When, If Ever, Does it Stop?

[Dr. Who]

2 hours ago, SoTier said:

 

I'm sorry that I misinterpreted  " ... folks will come after you with pitchforks and fire for suggesting it [holding unpopular opinions] or at least try to make it so you can't hold a job or speak in public, that's the way we've been moving for decades now and it's accelerating in the age of social media" as being based on personal experience rather than simply being a general defense of hypothetical defenders of reprehensible ideas whose public comments could hypothetically get them fired.

 

 

Yes, you misinterpreted and you continue to do so. Nor are you sorry, of course.

 

It is revealing that you find it necessary to scrutinize the ephemera of a message board and subject quickly written declarations to the scrupulosity of a petulant proofreader. Further, it is interesting that I merely brought up my education in passing as a response to a condescending riposte that did not address the substance of what I wrote. Nor is my habitual mode of expression affected or an attempt to cow those who use a more casual diction. I’ve been on this board for years and I generally coexist quite nicely even with those I disagree with. If you surmise that rhetoric beyond the mean of what one might encounter in USA Today is inherently dismissive and contemptuous of those who speak more plainly, that is an expression of your own prejudice. I’m not going to alter my speech to accommodate your problem. Much more invidious is the claim that by objecting to the reactive attitude that hastily casts aspersion on the dead who cannot defend themselves one is somehow implicated in the sins of the past. Is it really decent let alone just to claim that being a Christian compels one to justify religious wars, the Inquisition, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, etc.? Is it intolerable that a religious person thinks that piety has a meaning other than a mask for wicked deeds? Such exquisite tolerance, this liberal compassion.

 

As David Bentley Hart wrote in response to Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great and Religion Poisons Everything --- “Does he really mean precisely everything? Would that apply then – confining ourselves to just things Christian – to ancient and medieval hospitals, leper asylums, orphanages, almshouses, and hostels? To the golden rule, `Love thine enemies,’ `Judge not lest you be judged,’ prophetic admonitions against oppressing the poor, and commands to feed and clothe and comfort those in need? To the music of Palestrina and Bach, Michelangelo’s Pieta, `ah, bright wings,’ San Marco’s mosaics, the Bible of Amiens, and all that gorgeous blue stained glass at Chartres? To the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement, and contemporary efforts to liberate Sudanese slaves? And so on and so on?”

 

In short, it’s a pretty neat trick to ascribe the failures of religious people to live up to the intrinsic meaning of their faith as prima facie evidence of what that faith intends, whilst ignoring the excellences both achieved and made imaginable by the lives of saints, artists, and ordinary people seeking a good greater than their own individual benefit. I am not invested in defending Kate Smith as Kate Smith. I am not a populist, nor an uncritical admirer of America or capitalism for that matter. The founding in my judgment suffers from an unstable mixture of Enlightenment ideals, elements of an ancient virtue ethic, and concepts drawn from biblical revelation. Hence, typical notions of what constitutes freedom, happiness, and the common good are at some level vague and incoherent. Yet for all that, America remains an intriguing experiment with many admirable qualities. What seems vile to me is the easy contempt thrown towards the honored dead who lived in times with differing sensibilities. The left makes a virtue of what C.S. Lewis called chronological snobbery. It’s a simplistic ethic that takes contemporary certitudes as warrant to dishonor and destroy those who lived before the current enlightenment and thus lacking in varying degrees. Further, its vindictive fury mimics an idolatrous conception of an outraged deity. The leftist discerns hearts with easy aplomb and self-righteously decides who will be celebrated and who should be shunned for the rest of history.  Ironic that Christians are condemned for the hysteria of Puritans at Salem whilst progressives routinely seek to publicly humiliate those they disagree with, often to the point of threatening their livelihoods and declaring traditional religious belief a form of hate speech liable to ostracization or perhaps even incarceration. But I am told there is nothing totalitarian in their attitudes and behavior!

[The Senator]

2 minutes ago, Dr. Who said:

Yes....there is nothing totalitarian in their attitudes and behavior!

 

Fixed it for you.

.

[LeviF]

1 hour ago, Dr. Who said:

To the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement, and contemporary efforts to liberate Sudanese slaves? And so on and so on?”

 

"bUt wE nEeDeD a wAr tO eNd sLaVeRy!!!!11!!one"

 

Forget the fact that a society without slavery is a completely novel idea, when considered in the context of human history, or that slavery persists to this day in many parts of the world.  But yeah, evil America and their fight to end slavery.  Booooooo

[Uncle Joe]

On 4/20/2019 at 10:46 AM, KD in CA said:

 

Of course it doesn’t matter whose recording of God Bless America is played, and of course ‘***** the Flyers’ applies in all possible situations, but the underlying issue is the desire to rewrite/whitewash history based on the whims of a vocal, powerful minority.  And even worse, it’s portrayed as some type of ‘progress’.  

 

Progress towards what?  Well, apparently toward a recording of history that only includes the narrative which the vocal, powerful minority wants you to know about.

 

Those who exert that type of influence don’t have a real great track record throughout history.

And then I saw this on SI today. I wondered how well it would be received today (most definitely a rhetorical statement) 

Edited April 24, 2019 by Uncle Joe

[KD in CA]

47 minutes ago, Uncle Joe said:

And then I saw this on SI today. I wondered how well it would be received today (most definitely a rhetorical statement) 

 

I'm sure many snowflakes (and Saints fans) would melt if they saw that horrible image.