The big social movements of the past half century were about maximizing freedom of choice.
- Right-wingers wanted to maximize economic choice and
- left-wingers lifestyle choice.
Anything that smacked of restraint came to seem like a bad thing to be eliminated.
We’ll call this worldview — which is all freedom and no covenant — naked liberalism (liberalism in the classic Lockean sense, not the modern progressive sense). The problem with naked liberalism is that it relies on individuals it cannot create.
Naked liberals of right and left assume that if you give people freedom they will use it to care for their neighbors, to have civil conversations, to form opinions after examining the evidence.
But if you weaken family, faith, community and any sense of national obligation, where is that social, emotional and moral formation supposed to come from? How will the virtuous habits form?
.. Freedom without covenant becomes selfishness. And that’s what we see at the top of society, in our politics and the financial crisis. Freedom without connection becomes alienation. And that’s what we see at the bottom of society — frayed communities, broken families, opiate addiction. Freedom without a unifying national narrative becomes distrust, polarization and permanent political war.
- .. Moreover, if you rob people of their good covenantal attachments, they will grab bad ones. First, they will identify themselves according to race. They will become the racial essentialists you see on left and right: The only people who can really know me are in my race. Life is a zero-sum contest between my race and your race, so get out.
- Then they resort to tribalism. This is what Donald Trump provides. As Mark S. Weiner writes on the Niskanen Center’s blog, Trump is constantly making friend/enemy distinctions, exploiting liberalism’s thin conception of community and creating toxic communities based on in-group/out-group rivalry.
Trump offers people cultural solutions to their alienation problem. As history clearly demonstrates, people will prefer fascism to isolation, authoritarianism to moral anarchy.
If we are going to have a decent society we’re going to have to save liberalism from itself. We’re going to have to restore and re-enchant the covenantal relationships that are the foundation for the whole deal. The crucial battleground is cultural and prepolitical.
In my experience, most people under 40 get this.
.. To address it, we’re going to need to confront it with another broad social movement
.. Many people my age and above seem clueless. Our elected leaders were raised in the heyday of naked liberalism and still talk as if it were 1994.
- .. Congressional Republicans think a successful tax bill will thwart populism.
- Mainstream Democrats think the alienation problem will go away if we redistribute the crumbs a bit more widely.
What the corruption arrests in Saudia Arabia mean for the economy
Ryssdal: One of the other things, though, that that IPO, if and when it happens — and I should point out here that President Trump brought it up with King when they spoke this weekend — one of the things that IPO will bring is transparency and sunlight into the internal workings of the Saudi royal family and its finances, which has to be on Mohammed bin Salman’s mind.
Waldman: Clearly. Saudi Aramco, the oil company, is a slush fund for the royal family. The thousands of princes depend on oil revenue directly for their lifestyles. This is something of a warning shot to them, I believe, this corruption roundup, or anti-corruption roundup, saying to them, “Listen, your lifestyles are indeed threatened by what we’re planning to do in this kingdom, and you better not complain too much about it. We’re moving on.” So I do absolutely think this is all connected.
Ryssdal: One of the big names among the crowd that was arrested this past weekend is Alwaleed bin Talal. He’s a holder of, or has been owner of, Citigroup stock, and Ford, and Hewlett-Packard and Twitter. He is somebody in the world of international investments.
Waldman: He certainly is. I think Bloomberg ranks him in something like the 50th wealthiest person on the globe. We’re certainly not aware of specific allegations against any of these people, but particularly against him. On the other hand, the public has wondered for years both in Saudi Arabia and overseas, where did all that investment capital come from in the first place? So it could be an interesting file to open up.
Louise Linton Isn’t Mad. You’re Mad
Ivanka and her husband holding hands as they stride across electric-green grass at the G-20 summit; her kids ascending the crimson staircase of Air Force One. What’s notable is that Ivanka, like Linton, often does not procedurally belong in the settings where she is photographed; there is an undercurrent of White-House-as-life-style-blog-prop. Nonetheless, these images seem ordinary when viewed without context.
.. Great #daytrip to #Kentucky!” Linton wrote. “#nicest #people #beautiful #countryside #rolandmouret pants #tomford sunnies, #hermesscarf #valentinorockstudheels #valentino #usa.” This is an unsubtle caption, drawing on a type of hashtag-saturated social-media syntax that I associate both with discount-clothing retailers attempting to optimize their search results and aimless individual souls hoping to catalogue their membership in some tribe. Charitably, we could assume that Linton was writing in the latter spirit, registering herself as a lover of the #daytrip, of #people and #beautiful #countryside—a sister to all who love #tomford sunglasses and #valentino heels.
.. In a few aggrieved sentences, Linton managed to frame her husband’s three-hundred-million-dollar net worth as a burden, her six months in Washington as harrowing public servitude, and an ordinary American as a contemptible member of the economic underclass. She punctuated this bit with two emoji, a flexed bicep and a kissy face, which were meant to convey nonchalance but instead communicated a type of strained, hierarchical female fury that I have not witnessed in person since cheerleading camp, in 2005.
.. Linton, who spent part of her childhood in her family’s castle in Scotland and once gave an interview to Town & Country about her twelve-piece suite of wedding jewelry, cemented her appearance as an appropriate partner for Mnuchin, whose company OneWest earned him the nickname “Foreclosure King.”
.. The two fiascoes are twin parables, really—each one illustrates how a desire for reverence leads easily to ridicule, and how, when you visibly strain to perform your identity for an audience, the audience often rebels. The trouble with a manufactured self-image is that it requires onlookers for confirmation.
Christian Theology & Transgenderism
Is there a way in which the transgender movement is different than the debate over homosexuality?
AW: Yes, definitely. But first, let me note that they demonstrate some similarity because underlying both issues is the question of teleology. In the case of sexual desire, the question becomes: How are sexual desires to be directed and for what purpose? In the case of the transgender phenomenon, the question is: Does human embodiment have an objective and discernible nature? Both assume some degree of plasticity to human nature that I think violates both Scripture and natural law.
.. Seen in this light, transgenderism is a far more foundational and consequential issue because it makes us unable to direct the totality of the person toward any concrete goal of personhood, not just their sexual desires.
.. Are Christianity and transgenderism compatible?
AW: Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 6 v 9-11 offer a helpful way to answer this question:
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Paul’s words show that there are practices and lifestyles that, if left unrepented of, can prevent someone from inheriting—that is, having a place in—the kingdom of God. To live as a Christian is to accept God’s authority over our own.
.. Transgender identities fall into that category — they are not compatible with following Christ. A person’s gender identity reflects how they define what it means to be a human being. That self-definition will either correspond to God’s revelation in his word or it will not. God has created human beings in his own image as male and female. Our identity, therefore, is defined by God in his purposes for his creation and in his new creation in Christ. The design of humanity is purposeful and good, and part of our design is that we are men and women. To deny or overturn that distinction is to nullify God’s revelation both in nature and in Scripture. The Bible calls it suppressing the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1 v 18).
.. But it does mean that a settled rejection of God’s purposes for us as male or female cannot be reconciled with following Christ. Someone can embrace a transgender identity or find their identity in Christ, but not both.
.. Likewise, it would be possible to identify as transgender and also be trusting Christ as Lord because they have not yet realized the implications of the lordship of Christ in this area of their life and identity. As and when they do realize it, a Christian person would change their behavior in this area, with God’s help.
.. the idea of maleness and femaleness are integral to human flourishing and social stability. A theology of the body is missing in most churches, and if there is one,
.. progressive judicial philosophy means picking a desired outcome and reasoning backwards until the Constitution can justify it
.. Yes, its impact on children and adolescents.
Children who express gender confusion are now encouraged to explore it.
.. Most kids grow out of their confusion, but society’s affirmation makes it more likely that children will go down this path. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
.. An article recently highlighted a transgender day camp. One of the paragraphs reads, “Some change their name or pronouns daily, to see what feels right.” That sounds polite, tolerant, and very social justice-y. But that’s unbridled radicalism dressed up as effete 21st century parenting.
.. there’s a growing number of voices that are talking about transgender skepticism and some who regret transitioning and who have transitioned back — what’s called “Desisting.”
.. Perhaps the most outlandish example of transgender overreach is the attempt to brandish “genital preference” as some form of transphobia. What is that, you ask? Without getting too graphic, if a person has a revulsion against having attempted intercourse with someone of the same anatomy, but who has a different “gender identity” — that’s transphobic.
.. So, for example, imagine a scenario where a man dates a transgender woman (a biological male). If the man objects to having intimate relations with the transgender woman because the transgender “woman” has a penis, that’s now bigoted, because anatomy is irrelevant to gender identity.
.. “Affirm me, or else you’re harming me.” How can conversation and debate ever occur when such zero-sum inanities are thrown about? When did it become acceptable in public discourse to reduce disagreement down to the level of personal harm? People who hate Christianity do not do me any harm. In fact, the Scriptures portend a future where that’s to be expected. Now, if there’s actual harm, or threatened harm, that’s a different situation.
.. where critique does occur, we’re told it is tantamount to violence. If I can be so blunt, this has the seeds of totalitarianism in it. If you can get society to believe that men can become women, and women can become men, what can’t you get society to believe? The language of “dignitary harm” is ever-expansive in its use today, and it may be the most weaponized asset used against religious conservatives in the years ahead.
.. Why must I affirm their understanding of the issue but them not affirm mine? Why must I assent to the belief that suppressing one’s innate biology and nature is healthy? I will never subscribe to the idea that psychological impairment which incites troubled souls to take irreversible action is ever loving, kind, or compassionate. Conservatives and Christians can play the affirmation card, too. So use progressives’ language and arguments against progressives. Make them play by their own rules. Tolerance and inclusion are two-way street.
.. First, as a general principle, parents ought to have the right to send their children to a school that does not teach contrary to what the parents believe — especially on a subject like this. Parental rights are at stake because a child is being exposed to conversations and situations that some parents are wholly opposed.
.. First, as a general principle, parents ought to have the right to send their children to a school that does not teach contrary to what the parents believe — especially on a subject like this. Parental rights are at stake because a child is being exposed to conversations and situations that some parents are wholly opposed.