Tuesday, June 30, 2015

BUT WE LIKE SCOLDING PEOPLE!

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage, David Brooks notes that social conservatives still seem determined to turn back the clock on sexual morality. Brooks tries to steer them away from the course they're on:
These conservatives are enmeshed in a decades-long culture war that has been fought over issues arising from the sexual revolution. Most of the conservative commentators I’ve read over the past few days are resolved to keep fighting that war.

I am to the left of the people I have been describing on almost all of these social issues. But I hope they regard me as a friend and admirer. And from that vantage point, I would just ask them to consider a change in course....

Put aside a culture war that has alienated large parts of three generations from any consideration of religion or belief. Put aside an effort that has been a communications disaster, reducing a rich, complex and beautiful faith into a public obsession with sex. Put aside a culture war that, at least over the near term, you are destined to lose.
I'd argue that the War on Sex not only makes religion look stifling and awful, it's done the same thing to conservatism, which was going great guns in the 1980s, and might have won an overwhelming, decades-long victory if righties hadn't been so obsessed with unwed mothers and gay people and porn.

What Brooks is trying to do is futile, because these folks aren't going to listen to his recommendation for an alternative course:
Social conservatives could be the people who help reweave the sinews of society. They already subscribe to a faith built on selfless love....

The defining face of social conservatism could be this: Those are the people who go into underprivileged areas and form organizations to help nurture stable families. Those are the people who build community institutions in places where they are sparse. Those are the people who can help us think about how economic joblessness and spiritual poverty reinforce each other. Those are the people who converse with us about the transcendent in everyday life.

... the sexual revolution will not be undone anytime soon. The more practical struggle is to repair a society rendered atomized, unforgiving and inhospitable. Social conservatives are well equipped to repair this fabric, and to serve as messengers of love, dignity, commitment, communion and grace.
But these social conservatives aren't remotely interested in "selfless love." They're interested in God's wrath. More specifically, they're interested in being the broken-windows cops enforcing God's wrath. They want to scold. They want to ban. They want to identify sinners and declare them unworthy unless they repent, while society, in unison, chants, "Shame! Shame! Shame!"

And, failing that, they want to regard themselves as the culture's most long-suffering martyrs. Here's Rod Dreher, one of the conservatives Brooks mentions by name in his column, responding to what Brooks wrote:
I am recommending a strategy for resisting, enduring and thriving under the reality of occupation.
Yeah, there's a guy you want ministering to those in need, right?

The sense of being under siege feeds Dreher's sense of self-righteousness. He knows he stands for good. He knows that the society we live in is evil -- and that those of us who share the values of this society are deranged destroyers of civilization:
The point is, there is no way for Christians to undertake the task of nurturing stable families, as David correctly wishes for, without making the teaching of Christian chastity part of the mission. This is the one thing the world cannot accept....

The romanticization of sexual love is no new thing. But it continues to seduce us and to confuse us, and, along with economic individualism, has become on of the two dominant ideologies of our civilization. This bad idea has consequences. The destruction of the family and the sundering of social bonds are among them.
Love your significant other? Love your significant other romantically and sexually? You're going to hell. And you're taking the rest of us with you.

Stop trying to reason with these people, David. Stop trying to be one of these people -- we've read the rumors and we know you can't live according to their moral code. I'm sure most of these clowns can't do it themselves, either. But that won't stop them from lecturing us. David, please realize that what they want most for society is to be its morality cops. They don't really give a crap about Christ's love.

11 comments:

commonsense2016 said...

You been watching Game of Thrones?

Victor said...

There aren't many things as conservative as monogamous marriage.

And our "Christian" conservatives should have realized it early on, and welcomed gay people into their churches, and for them to adopt children and raise them in the church.

But, instead, they went blew it (pun fully intended)!

They wanted to be God-bothering, holier-than-everyone, intolerant buttinski's.

Food, again...

tony in san diego said...

This is so funny: his prescription is for conservatives to go out and do what social liberals have been doing all this time: help the poor. I guess it is the twisted sister of both-siderism. But that is what republicans do: steal our good things.

Jay Upton said...

Would the conservative movement have been able to get going at a "great guns" level in the 1980's without the social conservatives? They seem to be a drag on them now, but they provided an awful lot of votes in the interim.

And now in their weakened state, I remain concerned about a backlash. I think we should continue pressing them further though

Victor said...

Jay,
Our "Christian" conservatives are at the rabid rat trapped in a corner stage.

I expect we'll soon see some armed assaults at gay weddings, sadly.

Never Ben Better said...

Good one, Steve! Shared on my Facebook page.

I actually guffawed out loud at this quote:

"The more practical struggle is to repair a society rendered atomized, unforgiving and inhospitable. Social conservatives are well equipped to repair this fabric, and to serve as messengers of love, dignity, commitment, communion and grace."

Fortunately I'd already swallowed that mouthful of coffee.

Die alte Aechzener said...

"What Brooks is trying to do is futile" This is a phrase you can use in every column about Brooks, without fear of error

Philo Vaihinger said...

As soon as a denomination becomes liberal its churches start to empty with no end in sight but complete abandonment.

The relatively stable or growing denominations stick to traditional - i.e., actual - Christianity.

Don't expect the denominations or the Christian Right to change their stripes, and so don't expect Christian or social conservatives to do so.

But do expect the GOP to try to back away from such issues, but not much and with not much success.

The real heart of conservatism isn't about anything but undoing a century of progressivism and restoring as bare-knuckle a version of capitalism in America as possible.

But only a minority of Americans are anti-progressives, so the GOP has sought to fatten its vote with Christian and social conservatives, a strategy that has worked pretty much only among whites.

This has worked only because though many of the traditional Christians of America, Catholics included, don't really want to roll back progressivism, a lot of the whites among them are willing to tolerate anti-progressivism so long as the GOP pursues their social agenda seriously and with vigor.

If the GOP backs away from social and Christian conservatism while staying strong for killing progressivism it will lose the support of many of these white Christians and social conservatives while picking up support only among however many libertarian enemies of progressivism commonly now stay home or vote for others out of distaste for social/Christian conservatism.

How many of them can there be?

In my experience, there are an awful lot of gays and others whose attitude is typified by Log Cabin types, people who loathe Christian and social conservatism but oppose progressivism enough to vote GOP and donate GOP, quite determinedly.

I never met even one anti-progressive social liberal who voted with the Dems because he privileged social over economic issues.

And that's still the GOP's real problem.

Philo Vaihinger said...

Oh, by the way, I know plenty of black people and whites who are more socially conservative than official social liberalism but who vote regularly with the Dems because they cherish traditional, economic progressivism and want more of it.

Me among them.

Zandar said...

Can't have a religion based on somebody dying for your sins without martyrs, either real or perceived.

giantslor said...

"Those are the people who go into underprivileged areas and form organizations to help nurture stable families. Those are the people who build community institutions in places where they are sparse. Those are the people who can help us think about how economic joblessness and spiritual poverty reinforce each other."

So he wants conservatives to become community organizers? But only thug Alinskyite politicians from Chicago do that!