Civil Commotion

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
II: Criticism of Morality

§278   Within the confines of a herd or of a community, that is to say, inter pares, the over-estimation of truthfulness is very reasonable. A man must not allow himself to be deceived and consequently he adopts as his own personal morality that he should deceive no one! A sort of mutual obligation among equals! In his dealings with the outside world, caution and danger demand that he should be on his guard against deception: the first psychological condition of this attitude would mean that he is also on his guard against his inner self. Mistrust thus appears as the source of truthfulness.

I’ve insisted for years that, if you listen closely and think carefully, you can’t avoid the conclusion that Christian teaching endorses animal husbandry but is hostile to marriage — that is, to the idea that marriage has something to do with two people building satisfying lives together. Now comes a collection of state affiliates of Focus on the Family to argue exactly that in a brief filed with the Supreme Court in the upcoming same-sex marriage case.

Redefining marriage, moreover, would seriously erode the existing marital norm that encourages gender-diverse parenting. By itself, the fact that marriage is defined as the union of a man and a woman makes clear to society that marriage is really about procreation and children, and that it is expected to carry with it both a masculine and a feminine aspect.

Just so’s you know, the theological reason that marriage has nothing to do with two people working and cooperating together toward building the lives they want is that self-direction is a presumption upon the absolute sovereignty of the Invisible Wizard, who has a Mysterious Plan and will tell you what you want.

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
II: Criticism of Morality

§277   The morality of truthfulness in the herd, “Thou shalt be recognisable, thou shalt express thy inner nature by means of clear and constant signs, otherwise thou art dangerous: and supposing thou art evil, thy power of dissimulation is absolutely the worst thing for the herd. We despise the secretive and those whom we cannot identify. Consequently thou must regard thyself as recognisable, thou mayest not remain concealed from thyself, thou mayest not even believe in the possibility of thy ever changing”. Thus, the insistence upon truthfulness has as its main object the recognisability and the stability of the individual. As a matter of fact, it is the object of education to make each herd unit believe in a certain definite dogma concerning the nature of man: education first creates this dogma and thereupon exacts “truthfulness”.

Early in 1962, William F. Buckley, Jr., Barry Goldwater, and a handful of other influential people on the political right met at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss a growing problem: Robert Welch and his John Birch Society. Its influence was growing rapidly, and Welch was prone to saying insane things, such as Dwight Eisenhower was a knowing agent of the international communist conspiracy.

They were smart enough to recognize that Welch was so wildly out of touch with reality that his influence would be ruinous in the 1964 general election, but that he enjoyed immense popularity with the Republican base.

What to do?

They decided they would risk alienating the base, which actually had no place else to go, and cast Welch into Outer Darkness. Buckley would go first in the pages of National Review, and the rest would then declare their support for Buckley’s dismissal of Welch. Goldwater lost in ’64, but that shift away from lunacy and toward moderation laid the groundwork for decades of barely-interrupted Republican control of the Presidency (68-76, 80-92, 2000-2008).

In 2000, Karl Rove and George W. Bush decided to lower the drawbridge and invite the loonies in. We all know how that has worked-out: Ronald Reagan’s ‘Big Tent’ Republicanism has become the Kingdom of Nutjobs, the sort of people who would dismiss a distinguished senator of their own party, like Richard Lugar, without a word of thanks.

It is time, once again, for a prominent conservative to go first and say aloud what everybody knows: The Evangelical Right is intensely hostile to American ideals and an existential threat to the country; they are not part of the decent, educated world; they are the country’s dark, sick, irrational, paranoid underside — the people the Founding Fathers feared.

It doesn’t appear that the Republican establishment’s candidate, Jeb Bush, is the guy to do it, though. Nope, not Jebbie. After all, that might squirrel his commencement address at Liberty University where, he doubtless hopes, he will outshine Ted Cruz and pick-up some votes.

When are these guys going to understand that the only Republican who can win, or deserves to win, is the one who will clean house?

The Wartburg Watch continues their series of reports from Sterling, Virginia’s Calvary Temple with yet another account from a former member.

My husband and I have 5 boys. All of them left the church except for Joey who was 21 years old when we departed. Three short months later, the church leaders convinced Joey to get married. None of us, parents or brothers, were allowed to attend the wedding. We were told that they had a police presence at the church, just in case we did show up.

Joey now has two children-our grandchildren. The oldest is 3 years old and we have only been permitted to see her on two occasions. The youngest is 3 months old and we have not been allowed to meet him yet.

[ … ]

A couple of events had troubled me:

1. I was told that I could not go to breakfast or hang out with my friend who had left the church. I told him that at my age, I would not have someone tell me who I could or could not hang around with.

[ … ]

As soon as we left, the youth pastor Jeff Heglund called all the high school kids together [ed. note: Calvary Temple has a school] and told them not to talk to any of the Simoneau’s because “they were not Christians and serving God.” Our children were crushed. These were all of their friends that they had since birth. They had no other friends because the church discouraged friendships from outside of the church and school.

And on, and on, and drearily on.

Two things must be kept firmly in mind when reading these stories:

• All churches are incipient cults, and Calvary Temple differs only in degree from the respectable, little white church down the street from your house.

• Healthy families, with their concomitant loyalties, threaten the pastor’s total ownership and control of his church’s membership; necessarily, excepting its marketing schtick, no church is or can be truly family-friendly.

Notice the second passage I highlighted; that’s the proper, healthy response to Calvary’s intrusiveness. Recall, now, this famous passage from Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Antichrist: “Christianity finds sickness necessary, just as the Greek spirit had need of a superabundance of health — the actual ulterior purpose of the whole system of salvation of the church is to make people ill.”

Calvary Temple is a good example of what ol’ Friedrich was talking about.