Sounds Kind of Insurrectioney, Jane

Introduction

We are coming up on the release of the Supreme Court decision on Dobbs. In anticipation of that decision, quite a few people are bracing for real trouble. As they ought to be.

And I think there could be real trouble either way. The hard left is promising riotous trouble if Roe is overturned, along with the Biden administration contemplating an absurd declaration that the lack of nationwide abortion access is a “public health emergency.” That would enable them, for example, to use executive orders to allow blue-state doctors to perform abortions in states that had restricted the practice.

And going the other way, if the leak of the Alito opinion achieved its intended effect and caused one of the five conservative justices to flip (e.g. assassination attempt on Kavanaugh, protests at justices’ homes, agitated protests outside the Supreme Court building, and it all sounds kind of insurrectioney, Jane), thus keeping Roe as the existing rule, it would then be obvious to all thinking conservatives that this decision preserving Roe was extorted from the Court. And when a judge reverses himself because of the cold steel barrel that was placed against his temple, it makes the judicious observer think that perhaps objective legal reasoning was not in the forefront of his mind. In short, every conservative in the country, David French excepted, would know that all the posturing about constitutional norms was a sham and a pretense.

Let’s Hear What Jane Has to Say

The image to the right is a statement from an outfit called Jane’s Revenge, a pack of “direct action” johnnies. In the course of their statement, their draftsman gave way to the temptation to indulge in some loftytalk, resulting in what might better be described as a verbal and epistolary equivalent of Montezuma’s Revenge. Forget Jane.

“We were unsurprised to see thirty days come and thirty days pass with no sign of consilience or even bare-minimum self-reflection from you who impersonate heathcare providers in order to harm the vulnerable. History may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes, and we’ve already seen such stanzas where medical autonomy is stripped away, humanity is increasingly criminalized, and merely surviving becomes largely untenable.”

Montezuma’s chief of staff, a gent named Camaxtli

Consilience, eh? Almost the right word!

You have to remember that this verbiage is aimed at pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, and that these centers are accused (with sophomoric mien) of “harming the vulnerable.” They are accused of “criminalizing humanity.” And why? Because they give away diapers. The answer is that these crisis pregnancy centers seek to use legal and gentle and helpful means of persuading young mothers to keep their babies. Because they are trying to prevent the dismemberment of young children, they are charged with “harming the vulnerable.” So those who want to continue the practice of dispensing with the unborn like so much bio-refuse are trying to cast those pursuing abortions as barely hanging on, as somehow “merely surviving.”

In fact, those who are not “merely surviving” are the targeted sons and daughters in the womb. Survival is not a metaphor in their case. Because these crisis pregnancy centers want to support young moms in a time of crisis, they are somehow seeking to “criminalize humanity.” Somebody, before sitting down to draft this strident and very stirring manifesto, took a couple hits of acid.

Somebody has plainly bought into his own propaganda. The composer of this particular screed persuaded himself entirely. He printed off his manifesto, then took the toner cartridge out of the printer, broke it open, and drank all the rest of the toner. According to him, the people trying to stop the violence by peaceful means are guilty of violence. If you can’t follow this, you plainly need more toner.

“Through attacking, we find joy, courage, and strip the veneer of impenetrability held by these violent institutions.”

Camaxtli the Younger

Violent institutions are the ones giving away strollers to single moms, along with free ultrasounds. Everything they do is peaceful. But when we oppose Planned Parenthood, and the kinds of clinics that this guy would call “genuine healthcare providers,” the kind that sell little arms, legs, and kidneys, we are opposing actual violence. Actual violence, not the metaphorical kind of “violence,” the violence called disagreeing with a progressive about something. Violence is winning an argument with a liberal. Or maybe that’s racism. I forget.

“Your thirty days expired yesterday. We offered an honourable way out. You could have walked away. Now the leash is off. And we will make it as hard as possible for your campaign of oppression to continue. We have demonstrated in the past month how easy and fun it is to attack. We are versatile, we are mercurial, and we answer to no one but ourselves. We promised to take increasingly drastic measures against oppressive infrastructures. Rest assured that we will, and those measures may not come in the form of something so easily cleaned up as fire and graffiti.”

Camaxtli the Wise

“We answer to no one but ourselves.” I think we may have identified the problem. And we suspect it was a problem that was first manifested in the toddler years, and it was a problem that was not greeted with the requisite number of spankings.

They promise “increasingly drastic measures.” They promise measures that might not clean up so easily as arson and graffiti. I wonder what such increasingly drastic measures might include. Maybe it is killing a volunteer grandma who was helping to give baby supplies to a distressed mother, a thing not to be endured.

“From here forward, any anti-choice group who closes their doors, and stops operating will no longer be a target. But until you do, it’s open season, and we know where your operations are. The infrastructure of enslavers will not survive.”

Camaxtli the Bold

“We know where your operations are.” It is open season on us now. Gee, I wonder what open season might mean.

We Can See What They Are Doing, You Know

Once the lies stop working, the only thing left for them to use is force. And the lies have stopped working.

But the fact that the lies have stopped working doesn’t mean that they stop telling them. They continue on through some kind of inertia, even while preparing to move on to the now necessary use of force. And after the use of force and coercion is open and plain to the naked eye, they still like to tell their lies. The coercion is the press wood, and the lie is the oak veneer. Everybody knows that it is oak veneer, but somebody still puts it on at the factory.

When it comes to the administration of justice, equal weights and measures are absolutely essential. They are essential to the stability of the civil government, because when God considers the behavior of the civil government an abomination, that government cannot be secure.

If God considers it loathsome to judge this case with one standard, and another case with another standard, then it is the responsibility of all Christians to respond to the injustice the same way. We should think of it as loathsome also. You can identify those Christians who have been captured by “politics” through the fact that they refuse to do this.

A throne is established by righteousness. A throne, a system of law, is destabilized by iniquity. Now if a throne is destabilized by iniquity, what should American Christians think when they come to realize that they are actually being governed by Ghislaine Maxwell’s client list?

So when demonstrators occupied the capitol in Wisconsin for a couple weeks and it was democracy in action, and demonstrators did the same in DC and it was a coup attempt right up there with the Civil War, this double standard is atrocious. When church services are hot spots for transmission of the deadly virus, and BLM rallies are not, the double standard is hateful to God. When questioning the 2020 presidential election is the height of tin foil hatism, and questioning the 2016 presidential election causes the FBI to swing to action on your behalf, the double standard lies under the judgment of God.

When Christ Church receives repentant sex offenders to the Lord’s Table, this is alleged as proof of our total and complete dedication to evil, but if we slapped a rainbow on it, we could assemble a congregation of polluted Disney execs and nobody would care. So the thing they must find so offensive is the repentance.

I am not talking about the kind of double standard you have to go investigate. I am talking about a manifest double standard. A glaring double standard. A wicked double standard. A gross double standard. An outrageous double standard. An egregious double standard. A bacon grease fire double standard.

Suppose for a moment that Christ Church had a catechism class for little kids, and it was taught by a drag queen, leering at the kids from underneath the circus paint? Yeah, right. Incandescent outrage. Unless we put a rainbow on it. Then we would be as immune from fiery indignation as any “out there” third grade teacher in the public school system. We should allow the kids to all go down to the public library to listen to the nice library lady. Democracy depends on it, as David French would have it.

No Other Way Out

We have gotten ourselves tangled up in a mass of contradictions. We are a lost people. We are a God-forsaken people. We are a wicked people. We are a people steeped in our sin. We think we know how to think, but we don’t. We believe that we are virtuous because we make up imaginary threats, like climate change, and we fight them diligently. We do this kind of thing so that we can still be wicked and feel virtuous. We have to stop pregnant women from smoking because that might result in a low birth weight, but if she wants to go chop that same baby into little pieces, she should count on our unwavering constitutional support. Fools and blind!

It is Christ or chaos, and we are starting to taste the chaos. How do you Americans like the first returns on your decades of insolent disobedience? It turns out to be really true that God is not mocked. It turns out that your cannot plow the field, and plant all your thistles, and harvest any of your vaunted amber waves of grain.

Christ died and rose, and it turns out that there is no other way for sinners to rise again apart from Him. Make America great again? Are you serious? Apart from the gospel? Apart from the gospel, there is no good news. Apart from Christ, there is no hope.

This means that reformation and revival are not optional. Repentance and faith are the two great imperatives. America is in dire need of a crucified Savior and a risen Lord. We need to turn back to Him. If we do, He will forgive it all—especially including our labyrinthian rationalizations on behalf of our secular folly.

If we don’t . . . well, take another look at the road ahead.