Sunlight Is The Best Disinfectant № 6
Exposing Right-Wing Extremism at the Source
Not going to lie, I have had a hard time putting together this edition of Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant because I am slowly becoming numb to the idea that the far right is on the move, that the fascism in the rear view mirror is, in fact, closer than it may appear. And so, without further ado…
Sections: Battle for Cultural Survival / People Will Die / Rise and Fall of the Evangelical Elite / Saskatchewan Premier to use Notwithstanding Clause
A Battle for Cultural Survival - Heather MacDonald - City Journal
In this piece, Heather Mac Donald rails against what he sees as left-wing cultural dictat, saving the bulk of his invective for transgender people. Clearly visible in her writing, hinted at in her title, is the increasing militarism of right wing extremist thought. Unable to make cogent arguments for their positions, they turn instead to thinly veiled violence.
Mac Donald, complaining about the Left, writes,
Coverage of this alleged culture war demonstrates the Left’s most important power: the ability to set the default. The Left engineers disruption after disruption to longstanding social practices, each more sweeping than the last. And as soon as those changes are in place, they become the norm, treated as having existed from time immemorial. Questioning that new default is painted as churlish and radical. The Left never has to meet a burden of proof to implement its changes; the burden falls exclusively on conservatives seeking to restore a once-uncontroversial tradition. Though conservatives are portrayed as the aggressors, in reality they are always on the defensive, fighting a rearguard action.
After a lengthy invective against “undertheorized” progressive views on gender and sexuality wherein Mac Donald attempts to explain complex biological processes in a few paragraphs, she exhorts conservatives to stand up against “the queering of America.”
But conservatives must find the will to reject the queering of America. They need to reassert what was once obvious—that the biological, married family is the best environment for raising children and that to be heterosexual is not merely an inferior option in life for those who just can’t for some reason join up with the alphabet brigade. They have to reassert the legitimacy of bourgeois norms and insist that children deserve to have their innocence regarding sex preserved for as long as possible (though that latter battle is mostly lost, thanks to pop culture and the sexual revolution). Conservatives may even have to reject the longstanding safe harbor of declaring a breezy indifference to what people “do in the privacy of their bedrooms.” At some point, it may be necessary to re-moralize sex.
She closes with a call to war: “The rejection of the trans default is a battle for cultural survival.”
People Will Die / Christ is Our Compass - Jeff Darville
I have hesitated sharing stuff by Jeff Darville simply because I subscribe to his Substack and I don't want to find myself blocked from doing so in the future. However his rhetoric is becoming even more dangerous, which is to be expected as far right fundamentalist zealots gain power in the social and political world we live in. The pieces I am sharing here, his two most recent, belie the kind of mental preparations being made by folks on the far right for a time when violence and bloodshed seem necessary to rid the world of the evils of leftism.
In his not-so-nuanced post, People Will Die, Darville chastises Christians who think that peace is preferable to war:
Many pacifists want to avoid bloodshed through weakness. This appeasement will only encourage a bully. But the man who stands up to one bully is equally likely to find fights where none need not exist. This is because the ability and desire to defend yourself are cultivated over years of courage. And that courage in the sheepdog finds expression in fights from time to time. God wrote the Ten Commandments on our hearts before he etched them into stone. With this conscience comes our sense of justice and right. When a nation blatantly flaunts this law good men must rise and stop it.
Strong leadership avoids bloodshed rather than leading to civil unrest and strife. Weak leaders invite the negative consequences that their timid response creates. The line between opinions and beliefs is the commitment to act. Our opponents are more committed than we are, and they believe that they will not suffer for their criminal behavior. Anyone who supports the ideology of the left is running cover for this attack on America. Provoking violence is participation in it at some level. We should all hope that self-control limits excessive conflict, but an instigating factor is always at play. When an attack is orchestrated with the intention to garner support for future military action, it is called a false flag. We are dangerously close to a series of events that will spark war here and around the world. [emphasis added]
Darville’s contention is that the Left not only instigates violence, but that instigation is also is participation in it. When the left instigates violence, Darville claims, they do so with the intention to spark war. What is the Christian to do? He continues,
Who is to say when the end will come? Should we not seek revival in America? Many atheists, Islamists, or statists want to kill their opposition and tell us that they want to commit murder on a massive scale. That is never the way of Jesus. We can only prevent this with Christian leadership. It is better to go down fighting than give in and die as a coward and apostate. There is no better option available in this country for the people in the Church of Jesus Christ than the opportunity for decisive leadership and policy changes that check evil. While the Church proper does not participate in military action, Christians are part of the military. In the same vein, Christian men and women may join law enforcement to uphold our laws, order, and justice or run for office. We must stand and be counted.
Darville follows this up with a post that, while ostensibly about the need to trust in Jesus Christ, is largely a review of the history of 20th century conservatism. The point is to show that conservatives have been polluted by ‘free speech absolutism.’
He writes,
Conservatives attempted to invite libertarians into our big tent, but many wanted to light up their weed and have an orgy or party instead of submitting to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Libertarians had a live-and-let-live attitude toward social policies. Abortion was not a hill to die on (unless you were in the womb). …
Like modern liberals, many libertarians began to support open borders and parrot the catchphrase “diversity is our strength.” No. Morality was once our strength. The USA has welcomed immigrants but honestly, our strength is wider and deeper than diversity. Anyone who thinks that diversity is a singular boon to a culture knows nothing about the benefits of homogeneity and assimilation. Over time, people can become unified but initially, there will be a period of trials. Immigration must be managed and allowing labor to move freely between countries with different values will destroy, or at least massively transform, the host country.
We must have some internal measures to regulate freedom and promote responsibility. Both laws and the will to implement punishment emanate from our moral core values and duties found in service to Jesus Christ. Ethics are further expressed in cultural taboos, norms, and mores. This is a behaviorist principle that is mainly true: we get more of what we allow and less of what we sanction to make extinct. [emphasis added]
Thus, Darville claims, a cleaving is coming even within conservative circles:
Should Christians hold to the idea of a secular and religiously neutral public square? No. This is an untenable position. Even if the idea of pluralism has been appealing for the last few decades, it is no longer feasible to sit on the sidelines. We can allow people who believe differently than us to benefit from our faith and freedom, but not alter it. Practically one ideology or religion will assert dominance in our national conscience.
Our comfortable lives of passive and timid weakness are coming to an end. One way or another you will be made to care. Whether with a national divorce through a form of succession or an economic upheaval and federal collapse, our nation will change in the coming years. These changes will not be instigated by liberals but imposed from above. They are coming and needed.
The only question is: where will you be standing when the storms hit?
The Rise and Fall of the Evangelical Elite - Stephen Wolfe - Chronicles Magazine
Continuing with the theme of a radicalizing cleft in conservative circles, Stephen Wolfe, author of The Case of Christian Nationalism, took his Twitter witch-hunt of the so-called Evangelical Elite to the pages of Chronicles Magazine. He claims to tell the story of Evangelicalism’s downfall, but instead ends up telling the story of Evangelicalism's rightward drift.
Wolfe describes a conference that brought together some of the most well-respected names in conservative evangelicalism, the T4G Conference. However, the most influential individual on the scene, according to Wolfe, was Tim Keller, who Wolfe thought peddled a safe form of the social justice gospel, aimed at a liberal world. That was the beginning of the end.
It is obvious now, looking back at the post-9/11 and pre-Obergefell era, that the leftward drift of this movement was inevitable. The end of Renn’s “neutral world” and the beginning of a negative world hostile to Christianity began soon after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision in 2015 and accelerated rapidly with Trump’s 2016 victory. Changed circumstances undermined the attractive witness model as previously practiced. The neutral-world ethos could not hold in the negative world; the era of open debate was gone. Christianity as a viable, alternative identity was placed under serious strain, as acceptance of LGBTQ+ became mainstream, with mandatory celebration of alternative sexualities in nearly every institution. The #MeToo and racial justice movements that emerged in this era likewise demand that everyone atone for alleged misogyny and racism.
The politics-as-witness model has, however, remained in place among the evangelical elite. With LGBTQ becoming social dogma, elite evangelicals began shifting hard with the culture to focus gender and race. Thus, in 2016 and throughout Trump’s presidency the evangelical elite apparatus relentlessly attacked Trump and his evangelical voters for being insufficently sensitive to cultural prejudice. For example, Christianity Today editor Russell Moore (promoted early on by Al Mohler) wrote an article, “A White Church No More,” for The New York Times, in which he accuses Trump supporters of “nativism” who will be “shocked” to see the “dark-skinned, Aramaic-speaking ‘foreigner’” on His heavenly throne. Trump’s supporters are not on the “right side of Jesus,” Moore claimed. Since it appeared in a paper not widely read among average evangelicals, it was clear that Moore wrote the article not for evangelicals but for the secularist elite and his leftward social network.
Wolfe then proceeds to castigate the so-called Evangelical Elite, of whom Russell Moore is one of his prime targets, for their support of the medical establishment during COVID. He concludes his piece by drawing a line in the sand:
The energy in American evangelicalism is now on the Christian right, who have become emboldened in their efforts to return America to its heritage of faith. They affirm the goodness of Christian nations, an assertive Christian politics, and the predominate heritage of faith in American history. For them, Christian politics is not loser theology, nor meant only to carve out a safe existence for churches. The goal is the complete re-Christianization of civil society, institutions, and government.
The moderate wing … represented by such pastors as Kevin DeYoung, want to reaffirm a “center” amid this chaos. But that is pure nostalgia for a neutral world that no longer exists and which will never return. In our age of secularist hostility, you must decide whether drag queen story hour is a blessing of liberty or a license to be destroyed; whether you want pagan nationalism or Christian nationalism; whether degeneracy or righteousness will prevail, and whether Satan or the Lord Jesus will rule over this land.
Sask. premier ready to use notwithstanding clause - CBC News
While technically not the writings of someone on the right wing, this piece of news concerns the safety of trans kids in the Province of Saskatchewan, one of two provinces that have introduced legislation requiring parental permission before a student is permitted to be called by a different name or pronouns while at school.
These policies are motivated by the view that if trans people do exist (for these folks, a big if), they certainly can’t exist as children.
The Conservative Party of Canada, with which the Saskatchewan Party is loosely affiliated, this past weekend passed a resolution at their policy convention with “about 69 per cent of the delegates agree[ing] that young people should be barred from gender-affirming care, which sometimes includes hormone-related treatments that delay puberty or promote the development of masculine or feminine sex characteristics.”
To show that he is serious about discriminating against 2SLGBTQI+ people, the Premier of Saskatchewan has threatened to use the Notwithstanding Clause - which allows politicians to override, for a period of time, Charter rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada - in an effort to enforce his transphobic policies.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is ready to use the notwithstanding clause to protect a new rule requiring parental permission for transgender and non-binary students under 16 to use different names or pronouns at school.
In the face of a court challenge brought against the new education policy, Moe announced late last week that his provincial government would seek to enshrine the changes in legislation to be introduced this fall.
He recently told reporters that his Saskatchewan Party government was prepared to use different "tools" to ensure that the policy remains in place.
"If necessary, that would be one of the tools that would be under consideration -- yes," Moe said in an interview Wednesday when asked whether the notwithstanding clause was an option on the table.
"The notwithstanding clause is present for a reason — so that duly elected governments can represent their constituents when necessary."
Not surprisingly, fundamentalist Christian groups are taking credit for bringing about these kinds of policies, with Tanya Gaw, founder of Action for Canada claiming that her group facilitated thousands of emails to the Saskatchewan Premier’s office. Additionally, she said, "the premier and others also had a meet-and-greet in a park, which was a good opportunity to get some of the information in their hands … It was just a consistent pursuing of their office, providing information in the files that we had."
With New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs holding steady on a similar policy in his province, and both Ontario Education Minster Stephen Lecce and Premier Doug Ford making overtures on a similar policy down the road, this will not be the last we hear about these discriminatory policies.
I share these pieces because it is important that right-wing commentators be called out for the false prophets and fanatical liars that they are. There is no left wing plot to force authoritarian communism on the American (or Canadian) public. There is, however, a growing stable of increasingly unhinged right wing rants that don’t offer anything to the conversation, but instead look to utterly destroy those who disagree with them. And as those rants find themselves in mainstream publications, the Overton Window shifts even further to the right.