Right Reason and the Smudge

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Introduction

The caliber of argumentation online is something that can best be described as a gigantic smudge. There are brilliant exceptions, of course, here and there, but they tend to stand out precisely because they are able to make careful distinctions, and they continue to do this despite all the yelling that is directed at them from the general direction of the smudge. I admire such stand-out writers, and this post is . . . well, not about them.

The problem of the smudge is that we are trying to make our way through an environment fueled by a toxic fuel mix of postmodern relativism, lax educational standards, grasping and ignorant elites, default feminism, lack of application in sermons, and all of that together powering the driveshaft of sexual lust.

One of the clearest examples of how far astray we are is seen in our inability to weigh truth claims with any kind of honest measure. In our public discourse, logical fallacies in reasoning—which are abundant—are the equivalent of dross in the silver, water in the wine, sawdust in the bread, thumbs on the scale, and women at West Point. Our public life is teeming with nons, dragging ostensible sequiturs after them.

And in most of these cases, the lousy reasoning is a moral failing—it is the abominable practice of having unequal weights and measures in your intellectual bag (Prov. 11:1; 20:10; 20:23).

What We Are Missing

A God-fearing people have a foundational loyalty to something which is anchored outside the world. They have a loyalty to the truth, in other words, and it is to a concept of truth that does not fluctuate with the times. As C.S. Lewis put it, unless reason is absolute, all is in ruins. And he also said, with regard to the liberal lust for “staying relevant,” whatever is not eternal is eternally out of date. Truth is fixed, fastened forever to the character of God, and because it is fixed, the people who understand it have no patience with what might be called weather vane truth.

When we have lost the idea of absolute truth, we are no longer tethered. And because we are no longer tethered, we are “tossed to and fro.” Like a bit of fluff from a cottonwood tree, airborne for a full half hour, the breeze takes us over here, right before taking us over there. The people caught up in this kind of error think that the warning doesn’t apply to them because they know how to use words like trending, analytics, buzz, viral, and engagement. But these are just different names for the breezes that are wafting them. Having trendy names for the winds does not put the cottonwood fluff in control.

Now to be fair, it is not as though absolutely everyone is blown about by these winds. There are some in this scenario who are the wind. The majority are blown about, but there are some who are providing the winds. They are the ones conducting the “sleight of men,” who exhibit that “cunning craftiness,” and who “lie in wait to deceive.” But enough about Candace.

The thing that turns people into such chumps in the hands of a genius manipulator like Candace is that they had already formed their opinions on the basis of their affiliations and tribal loyalties, and not on the basis of what is objectively the case.

People now decide what is true “for them” on the basis of what they want. Their desires are the foundation, and those desires are shaped by who they want to be affiliated with. But in the world of such relativistic affiliations, because truth is no longer absolute, the affiliation becomes absolute. It is yet another inescapable concept—not whether, but which. It is not whether something is going to be your absolute, it is rather which thing is going to be your absolute. If it is not the truth, anchored outside the world, it is going to be your friends and affiliates, who are all inside the world. Where it is windy.

Now such people will still wave the banner of objective truth, as though they cared about it, but only as it suits them. The “objective truth” is a weapon they will use if convenient, and lay aside when inconvenient. They will angrily ask you to respond to a photograph of a ten-year-old boy slain by the Israelis in Gaza, and they will do this as though objective realities exist, and as though you were interested in denying them. But then when proof is brought forward that this same ten-year-old is currently enrolled in a private school in Bethesda, Maryland, and doing quite well, thank you, their fierce insistence on objective truth evaporates. No retractions, no corrections, like dew off a watermelon in August . . . gone. That is because the faux-objective claim has already accomplished its work for them, and there is no sense revisiting it.

Litmus Test

One of the ways to test whether truth is a person’s absolute, as opposed to whether his tribal loyalty is, would be by seeing whether he ever acknowledges that his political opponent, the one who is against his tribe, has ever made a fair point. Or is he wrong about absolutely everything? This is how our polarization has come to pass; this is where it comes from. Far from making everyone more tolerant, relativism pushes people into the assumption that anyone who differs must be an orc.

One time, many years ago, I was participating in a panel discussion sponsored by the League of Women Voters. The issue had to do with an anti-homosexuality referendum that was on the ballot here in Idaho, and a bunch of activists had been flown in from New York or someplace like that. The room was full of them, and the evening was zesty enough that I had pre-written a note to the moderator, suggesting that he call the cops. That way, if such a time came, I wouldn’t have to spend any time writing. I could just slide it over. It was that kind of evening.

During the Q & A, I believe it was, I was answering a question about discrimination. I started to explain by saying something like, “Suppose I was the manager of Arby’s . . . ” at which point I was cut off by a heckler sitting near the front. And he loudly said, quite indignantly, “Arby’s!? Why Arby’s, Doug . . .?” I responded by saying that I knew that we had many deep and serious differences, but that it seemed to me as though I should be able to say “Arby’s” without causing a conflict. That heckler, incidentally, was the same guy who, at the end of the evening, stood up, hoiked up a sign that said, “No hate here” and with the other hand flipped me off. This was an era before smart phones so I was unable to capture those juxtaposed sentiments for posterity.

One of the tragedies of our time is that this moral failing—and it is a true moral failing—has grown to be pervasive on the right as well as on the left.

The Smudge Has a Right Wing

I have no problem with criticism of Israel. Zero. No human government should ever be considered untouchable, or as somehow being above criticism.

But . . .

In our American form of government, the political alliances are usually made before the election. In a parliamentary system, like Israel’s, the coalitions are formed after the election in order to be able to form any kind of government at all. This means that splinter groups can often find themselves with out-sized influence and/or cabinet positions. And that means that someone with an unhinged position or two can wind up on Netanyahu’s cabinet. His presence in the government then invites unhinged criticism, as though “X is in the cabinet, X holds Y, and so therefore the Israeli government is enthusiastically doing Y.” X has four legs, X is a cow, and so anything with four legs is a cow.

And that is where the smudge comes in—arguing that anything with four legs is a cow. But how many times has that cabinet member threatened to resign precisely because his views were not the position of Israel?

Here’s another one.

Because we live in a time when white people are deemed by the commies to be oppressors by definition, and are under constant attack by the progressive left, it was a great joy to me when someone like Jeremy Carl wrote a book like The Unprotected Class. That book is intelligent, careful, free of vitriol, and compelling. But we also live in a time when other white people, educated well past their intelligence, rush to the microphone in order to advance the cause of white people. When they have said their piece, there is a deep impulse I have (which I usually resist) to turn to the anti-white mob and say something like, “Look. I know that was lame. But we are not all morons.”

In short, the problem is not that they are fighting the anti-white commies. The problem is that they are doing it so poorly. These are tough times for thinking conservatives. It is hard being represented by tighty righties.

They are long on noticing, and short on reasoning. And to the left I would say this. If we really were bent on establishing white supremacy, we wouldn’t be fielding the C squad, right?

Applied to the Longhouse

And again, note that I am talking about how people get to their positions, and how they “reason” for them, and not about the positions themselves. When it comes to my politics, my views about history, my convictions about egalitarianism and that harpy feminism, I remain where I have been for decades now. What I mean is this.

People can arrive at positions I actually hold, but they managed to reach those conclusions through standing on small stack of fallacies. And someone else can arrive at a different conclusion, but one of their premises is true enough. We live in a time when agreeing with that one premise is sufficient for some people in the first group to claim that I have been paid off by the Jews.

Many Christian women have taken more feminist assumptions on board than they realize. That’s one thing. The situation is not helped any when some based bros with the mentality of eighth-grade boys start a podcast called Weaker Vessel, in which the discussions frequently include phrases like quiet, wench, or birthing hips, or make him a sandwich. Incidentally, I made all that up, which I am hesitant to do, not wanting to give anyone any ideas. The devil’s idea here is to create a barrier in young women’s minds, making them assume that repenting of their feminism, and returning to biblical patriarchy, would necessarily mean finding some mantard to marry and submit to.

But the central problem remains the feminism that gets tracked into the home, and the so-called reasoning processes that support it. There is a vast difference between a husband treating his wife with dignity and respect, on the one hand, and walking on eggs to keep her from getting upset, on the other. We live in a time when treating a woman respectfully is tagged by some as feminism, and catering to her every whim is called servant leadership by others. Everything is in a muddle.

But in a biblical home, in a biblical relationship, the whole thing is governed by authority. And if you have been following the point of this post, it is an authority that is grounded outside the world. The husband is not in charge—Christ is. The woman is not in charge—Christ is. And the Lord has assigned to each one their role, and He has also assigned to each the disposition they are to have toward the other in their role. The woman’s submission is to be honored (1 Pet. 3:7) The man’s authority is to be respected (Eph. 5:24). We have Bibles, remember.

Coda: Duties Toward Your Enemies

I said earlier that the wise have the ability to make distinctions. Here is one of them, and it is a key distinction. There are times when our adversaries should be treated as our adversaries, and there are other times when we must make no distinction between them and our friends.

Here is an example of Jesus treating His enemies as the enemies of God that they truly were.

That is a denunciation that is a little spicy around the edges, wouldn’t you say? It was a case of Jesus letting the Talmudic scholars have it. But then there are other times when you are to act as though everything is just fine, as though there were nothing between you and your enemy.

So Scripture teaches that we have duties and responsibilities toward our enemies. You find your enemy’s wallet and you return it to him. You see his wife with a flat tire by the side of the highway, and so you stop and change it for her. This would be case even if she were driving to the city council meeting where there was going to be a showdown between you and her husband. She was going to silently cheer for her husband there. You still change the tire.

This is not said on the basis of one obscure verse, the one cited above. We find this spirit in multiple places (Dt. 22:1-4; Prov. 25:21-22; Rom. 12:20; Luke 6:26-27; 35; Matt. 5:44).

Politics is the art of the possible. And so it is important for Christian conservatives to maintain the strength of their convictions, anchored in the permanent things outside the world, while at the same time demonstrating that they are reasonable people, with whom negotiations are possible. If you are ideologically sclerotic, you will not be able to accomplish anything. If you are the kind of person who cannot understand the concept of duties toward your enemies, while retaining the understanding that they are your enemies, you will be perpetually consigned to the role of a yapping outsider—unfit to govern anything.