Taking another journey into the Cuckservative Mind, Richard Spencer and Hannibal Bateman deconstruct Rod Dreher's article "Justice, Mercy, and Anti-Semitism" from The American Conservative (January 15, 2018). Notes:https://www.spreaker.com/episode/13262174http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/justice-mercy-anti-semitism-edgardo-mortara/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit radixjournal.substack.com/subscribe
It's about Christianity, it's about the Jews, it's about anti-Semitism, and a whole lot more.
But, before...
First Things even makes another guest appearance.
Yes, First Things is back, the ultimate cock journal.
Though in this case, actually not.
They're doing something hardcore.
Yeah, they...
They have a remnant of traditional Catholicism.
But we'll get into that soon.
Yeah, just to explain to everyone, just in case you're tuning in for the first time, this is Cucksplaining.
Hannibal Bateman and I will go through, line by line, a super cuck article.
We will read it so you don't have to, and we will get into the cuck mind, and perhaps understand them better, or perhaps just laugh.
So we are going to go into Dreyer.
I don't know if Dreyer needs an introduction for our audience.
I have known about Dreyer for a long time.
I...
So, Rod Dreher, he wrote Crunchy Cons, I believe in like 2005 or 2006 or something like that.
That was sort of one of the big sort of post-wake paleo-con books, right, Richard?
The post what?
The post sort of Bush.
It wasn't post-Bush, but it was sort of the first.
Post-Ninal.
It was like post-Iraq, you know, paleo-ish responses.
In 2003, Rod Dreher was just a cut out of the cloth of National Review, pro-war.
He was just a journalist.
It was around that time.
He writes a book called Crunchy Cons, and it's all about how his wife is the only one at Whole Foods with a National Review tote bag and all this kind of stuff.
And he basically, in a totally...
Hollow and meaningless manner kind of gestures towards...
2006.
2006.
It gestures towards traditionalism and localism and being nice and cutesy and granola and all this kind of stuff as a kind of conservative response.
And I do think that it was ultimately coming from the Bush era.
Because there was a...
Yeah, and they were rediscovering paleo-conservatism, but in this, again, totally non-offensive manner.
Paleo-conservatism, I mean, Chronicles Magazine, their number one columnist, no question, was Samuel Francis.
And even to his credit, Thomas Fleming was talking about evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology in the pages of Chronicles.
Needless to say...
Tom Fleming was a much more political thinker than Dreher.
Chronicles was a lot more conservative.
Not just conservative, but a lot more radical.
Yeah, and his column...
When he was there, it was called Hard Right.
It was a kind of angry, cantankerous, gritty, you know, I hate everything.
Especially George W. Bush.
Yeah, exactly.
And he did challenge him.
With the Dreyer, it's the kind of lighter, obviously more palatable, feminine as well version of this.
And it's all well and good.
I mean, I get it why you would want to run away from the vulgarity of the religious right or the vulgarity of Bush.
You yourself might be called a crunchy con, Richard.
Well, yes, I am a Whole Foods fascist, as we determined.
And our recent Alt-Right Plus content podcast.
As a preppy fascist, I believe it's a variety of crunchy con, right?
Yes, yeah.
Brooks Brothers Socialism, preppy fascism.
Yeah, I mean, look, I think it's funny.
I don't think anyone's ever accused me of not being radical or not offending people, so I think I'm good.
But in terms of that whole crunchy phenomenon, it's funny.
It was such a wave.
It was like a two-year wave.
I remember because I was at Amcon.
It's the transitional phase, really, for paleoconism.
Yeah, it was a younger generation of paleocons.
The paleocons, of course, hated them.
That's because they hate everyone.
But anyway, that is definitely over.
But Rod, I briefly met Rod Dreher.
And Rod Dreher was, you could say, flirting with the burgeoning alt-right or the burgeoning...
Burgeoning alt-right.
He would link to Taki Mag when I was there and so on.
And I would write a critique of his and he would respond.
There was at least some kind of knowledge in the way that National Review now would only attack us or try to ignore us.
And Dreyer still, I think, occasionally links to Steve Saylor and things like that.
Yeah.
So, it's interesting.
But anyway, I met him briefly in Dallas, Texas.
I believe it was 2008.
It might have been 2009.
It's immaterial.
I was editing Talkies Magazine.
I was home for the Thanksgiving holiday, and he was living there.
The Dallas Morning News had become a shell of itself by the time that he was there.
I know this.
I actually grew up with the major person behind it.
Also Texan of the Year finalist, Richard.
Yes, I was a Texan of the Year finalist, Dallas Morning News.
I should not bash them.
I grew up with someone who was very high up, the son of someone who was very high up in the Dallas Morning News.
I'm not in the journalism and the ownership management, but yeah, like a lot of these papers, unless you're the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, or maybe if you're some little local paper, you could survive.
You know, space where no one's reading newspapers anymore.
It became hollowed out where it was just a...
It was like the sports section and a bunch of AP stories from The Wire that they were reprinting.
It was pretty pathetic.
Anyway, but he was there at that time.
This was before he went to the American Conservative.
And so I met him for drinks.
He was perfectly fine.
We talked a bit.
You know, I think he could tell that I was a little too radical for him, but whatever.
You had a good time, didn't you?
Not that great, but...
But anyway, he was perfectly nice.
I don't want to bash him personally.
I believe he's done the same courtesy to you before.
I think there was some alt-right article where he was like, I once met Richard Spencer, and it was perfectly...
Yeah, it was perfectly fine.
I don't think we were ever going to be friends or anything, but I'm not going to...
There's no...
You know, he's a gentleman.
He's not, you know, I would say this about him.
He's not gross or something.
You know, he's not one of these conservatives who's just, you know, hugely fat and disgusting and unpresentable.
He tries really hard to.
What?
No, I'm just saying he tries really hard.
No, he is a try-hard.
You know, he tries hard to think.
He tries very hard.
He tries.
He tries to read Dante and, yeah.
Things.
Kind of sad.
Anyway, so he went on to the American Conservative.
He apparently is their blogger.
I mean, from what we've heard, all the hits go to him on that webzine.
And I think the reason is, and you can tell by the writing style of this piece, is that it's like the ultimate expression of middle prowl.
Theology or politics.
He's the best middle-brow blogger on the right.
Yeah, but in some ways, because he is so aggressively middle-brow, he becomes just insanely punchable.
And pretentious in a way that's not like we are pretentious in a lovable way.
Right.
Whenever I'm arrogant or pretentious, I do it with a bit of a wink.
And a bit of a knowing smile or something like that.
He's pretentious because, again, he's like a middle-class person becoming this traditionalist tryhard, but never actually going...
I mean, you can see in this article, he's never actually willing to bring anything to fruition.
It's just this kind of...
A mockish pose that he sets on his articles.
And again, it's like if someone is lowbrow, there's something redeemable to them.
A lowbrow person can be funny, can be hilarious, or outlandish, or outrageous.
Or there might be just something there that there's a vitality to it.
Yeah.
Or obviously, if someone's highbrow, you know, again, too highbrow, your head's in the cloud, you're speaking to no one.
You know, you hit that right mean of...
High IQ political writing, it's really interesting.
You can see something in a way that I can read something from someone that intelligent, that I can see the world a little bit differently, and it's rewarding.
Aggressive low blowout, you're just reiterating bromides, and in this conversational style, you're reassuring your suburban audience, and they can just nod along with your effectively, totally non-radical...
You know, establishment-friendly nonsense.
Dressed up in the garbs of semi-radicalism, I might add.
Yes, exactly.
And that's what makes it all so much more fun.
Because he can put forth totally mainstream liberal ideas but tell you about how he's an orthodox.
Or tell you how he's vacillated because he's dealing with the tensions of liberalism and it's really driving him wild.
But what are you going to do?
Okay, so...
Hannibal, please explain this controversy, because you know it better than I. I have done some research.
Yeah, no, I don't doubt you.
Well, you know, so, going back to one of the staples of this podcast, First Things, it seems that they took...
Our advice to heart in our last podcast.
Because they were listening.
Right.
They were listening.
That so much is clear, actually.
And what they heard was, we need to go hard.
What should we do?
And they actually decided to go hard in an interesting direction.
And it really relates to the JQ of all things.
And they went hard in a really hard way.
Yeah.
So, a Catholic priest, his name escapes me at the moment, he wrote an article for First Things where he defended this case by Pope Pius IX.
His name is Romanus Cesario.
Sounds like a reputable man to me.
He wrote a defense of an action by Pope Pius IX, probably one of the better popes in my own pseudo-Catholic perception.
Mid-19th century.
And what happened here was this.
There was a Jewish family who had a child that was deathly ill, deathly sick.
It was on its deathbed.
And they employed a Catholic maid.
And, of course, they lived in the papal states.
And the maid, a good Catholic...
Was that controversial?
I don't think that was...
As much controversial...
Because the years of the ghetto were over by that time.
Also, you have to remember, at this time, the Papal States extend over almost all of Tuscany, and they have...
This is in Bologna.
Right, and they have ports on the Adriatic and the...
What's the other sea?
The Med?
Yeah.
I think there might be a...
But it extended to both parts.
So it's a very wide area.
So obviously there's a large amount of people living in the Papal States.
But anyway, this Catholic maid decides to baptize the child before it presumably might die.
In her mind, an act of contrition, especially from a Catholic Christian perspective.
This is probably the most, you know...
It was an act of love.
Right.
It was an act of love.
It was an act of charity.
However, the child did recover, and this posed a conundrum.
Which was, what do you do with this child now, who's a baptized Catholic, but being raised in this Jewish family?
Well, Pope Pius IX decides to take the child away from the care of the family, the Jewish family, because they will not raise the child as a Catholic within the Church's traditions.
And this is...
Wildly controversial.
It is controversial at the time.
Because in Catholic liturgy, once someone is baptized, they must receive a Catholic education and upbringing and so on.
Right.
And you can see where this sort of rubs...
Including the child of non-Catholics.
Right.
It rubs a lot of people the wrong way, especially this Jewish couple.
And it becomes a big affair.
However, this priest in First Things writes an article in defense of this decision to take this child from this Jewish family and raise him as a Catholic rather than as an adherent to Judaism.
And, of course, this sets off all the bells in mainstream publications, both on the right and left.
Oh no.
Kidnapping.
Right.
Not only is it kidnapping, but you're committing an unforgivable sin of saying to a Christian that Judaism is just not true as well.
You're admitting that you have values prior to liberal pluralism, which we'll get into in Rod Dreher's article, but that's roughly...
Or some weird...
You know, American or British, like, philo-Semitism, where you feel like you're on the same team as the Jews.
And it should be noted, it was interesting, the editor of First Things, R.R. Reno, he issued an apology for running this article a couple days after it ran.
And, you know, Reno, I don't know if our listeners know this, he is a professed Catholic.
Theoretically a practicing Catholic, but he's married to a Jewish woman and he's raised his children as Jewish.
And in this apologetic letter, I don't know if you've read this letter, Richard, but it's worth perusing.
He even mentions how a woman who was a Gentile who married a Jew and she converted to Judaism, she came to him once with a crisis of faith, asking him if she should go back.
To the Catholic Church.
And he admits in this article, he told her, no, you should stay with your family and not pursue this further.
Which, you know, this whole letter was one of the most conservative things I've ever read.
Yeah, I mean, you're not even a Christian.
Either you accept your Catholicism as true, and if you accept it as true, it is an intense sadness that your own children are not going to be raped.
Are going to burn in hell.
As well as your wife.
Yes.
And also, again, I'm saying this as a non-Christian, but I'm just taking this seriously.
Especially from a so-called traditionalist perspective.
Yeah, and granted, yes, he is a merciful God.
But nevertheless, on this part, I'm not sure how merciful it's going to be.
Well, not just that.
These are choices being made from a Christian perspective.
These are choices being made by you.
In your life, it's not an act of mercy.
You're making the choice to burn in hell in this particular...
So effectively, he does not really believe.
Right.
Because if he believed...
Yes, it's a tragedy.
In his own mind, he might ache in a way over it, but he doesn't ultimately...
Come down on the side of his own truth.
And he is, even though they might buy a lot.
This is a weird way where it's almost like the reverse of a cuck.
Because the cucks, we usually imagine, are some southern congressman.
They've adopted Haitian children.
He's like, but they're Christian Americans or whatever.
So they're not biologically his, but he imagines that they're culturally or religiously and politically his.
This is a weird kind of reversal.
Where the children are biologically his, but they're not culturally and spiritually his.
It's a weird...
I don't know if I've seen cuckservatism of this nature before.
Well, I mean, to briefly...
It's kind of worse in a way, you know what I mean?
To briefly digress, I guess, into the Jewish question, it is, you could argue, one of the best group evolutionary strategies that they have, which is that children born from a Jewish female are Jewish by Jewish law.
Right.
So it makes it easier to marry into elite groups or any group when you think about it, simply because it's easier to marry off a pretty daughter or something like that than it is to get a son, say, to marry.
Yeah, there's always demand on the male side and supply on the female side.
And so, yes.
Yeah.
Anyway, should we get into this?
Let's do it.
Let's hear what Brother Rod has to say.
Justice, Mercy, and Anti-Semitism by Rod Dreher, January 15th, 2018.
He wrote this at 9.30am.
By the way, that is on their website.
I guess he got up early or something.
These facts.
We bring these facts to you.
Just the facts.
To write this vlog.
Or because his writing is so shallow, he could write in like 10 minutes.
I'm sure he can post whenever he wants.
He probably has posting privileges.
I would imagine.
A couple of you bring to my attention the comments of the Catholic writer Eve Tushnet on the recent online controversy over Catholic integralism, a concept that can be defined simply like this.
From a Catholic Integralist website.
Okay, first off, I get that it's blogging, and that's what he's doing, but just the total absence of style, and processing, there's no processing going on.
It's like he's just...
Thinking through...
Out loud.
Or digitally.
This is literally like...
A couple of you bring my attention.
Like, why are you writing this way?
Like, what are you...
Like, there's no reason to write any of that.
Well, actually, there's an interesting psychological reason when you think about it, Richard.
Why?
So, say, you know, as a blogger, he gets...
A couple dozen or more emails a day.
He's rewarding those people that email him and, you know, by implication, asking more people to email them.
That way, any reader that reads that, that sends him an email, whether he responds or not, automatically connects to this.
Still, it's just bad writing.
There's no reason to do that.
However, we should also note Eve Tushnet, for one.
This is an interesting character in and of its own right.
I've heard about her for like 10 years.
I remember Helen Riddlemeyer, who's now Helen Andrews, I believe, because she's married.
She was always talking about Eve Tushnet, who's this lesbian Catholic, and this is so amazing.
And I remember reading her pieces and not...
Being very impressed.
Well, we're all about to hear a little bit of Yves Tushnik.
Yeah, we will.
Okay, but not right now.
This is from a Catholic Integralist website.
Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that rejects the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holding that political rule must order man to his final goal.
Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, intercalism holds that there are two powers that rule him, a temporal power and a spiritual power.
And since man's temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end, the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.
I actually, I have to say, I agree with this logic.
A, I think the separation, as I've said many times, I think the separation of church of state is a rather ridiculous concept.
Historically, and also psychologically, you could say.
I mean, obviously, historically, it's...
They are state religions.
And there are certainly religions without states, but even those had a political component to them.
They define the tribe.
Or the people, or so on.
So this idea that religion in this hyper-Protestant way is just some thing that we do behind closed doors, or it's just a matter of personal will or personal church, I think that's bullshit.
It's A, historical, and then B, even in the United States, where there is this so-called vaunted tradition of the separation of church and state, there's never really been a separation of church and state.
There is a...
Mainstream American Protestantism that has undergirded the legitimacy of the government.
And it should be noted a lot of states were founded with state churches.
Yeah, sure.
You know, explicitly.
But even that, some like ISI people will point out that.
I'm going a little bit...
I'm saying that like...
Even in the United States government, like this government, there was never really a separation.
There was always a religious component to the practice of politics, and the whole social order is undergirded by belief.
That's why I'm a tragic atheist or a tragic ethnostic or a tragic pagan or whatever you want to call me.
It's because I recognize that actually you can't separate these two things, and that I am not a fervent believer, and I'm willing to be open about that.
But I recognize it as a problem, as a challenge.
Right.
And I would agree with those things.
And I would say, you know, As something of a Catholic, the Catholic integralist perspective, I think, is roughly correct.
Yeah.
And I think, also, if you were an American, it obviously should raise grave doubts about the American project, about a lot of projects, you know, in and of itself.
And the American project has been, you know, denounced as well by many a pope.
Pope Pius IX declared Americanism a heresy along with liberalism, which, of course...
I think both are very wrong and very destructive to the world as we see it.
I have a lot of sympathy for the Catholic integralist position.
Richard, though he is not a Catholic, I think very well understands and has some sympathy in understanding the world in a post-liberal or beyond the liberal perspective in that same way.
Yeah, no question.
This all came up on this blog in response to a book review.
Again, all this telling, not showing.
He's just telling you what he's thinking.
And you're getting links.
Yeah, he's telling you what he's thinking as opposed to thinking.
It's a classic maxim in theater or film or novels.
You show, don't tell.
Don't tell your audience what you're doing.
You do it.
And I think there's a similar maxim in writing.
You should just think through writing.
You shouldn't tell them what you're thinking about.
It's stupid.
Bad writing.
Rod Dreher is a bad writer.
And the fact that he's, what is he, in his 50s or something?
Yeah, he'll never get better.
He's inherently bad.
Sorry, Rod.
I really don't dislike you, Rod.
If you're listening.
And you are.
But you're a bad writer.
You're not that smart.
But I don't dislike you.
And I'm not bashing you.
Sorry.
But you are.
The truth hurts.
Sometimes.
I have my own faults.
Yes.
This all came up on this blog in response to a book review on the First Things site, in which a Dominican priest issued a full-throated defense of Pope Pius IX for removing Eduardo Montara from his Jewish family's home.
The Montaras were living in the Papal States at the time, and Pius was therefore the head of state.
The child had been baptized secretly by a Catholic housemaid when he was on the verge of death as an infant.
And when this fact became known to the church five years later, the Pope's men seized him, saying that they had a responsibility under canon law and otherwise to give the Christian child a Catholic upbringing.
The Motara case caused a huge uproar at the time and had something to do with the Pope losing the Popal States.
I'm not exactly a liberal.
Okay, thanks, Ron.
But it was still shocking to me to read in a mainstream journal like First Things, an unapologetic defense of Pope Pius the Knight's actions.
Okay, I think I'm stealing this from Thermidor Mag's Twitter account.
But, okay, this sentence is not almost literally like, wow, just wow, this is the current year.
That is what this sentence is.
And, like, don't deny it.
You know, he's like, well, I'm not a liberal, but wow, just wow.
Also notice it's like, I'm not exactly a liberal, but I am.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm not exactly a liberal, but let me put forth, like, something.
Liberal propositions.
Yeah.
But there it was.
And as I blogged here yesterday, that same author had in a different place published a farrago of clericalist BS.
Oh, clericalist BS.
Downplaying the seriousness of the pre-sex abuse scandal and longing for the days when the church had the right to police its own priests and not have them compelled to answer before secular courts of justice.
Pre 2002 Boston wasn't an integralist polity nor was the nation of Ireland but both were arguably as close as you can get to that in the modern world in terms of the role of the Catholic Church played in public life and the results were catastrophic I mean true 2002 Boston, Richard.
A theocratic state.
I mean, Lord help us.
God.
Imagine what it was like in 1978 when I was born there.
I'm surprised I was not ripped from my mother's arms and just baptized and then kidnapped.
Thankfully, I'm still an Episcopalian, confirmed.
2002 Boston.
The closest you can get to an integral estate.
And look, I'm sure...
Look, I don't want to go delve too deeply into the priest-child sex scandal.
And look, I'm sure there's extremes on both sides.
There are people who overblow it, and there are people who underblow it, no question.
And the truth is somewhere in the middle.
I get it.
And I'm sure there were clerics who were covering up and just saying, oh, well, we'll police our own clerics, and there's a secular authority and things like that.
Okay.
But the results were catastrophic.
All right, look.
What happened with those boys and young men who were abused by these terrible priests?
Those are very bad things.
To say this was some, like, cataclysm because of, you know, too much Catholic clerical power or something is ridiculous.
I mean, first off, as many people have pointed out, fair-minded liberals have pointed this out, that there is actually per capita more abuse in public school systems.
There are more abuse in other institutions of society than there was in the Catholic Church.
It's not an excuse, but it's just...
Is what it is.
To overblow this as like we were living under clerical fascism and this is the kind of abuse you get.
And secondly, you're just avoiding that question of who's in charge.
I mean, there are secular authorities that are tremendously corrupt.
That abuse happens systematically.
All you're basically saying is that we don't want to bear too much responsibility because then we get criticized.
You're looking for a gotcha question, whereas the debate between a radical secularist and a Catholic integralist is about political power.
It's not about any of this stuff at all.
It's about who is the arbiter.
Of authority in a society.
And again, I'm not an expert, but a Catholic integralist, no Catholic integralist who's a serious person would deny that there might be abuse in the church or something like that.
We live in a fallen world.
Yeah, exactly.
So this is just a ridiculous statement that he's making.
Anyway, it is...
Okay, back to Rod.
It is perfectly reasonable in italics.
Why use italics there?
Oh, I forgot.
You're a bad writer.
His name is Ray.
Ray?
You know, Rod Dreher's name is actually Ray.
Ray Dreher?
Ray Oliver Dreher.
Goes by Rod.
Okay.
It is italics.
Perfectly reasonable.
No more italics.
Why use italics?
Why use italics?
Perfectly reasonable.
Why are you emphasizing perfectly...
I don't know.
Maybe you're hysterically bad at writing?
Perfectly reasonable, Richard.
What don't you get?
Anyway, to point to the abuse scandal, including the way the secular world collaborated with the church to sweep sex crimes against children under the rug.
Okay, what's your point?
As an argument against integralism, a philosophy that would subjugate the state to the power of the clerics.
I can easily imagine myself around 1998 as a younger Catholic, full of ardor and ideology, finding the clarity and logic of integralism appealing, but having spent years writing about the abuse scandal and seeing how terribly, terribly clerics can screw things up, not because they're clerics, because they are human beings in italics, and their ordination does not change that.
There's no way on God's green earth I would stand for an integralist regime.
You are not making an argument against integralism.
And we should know...
He starts out as a Methodist, becomes a Catholic, allegedly becomes shocked by this, and now becomes Orthodox.
Right.
So he claims that he converted to Orthodoxy because of the sex scandal?
Yes.
Because of the covering up?
Yes.
Again, the question is who is in charge?
Even as he admits himself...
I can't believe I'm defending the Catholic Church, but I must!
Tom Fleming will love you now.
I am compelled to defend the Catholic Church.
No Catholic Integralist believes that clerics are not human and that there will not be abuse or corruption.
Yeah, the question is who is in charge?
And is it a secular authority that is a representative of democracy or obeys the whims of the people or has an entirely secular aim, as some people think the United States government is, or is it a religiously defined institution?
That is the question.
The question is not whether there are bad human beings or that all human beings are subject to vice, which is obviously true.
And yes, obviously any Christian will say that any Catholic, even if you're not an integralist, I think any Christian or any Catholic would say, hey, we're all beholden to sin.
Bad things do happen in the world.
Richard, can you believe that?
When people have power, they abuse it?
Yeah.
Whoa.
Whoa.
Wow.
That's a hot take.
Yeah.
Thanks, Ray.
I say that mostly as someone who wants the church to flourish in italics.
Thank you for the italics.
A church that has too much temporal power imperils itself in a different way from a church that is completely at the mercy of the secular state.
But it imperils itself, it doesn't.
It imperils itself, it does.
Excuse me.
No!
In fact.
Actually, there is terrible child abuse in totally secular institutions, in government, that has power.
And it should be noted, this is the question Catholic integralism wants to answer.
Who is in charge?
What is the authority?
Yeah.
God, okay.
Here's the thing that is very hard, back to Ray.
Here's the thing that is very hard to get progressives to understand.
Liberalism today is turning illiberal in a way that resembles the papal states of Pio Nono.
Okay, so he's making, now he's arguing that the secular state, which he wants to be in charge of the church, in order for the church to flourish, The secular state is becoming illiberal and fascist just like the Catholic Church.
This is literally what he is arguing whether he knows it or not.
Many on the left don't see it because they are caught up in the relentless logic of virtue.
I don't quite even know what that means.
Well, I mean, I think he means virtue signaling, but when he uses virtue there singularly, he might confuse those of us.
Who've read Aristotle as...
Right.
We know the real meaning of virtue, which derives from...
It derives from the same root as virile.
It means manly.
So virtue is...
That's why, again, we should take back virtue signaling as, like, virtue signaling means that you're a man.
You're a man's brain.
And you handle pressure and you make tough decisions.
Yeah.
I'm virtue signaling.
Okay.
Let's step away from the religion aspect for a second.
Okay.
Again, you're telling and not showing.
Just do it.
You don't have to tell us that's what you're doing.
Terrible writer, Ray.
Have you been watching the progressive mob savaging Margaret Atwood?
Margaret Atwood!
As a traitor to feminism for having said publicly that a Canadian academic punished for sexual harassment was denied due process.
Oh, interesting.
Was that actually at a public institution in Canada?
Oh my god, you mean the secular state is corrupt?
Oh, wow.
Who knew?
The Handmaid's Tale author was a hero to feminists yesterday, but today she's a monster because she deviated ever so slightly from the virtuous position in caps.
So capital V, capital P position.
Yeah.
Great writing.
Extremism and the pursuit of progressive virtue is no vice.
I'm sure the author...
Oh, wow.
What a great literary illusion.
I'm sure the author of this passage would agree.
Oh, God.
If the spring of popular government...
This is such a great podcast.
Okay.
Now he's going on some kind of somewhat interesting digression here.
I'll actually...
This is the one part of the article that I kind of liked because it's a critique of autism.
This is an interesting...
Actually, dare I say, this is a neat digression.
Yes.
If the spring of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the springs of popular government and revolution are at once virtue and terror.
Virtue without which terror is fatal.
Terror without which virtue is powerless.
Terror is nothing other than justice.
Prompt, severe, inflexible.
It is therefore an emanation of virtue.
It is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most urgent needs.
It has been said that terror is the principle of despotic government.
Does your government therefore resemble despotism?
Yes, as the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed.
Let the despot govern by terror his brutalized subjects.
Let the despot govern by terror as brutalized subjects.
He is right as a despot.
Subdue by terror are the enemies of liberty.
And you will be right as the founders of the republic.
The government of the revolution is liberty's despotism against tyranny, is force made only to protect crime, and is a thunderbolt not designed to strike the heads of the proud.
That was Robespierre, by the way.
Okay.
That is a pretty outlandish couple of paragraphs, I have to say.
There's a case to be made that Robespierre had Asperger's Syndrome.
If true, it would give a neurological basis for his fanatical focus on justice, as he saw it, at the expense of tempering principle, especially mercy.
Okay, this is where I actually do find redeeming virtues in this piece, because it is kind of funny to think of Robespierre as the ultimate autist, who just, he like...
He kind of was when you think about it.
Yeah, he like grasped the logic of the revolution and takes it to its full conclusion, whereas a more sensible person would be like, uh...
More sensible revolutionary, in fact, would be like, uh...
Well, this is why he's superseded by the Chad Napoleon.
Yes, absolutely.
Literally.
Yeah, and also absolutely, so to speak.
This is why you listen to this podcast.
Right, who synthesized the Achean regime and its pomp and heroism with many aspects of the revolution.
He both ends the old regime while fulfilling it, as well as ends the revolution while fulfilling it.
This is a slight digression, but Kojev, as well as Carl Schmitt, sort of semi-agreed in a correspondence the two of them had that Napoleon is the end of conquest in Europe.
That might rub some of our listeners the wrong way, but...
Ultimately, this is the last real historical moment in European history.
Everything else is footnotes on Napoleon.
Bismarck was taking back small plots on the continent.
True conquest between states.
I will say this.
This is controversial.
But I think it could be argued that...
All of European history post-Napoleon is footnotes on Napoleon or jazz riffs on Napoleon.
Yeah.
I like that.
It resembles the famous phrase that all philosophy is footnotes on Plato.
Yes.
You heard it here first, folks.
Who said that?
That was...
Oh, that was...
Was that Bertrand Russell he said in his history of philosophers?
Yes, I believe it was Bertrand Russell.
You heard it here first.
All European history post-Napoleon is mere footnotes.
We're back to Ray.
Ropesphere was initially admired as incorruptible because he really wasn't in the revolution business for himself, but only for principle.
Yet his relentless purity got a lot of people killed before he finally lost his head.
Okay, so you're just talking about fanatics, I guess now, but why?
Somehow we're on to the French Revolution.
Is he arguing that you need a separation between church and state in order for there to be a balance between the authorities?
So you need a strong church, but you need a liberal state in order to balance out the church and vice versa?
Is that what he's saying?
Because that's a kind of interesting argument, but not historical, but...
Not, I don't know, whatever.
Not prima facie wrong?
Yeah, I mean, obviously there were conflicts between states and the church.
I mean, obviously that's very historical.
They were not liberal states.
Actually, Rod Dreher's great teacher Dante wrote an entire book, De Monarchia, about these very conflicts.
I will say this.
The thing about this part of this article, it almost feels disconnected from the rest of what we're reading about and what we will read later.
Like, what is going on here?
Right.
It doesn't logically follow.
It's kind of interesting.
Okay, I'll keep reading from Ray.
Robespierre was an extreme historical case, obviously, but his spirit is present wherever ardent idealists trample on basic humanity for the sake of following principle of law.
Well, one, here is human...
I forget who I'm quoting.
Richard, you might remember.
When I hear the phrase humanity, I reach for my gun.
Yeah.
It's also just such a, like...
It sounds like he's a new atheist or something.
It's like, wherever there are fanatics, the little guy gets stampeded over.
It's just a bromide.
It's like, yeah, I get it.
Sure.
This is the logic behind burning heretics.
If it is worse to lose your eternal soul than your body, and the flourishing of heresy will lead to people losing their souls, then it seems reasonable to kill the heretics before they take uncounted numbers of souls to hell, right?
Yeah.
Like, it's hard.
Do you know what I mean?
So, okay, is it...
Do you not agree that it's...
As a Christian, do you not agree that it is worse to lose your eternal soul than your body?
If you don't agree with that, you're not a Christian.
And so, Ray, you're disagreeing with 2,000 years of church history.
Right.
And teaching.
Not even just teaching.
You're saying all of it.
Right.
They were wrong.
Jesus Christ himself lost his body to gain...
His soul and that of everyone.
Or not his soul, really, but his soul with a capital H, maybe.
But to save the souls of everyone.
To save the world.
Yeah.
Otherwise, we would all be burning in hell were it not for his sacrifice, giving over his body.
It's the most basic Christian...
It's a weird thing for a supposed Christian to be concerned about.
Yeah.
I mean, again, all he's basically saying is, I'm going to be a Christian, but I'm not going to be fanatical about it.
Well, okay.
Congratulations.
You know, you don't have any actual response to your own religion.
You don't want to take seriously...
I'm going to be a traditionalist, but I'm not going to concern myself with the 2,000-year tradition of the church.
And in his case, since he's left the Catholic Church and he's Orthodox, there are even more innumerable instances of the Orthodox Church doing the same things.
I mean, look...
You know, the Russians, in the Orthodox Church, Russians are a little more equal than everyone else.
I mean, you know, it's a Russian-centric church, much like the Catholic Church is an Italian Roman-centric church.
It just is what it is.
But the Protestants don't really have that.
I guess maybe America is kind of the common.
Maybe the Church of England.
Maybe the Church of England.
But anyway.
Lutheranism, Germanism.
Yeah, German.
But let's not get into that.
The fact is, the Russian Orthodox Church, he claims to be Orthodox, it has a much tighter integration with the state.
Integralism, dare we say.
Yeah, with the state than Protestantism.
Or even Catholicism.
It should be noted, the Catholic Church went through...
And then the Italians, more secular state.
A more integralist polity than any other polity I can think of.
Right.
So again, he's just an American becoming an Orthodox Christian.
For kitsch purposes.
Yeah.
It's like, ooh, I'm Orthodox.
It's more mystical.
We have icons.
But it's not serious.
I have met a few serious Orthodox people, and I genuinely respect them and like them.
I have had some experience with the Orthodox Church in the United States, and actually my experiences are entirely positive and very serious people.
So I don't mean this to be disrespectful.
Ray is an outlier.
Right.
He is.
He is an outlier in terms of people I've met.
But it's just kind of weird.
It's like LARPing.
Again, it's like, let me take this church, which is really genuinely foreign to America.
I mean, there is some Orthodox Christianity in Alaska for historical reasons.
St. Herman, I believe.
Yeah.
But it is foreign.
Again, I'm not against it.
To the contrary, my sympathies are probably more with the Orthodox Church than any other, actually.
I mean, I still am an Episcopalian, by confirmation.
But anyway, it's like Americans adopting it.
It's like it is this eccentric...
really resonate with society.
It's like a weird hobby or something for a lot of them.
Right.
And again, I don't want anyone to take this too far because again, if I were to, of all the churches that I would criticize in America, Orthodoxy would clearly be the last one.
But still, there's just something false about this guy.
He's a southern Protestant, and he LARPed as a Catholic.
Now he's LARPing as an Orthodox Christian.
There's something really false about it.
You can just easily call out his bullshit.
Okay.
This is back to Ray.
The same principle is playing out on the left today, though thankfully not yet, with physical violence.
Actually, we're there.
Like, it's called Antifa.
Anyway, progressive militants are thrilled to throw dissidents from their purity project on the metaphorical bonfire, torching careers and reputations for the sake of justice.
There are some non-metaphorical bonfires, too, but anyway, that's not that important.
And if one protests that this or that person was treated unfairly, well, mistakes were made, but maybe it's time that the enemy, males, whites, straights, religious believers, et al.
Oh, he used Latin there.
Knows what it feels like to be oppressed.
That's the rationale.
I mean, sure.
I agree with that, obviously.
Obviously, we've bored in the brunt of that more than Mr. Dreyer here.
Yes.
No one's trying to take down the American Conservative website, I don't think.
Or take away the tax status of whatever it is.
Yeah.
I have no doubt that there are more than a few progressives who read the controversy over Edguardo Montara's case and are rightly appalled.
But who would tomorrow cheer the state for removing a child deemed transgender by experts from the home of his Christian parents who disagree?
Okay, so he's basically saying that secular liberals would cheer on some out-of-control secular society that would take away a transgender child from his or her Christian parents.
I don't think that's wrong.
Right.
I think he's probably correct there.
Right.
But, again, it's like...
You're the Christian.
You're the one who believes.
I mean, would you want the church to take away a Christian child from his demon-worshipping parents?
Would you not?
I mean, that's the question you have to ask.
This question, now you're just kind of like, now Ray is just bashing crazy leftists, which is easy.
Right.
He's not confronting the...
As a Christian, would you want to take away a Catholic child that's being raised by demon worshippers?
Why don't you answer that question?
I certainly would.
I mean, what Catholic or Christian in their right minds wouldn't?
It's a question of...
Of what the hegemony in your society says and what you think truth is and what you think is the best thing.
I mean, if you're an actual Christian, this child's eternal soul is at stake.
Which is more important than its body.
Yes.
Do you not believe that?
I'm saying you.
I'm talking to Ray, obviously.
I'm sitting across from Hannibal.
But do you not believe that, Ray?
Do you not believe that the soul is more important than the body?
Do you really not believe that?
Okay.
For me, the especially...
Here we go.
The eternal I. Yes.
For me, the especially chilling thing about the First Things essay was the cold certitude with which its author, Father Romanus Cesario, wrote in defense of taking a six-year-old Jewish child away from his parents because the housemaid once baptized him.
Yeah, he's certain because he has faith, I think.
Well, not just that.
It's not as if...
He has faith, so to speak.
Yeah, he's a Christian.
It's not as if this priest is advancing some new novel proposition or some eccentric...
He's not a rope speaker.
...or some eccentric trad interpretation that very few would agree with.
This is an orthodox...
An orthodox view of the situation.
I don't see a way around that.
It doesn't seem radical to me.
No, he's viewing it from a Christian perspective.
The Catholic writer David Mills reposted the other day this comment he made a couple years ago because it very much applies in this case.
He's posted a Facebook comment.
Flannery O 'Connor said that conviction without experience makes for harshness.
Here we go.
Okay, I'm just going to skip that.
Okay, this is back to Ray.
If applying the law were simple, we wouldn't need judges.
We could let computers do it.
But a good judge brings wisdom to his ruling.
He applies justice tempered by mercy.
Sure.
Yes.
Okay, no one disagrees with that.
There are cases like Mortara's in which the strict application of the law would bring about a greater injustice than the one the law seeks to address.
What?
A strict application that is...
He's basically saying that the strict application, i.e.
the taking of this child, is a greater injustice.
No, I know.
One, I will say...
It's not as if...
Again, I'm here, I'm defending the Papal States.
It's not as if they're going around to every Jewish household kidnapping children.
This is clearly a very hard case, but one in which...
The child has been baptized.
And it's, again...
Regardless of how it has happened, this is...
Yeah.
From a Schmittian perspective, it is an exceptional case, and they are making the decision on the exception.
This is not an easy thing.
They are the arbiters.
Right.
Because they are in charge.
They are the ones in charge.
Now, all Ray wants is that secular liberals to be in charge.
So that they wouldn't have to make these decisions.
And by his own admission, they're terrible at it too.
Yes!
They're worse, maybe.
But the great thing for him about that would be it would be easier for him to critique.
Yes, exactly.
He's like, as a Catholic, I'm as an orthodox.
It would be easier for me to point fingers at someone else rather than take responsibility or understand the mantle of power.
Yeah, here it is now.
As a Christian, I believe the greatest good for all men is that they accept Jesus Christ and be fully recognized.
Do you really?
Yeah, again, do you actually?
Are you a Christian?
Actually, I would actually ask Ray, are you a Christian?
Do you actually believe you're a Christian?
I don't think you are.
I don't think you have bad motivations.
You're just not serious.
If you don't see this as an orthodox application of Christian law.
Yeah.
But to force that belief on others would be wicked.
What?
Really?
Okay.
Would it not be mercy?
Yeah, so your whole church is wicked and has a wicked history.
Okay.
Go with that.
Pope John Paul II said that...
The Ronald Reagan of Catholicism.
Right.
You could even claim that...
Even when convincing someone, you're not using physical force, I guess, but even convincing someone is compelling someone.
We use that word compelling argument.
Is all evangelization wrong?
Right.
Where do you draw that line?
Is it physical force?
Okay, so you're kind of going into a libertarian, classical liberal non-aggression principle.
Okay, that's fine.
Or even going into an Isaiah Berlin value pluralism.
Right.
I get it, right.
I get it, but you're not a Christian then.
You're holding values other than your supposed Christian values as the highest.
That is the ideal we must follow, though obviously Christians did not do so in the past.
Oh, this I love.
Okay, this is, I love this argument, which is that we are the only true Christians now, in 2017 or 2018.
Very presentist, yeah.
We keep forgetting what year, yeah.
We in the current year, we're the true Christians.
In 2018.
Yeah, it's unfortunate that all these past people weren't actual Christians.
Yeah, good luck with that.
Okay.
Though it cannot be an open-ended proposition, we have to accept the rights of others to be wrong.
Really?
Do you?
You sound like a liberal.
That is a principle of, well, liberalism.
Oh, he admits it.
And he italicizes it.
And it's why I personally struggle with what I see as liberalism's eventual demise into authoritarianism.
Okay.
I'll write more about this in a different post.
Okay.
So he is a liberal.
But he laments that liberalism will become authoritarian, which I think is kind of an interesting...
That's kind of the place where I agree with him, where liberalism evolves into compulsion.
I don't necessarily disagree with that either.
However, it's like, what do you believe?
Yeah, exactly.
Anyway, comma, okay.
Did he just write that?
Ray might as well have written whatever...
Here's Ray.
Anyway, comma.
Eve Tushnet had some interesting things to say about the recent controversy.
This is from Eve, the Catholic lesbian.
Virtuous lesbian.
This harmony with God and neighbors is what, at their best, Catholic leftists call solidarity and Catholic rightists call order.
The longing for harmony and the recognition that it can also emerge.
Okay, I'm falling asleep.
Also, is it really the same thing when a Catholic leftist says solidarity and a Catholic rightist says order?
There's a reason they're different and there's a reason they...
Yeah.
There's a reason there's a difference there.
All right, let's get to the really juicy part, which he saved for the end.
The two parts at the end.
I'm skipping some of this tushnet, and I'm getting the final paragraphs.
Okay, this is Ray again.
I'd love to read more about that.
Walter Percy believed that the persistence...
Walker Percy, Richard.
Excuse me.
Okay, I'll start there.
Walker Percy believed that the persistence of the Jews in the modern world is a sign of God's presence.
Alright, let me just read that sentence again.
Walker Percy believed that the persistence of the Jews in the modern world is a sign of God's presence.
He's also taking Walker Percy slightly out of context here.
I will say, I've read, I know exactly what he was referring to.
I like Walker Percy as a novelist.
Walker Percy is just saying that, you know, from a Catholic perspective, Jews...
We're the former chosen people.
They still exist in the world, but that's a sign that, you know, God exists.
You know, it's just something that's there.
Not as...
Jews must eternally exist.
Let's actually...
Let me go back up.
I'm gonna...
I was skipping Eve Tushnet, but she wrote a very unselfaware paragraph above this.
So let me read that actually.
So this is Eve Tushnet.
From the Roman empire to the American, the consistent sticking point in every Catholic political fantasy is the Jews.
And every re-imagining of Catholic politics, which is not explicitly and uncompromisingly opposed to Jew hate, will be slowly corroded by it.
This is another thing you notice as you spend more time in Christmastia, I'm not totally sure why it's always the Jews, but I suspect it's because...
Okay.
This is wildly heretical.
Yeah, I'm not totally sure why it's always the Jews.
It's because you worship their god.
And it should also be noted...
Isn't that obvious?
They crucified your lord.
I mean...
Yeah.
You don't have this problem with the Hindus.
For a variety of reasons, but also because it is a completely foreign religion to Christianity.
Well, also, again, their role in Christianity was in rejecting Jesus Christ.
Right.
Well, given the choice.
Right.
I mean, from a historical theological perspective, how could you come to grips as a Christian polity or Christian people?
with a people who openly rejected you and scorn you Yeah, I mean Yeah, I mean, there was a Catholic prayer that ended until recently.
We pray for the ultimate salvation of the Jews who rejected Christ.
It was this schadenfreude or concern trolling about the Jews.
We feel so sorry for you, Jews, because you are going to face eternal damnation.
You are going to wander the earth without salvation, without a home, because you rejected Christ who was one of your own.
That is why there's this profound ambivalence towards the Jews.
It's not a secret.
It's not obvious.
It's not a sign of the presence of God in the world, either.
For a Christian to pity the Jews in that way...
Seems totally consistent.
To deify the Jews as an expression, like, no.
As many evangelicals do.
As evangelicals do, and it's insane.
The Christian Zionism and so on.
The covenant with the Jewish people is cancelled.
It just is.
If you don't believe that, you're not a Christian.
I can't believe I'm the one.
You're saying this.
You're giving theology with Richard Spence.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know what to tell you.
You can pity them.
You can, in a way, hate them.
You can see them as an alternative path that Christians should never take by rejecting God in the form of Jesus Christ.
But to not acknowledge their wrongness from a Christian perspective is just insane.
That's just...
That doesn't make any sense.
Yeah.
Percy was a...
This is back to Ray.
Percy was a believing Catholic, certainly, but he also considered the Jews among us as a sign.
Perhaps in the Mortara case, they are a sign of the Christian capacity for wisdom, justice, and mercy, or the lack thereof.
Maybe, maybe not.
Really assertive writing there.
What I know for sure is that whenever I see real anti-Semitism, whether it comes from the left or the right, I hear the sound of jackboots, and I know who and where the enemy is.
That's actually a surprisingly strong ending.
Okay.
Though there is an update.
Actually, we should...
Okay, update.
Before we talk about that, update.
This lessens the impact of that.
I should probably clarify that I am not saying that everyone who supports the Pope's decision and the Mortara case is therefore an anti-Semite.
But you are.
Yeah, you kind of are there, right?
You always cough out.
Even when you're being a fanatical liberal, you're still coughing out.
And actually, I have to say this.
From a purely writing perspective, this wasn't the greatest article.
However, I do think that end paragraph was very strong, very...
Well-worded, but by doing that update, he lessens the impact of what he just said.
Yeah.
So whenever...
When I see real anti-Semitism, whether it comes from the left or the right, I hear the sound of jackboots, and I know who and where the enemy is.
That's a good...
Okay, so your enemy is...
Not good in a value sense, but it's a good...
Yes.
Your enemy are the people who oppose the Jews.
That is real anti-Semitism.
Okay.
Ray, let me tell you something.
Anti-Semites are not your enemy as a Christian.
You are a Christian.
You are not a Jew.
I understand why Jews oppose anti-Semitism, you know, end quote.
Whether it's of the...
Vulgar, ridiculous, or resentful kind.
Whether it's of the very serious kind.
Whether it's even just a Jewish awareness.
I understand why Jews would not like that and view that as their enemy.
I get it.
We view anti-whites as our enemy.
Anti-Semites are not your enemy.
Yes.
Or you are a Shabbos Goy.
I'm sorry.
Or you're not a real Christian.
And you're not a real Christian.
It's like, no.
You are so screwed up.
Where you see anti-Christians, that is the enemy.
Whether someone is anti-Semitic is not primary.
It's secondary, tertiary to your friend-enemy distinction.
And if you can't make that, you're going to be wandering the earth without a home.
So to speak.
To Rod Dreher, someone like E. Michael Jones or Tom Fleming is his enemy.
Is his enemy.
I hear the sound of jackpot.
By that stricture he just gave us there.
And that's just insane.
What more is there to say there?
It's just...
Yeah.
I don't know if we have anything more to say.
We went into so much.
But again, it's good to do these things.
I think there's more to talk about than just deconstructing cucks, but it's good to get into their head.
I don't think anyone can claim that Hannibal and I are acting in bad faith or we're mischaracterizing.
Anything that Rod Array has said, we are re-presenting his thought process.
This is how he thinks.
And this is how his readers think, most likely, and this is how so many cucks, thought leaders, think.
Yeah.
There it is.
They're not really Christians.
So, you know, you might have been upset with us for the title of our last podcast, but...
Here you go.
Here's a full-throated defense.
Well, we're actually...
The first podcast was, Is Christianity for Cucks?
Or something of that nature.
But that was playing on an actual article written in First Things.
