logic of homosexuality. Unlike homosexuality, which requires no great metaphysical leap to accept that a person really is attracted to people of the same sex, accepting that someone is trans requires buying into a larger metaphysical system that the person really is a different “gender” from how they were identified at birth. The reason for accepting this new metaphysics is that leftist revolutionaries have placed transgender people as an authentic manifestation of the People and to reject this claim makes you an oppressor and not part of the People. This means that transgender people are dependent on leftist revolutionaries not only to have a transgender community but even to be trans in the first place.

Transgenderism, building off queer identity, is something so nebulous that anyone can claim to be trans and, thus become a manifestation of the People. That being said, “authentic” transgenderhood requires hormone injections and surgery. Going through this means that not only are you the male or female that you claim to be but you are more authentically that gender than those “assigned” their identities by their doctor at birth, thus you are an authentic manifestation of the People. Cisgender people can only become part of the People by being allies of transgenders and acknowledging their greater authenticity.

In the present discourse, it has become common to see rhetoric like “Gaza to Ferguson” or “Queers for Palestine.” If one thinks in terms of helping members of particular groups improve their physical lots in life and overcome oppression, this sounds strange. We are talking about different groups in different parts of the planet, with different needs that might even clash. For example, Hamas believes in murdering gay people. 

These claims begin to make sense once you realize that we are not talking about actual blacks, homosexuals, or Palestinians. Instead, these are simply names for manifestations of the People, united in being rhetorically useful for leftist revolutionaries. The point is not to improve the lot of members of any of these groups. On the contrary, doing so would lessen their usefulness to the revolution and render them no longer manifestations of the People.  Thus, we are not interested in helping gay Palestinians. Such a Palestinian undermines Palestinian peoplehood and, thus, it is a revolutionary act of the People to kill them. By contrast, a gay person in the United States does represent the People so not wishing them mazal tov on their wedding is a counter-revolutionary act that makes you an oppressor. 

The real purpose is for there to be the revolution. This will place the truest manifestation of the People, leftist revolutionaries, in power. In the end, not only will whites, Christians, and Jews not be part of the People but even the "oppressed" groups, which were supposed to be favored to make up for their lack of privilege will eventually also lose their place as they stop being needed and can be replaced with a more plausibly revolutionary manifestation of the People.   

The Paradox of a Bohemian Community: A Conservative Deconstruction of Rent

 

Among my favorite musicals is Rent. I confess that I feel guilty about some of the more problematic aspects of the musical. It is not as if I actually approve of the life choices made by any of the characters. In my defense, I would like to make the case for seeing the musical from a conservative perspective as an exploration of the intellectual trap of attempting to live outside of any communal standard. 

The characters in Rent are fundamentally narcissists in the sense that they choose to live for themselves over the interests of any community. To be clear, there is a spectrum among the characters with Maureen clearly being the most narcissistic with Mark and Angel being the least. In this, they follow the dictates of 19th-century Romanticism, the main philosophy in the Western tradition that attempts to justify placing the desires of the individual over the moral standards of the community. 

Ultimately, living for oneself is an unworkable idea so the characters attempt to create their own counter community This can be compared to Milton’s demons trying to create their own counter to Heaven, a project doomed by its own inherent contradictions. If submission to God is the necessary component to build heaven, then any community founded on the rejection of God will, by definition, turn into Hell.

The characters attempt to protect the homeless tent city from being torn down by their former friend Benny. The homeless (unless they are following some version of apostolic poverty) are an example of what can be seen, from an Aristotelian perspective, as a non-community. They may live in physical proximity to each other but they lack a set of binding values that allow them to work together for some greater good. Later, the characters try to form a community with each other. This attempt to build a community is fundamentally doomed as the "greater good" that binds the characters together is their commitment to living according to their Bohemian personal standards. 

One can see the logic of Bohemia as leading to one of two intellectual dead ends. The first can be seen in the landlord Benny.

           

On the surface, Benny is a traitor to the Bohemian values of the other characters. He once was like them, but then he exchanged sexual liberation and socialist living for marriage and now works as a capitalist for his father-in-law, destroying the homeless community in order to build the more lucrative Cyber Café. It should be noted that Benny still sees himself as the altruist and he has a highly plausible argument that, in the long run, Roger and Mark have a better chance of pursuing their Bohemian dreams under his "neoliberal" regime. The fact that we have good reason to question Benny’s sincerity both in terms of his marriage and his altruism does not mean that the other characters are right. On the contrary, it is Benny, with his neoliberalism, who is the ultimate Bohemian, living for himself without any care what other people think of him while pretending to have higher ideals. His hypocrisy is the contradiction within Bohemia itself.

The second and truly literal dead end for Bohemia is manifested in AIDS, which physically affects both Roger and Angel. AIDS represents death in its inevitability as well as its fundamental unfairness. With AIDS, some people might die in a matter of months while others may go on for years. Obviously, all people face death. AIDS just forces the characters to face the likelihood of dying young without the hope of pushing death to some far-off old age.

   

Roger hopes to write one song before he dies that will redeem him from being nothing more than a singer who threw away his gifts to heroin addiction and was responsible for his girlfriend's suicide.

 

Conventional people face the problem of death by making themselves part of a community. By being faithful to a spouse and raising one’s children together with them, one ensures that, even after you die, you will have meant something to someone remaining. This family should be embedded within some larger community with a story that plays out over millennia. Finally, this community and its purpose should be based on something supernatural that transcends time itself. (One thinks of the Last Battle where all the good things of Narnia are taken to Aslan's country to continue to exist forever even after Narnia is destroyed.) Even Romanticism could never truly escape this need for community. Even the genius artist who violates community standards in pursuit of their art can only succeed by embodying the essence of some people. Roger has no people to write for who will appreciate his art, leaving him facing death with nothing but regret and guilt for his girlfriend’s suicide.

The musical’s solution is for the stripper Mimi to fall in love with him, coming into his apartment to ask him to “light her candle."

   

With some reluctance, Roger falls for Mimi and this allows him to join with the other characters to resist Benny. This gives us an unconventional community populated by people who, except for Mark, are some combination of gay, drug addict, or HIV positive. The big question of the musical then becomes can love allow such an unconventional community to survive.

In the end, the true challenge does not come from Benny, but from the group's own internal dynamics. Angel's death causes the group to break apart as Joanne stops being willing to put up with Maureen's flirting with other people and Roger comes to suspect Mimi of sleeping with Benny, causing her to relapse into addiction. 

It is here that the musical finds itself trapped between allowing its scenario to play out to its logical conclusion or giving the characters a happy ending. Logically, the community should fall apart as the characters' beliefs do not allow for the formation of a community. As such, the musical should end as a tragedy. This, though, would not affirm the beliefs and lifestyle choices that the musical is attempting to advocate. In the end, the needs of propaganda outweigh the demands of truthfulness. A happy ending is salvaged with Roger returning to Mimi after she overdoses and she is saved, deus ex machina style, from a drug overdose. 

It is interesting to note that the musical has an artistic problem to match its intellectual weakness in that it effectively lacks a second act. The songs that are worthwhile are almost all in the first act. If only musical shorts were a thing then Rent could have been presented up until La Vie Boheme with the gang giving Benny the proverbial middle finger. One imagines Jonathan Larson of blessed memory being forced to add material simply to get to a respectable runtime and hoping that audiences would be so impressed with the first half that they would forgive him for giving them a garbage second act.   

    

Legalizing Discrimination: A Liberal Solution to the Recent Supreme Court Rulings

 

Last week, the Supreme Court offered two rulings along 6-3 ideological lines that upset many liberals, which I would like to discuss here. In Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the court ruled against the affirmative action programs of Harvard and North Carolina, arguing that they discriminated against Asian students. In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the court ruled that a Christian website designer could refuse to design same-sex wedding websites. I empathize with liberals and recognize that liberals deserve to live in states and have institutions that reflect their values. I would like to propose a solution that would give liberals the opportunity to rule parts of America according to their desires without interference from conservatives; we should eliminate the 1964 Civil Rights Act and limit the power of the Fourteenth Amendment so that it does not mean that constitutional rights apply to states. 

At first glance, liberals may be horrified by the thought of eliminating the legal foundations of modern civil rights law and suspect that I am trying to bring back segregation. This is not my intention. I honestly want to help liberals on the principle that people should be able to come together to form social and political institutions based on their particular values. By definition, such institutions must discriminate against someone. In the name of intellectual consistency, I am willing to defend the right to freedom of association even for my political opponents and even for those people who intend to use that right to discriminate against me. 

Eliminate laws that prohibit the federal government from funding institutions that practice discrimination and Harvard will be able to practice "affirmative action" to its heart's content. There will be no need to find clever workarounds. Harvard will be able to openly put a cap on the number of Asian students they will accept. If Harvard also decides that there are too many Jews, well that was why Brandeis University was created in the first place. To be clear, I do not support any government funding for universities or any kind of education. In fact, it is my hope that allowing universities to engage in discrimination will serve as a valuable step toward abolishing federal funding for education. If my proposal leads to federal funds going to whites-only colleges then hopefully liberals will join me in working to establish a wall between government and education. If they do not then they will be the ones propping up discrimination.   

Similarly, the First Amendment should not apply to states. Were it not for an expansionist reading of the Fourteenth Amendment, only Congress would be forbidden from establishing a religion. Liberal states like Colorado should be allowed to establish a tax-payer-funded LGBTQ+ Church, with inquisitors to hunt down and arrest anyone who fails to actively affirm the Sparkle Creed. 

It should be understood that while it is possible for there to be a wall separating education and state, there can be no consistent wall between church and state. Religions do not require any beliefs regarding gods or the supernatural. Any group that comes together will be motivated by a set of values and those values will be a religion of some kind. Anyone who says otherwise can be assumed to be attempting to force their values on the rest of society by pretending that their values are not really a religion. I prefer to deal with honest theocrats.  

Part of bringing back actual federalism is to recognize that different states are going to operate as different social and political experiments. Different states are going to establish different kinds of religions. It may be that they will also make different judgments about which groups have been oppressed and which groups have been privileged. They will then attempt to make their state more "equitable" by creating affirmative action programs to help those groups deemed to be historically oppressed. Some states might decide to focus on helping Jamaican immigrants while other states might focus on people who fled Red China. Finally, other states might want to help rural Appalachian whites. Those who belong to the wrong religion or to a group deemed to have unfairly benefited from privilege can either continue to live under a dhimmi status or they can emigrate to a state where their god is not a symbol of hate and where their skin color does not mark them as systemic oppressors.  

Coming Out of the Closet to Claim Group Rights

Essential for understanding African American history in this country is the fact that, for hundreds of years blacks were persecuted as a group. It was not just that blacks were disproportionally targeted for slavery, lynchings, and ultimately the system of Jim Crow, these things were part of an organized conspiracy against black people for the simple reason that they were black. By the end of the 18^th century, whites had developed the sense that the new United States was founded as a white man’s republic and therefore required a rigid distinction between whites and blacks that kept blacks in a subordinate position. This racism served a practical purpose in that it gave American whites, who otherwise did not have much in common with each other a sense that they were bonded into a common project. (This is not to defend American racism. On the contrary, this is a reason to take racists seriously and not as mere rhetoric.) This belief in America as a white man’s republic obviously existed in a dialectic with the belief in America as the country of “all men are created equal.” It is to America’s credit that, in the long march of history, the belief in all men are created equal has tended to win out over the white man’s republic.

The fact that African-Americans have been persecuted as a group is important because it establishes at least hypothetical grounds for blacks to make demands from white society that go beyond the elimination of laws that outright discriminated against blacks. The fact that I have personally never owned slaves and no African American alive today has ever been formally enslaved in this country does not mean that I do not owe something to African Americans. As critical race theorists would argue, I have benefited from systemic racism. Perhaps I should be willing to accept non-discrimination laws applied to private businesses, affirmative action, or even allow for my tax dollars to fund reparations?

To be clear, there is a risk in having blacks pushing the claim to be a distinct group as the traditional argument for their civil rights rested on the premise that blacks were not really a group. On the contrary, the idea was supposed to be that the notion that the color of a person’s skin could affect a person’s identity was a ridiculous notion invented by foolish racists. If blacks are going to be so reckless as to undermine the entire case for their civil rights and claim that they really are different from white people, they might be left to reap the consequences.

It is interesting to compare the case for black civil rights to LGBTQ+ rights as it is hardly obvious that LGBTQ+ people can actually claim to be a group let alone a historically persecuted one. For one thing, their opponents generally tend not to see them as members of a group but simply as people engaged in an action. It is that action that is the source of the opposition.

Furthermore, LGBTQ+ people are not, in any obvious way born LGBTQ+. We can say that black is a meaningful group in large part because we can accept that a newborn can, in some real sense, be classified as black. (We can go around a maternity ward and point to the black, white, Asian, and Hispanic babies and say that they are all beautiful in God's eyes and that it is wonderful to have such diversity.) What does it mean to say that a newborn is LGBTQ+. Think of it this way; how many black teenagers have undergone the experience of coming “out of the closet” to their parents? “Mom and Dad, I want you to know that I am black.” To which the parents respond: “Are you sure that you are black. Maybe, if you listened to more country music, you will become white.” LGBTQ+ people historically have not been raised by LGBTQ+ parents with an LGBTQ+ identity. It would seem that this is merely something that they decide for themselves. As such, it should make no wider claims on heterosexuals beyond the right to be left alone.  

Consider the consequences of coming out at an even later point in life. It is hardly obvious that a forty-year-old man who comes out of the closet has really discovered his “true identity” that he has been hiding, perhaps even from himself, all along. On the contrary, this sounds like someone going through a mid-life crisis that has led them to take on a "new hobby." Such behavior should be tolerated with amusement but there is no need to grant the person any kind of moral support for they have not done anything virtuous. Note that this all assumes that our middle-aged out of the closet gay person has not abandoned a wife and children to pursue his gay lifestyle. If he has then he is liable for social condemnation and possibly even legal penalties.

If LGBTQ+ people are not a group then they cannot make a claim to be persecuted as a group. For that matter, it would not be possible for them to be discriminated against. To be clear, I agree that anti-sodomy laws were wrong as they violated personal liberty. Then again, I believe with equal conviction that drug laws are wrong. This is not because they discriminate against potheads and keep them from becoming their true high selves. I do not accept that Pothead counts as a meaningful group. Human beings should have the right to ingest substances. Similarly, human beings should have the right to engage in consensual adult acts whether it is sodomy or incest. To be clear, in none of these cases should the right to engage in an action be confused with a right to a job or to social respectability.   

Something that I find fascinating about the LGBTQ+ movement is how they have managed to turn what should be an argument against them in their favor. It is argued that the fact that LGBTQ+ people are usually not raised with an LGBTQ+ identity is one of the ways that they are persecuted. LGBTQ+ people grow up "deprived" of their "authentic" selves. They have to struggle against a heteronormative society that tries to inflict heteronormativity upon them tempting them to live "inauthentically." From this perspective, even the progressive parent who never consciously attempts to stop their child from assuming an LGBTQ+ identity is still guilty of anti-LGBTQ+ persecution merely for raising the kid in an "inauthentic" fashion on the assumption that they are heterosexual or cisgender. This is sort of like the frum-novel trope where the Jewish kid is raised by Gentiles who try to keep the "truth" of his Judaism from him only for his "Jewish spark" to shine through in the end. (Note that the claims of an authentic LGBTQ+ self and an authentic Jewish self are both metaphysical claims. As such, the First Amendment would require that the government take them as equally valid.)   

A practical policy implication of this argument that LGBTQ+ people are a group even to the point of claiming that LGBTQ+ kids exist, is a push to bring LGBTQ+ material into schools. The goal is to teach kids about LGBTQ+ practices but, more than that, they wish to teach that LGBTQ+ people are a legitimate group with the moral high ground due to their "authentic" living earned by struggling against the constraints of a persecuting culture. This leaves children with an obvious question: might they really be LGBTQ+? If they come out as such, they will be praised for showing the "courage" to be their "authentic" selves. The more there are children who can be convinced to do this, the easier it becomes to argue that LGBTQ+ people really are a group. If children really are born LGBTQ+ and only needed adults to give them the language and the support structure to come out of the closet in ways that are in "no way manipulative," then being LGBTQ+ must be a legitimate identity. As such, society must not only eliminate all laws that ban LGBTQ+ practices but also "atone" for the crime of not previously recognizing that such an identity existed. 

Arguably, this would require greater government action than rectifying American racism. Consider, blacks have never had to seriously struggle against people who refused to accept that there was such a thing as black people in the genetic sense. For LGBTQ+ people to receive their full rights as a group, it might be necessary, regardless of the First Amendment, that everyone must be forced to acknowledge that they really are a group. 

Do You Support LGBTQ+ Rights?

 

I was recently asked by a student if I supported LGBTQ+ rights. I asked them what they meant by rights. It quickly became apparent that this student had not seriously considered what counts as a right and what it might be based upon. In essence, their belief in LGBTQ+ rights was the practical equivalent of being a sports fan. They were not asking me whether I agreed with their beliefs as they had no beliefs for me to agree or disagree with but merely if I cheered for their particular team. Their teachers had taught them that to be a good person, they needed to recite the credo "I support LGBTQ+ rights." For all intents and purposes, the students could recite something in Latin and it would be equally meaningful. To be clear, I do not question the intelligence or decency of this student. The fault is not with them but with the educational malpractice that they have been subjected to.   

What might it mean to support LGBTQ+ rights? One possible response is that LGBTQ+ people should be equal to heterosexual and cisgender people. This has a surface plausibility to it. LGBTQ+ people are human beings with rights who deserve to live with dignity just like everyone else. Now, what might this mean in practice? Consider that people with poor social skills, nose pickers, and MAGA Republicans are all human beings with rights who deserve to live with dignity. This certainly means that they have legal rights. If you are committed to civil liberties then there should be no moral difference between the police beating a confession out of someone with a pride flag or a MAGA flag. This is distinct from any kind of social right. In the real world, people are going to lose out on friendships and jobs for failing to follow all kinds of random social conventions that could never be defended simply on rational grounds. Furthermore, these social failings may be so subtle that neither party can even articulate the rule that has been violated. As someone on the autism spectrum, I am forced to reckon with this fact on a daily basis and pay a heavy price for it. Once we accept that society can penalize nose pickers, the burden of proof falls on anyone who objects to society penalizing anyone for violating a social convention. If people have the right to arbitrarily give nose pickers a look of disgust, they have the equal right to arbitrarily give a person in drag a look of disgust.    

I believe that LGBTQ+ people have the right to negative liberty. This means that the government should not cause physical harm to people it classifies as LGBTQ+. Such people should be able to engage in consensual behavior between adults as they wish whether that is non-heterosexual sex or gender reassignment surgery. As language is an arbitrary social construct, LGBTQ+ people have the right to call themselves married or members of the opposite sex. If they can convince the majority of society to speak their language, all power to them. This would be no different from the advocacy of Esperanto speakers. 

I would not be willing to grant LGBTQ+ people positive liberty but then again I do not believe that anyone has a right to positive liberty. I am willing to accept a legal obligation under the social contract to be drafted and have to mow down, with machine gun fire, a mob of theocrats trying to violently stop a gay orgy from happening. I am not willing to execute Christian bakers who refuse to bake gay wedding cakes. 

In any argument, it is crucial to control the terms used. Once the issue is framed in terms of supporting or opposing LGBTQ+ rights, the LGBTQ+ side is guaranteed to win. My students may not know what rights are but they have been raised to believe that rights, whatever magical black box they might be, are an important good to such extent that your support or opposition to them is what makes you a good or bad person. If we are going to change minds on LGBTQ+ issues, we are first going to have to get them to think seriously about what rights mean.  

LGBTQ+ History Month

 

A local elementary school here in Pasadena placed the following banners in honor of LGBTQ+ month outside its front office. Let us leave aside the question of why it is more important for the school to ensure that elementary school kids are more aware of LGBTQ+ History Month than Filipino-American or Italian-American History Month. What struck my attention was the timeline's claim for 2003: "LGBTQ+ legalized nationwide in the U.S." 

I can only assume that this is supposed to be a reference to the Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas decision that struck down anti-sodomy laws. Obviously, this was a critical event in the history of gay rights that set up the Obergefell decision with its right to same-sex marriage. That being said, it is not as if LGBTQ+ people were illegal before 2003. While gay sex has certainly been illegal in many parts of the country, being a gay person was never, in of itself, illegal. As someone who studies Jewish History, the distinction is an important one. The Spanish Inquisition went after people who carried out Jewish actions such as eating cholent on Shabbos. The Nazis, by contrast, killed people for having a Jewish grandparent. 

The timeline's statement only makes sense if we assume that being gay is fundamentally about what kind of sex you engage in to the extent that preventing people from engaging in gay sex stops people, in some sense, from being gay as opposed to "merely" violating the right to privacy of consenting adults. If being gay is really about sex then it has no business being discussed with elementary school kids. Those in the gay rights camp need to get their story straight. 

The really strange thing about this mess of a statement is that Lawrence v. Texas had nothing directly to do with much of the LGBTQ+ alphabet. The decision affected trans people about as much as heterosexuals. Whoever made the timeline was so wielded to the notion that LGBTQ+ represents a coherent group of people that they kept to it even to the point of writing utter nonsense. Here is my proposal to the LGBTQ+ advocates running our schools. If you are planning to groom my kids, pump them with puberty blockers, and castrate them, is it too much to ask that you at least teach them to write about history in coherent sentences?           

Sacrificing Your Children on the Altar of Principle

A critical argument for those in the LGBTQ camp is that, unless LGBTQ individuals are accepted by their parents and peers, they are liable to commit suicide. This argument has a moral component. It can be argued that people who reject the premises of the LGBTQ movement are committing “literal” violence and endangering LGBTQ people with their “hate.” As such, the government is justified in acting against social conservatives in ways that might otherwise appear like a violation of conservatives’ freedom of speech and religion. There is also a practical component. As a parent, regardless of what you think of LGBTQ arguments, would you rather see your child become LGBTQ or be dead? I wish to take this argument head-on and ask are their principles worth sacrificing your children for?

I once did a post about the proper response of a parent whose daughters became bell-bottom-wearing, lesbian Nazis. To return to this basic premise, imagine that your child’s psychologist sat you down and solemnly explained that your child now identified as a Nazi. They prefer to be called Adolf and demand reconstructive surgery to become white and blond to match their “true Aryan ubermensch selves.” Finally, they wish to have a swastika tattooed on their forehead. The psychologist makes it clear that, unless you accept your child for who they “really are,” they are liable to kill themselves. As such, they put the question to you: would you rather be the parent of a living Nazi child or the parent of a dead child?

I would be willing to refuse the demands of such a kid. If a social worker attempted to aid my child in order to save their lives, I would insist that the government treat them no differently than any common kidnapper. This is not because I doubt what the psychologist told me but because I have principles that I am willing to die for and even willing to sacrifice my children for. I believe in classical liberalism and seek to impart those values to my children. If I had to choose between giving them the impression that I was ok was Nazism and seeing them dead, I would choose their deaths. I would even be open to the idea of outright killing them myself to protect society.

I do not think that this makes me a bad parent. The job of a parent is not merely to take care of their children’s bodies but also to prepare them to take their places within society. That larger society is more important than their lives and may require their sacrifice. Sometimes, parents must send their children off to war. My middle name comes from a nineteen-year-old cousin who was killed in Lebanon several months before I was born. His parents sent him off to serve in the IDF knowing that he might come back in a box and he did. Other parents must deal with children who come out of the closet as Nazis. While such parents might be tempted to simply love and accept their children for who they are, liberal democratic society demands that you reject such children even at the cost of their lives.

Sacrificing your children is certainly a high bar and there are many things I would not be willing to sacrifice them for. Despite being a traditionally observant Jew, I would rather my children reject Judaism than damage their mental health and put their lives at risk. If this means that I must accept their non-Jewish wives or even that they are in relationships deemed by Leviticus to be abominations, so be it. That being said, I do believe that human beings are born into societies and that we have no right to expect society to refashion itself to suit our convenience. As someone on the autism spectrum, this is something I am very conscious of. All my life, I have had to accept that I must either conform myself to the dictates of society or be prepared to pay a heavy price. You have the right to make your own lifestyle choices but other people have the right to disapprove of those life choices and to make their disapproval clear to you. If that disapproval causes you distress and psychological harm even to the point of driving you to suicide, that is on you and not them. Much as Nazism is an existential threat to liberal democracy, I fail to see how a liberal democracy can hope to survive citizens who believe that they not only have the negative liberty to make life choices but also the positive liberty to not have other people disapprove of them. I am willing to stand on this principle even at the cost of my children.

If my children become LGBTQ, I will still love them and want to be part of their lives. That being said, I would insist on my right to make my disapproval clear even to the point of taking largely symbolic actions like refusing to attend their same-sex wedding or granting permission for them to have “gender-affirming” surgery. I recognize that this is liable to cause them great distress and for that I am sorry but there are certain principles worth standing for even at great cost.       

A Club That Yeshiva University Can Reject

 

Recently my alma mater, Yeshiva University, has been in the news over the issue of an officially sponsored LGBTQ club with the court ruling that YU is obligated to allow it. To be clear, I am opposed to YU probing into the personal affairs of students. I do not want any guys expelled for being caught having sex with their girlfriends. I do not wish to be accused of being inconsistent so it only seems reasonable not to expel guys caught having sex with their boyfriends. 

A major part of the culture of YU is that many students do not personally live the kind of life that YU endorses. This is important if YU graduates are going to take leadership roles in the broader Jewish community. The practical goal here is to create a world in which even those Jews who personally do not practice Orthodox Judaism, see themselves as Jews and see Orthodox institutions as representing them. Chabad is a good example of this kind of thinking. There are thousands of Jews in this country who drive to Chabad shuls because Chabad makes them feel welcome. For all my disagreements with Chabad, it needs to be said that Chabad has a genius for loving Jews even the completely unobservant. 

Whether you are YU or Chabad, one's ability to be welcoming requires a balancing act where one still recognizes that there are lines that cannot be crossed. For example, I would expect a Chabad rabbi to welcome people who they knew were active homosexuals. I would not be surprised if Chabad rabbis were even willing to acknowledge a couple as husband and husband or wife and wife. That being said, any Chabad rabbi who performed a same-sex wedding would need to be expelled. Failure to do this would mean the end of Chabad. If Chabad could allow same-sex marriage then what redlines would be left that would stop us from simply thinking of Chabad as Conservative rabbis in funny hats?

It is hardly obvious that YU would lose its ability to claim to be the flagship institution of Modern Orthodoxy in America if a rabbi with YU ordination agreed to perform same-sex marriages as a personal decision. An institution like YU may have significantly more leeway than Chabad to allow its rabbis to go off script. That being said, even YU must have its redlines. I am less concerned about where precisely those lines are than the fact that they really do exist.     

I recognize that there are practical reasons for there to be an LGBTQ club at YU. I have no doubt that there are LGBTQ students at YU trying to figure out how to balance their identity with their Judaism. I honestly want such people to feel that they can attend YU. Having a club is likely to strengthen their connection to Judaism. That being said, one needs to ask the question of whether there can be a club that crosses a redline. Is there a club that would be perfectly reasonable to expect at a regular campus but would destroy YU's claim to be an Orthodox institution if it ever officially agreed to recognize it?

While likely far fewer than LGBTQs in the Orthodox community, I assume there are Jewish teenagers who have privately accepted Jesus as their personal savior and are struggling with how to balance their desire to live observant Jewish lives while being true to their Christian faith, knowing that most people in the Jewish community would react with extreme hostility if these kids ever came out of the closet. 

If I knew that my roommate was in the closet about Jesus, I would not out them or try to have them expelled. If people began to suspect that he was really a Christian perhaps because he shokeled when reading the New Testament a little too intensively for mere academic interest, I still would not support any action being taken against them. Things begin to change the moment our Jewish Christian steps out of their closet and actively proclaims that they believe in Jesus. By doing this, they would be putting YU in a bind, either take action against the student or implicitly acknowledge that faith in Christ is not as absolutely contrary to Judaism as one might have thought. If YU feels that it has to choose the former then so be it. 

Clearly, YU should not allow there to be a Campus Crusade for Christ club on campus. I believe that USC should allow Campus Crusade for Christ on its campus even though they are a private university. The difference is that Campus Crusade for Christ does not present a head-on challenge to USC's mission while YU exists precisely to be a space for people who reject Christ. 

I believe that YU should not be hosting Christian missionary attempts to convert Jews on campus even though it is hardly obvious to me that Christian theology is less heretical than hardline Chabad messianism. I would be willing to allow a messianic Chabad club on campus even over the objections of Prof. David Berger. In truth, there are large numbers of non-Jews in YU's graduate schools. If non-Jewish Christians in graduate school wanted a Christian club, I would support them. For that matter, if a group of Christian undergrads from South Korea enrolled at YU to learn about Judaism and America, I would welcome them and allow them to form an official Christian club even if it crossed the line into missionary activity. What would be the point of these students coming to YU if they were not allowed to discuss religion? 

If you want to argue that YU should have an LGBTQ club, I am not going to tell you that you are wrong. I am going to ask you, though, to produce a list of clubs that would be perfectly fine on most campuses but should not be on YU. YU should not have a Nazi or Hamas club on campus but neither should USC. I see a Christian club as less of a problem than an LGBTQ club. If we are going to have an LGBTQ club at YU then it would be unjust to keep Jewish Christians in the closet about their chosen savior.               

Quasimodo in the Classroom

 

Imagine that you are the principal at a school at the beginning of the year and you are given Quasimodo as a student. Quasimodo is a hunchback and incredibly ugly but this is no fault of his own and his loathsome exterior covers a truly decent soul. How far would the administration be morally obligated to go in order to accommodate Quasimodo? Clearly, the school needs to protect Quasimodo from blatant bullying. Quasimodo's teachers need to be prepped before the year starts for having Quasimodo. For example, the teachers need to be conscious of the fact that Quasimodo notices how people grimace at the sight of him and that it does real psychological damage. That being said, there are going to be real limits as to what Quasimodo's two moms, the Notre Dames, can demand from the school. 

Despite the fact that social standards of beauty are largely arbitrary and that they discriminate against Quasimodo, who never chose to look the way he does, it would be unreasonable to demand that the school overthrow conventional standards of beauty in order that Quasimodo no longer be considered hideous. A different standard of beauty, besides being impractical, would simply leave some other unfortunate student as the ugliest kid in school. To eliminate all standards of beauty, besides being profoundly impractical, would harm society. Beauty is foundational to art and to ethics. It is by contemplating mere physical beauty that we come to comprehend the possibility of a higher form of beauty such as the virtuous person. 

Unfortunately, a tragic consequence of believing in physical beauty is that, inevitably, there will exist an ugliest person such as Quasimodo who will be made to suffer even if no one is actively mean to him. While it would be wrong to stare at Quasimodo, he will catch on fairly quickly if people are not looking in his direction at all or if the timing for how long people look at him is different from how they look at other kids. What is the principal supposed to tell Quasimodo when Esmeralda turns him down for the prom and instead goes with Phoebus, the football captain, even though he is a jerk? Before the school accepts Quasimodo, the principal will have to be honest with Quasimodo's moms. If they really want to avoid getting him hurt at all costs, the best option would be homeschooling. 

For Quasimodo to attend school, it will need to be acknowledged that, while there is an obligation to tolerate and be kind to him, he will never be truly accepted. The very act of trying to be kind to Quasimodo will only further his alienation. Why would anyone feel the need to go out of their way to be nice to Quasimodo if it were not for the fact that they have already "Othered" him and, feeling guilty about it, wish to cover up for their moral failure? As such, the Notre Dames would have to agree to let the school off the hook for trying to make Quasimodo fully part of the community even though that is what pure Justice would demand.  

I bring up this example of Quasimodo because it sets an outer limit for the moral obligations of a school to a student. The fact that Quasimodo did not choose to be the way that he is allows his moms to make real demands from the school if it wishes to plausibly claim that they are serving the entire community but there is not going to be any blank check to refashion society to allow Quasimodo to function within it. 

Imagine that, while Quasimodo's principal is talking to the Notre Dames, he has to put them on hold because a call is coming in from Steve Urkel's parents, who want him to do something about the fact that Urkel finds himself socially isolated. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with Urkel dressing like a nerd and the school should protect him against physical violence. That being said, the Urkels cannot expect a higher level of support than the Notre Dames. Fairly quickly, the principal is going to have to point out that Urkel is choosing to wear dorky glasses. Even though it is wrong that kids do not want to be friends with him because of how he dresses, if Urkel wants friends, he should probably change his clothes.    

The moment we start dealing with students who violate social norms out of any religious belief or ideology, the ability of the school to act should constrict even further. Imagine that Quasimodo and Urkel were to come out of the closet as transgender Trumpist Christians and came to school wearing skirts, MAGA hats, and crosses. Clearly, Quasimodo and Urkel have the right to wear such paraphernalia even though it will make many people uncomfortable, particularly as they are likely to strongly oppose the beliefs of transgender Trumpist Christianity. 

While the principal is on firm ground to admonish students for making fun of people for their clothes and certainly for their looks, he is on far trickier grounds when students criticize or even mock the beliefs of other kids. Disagreement is an essential part of a free society. As a public servant, the principal needs to be absolutely neutral in the often brutal ideological discourses taking place around the school. He can protect Quasimodo and Urkel as long he acts in exactly the same manner for all other groups. It must be clear that he is not acting out of any desire to promote transgender Trumpist Christianity as that would violate the rights of all the other students. As this standard would be incredibly difficult to reach, the principal may have no choice but to allow Quasimodo and Urkel to be mocked. 

It will do them no good to argue that they really are women, that Trump really is their president, and that God predestined them from before creation to be part of the elect despite their sins. All three claims are things that their opponents have the right to dispute. Furthermore, it will not help Quasimodo and Urkel to argue that being transgender Trumpist Christians is essential to who they are and that their opponents are rejecting their humanity. They were on better ground arguing that being a hunchback and a nerd was essential to their being and even that offered them little benefit.      

Why Conservatism Needs a Classical Liberal Foundation: A Response to Yoram Hazony

 

Yoram Hazony provides a useful example of the importance of the unwritten texts by which we read an author. On paper, there is much that I agree with Hazony. We are both traditionally observant Jews, who have been heavily influenced by Christian thought and therefore greatly respect serious Christians. We believe that religion of some sort will inevitably form the background of any political system and that any claims to be able to completely separate Church and State will prove unworkable or a cynical ploy to bring someone's preferred religion through the backdoor under a different name. (It is important to keep in mind that the various forms of leftism that have evolved since the Enlightenment down to modern Wokism are religions with their own metaphysics and a metanarrative about the interplay of good and evil throughout history and should be held to the same First Amendment standards as any traditional religion.) Both of us wish to protect small traditional communities from the larger forces of modernity. 

One difference between us is that Hazony is clearly more willing to use the power of government against corporations that choose to pursue a leftist agenda. Even here my opposition is somewhat muted. I am torn as to how conservatives should respond to a left that no longer accepts traditional classical liberal norms. If leftists are willing to use government when they win elections to reshape culture in their image, it is only fair that conservatives respond in kind. 

It is the issue of classical liberalism, though, that highlights the key problem I have with Hazony. His recent book, Conservatism: A Rediscovery, is an attack on fusionist conservatives like me who presuppose a commitment to a classical liberal unwritten constitution. Hazony blames the mainstream American conservative movement as embodied by William F. Buckley and Frank Meyer for not being willing to take a harder line in defense of religious values, having already conceded to the left the premise that religion was a private matter with no role in the public sphere. This turned the culture wars into a decades-long negotiated surrender where only the timeline for the secularization of society was ever in question. If conservatism is about preserving something, it would seem that the only thing conservatives have been able to conserve is the power of big business. This might have been a reasonable strategy at a time when it could be assumed that businessmen could be counted upon to support a socially conservative agenda in return for conservatives voting for free-market policies. Today, this is clearly no longer the case as it is corporate America that is the main force pushing for Woke policies. 

To respond to Hazony, it is important to state why a classical liberal framework is necessary particularly for conservatives. For better or worse, we live in a pluralistic society, full of decent people who have a right to live and vote in this country but are far from being conservatives even by the standards of National Review let alone Hazony. Assuming that we are not planning secession (a solution that I would support but Hazony would not) or civil war (which I hope that Hazony would not support), it is necessary to convince such people to vote for the Republican Party or at least not object too strongly when the Republican Party wins an election or a Supreme Court vote. Conservatives need to be able to offer such people certain guarantees that they will be able to live their non-conservative lives in peace. To operate within the classical liberal unwritten constitution is to have a set of values ingrained into you to such a degree that violating the legitimate rights of your opponents becomes unthinkable.   

Rod Dreher provides a good example of this sort of thinking when he challenges Catholic Integralists with what might be called the Edgardo Mortara question. If Integralists, somehow, were to take power, what, in their philosophy, would make it unthinkable for something like the Mortara case to ever happen? For those unfamiliar, Edgardo Mortara was a Jewish kid kidnapped by the Vatican in the 1850s because he had been baptized by a maid. This is a scenario that fills me with fear coming from the left. If you are on the left and you cannot explain to me why it is inconceivable that police will come to my house tonight or in five years to take my boys away because one of them told a teacher that they felt like they were really a girl but I refused to let them wear a dress then you can assume that political cooperation is off. Consistency demands that I respect the right of leftists to think along the same lines. If a political party animated by Hazony's ideals ever came to power what guarantees could he make to homosexuals that police will not come in the night and seize their children?

Democracies are inherently plagued with a variation of the prisoner's dilemma every time a new party wins an election. If Republicans win in November 2024, what is to stop Joe Biden from declaring the election a fraud and having Republicans shot before they can take power in January? This could even be declared a "defense of democracy" on the assumption that the Republicans would do the same thing if they lost in 2028. For democracy to work, not only is it necessary that all major factions respect the results of elections, it needs to be inconceivable to both sides that their opponents, whom they honestly dislike and think are bad for the country, would ever stoop so low as to overthrow an election. (Because of the events of January 6, this assumption can no longer be made about the United States.) 

The same logic applies to Supreme Court decisions. Will leftists, in response to the overturning of Roe, content themselves with mouthing off, marching, and trying to turn out voters for November or will they, instead, send out execution squads with proscription lists against conservatives? Make no mistake; this is the only reasonable option for anyone who truly believes that this country is in imminent danger of turning into the Handmaiden's Tale. Leftists have a plausible incentive to do so now that they can still rely on the protection of the Biden administration as opposed to a Republican administration that might come to power in 2025. What if the Court were to overturn Obergefell? 

It is the responsibility of conservatives like me to talk to the decent liberals in my life like my mother and mother-in-law to convince them that, contrary to what they might be hearing on NPR or MSNBC, there is no plot to establish a Christian theocracy. For good reason, they might not like conservative policies but that is the price of living in a country that has the GOP. For this to work, I need to be able to argue that there are certain lines that would be inconceivable for conservatives to cross. 

Here is where classical liberalism becomes important. It provides a collection of assumed red lines that can be built into the collective political consciousness of a society to never cross even at the cost of some short-term gain. Some hack writer is producing smut. That is their right. It does not matter if it has no social redeeming importance and may even be harmful. By tolerating indefensible junk, I signal to my opponents that I have no intention of coming after them even when they write books attacking me.  

As Hazony recognizes, part of being a conservative is the acceptance of norms, the most important ones being unwritten, that govern a society. One does not attempt to refashion society with a gun in one hand and a philosophy book in the other.  In the United States, a central part of our political norms is classical liberalism. This is an advantage of American conservativism. As Hayek argued, to be a conservative in America still means to be a supporter of liberty. The United States has no living tradition of crown and altar conservatism. Thankfully, the closest American equivalent, the slavocracy tradition of John C. Calhoun, lost all political plausibility in the 1960s with the defeat of George Wallace. When Hazony talks about the Anglo-American conservative tradition, he means Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and Marshall. Even as Hazony denounces the "Puritan theocrats" of the English Civil War, he never suggests that Americans should return to absolute monarchy along the lines of Charles I.   

The United States is a large and complicated country, one that I personally think should be broken up. If I, somehow, was ever elected president here would be my message to my mother, mother-in-law, and all the decent liberals out there who profoundly disagree with me. There will be no more pride flags on federal buildings but the police will not be charging into homes to arrest adults engaged in consensual activities. I may be willing to allow states to ban abortion but I will protect abortion in those states where it is legal. As a guarantee of my sincerity, I will respect the right of every individual property owner to secede from the United States to create LGBTQ/abortion sanctuaries as they wish. 

As a classical liberal, I am willing to make serious good-faith guarantees to my liberal opponents. What can Hazony promise? What lines will he not cross even though it will cost him the chance to build his conservative society? 

 

Transcending Stereotypes: A Lesson From the Artscroll Children's Siddur

 

Here is the opening paragraph for Birkat Hamazon, the Jewish grace after meals blessing, from the illustrated Artscroll Children's Siddur. This blessing deals with the idea that God feeds the entire world. Hence we are treated to an illustration of examples of animals and people from around the globe. What I find interesting about this picture is that it makes for a useful ideological Rorshach test. When looking at the picture, do you see diversity or racism?

I can honestly see how a reasonable person can come down on either side of this question. A charitable view of the illustrator would be that he recognizes that God cares to provide for the entire world and not just Jews. A less charitable view would be that the picture has set up a hierarchy of being. There are animals and highly stereotyped gentiles to be contrasted with the non-rediculous-looking Jewish boy and girl at the bottom. 

Part of the problem is that ridiculous-looking stereotypes are certainly better than the alternative. Imagine that instead of smiling children, the gentiles of the world were portrayed as the Spanish Inquisition, Cossacks, and Nazis. A world in which we patronize the other as ridiculous stereotypes really is a far superior one from where we fear the other as something monstrous. The former leads to microaggressions while the latter leads to mass murder. Furthermore, the former actually protects us from the latter. If the African and the Native-American simply like to ride around on elephants and buffalos and are not engaged in vast anti-Semitic conspiracies then harming them not only ceases to be a regretful necessity but actually becomes morally repugnant and ultimately unthinkable.

Portraying the other as ridiculous and therefore unthreatening can serve as an important step towards higher levels of acceptance. Consider the example of Apu from the Simpsons. Originally he honestly did serve a liberal purpose. In a town full of ridiculous characters, Apu with his accent and idols was one of the more endearing residents. If your daughter was going to marry someone from Springfield, Apu might be the one that you did not object to. (As opposed to either the old Jewish billionaire or the sleazy Jewish comedian.) It very well might be that Apu helped a generation of Americans become comfortable with Indians and Hinduism. None of this changes the fact that Apu is an absurd stereotype and it is understandable that many Indians find him offensive. In this sense, it is unfortunate that the Simpsons show has so greatly outlived its time.

It is easy to underestimate the challenge of transcending stereotypes. We are surrounded by progressives who claim to be such enlightened beings. In truth, progressives have no interest in accepting other cultures but only suitably neutered versions of cultures made in the progressive image. This gets in the way of having honest conversations about actual diversity.   

The problem is how do you imagine someone with a fundamentally different worldview without turning them into monsters? For example, there are people out there who believe that it is ok to murder someone for refusing to bake a gay wedding cake. (By definition, all government actions imply the moral authority to kill anyone who refuses to comply.) Such people not only deny their heinous intent but pretend that they are human rights activists trying to fight against "hate." Perhaps LGBTQ activists do not really mean what they say and like simply shouting slogans as a social exercise. To say that would commit the sin of not taking them seriously and ultimately to unfairly reduce them to a crude stereotype. This includes many people close to me who I love and whose moral judgment I respect in all things except for the fact that they are complicit in mass murder. What can I say; like most reasonable people, I find myself unable to live my life in a way that is perfectly consistent with my values at all times.   

There are two plausible solutions to this problem. The first is to pretend that there are no real ideological conflicts as everyone actually agrees about the important things. Consider the moderate Enlightenment’s natural religion. In this model, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews all agree that the world was designed by a benevolent deity, who guides the world through providence and offers rewards and punishments. People are free to serve this deity through Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish rituals depending on their personal taste. The advantage of this model is that no one would ever think to murder their neighbors over religion because everyone really has the same religion. The problem is that you have to pretend that everyone really does believe in this natural religion and has cast off everything that makes their religion distinctive.

The alternative is to deny that other people have beliefs at all. All they consist of are a collection of strange clothes, customs, and myths. Such crude stereotypes can easily be tolerated as they lack an ideology to ever make them dangerous. Sometimes wanting to kill your opponents can be a sign of the utmost respect. You respect them enough to recognize that they really do have beliefs and that these beliefs really are in utter conflict with yours.  

The Paradox of Classical Liberalism

 

A strength of classical liberalism is that it is not supposed to be a positive value system. Instead, classical liberalism is meant to function as a structure from which one can reform existing societies. For example, classical liberals can reform societies so that they are less prone to use violence against women along with various ethnic or sexual minority groups. We call this negative liberty. You have the right to be protected against those wishing to cause you physical harm and that is the limit of your rights. It is a simple belief that can easily be explained to anyone of any race or creed and it is a profound concept that can uplift those societies where people take it to heart. This strength of classical liberalism is also a weakness. Classical liberalism, in of itself, is an empty ideology. It can oppose various visible forms of oppression but it cannot offer a positive alternative. In a classical liberal society, people should be free to pursue their own good in their own way as long as they are not causing physical harm to others. That being said, what should classical liberals actually do once they have learned to stop beating people up for looking different or believing in the wrong things?

One might say that classical liberals should become scientists and philosophers, using their reason to better comprehend the universe. Such pursuits, though, only make sense within a particular society. Consider the example of Socrates. Socrates may have believed that only the examined life was worth living but he was also someone whose life only had meaning within Athenian society. For this reason, Socrates refused to flee Athens and instead stayed to drink hemlock. Without Athens, Socrates was simply someone with a talent for deconstructing ideas; he might as well be dead.    

Whether it is a city or a religious community, classical liberalism is always going to be dependent on something outside of itself that is likely going to exist in tension with it. For example, I am both a classical liberal and a traditionally observant Jew. This is not a contradiction in the sense that I am not trying to force my Judaism on anyone else. I honestly have no interest in murdering homosexuals or even Amalekites. That being said, clearly, Judaism is not the same thing as classical liberalism. Furthermore, it is Judaism that controls how I live my day-to-day life. Classical liberalism is limited to an abstract philosophy to think about. It lacks the power of leather boxes to tie onto my biceps and on top of my head.  

The temptation is for classical liberalism to attempt to attach positive values to itself and claim the existence of positive liberty. For example, there is a difference between not beating up transgender students and a public school actively celebrating that student's life choices and handing out puberty blockers without parental consent. The problem is that the moment liberalism becomes a positive set of beliefs, it loses its moral high ground and simply becomes one more cultural system. It no longer is something that everyone can embrace, no matter their background, as part of their inheritance as rational human beings. This kind of liberalism is particularly dangerous because it still thinks of itself as something universal even as it has become a particular creed. This eliminates the checks that stop it from becoming totalitarian. 

If you believe that LGBTQs truly have the right to receive active positive acceptance from everyone, then you have signed on to murder anyone clinging to conservative religious values. If LGBTQs must be given acceptance and religious conservatives will not give it then the only option left is to "lovingly" murder those religious conservatives so we can have a world without "hate." 

As long as liberalism is merely the support of negative liberty to not initiate physical violence, there is no problem if we expect everyone to live by it. Do not start fights with us and we will not start fights with you. Alternatively, if liberalism is a particular creed that is only meant for "WEIRD" people on college campuses that would also be fine as there would be no reason for liberals to bother anyone else. The problem becomes when liberalism tries to be both; you then have a license to try to refashion the world according to your creed. If that means killing people then so be it.   

Consider the example of Judaism and Christianity. One of the benefits of Judaism is precisely that it is a particular creed. God entered into a covenant and offered a set of commandments to a particular group of people and not anyone else. Beyond preaching ethical monotheism, Judaism has no universal message to convert the world to. More importantly, there are no particular rituals that non-Jews need to perform. It is right and good that members of the Bahai religion continue to be Bahai. There is no good reason to try to convert them to Judaism so I am under no obligation to try. The Bahai do not have to be circumcised or celebrate the Sabbath. Christianity, by contrast, suffers from being a universalist religion. If Jesus died for the sins of the entire world, then Christians have an obligation to baptize the Bahai in his name and are not free to live and let live. Even if Judaism is not enough to make someone a classical liberal it clearly offers fewer temptations to stray from that path. 

Classical liberalism's limited vision for itself also applies to science. The power of science is precisely that it is not meant as an all-encompassing doctrine. It is merely a tool for explaining the world that does not even claim to always be right but simply leads to productive results in the long run. This allows science to be taken up by any culture because there is no contradiction between being a practicing scientist and going home and pursuing any lifestyle. Granted that a society that values science will eventually experience benefits beyond new technology. That being said, science is not a complete value system in itself and any scientist who claims otherwise, regardless of the moral value of their system, has ceased practicing science. 

There is a place for universal ideas for people in all times and places and particularist ideas for some people in some situations. Universal ideas may be the grand important ones but it is also their very nobility that limits them. To live our lives, we need particular ideas that we can bring down to our level. Unlike Judaism, classical liberalism is for everyone precisely because it is not a guide for actual living. Think of it as an invitation. Reject violence and embrace reason. The world that arises will contain many surprises but there should be a place for what is truly important to you.  

Of Hobbits and Muggles: A Study in Fantastical Creatures

To Kalman and Mackie, my Wizard and Hobbit. 

J. R. R. Tolkien's Hobbit and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series both open by introducing us to a fantastical race of beings. Tolkien gives us Hobbits and Rowling gives us Muggles. One might respond, Hobbits are make-believe beings who live in the fantasy land of the Shire in Middle Earth. Muggles are simply humans who live on Earth so it is silly to compare them to Hobbits. On the contrary, the problem is comparing Hobbits to Muggles. One of Tolkien's chief virtues over Rowling is precisely that it is the Hobbits that are truly believable while it is Muggles who require the suspension of disbelief. What makes this possible is Tolkien's love for Hobbits in contrast to Rowling's contempt for Muggles.

"The Boy Who Lived" chapter is different from most of the rest of the Potter series in that most of it takes the perspective of Uncle Vernon. Baby Harry does not enter the stage until the very end. The rest of the series is told from Harry's point of view. Our knowledge of the Wizarding world is meant to closely match Harry's and much of the books' plots revolve around Harry trying to find things out. Vernon and the Dursleys are held out as the Muggles par excellence. They are a stereotype of 1950s bourgeois conformity who have somehow managed to survive into the 1990s. As with Dickens' villains, we can laugh at the absurdity of the Duriksleys and their cruelty but let us never confuse that with reality. Wizards are introduced to us as hippies, complete with eccentric tastes in clothes.

Mr. Dursley couldn't bear people who dressed in funny clothes - the getups you saw on young people! He supposed this was some stupid new fashion. ... his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing quite close by. ... Mr. Dursley was enraged to see that a couple of them weren't young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and wearing an emerald-green cloak! The nerve of him! (3)

Later, when Harry is living with the Dursleys, one of Vernon's main objections to him is his hair.

About once a week, Uncle Vernon looked over the top of his newspaper and shouted that Harry needed a haircut. Harry must have had more haircuts than the rest of the boys in his class put together, but it made no difference, his hair simply grew that way - all over the place. (21)

As readers, we are never meant to identify with Muggles like the Dursleys. I do not know about you but I am not a Muggle. I am a Wizard who did not get his letter to Hogwarts when he turned eleven due to a bureaucratic snafu. I may be thirty-seven years old but I still am waiting for that letter that is rightfully mine and, when I do, everyone will finally realize how special I am. Here is where the series’ focus on Harry as the point of view character becomes important. Harry’s discovery of the Wizarding world becomes ours. Hagrid is showing up with our letter of acceptance and taking us to Diagon Alley. Potter's greatest strength was that it offered a magical world just out of reach that readers would desperately want to be a part of.

The dark side of this is a contempt for ordinary people, Muggles. We readers always knew we were different from the Muggles around us; we read books. We might not be able to tap the right brick to enter the Wizarding world but we can still look down upon the Muggles around us. This is ironic as the bad guys hate Muggles in general and Muggle-borns (Mudbloods) in particular. Were it not for the fact that the Death Eaters are clearly Nazis with their obsession with racial purity, readers could easily become confused as to whose side they should be on. (To Rowling's credit, the later books show a sophisticated understanding as to how a society could fall to Nazism.)

One of the advantages of being on the left is that you are granted a license to hate anyone who you decide is a racist. In practice, this means anyone not sufficiently on the left. This is not counted as hate. On the contrary, it is standing up for justice for all. This makes leftism the ultimate enabler of hate as a true leftist can never conceive of themselves as guilty of hate. In a similar vein, readers are never meant to question their hatred of the Dursleys even if Dudley finally shows some flicker of humanity in the end. On the contrary, we can take a righteous pleasure in our hatred; they deserve whatever pranks the Wizards pull on them. We are never meant to see any link between our response to the Dursleys and that of a Death Eater. 

It is worth noting that the recent Fantastic Beast films have introduced a positive Muggle character, Jacob Kowalski. What is so great about Kowalski and what makes him a necessary corrective for the series is that he is not simply a fall guy to get magical poop on his head. He is someone that the audience can deeply empathize with as well as a voice that the Wizarding world needs. It is not for nothing, he gets the beautiful Wizard girl in the end.

In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about how Potter has inspired a generation of young activists with its anti-authoritarianism. I never read Potter as truly subversive of authority considering how much of the story rides on our willingness to trust in Dumbledore's wisdom and goodness despite his numerous mistakes. (To be clear, I consider Dumbledore's flawed sainthood and the need of Harry to still believe in him to be one of the strong points of the series. Rowling, in the later books, chose to make a point of Dumbledore’s fallibility instead of covering it up. Contrast this with how Stars Wars handled Yoda even as Yoda is far more guilty in the creation of Darth Vader than Dumbledore is in creating Voldemort.) My less charitable interpretation of how Potter has inspired a generation of youth activism is that it trained children to believe that they were special and to be self-righteous about it. They are Wizards forced to live among horrible Muggles with nothing worthwhile to teach them. Through activism, their magic specialness will become manifest. To be fair to Rowling, she has been a brave voice of sanity on the left for her willingness to defend Israel, attack Jeremy Corbyn, and leave herself vulnerable to the malice of supporters of transgenderism. That being said, I cannot help but feel a slight twinge of schadenfreude for how she made Dumbledore gay after the series was finished.

At the beginning of The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins is hardly more likable or open to magic than Vernon. Furthermore, it is not as if Bilbo does anything useful like run a drill company. Bilbo changes but it is not a matter of Gandalf convincing Bilbo to abandon his boring Hobbit ways to open his mind to adventure just like the more interesting Dwarves. On the contrary, Bilbo’s Hobbit love of the simple things of life like hearth and home plays a critical role in protecting him from the greed for treasure that consumes Thorin Oakenshield. Gandalf was not trying to convert a Hobbit; he was looking for a Hobbit because there is something incredible about Hobbits. Gandalf's greatness is that he can appreciate Hobbits. This sets up Lord of the Rings, where it is the Hobbits, Frodo and Sam, who save Middle Earth by carrying it to Mordor. Only a Hobbit could resist the temptation of using the Ring because Hobbits honestly would rather tend a garden with a beer and pipe of tobacco than to rule the world.

Belief requires something plausible that might exist and something important enough to care if it does. It is easy to believe in Hobbits. They are as perfectly ordinary as the corner grocery and should be as common. Tolkien's genius was to discover something incredible in this ordinariness. If Tolkien did not love Hobbits, Bilbo would have never become more than a comic foil for Gandalf and the Dwarves, nothing worth believing in.

It was with the Hobbits that Tolkien identified with as opposed to even the Elves. This despite the fact that the original purpose of Middle Earth was supposed to be for The Silmarillion, an epic about the Elves. Perhaps this is why Tolkien never finished it and it was only published posthumously. There is no doubt that if Tolkien could choose between being a Hobbit or an Elf, he would choose the Hobbit. Can you imagine, Rowling wanting to be a Muggle instead of a Wizard?

Until my letter comes, my Wizarding career will have to stay on hold but I will still not be something so absurd as a Muggle. But maybe I could be a Hobbit, an ordinary hero. If I fail, it will not be because someone forgot to send me a letter but because I am not worthy of such a title.

Can the Benedict Option Survive Nationalism?

Previously, I discussed Yoram Hazony's defense of nationalism as an alternative to a universal empire. I believe that people in the liberty movement should take Hazony seriously as someone working within the classical liberal tradition. From my perspective as a libertarian anarchist, I fail to see where the dividing is between a tribe and a nation or between a nation and a universal empire. If Mormons in Utah wished to leave the union, would that be tribalism or a nation trying to break free of an empire? Clearly, our Mormons have less in common with liberal New Yorkers than liberal New Yorkers have in common with liberal Canadians.

Rod Dreher is another writer I respect who has joined with the New Nationalists. As someone who, like Hazony, attempts to pursue a non-authoritarian live and let live form of nationalism, Dreher is vulnerable to similar lines of attack. Moreover, as the author of The Benedict Option, Dreher's embrace of nationalism seems particularly suicidal.

A foundational premise of classical liberal political theory is that you should assume that any system of government you create will be taken over by your opponents. In a similar vein, Dreher's starting point is that it is the other side who has the power. Christians and other religious conservatives have lost the culture wars and are facing a society that is actively hostile to them. Because of this, Christians should abandon politics, as not even the Republican Party will save the situation, and concentrate on building strong local community institutions such as private schools so that their children will have a chance at resisting the lure of secularism.

I am reminded of the anarchist criticism of Ayn Rand. How is Galt's Gultch not an anarcho-secessionist state? Galt and his followers reject the United States government for its interference with private enterprise so they build their own community in complete defiance of federal and state law. Similarly, I fail to see how any Benedict Option community can avoid being stridently anti-nationalism and even pro-secessionism.

I could understand if Dreher was a conventional social conservative activist warning of the need to stop liberals by appealing to a "silent majority." Under such circumstances, there would be a nation to appeal to. For Dreher, though, the real America consists of liberal elites who see Christian sexual ethics as the moral equivalence of Nazism and conservatives who reject the left but have already become untied from their heritage. In a battle between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, Christianity will lose. Dreher reluctantly supports Trump on the logic that he gives Christians several more years before Democrats can point-blank ban them from openly working in the public sphere.

I can understand if Dreher wants to support Hungary as a nation-state as there is a plausible case to be made that there really is a majority of Hungarians who identify with Hungary's Christian past. Even if they are not active churchgoers, they can be rallied, under the right leadership, to resist being turned into a mere province of the European Union. (To be clear, as the grandson of Hungarian Holocaust survivors, Hungarian nationalism terrifies me.) Whatever Dreher's hopes for Hungary as a conservative Christian nation-state, this is not an option for the United States as a whole (as opposed to individual states if they seceded). Where are the Christians inspired to bring about a new great awakening built around Calvinist republican virtue or Methodist evangelical populism and not merely the desire to "own the libs?"

A Benedict Option community can only survive if it rejects not only nationalism but even the very identification with the country itself. If your children think of themselves as Americans, what are you going to tell them when National Pride Day becomes a Federal holiday? One thinks of the example of Haredi Jews in Kiryas Joel or New Square. They do not think of themselves as Americans. They live in the United States and are grateful to God that they are not persecuted but the outside world is "goyish" and is to be ignored. Keep in mind that, historically, Jews were not citizens of their host countries. Instead, Jews belonged to semi-autonomous kehillot, which negotiated with and paid taxes to the non-Jewish authorities in exchange for protection. One is on far better ground, Jewishly, advocating for the return of kehillot or the Ottoman millet system than Hazony is when engaging in apologetics for nationalism.

On a side note, let me add that I hold little hope for Modern Orthodox Judaism to survive under Benedict Option conditions. Modern Orthodoxy has always been the dream that one could be a doctor, lawyer, and even a public intellectual (like Yoram Hazony) and still be an openly practicing Jew. The moment that Modern Orthodox kids are no longer accepted in the Ivies, Modern Orthodox schools will be discredited as the teachers will have failed to deliver on their promises to students. The only options left will be the abandonment of Judaism or Haredism.

Once you no longer identify with the state, either intellectually or even emotionally, it is hard to avoid falling into the "heresy" of secessionism. What is Dreher's plan for when the government (or Google) makes the Benedict Option illegal, say by demanding that all children attend LGBTQ-approved schools? If he intends to pursue civil disobedience, he will implicitly be accepting the anarchist premise that one's personal conscience is more important than the Law. The only reason why the American Civil Rights Movement never came to advocate the kind of anarchism that is explicit in writers like Thoreau and Tolstoy is that it was still premised on the notion of sympathetic white Americans who could be reached by rhetoric couched in American terms. This is something that a Benedict Option community, by definition, could never do as the whole reason we are pursuing the Benedict Option in the first place is that we no longer believe that our ideas can get a fair hearing in general society.

I agree with Hazony and Dreher, perhaps too much. The problem is that it seems as if I am willing to take their conclusions in the opposite direction. This has troubling implications. As someone who still identifies emotionally with conservatism, I wish to believe the best of the New Nationalists that they still fundamentally believe in personal liberty and in markets. I am a big tent kind of person, who believes in allowing many different kinds of projects to operate even if they seem at cross purposes. This is only possible as long as all parties accept the right of everyone to pursue their own good in their own way as long as they are not engaging in physical violence. I do not want to believe that the New Nationalism is a conspiracy to force conservative values on other people. For a non-authoritarian nationalism to work, at some level, it must reckon with secessionism. The New Nationalists are free to follow their path as long as they are willing to grant me the freedom to follow mine.