Dreher, Deneen and Vermeule misread cause and effect.
They want to blame decadence on gay marriage but ignore that religious leaders have done far more damage to faith than a million atheists ever could.
They want to disown the Iraq war but ignore that George W Bush was the most overtly religious president in memory.
They try to surf a movement built on conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein while ignoring that the Catholic church and many evangelical leaders have literally been caught, tried and convicted of doing unspeakable things.
They think Christianity must be imposed with a sword and ignore that early Christianity was a tiny minority that succeeded through persuasion and bearing witness.
If these guys had lived at the time of Jesus, they would have been on the side of Rome.
Well worth reading. I have long thought it was a bad sign how much of blue America is unaware of Deneen and his allies.
(btw, Deneen goes considerably further than this piece recounts. He attacks not only what we call liberals, but also business conservatives, who he considers part of the liberal project.
He is smart enough to understand that technological advance is the central enemy of his project, and also understands that as long as people have freedom of movement, the most talented and motivated will gravitate to metropolitan areas, which works against his goals. He never mentions how our country, blessed by his system, would compete against rival nations, however.)
The main takeaway, from my perspective, is to realize that this is one of a few disparate forces currently united in the Trump tent, and JD Vance is the most visible representative of this group. They fully intend to hijack MAGA for their own purposes, and those purposes are extremely dangerous. (I think they are so dangerous that if I were a friend of Donald Trump, I would have told him to be extremely wary of choosing this man as VP, and now I would tell him to watch his back.)
It's not that I am a fan of the other parts of the Trump tent, but it behooves blue America to become more aware of the differences, and to do all we can to legitimize other factions within the GOP, which, repellent as they are, actually aim to represent the will of citizens. That is most decidedly not the stated goal of this group of radicals.
They HAVE hijacked "maga" - or rather, the maga-circus is, in large part, window dressing for and distraction from, what the P2025 ghouls are doing to destroy governmental institutions. The DOGE-show was smoke for destruction of agencies and institutions impeding his businesses, largely overlapping with those in the P2025 cross hairs (and also Thiel/Palantir Big Brother fuckery).
Vought, Miller, Roberts and their cabal are on Team Vance (or vice versa), Elmo's dogeboys do their things, many of which operationalize P2025.
I read somewhere that Vance was forced on the Orange One by donors like Musk and Thiel. That would certainly explain why he wasn't dumped despite his abysmal polling.
I don't see Trump as a Constantine-like figure at all, but what if the American Constitution is not "liberal" -- read the book on the reception of Locke in America -- but a common Good Republic with anchorage in the Italian Renaissance? Who then has abandoned the Constitution?
Thank you. If we may dialogue some. You shift the issue from ‘liberal democracy’ to ‘democracy vs. republic.’ The ‘Bill of Rights’ were seen largely as pro forma, what already the Constitution had protected. It didn’t change the political theory from the Constitution. Do an ‘ngram’ for ‘liberal democracy.’ The concept ‘liberal democracy’ did not exist before the early 20th century. The book presupposes anachronistically that the Constitution formed a ‘liberal democracy.’ Interestingly, the book recognizes that liberalism generates its own ‘heresy‘ and thus is a theological position. The issue, it seems to me is whether the Constitution is based MERELY on a social contract or not. The historical data indicates to me that it presupposes more than positivist notion of law that a social contract demands and requires a classical notion of a common good. As ‘rerum novarum’ shows, I don’t know that this is ‘conservative.’
This has always been the weak link in the liberal movement. The Constitution set up a republic, but put up strong guardrails against a democratic republic. That's why conservatives love to cite Founders' writings -- very few of them believed in democracy.
However, the amendments to the constitution do make things more democratic, in some cases, much more democratic. Which is why hard core conservatives often have advanced theories as to why various amendments don't mean what they say, or aren't actually valid.
It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that the only liberal thing the Warren Court did was to insist that that the Reconstruction Amendments were binding.
I have known about this for many years having been raised catholic becoming very disillusioned as the child sexual abuse scandal surfaced with many victims all over the world.
Attended many evangelical non-denominational churches being able to then discern what their motive was, which we now see as evangelical Christian nationalism.
I made it a point to understand what was going on and participated in both Bible studies, etc.
The evangelical “born again “ would just state that Catholics are not Christian.
The Catholics think they own God that they only allow other religions to “share a piece of the truth”.
Words spoken by a bishop on TV!!
It is well known that the Catholic hierarchy perceives and envisions themselves as a universal religion pursuing this for years.
So we have a Supreme Court that has far right Catholic Supreme Court judges.
And we have with the Speaker of the House and other members in Congress part of the Evangelical Christian nationalism movement declaring our public policy should be formed, according to the Bible.
Both believe they should be the universal religions .
One must realize when dealing with these organized churches, they are all man-made and man-made rules and have literally nothing to do with a true belief in God nor do they follow the tenants of what Christianity is .
Pope Francis, spoke the real tenants of Christianity as well as our new pope .
Our country was formed for people to worship or to not worship, and to have that freedom as they escaped the King of England with everyone being enforced to worship under the church of England with the Kings rule .
Our constitution and our country was created with absolute separation of church and state .
As the violation of church and state continued to take hold in our communities in our government any attempt to put that boundary back on and address it was met with the victimhood chant
“ religious persecution” which could not be further from the truth.
And they made great in roads doing exactly what your article has described. They set out to do.
We must return to our democracy and our constitution, as it was intended with absolute separation of church and state .
There has been an expression out there :
“ Facism will arrive on our shores, waving a flag and carrying a Bible”
Trump was simply chosen because he was willing to push through their agenda.
Nothing has been more offensive than to see Maga followers with a picture of Jesus with a red Maga hat on with the slogan
“ make America pray again”.
Prayer is a spiritual and emotional personal journey that evolves as we age. It cannot be controlled.
It cannot be dictated and forced by any man or law or government .
Much corruption and vicious, cruel acts have been done in the name of religion, invoking God‘s name .
During Richard Nixon’s administration, there was a man named Doug Cole (evangelical )
who attached himself
His idea was how necessary and powerful it was to invoke the name of God and Jesus Christ in order to get people to do what you wanted them to do .
One needs to connect and know the history of all these various factions to get the whole picture of what is happening
This purging of religion in government has contributed to our present situation facing this fascist authoritarian movement and the far right facts
There is a book out there called “ The Family” describing what goes on in Washington DC
“ The founding myth: why Christian nationalism is UnAmerican”
By Andrew L Seidel
There are actually so many good books describing what has brought us to what we’re dealing with right now
Heard. The U.S. Constitution was written in reaction to the bloody religious wars England and Europe had prosecuted and endured for centuries. The Founding Generation clearly wanted to avoid a repeat of those disastrous conflicts by not permitting any church or religious identity to claim supremacy through our government.
To me, the desire to abrogate the Constitution in favor of a single supreme state religion betrays a large lapse of actual faith in God and an idolatry of domination by pure force.
Dreher, Deneen and Vermeule misread cause and effect.
They want to blame decadence on gay marriage but ignore that religious leaders have done far more damage to faith than a million atheists ever could.
They want to disown the Iraq war but ignore that George W Bush was the most overtly religious president in memory.
They try to surf a movement built on conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein while ignoring that the Catholic church and many evangelical leaders have literally been caught, tried and convicted of doing unspeakable things.
They think Christianity must be imposed with a sword and ignore that early Christianity was a tiny minority that succeeded through persuasion and bearing witness.
If these guys had lived at the time of Jesus, they would have been on the side of Rome.
Fully agree - a survey found that MAGA-aligned men think often, and positively, of the Roman Empire. It tracks.
Well worth reading. I have long thought it was a bad sign how much of blue America is unaware of Deneen and his allies.
(btw, Deneen goes considerably further than this piece recounts. He attacks not only what we call liberals, but also business conservatives, who he considers part of the liberal project.
He is smart enough to understand that technological advance is the central enemy of his project, and also understands that as long as people have freedom of movement, the most talented and motivated will gravitate to metropolitan areas, which works against his goals. He never mentions how our country, blessed by his system, would compete against rival nations, however.)
The main takeaway, from my perspective, is to realize that this is one of a few disparate forces currently united in the Trump tent, and JD Vance is the most visible representative of this group. They fully intend to hijack MAGA for their own purposes, and those purposes are extremely dangerous. (I think they are so dangerous that if I were a friend of Donald Trump, I would have told him to be extremely wary of choosing this man as VP, and now I would tell him to watch his back.)
It's not that I am a fan of the other parts of the Trump tent, but it behooves blue America to become more aware of the differences, and to do all we can to legitimize other factions within the GOP, which, repellent as they are, actually aim to represent the will of citizens. That is most decidedly not the stated goal of this group of radicals.
They HAVE hijacked "maga" - or rather, the maga-circus is, in large part, window dressing for and distraction from, what the P2025 ghouls are doing to destroy governmental institutions. The DOGE-show was smoke for destruction of agencies and institutions impeding his businesses, largely overlapping with those in the P2025 cross hairs (and also Thiel/Palantir Big Brother fuckery).
Vought, Miller, Roberts and their cabal are on Team Vance (or vice versa), Elmo's dogeboys do their things, many of which operationalize P2025.
I read somewhere that Vance was forced on the Orange One by donors like Musk and Thiel. That would certainly explain why he wasn't dumped despite his abysmal polling.
What we need in this country is a reset back to honor, character, integrity, and what human healthy emotional growth is.
This includes the emotions of empathy and compassion
Regret and remorse
Emotional skills of self reflection and introspection .
What’s going on is the 2025 plan
It’s all about religion
Spiritual abuse is a very real thing
Good piece
Any theocracy would be problematic. Christian less so than the other religions but still a really bad idea
I don't see Trump as a Constantine-like figure at all, but what if the American Constitution is not "liberal" -- read the book on the reception of Locke in America -- but a common Good Republic with anchorage in the Italian Renaissance? Who then has abandoned the Constitution?
Thank you. If we may dialogue some. You shift the issue from ‘liberal democracy’ to ‘democracy vs. republic.’ The ‘Bill of Rights’ were seen largely as pro forma, what already the Constitution had protected. It didn’t change the political theory from the Constitution. Do an ‘ngram’ for ‘liberal democracy.’ The concept ‘liberal democracy’ did not exist before the early 20th century. The book presupposes anachronistically that the Constitution formed a ‘liberal democracy.’ Interestingly, the book recognizes that liberalism generates its own ‘heresy‘ and thus is a theological position. The issue, it seems to me is whether the Constitution is based MERELY on a social contract or not. The historical data indicates to me that it presupposes more than positivist notion of law that a social contract demands and requires a classical notion of a common good. As ‘rerum novarum’ shows, I don’t know that this is ‘conservative.’
This has always been the weak link in the liberal movement. The Constitution set up a republic, but put up strong guardrails against a democratic republic. That's why conservatives love to cite Founders' writings -- very few of them believed in democracy.
However, the amendments to the constitution do make things more democratic, in some cases, much more democratic. Which is why hard core conservatives often have advanced theories as to why various amendments don't mean what they say, or aren't actually valid.
It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that the only liberal thing the Warren Court did was to insist that that the Reconstruction Amendments were binding.
This is a great article
Thank you for the two that you inserted into the article
I have known about this for many years having been raised catholic becoming very disillusioned as the child sexual abuse scandal surfaced with many victims all over the world.
Attended many evangelical non-denominational churches being able to then discern what their motive was, which we now see as evangelical Christian nationalism.
I made it a point to understand what was going on and participated in both Bible studies, etc.
The evangelical “born again “ would just state that Catholics are not Christian.
The Catholics think they own God that they only allow other religions to “share a piece of the truth”.
Words spoken by a bishop on TV!!
It is well known that the Catholic hierarchy perceives and envisions themselves as a universal religion pursuing this for years.
So we have a Supreme Court that has far right Catholic Supreme Court judges.
And we have with the Speaker of the House and other members in Congress part of the Evangelical Christian nationalism movement declaring our public policy should be formed, according to the Bible.
Both believe they should be the universal religions .
One must realize when dealing with these organized churches, they are all man-made and man-made rules and have literally nothing to do with a true belief in God nor do they follow the tenants of what Christianity is .
Pope Francis, spoke the real tenants of Christianity as well as our new pope .
Our country was formed for people to worship or to not worship, and to have that freedom as they escaped the King of England with everyone being enforced to worship under the church of England with the Kings rule .
Our constitution and our country was created with absolute separation of church and state .
As the violation of church and state continued to take hold in our communities in our government any attempt to put that boundary back on and address it was met with the victimhood chant
“ religious persecution” which could not be further from the truth.
And they made great in roads doing exactly what your article has described. They set out to do.
We must return to our democracy and our constitution, as it was intended with absolute separation of church and state .
There has been an expression out there :
“ Facism will arrive on our shores, waving a flag and carrying a Bible”
Trump was simply chosen because he was willing to push through their agenda.
Nothing has been more offensive than to see Maga followers with a picture of Jesus with a red Maga hat on with the slogan
“ make America pray again”.
Prayer is a spiritual and emotional personal journey that evolves as we age. It cannot be controlled.
It cannot be dictated and forced by any man or law or government .
Much corruption and vicious, cruel acts have been done in the name of religion, invoking God‘s name .
During Richard Nixon’s administration, there was a man named Doug Cole (evangelical )
who attached himself
His idea was how necessary and powerful it was to invoke the name of God and Jesus Christ in order to get people to do what you wanted them to do .
One needs to connect and know the history of all these various factions to get the whole picture of what is happening
This purging of religion in government has contributed to our present situation facing this fascist authoritarian movement and the far right facts
There is a book out there called “ The Family” describing what goes on in Washington DC
“ The founding myth: why Christian nationalism is UnAmerican”
By Andrew L Seidel
There are actually so many good books describing what has brought us to what we’re dealing with right now
Heard. The U.S. Constitution was written in reaction to the bloody religious wars England and Europe had prosecuted and endured for centuries. The Founding Generation clearly wanted to avoid a repeat of those disastrous conflicts by not permitting any church or religious identity to claim supremacy through our government.
To me, the desire to abrogate the Constitution in favor of a single supreme state religion betrays a large lapse of actual faith in God and an idolatry of domination by pure force.
I totally agree
Idolatry is what’s going on right now