How Blue the Sky Was

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All right. I suppose I should explain to you all what was up with my near-week-long involuntary hiatus from blogging. There were various factors in play, but the central one was my misguided belief that I was somehow included in all that free speech business that Madison wrote about in the First Amendment. You see, say I were to write a “controversial” post about the homo-jihad, and say this post went nuts on Facebook with people reading it and stuff, suppose something like that. One of the things that usually happens when I misbehave like this is a series of cyberhack attacks on my server, conducted by the Anarchist Brotherhood in their ongoing fight for the Free Exchange of Ideas. In the aftermath of one such recent post, my blog’s server wound up getting around a million hits a day, designed to crash the server. It did have that intended effect, and took down other web sites with me. My host company had no choice but to suspend my account.

Like I said, there were other factors involved as well. Initially, when I thought it was simply a series of techno-glitches, I was tempted to be exasperated, a temptation which I manfully resisted. But when it turned out that I had not tripped and fallen, but had rather gotten knocked clean out of the saddle, I cheered up considerably. It is quite an honor to be thought a worthy enough opponent that they decide to shiver some of their more expensive lances on you. Unhorsed, and with a split helmet, and flat on my back, I was able to notice how blue the sky was.

So . . . at the end of this very exciting week and transfer process, I am now currently ensconced in a gray granite cyber fortress, and it is my purpose here to do a little trash talking from the top of the wall. And this I will do, God permitting, provided I don’t take one of Rabshakeh’s arrows in the neck. One doesn’t want to pull one of those Josiah/Pharaoh Necho thingies, so one must be careful to keep one’s trash talking within the recognized boundaries of decorum.

Liberals really hate freedom of speech. They loathe it. They are currently involved in far more than just trying to shut down speech that is inconvenient to this particular project of theirs or that one. They are engaged in rejecting the whole idea of free speech in toto. They have gotten to the point where they object to freedom of speech in principle. William F. Buckley once said that liberals give great lip service to the idea of hearing other points of view, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other points of view. That tendency, which Buckley observed, has now officially metastasized.

So in pursuit of gratifying this strange animus, they will employ any number of tricks to silence dissent. But I will content myself here with simply listing two or three of them.

The first is the straightforward jackbooted assault. You say something they don’t like, and they will do what it takes to shout you down. I have seen this in my own experience in a number of different ways. They don’t care how ugly it gets, and they don’t care how ugly it looks. All they do is pitch a fit in order to get what they want. Their play is simply raw, open, naked power, and if it works, it works. If you want to tell me that liberals are committed to free speech, please remember you are talking to someone who once needed an entourage of around twenty cops in order to be able to say something in a classroom at a state university. Those remaining classic liberals — all six of them — who are still committed to free speech have a great deal to be embarrassed about.

Another trick is to play dirty behind the scenes. That’s the kind of thing we see in these cyber-attacks. “For behold, the wicked bend the bow; they have fitted their arrow to the string to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart;” (Psalm 11:2, ESV). They love it in the dark because their deeds are evil. They lurk in anonymity. They don’t have to worry about anyone seeing them there in the dark because there is no God who can see them there. Or so they’ve been told.

And a third technique I have been seeing a lot of lately is what might be called china doll feminism. Feminism began by insisting that women could do everything the men can do, I-am-woman-hear-me-roar stuff, and has ended by weepily entreating all their sob sisters to repair themselves to the fainting couches, where trained counselors in crinoline skirts will cluster around with the smelling salts. A recent lib conference asked the attendees to show their appreciation for the talk through an adroit use of jazz hands because the applause was upsetting to some of the delicate ones present. It must have been some kind of post-traumatic reaction from too much applause at a third-grade assembly.

Then there are the microagressions that make the lives of feminists such a dark, hellish place. There is, for example, the plague of manspreading, which insolent males perpetrate by sitting on subways with their legs apart. For myself, I believe the best response to microagressions should be a good dose of micro-caring.Manspreading

A university recently had to go through the calamity of allowing a conservative speaker to speak somewhere on campus, and they responded by creating a “safe” zone where people could come to deal with the trauma. The trauma of what you say? Well, the trauma of somebody out there saying things that unsettled them, you know, things that conflicted with what they already thought. That official safe place included trained counselors, videos of puppies, coloring books, and, like Dave Barry, I am not making this up. Somebody out there is saying things that do not comport with the Supremacy of My Feelings. All of this is, of course, just passive aggressive manipulation, and an assault on freedom of speech. Feminists have come full circle and are now the shrinking violets that their great-grandmothers despised.

I recently had an email exchange with a woman who wants to identify as a “Jesus feminist.” This is a woman who, when it comes to thoughtful engagement with positions she finds distasteful, couldn’t hit the rear end of a bull with a snow shovel. But the reason she cannot analyze an argument she differs with is that actual differences make her feel a certain way. This is what I wrote to her in my last communication.

“You cannot state what I actually think because what reads ‘ugly’ to you make you feel a particular way, and you cannot see clearly around that feeling. But in order to justify that feeling, you have to twist what I am saying.”

So she wrote back and said that her husband had said that she shouldn’t read any of my emails, and so she didn’t read the last one. So there. Feelings are paramount.

Rachel Held Evans wrote the Foreword to a book called Jesus Feminist. In that Foreword, she gives us a wonderful description of the frail feminist. She says, “Sarah does what all good storytellers do: she gives us permission — permission to laugh, permission to question, permission to slow down a bit, permission to listen, permission to confront our fears, permission to share our own stories with more bravery and love” (RHE, Foreword to Jesus Feminist, by Sarah Bessey, Loc. 99 of 2485).

Permission, permission, permission. There is a very brave feminist bumper sticker out there that says that well-behaved women rarely make history. And yet, here we are at the lunatic end of this feminist meander, having to get permission for absolutely everything. And if you think or say anything untoward, permission will be denied. If there is one thing RHE cannot afford to do, it would be to give me permission to laugh.

“A movement is underfoot, a holy rumbling. And things will never be the same” (Loc. 88 of 2485). This is a high adventure indeed, the high adventure of finding your emotional cozy spot. And when we all get there, we will be able to share a mug of warm tea with that Obamacare pajama boy.

Teacher, can I go to the bathroom? I need permission to hurl.

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MTrooper
MTrooper
9 years ago

Happy for your new techno fortress. I may be dense, but what’s with the picture of Bill Clinton?

Jon Swerens
9 years ago
Reply to  MTrooper

From the column: “There is, for example, the plague of manspreading, which insolent males perpetrate by sitting on subways with their legs apart.” Of which Clinton is Exhibit A.

MTrooper
MTrooper
9 years ago
Reply to  Jon Swerens

Got it, see… I am dense, but not any more!

Job
Job
9 years ago
Reply to  Jon Swerens

Quit mansplaining.

Jon Swerens
9 years ago
Reply to  Job

Quit white-knighting.

(Sorry, this will go down the progressive rabbit hole pretty quickly if we let it.)

Paul
Paul
9 years ago
Reply to  MTrooper

He’s manspreading. Hateful bigo…oh wait, he’s a Democrat.

ScriptureZealot
ScriptureZealot
9 years ago
Reply to  MTrooper

Easy to miss: “the plague of manspreading, which insolent males perpetrate by sitting on subways with their legs apart.”

Zachery Oliver
Zachery Oliver
9 years ago
Reply to  MTrooper

He’s manspreading, if I had to guess :)

Jon Swerens
9 years ago

Welcome back from your non-voluntary expulsion from the Internet! Ah, when I was a student, these kinds of champions would just steal all of the copies of the campus newspaper so no one could read an offending article. Good times, good times.

Chad Barnes
9 years ago

Welcome back!

K. Swanson
K. Swanson
9 years ago

Your rejoicing at being persecuted for the sake of righteousness is an encouragment. Thank you for “taking one for the team”. We often pray that you– and faithful men like you– would be strengthened, comforted, and upheld by the Lord.

Rob Steele
Rob Steele
9 years ago

Remember how the left always accused the right of wanting to impose stifling conformity? They were projecting. They have become the thing they feared most.

Ooooo, edit button. Shmanchy.

AM
AM
9 years ago

Good to have you back. Keep on doing what you’re doing.

Aaron Shaf
9 years ago

Please consider getting your site on the free service CloudFlare (you can likely use it with your existing services). It’ll help mitigate DDoS attacks and other kinds of hack attempts.

Jon Swerens
9 years ago
Reply to  Aaron Shaf

That’s a good idea. Check with your hosting provider! (WP Engine?)

Chad Barnes
9 years ago
Reply to  Aaron Shaf

Good call. The DNS records were pointed to CloudFlare through the previous domain registrar, so I’m working to disconnect CloudFlare from the previous registrar and activate it in a new account.

timpaul
timpaul
9 years ago

Doug, after 3 days of blog absence I knew the gay mafia got to you. Welcome back and good work mate.

Guest
Guest
9 years ago

Thanks as always for a helpful and encouraging word. In the category of unsolicited advice, I have worked near and around cyber mugging for most of my (as yet brief) carrier. The attack that took your site down this last week seems fairly unsophisticated and brute force. Sadly, these attacks can get much more sophisticated—and much more harmful—like hacking into an email account, Evernote book, online writing program, or breaking into a website and posting pornography and/or pelagianism everywhere. So write some 40 character passwords (with as many special characters as possible) and use two-factor authentication where possible. Anyway, I’m… Read more »

Keith LaMothe
Keith LaMothe
9 years ago

Congratulations on the new ribbon for your “If the world hate you” badge. By their own hatred is their undoing is accomplished. God’s been running that same play down the field the whole game, and His enemies still haven’t caught on. They also didn’t notice that the game was won about two thousand years ago, so maybe we shouldn’t expect too much.

Rod Story
Rod Story
9 years ago

Nothing like using Clinton for clickbait :)

It seems to me that the last stalwart defenders of free speech will be blog operators and the servers they own. They like the traffic that’s controversial.

On that note, I suppose we should be reading the fine print on Obama’s Net neutrality rules. Bet there’s appropriations for a “content committee.”

timothy
timothy
9 years ago

Your work here is a blessing from God.

Krychek_2
Krychek_2
9 years ago

I can’t get your new site to recognize my old Eric the Red login, so I guess going forward Eric will now be Krychek_2.

Doug, I disagree with virtually everything you write, but I’m also a huge believer in free speech and I find what happened to you deplorable. I would support prosecuting those responsible if they could be caught. Here’s one liberal who does support free speech, and welcome back.

Tim Etherington
9 years ago
Reply to  Krychek_2

Thank you Eric. Nice to hear a tolerant liberal. They seem to be so very rare these days. Again, thank you for being civil.

Krychek_2
Krychek_2
9 years ago

The thing is, free speech should be a liberal value. Liberals don’t believe truth is revealed; it has to be discovered. Also that government reports to the people rather than the other way around, which requires a well informed populace, which in turn requires allowing the people to hear all points of view. That’s why the liberal ACLU has been at the forefront of free speech activism for years. So I would say a liberal who would try to shut down this Web site doesn’t understand his own principles. Unfortunately, I suppose sometimes human nature gets in the way of… Read more »

Scott Cottrill
Scott Cottrill
9 years ago
Reply to  Krychek_2

Maybe those who we call liberals are not really liberals at all, but self-absorbed, “my way or no way” Cretans, who have somehow gotten themselves allied with and confused with true liberals.

Krychek_2
Krychek_2
9 years ago
Reply to  Scott Cottrill

Scott, I think part of the problem is that words like “liberal” and “conservative” (and, for that matter, “Christian”) have largely lost their original meaning, and today mean pretty much whatever the speaker wants them to mean. Which is deeply painful to those of us who think it’s important that words mean things so that ideas can be clearly communicated. Being a conservative can mean that you’re in favor of gay marriage (Rob Portman) or that you’re opposed to gay marriage (Ted Cruz). It can mean that you support abortion rights (Jon Huntsman) or that you oppose abortion rights (Tony… Read more »

Scott Cottrill
Scott Cottrill
9 years ago
Reply to  Krychek_2

In an effort to make sense of issues and to see who we are allied with and who we disagree with it is natural to use labels to sort out the issues and sides. You could probably label me as a Reformed Christian Libertarian Constitutionalist who is pro-life/anti-abortion and I oppose same-sex marriage, not because I hate gay people, but rather see their behavior as a choice rather than a condition they are born with and there fore that choice has far-reaching implications on society as a whole, and they are not positive implications. I am also a post mill… Read more »

Krychek_2
Krychek_2
9 years ago
Reply to  Scott Cottrill

Scott, I think I now have a pretty good idea of what you believe, but you had to write a fairly lengthy paragraph in order for me to understand that. There is no one label you could have chosen that would have communicated all of that. In fact, if all I had was “Reformed Christian Libertarian Constitutionalist,” I would have assumed, incorrectly, that you were pro-gay marriage. Based on that, I would have thought that you believe homosexuality is a sin but that the government should stay out of it since “the government should stay out of it” is usually… Read more »

Scott Cottrill
Scott Cottrill
9 years ago
Reply to  Krychek_2

“Nor is there a single label that, without explanation, would adequately convey mine.” And I respect that. Labels are basically shortcuts to understanding, but part of the problem is when we assume too much and this cuts into true communication. For the most part, liberal and conservative are helpful, but there is a lot of drift. You earlier referred to John McCain as a conservative. I don’t know of a single conservative of my ilk who would own him. Conservatives are all assumed to warmongers but I assure you that the majority of people in my church also think we… Read more »

timothy
timothy
9 years ago
Reply to  Krychek_2

What you are seeing are bondservants to sin at work. Absent repentance, their behavior will grow worse and more overt with time.

Evil cannot brook God, it seeks to displace Him and the various philosophies and principles that men have developed cannot break that principle.

Everything we touch (absent Him) becomes corrupted and dies.

God is bringing this world to a place of repentance and the choice will be made overtly clear and you will have to choose.

Good luck.

timothy
timothy
9 years ago
Reply to  Krychek_2

Click the “I’d rather post as guest” checkbox.

The “Password” field will disapear.

Enter ‘Eric The Red’ and you email.

Click the ‘->’ right arrow to the right of the “I’d rather post as guest” checkbox.

A “I hereby disavow any Humian Utilitarianism” checkbox appears. Click that.

voila!

Krychek_2
Krychek_2
9 years ago
Reply to  timothy

Thanks. But you know you’d miss my Humian utilitarianism if I disavowed it, right? Admit it; it’s kind of growing on you :)

Keith LaMothe
Keith LaMothe
9 years ago
Reply to  Krychek_2

If God changed you we might miss the old Eric, but we would rejoice far more in the new Eric.

And if you want labels and words to mean things, disavow the utilitarianism which sees language as a way to get what we want rather than a means to communicate truth.

Tim Etherington
9 years ago

Just to buttress your assertion that liberals hate free speech and up it to “Liberals hate freedom in general”, check out Hillary’s latest:

“Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed.”

You’re not allowed to have religious beliefs if she doesn’t like them. Change already.

http://theweek.com/speedreads/551565/hillary-clinton-calls-change-deepseated-religious-beliefs-abortion

Gregory Hickman
Gregory Hickman
9 years ago

Pastor Doug, I am glad to see your website up and running again. We need to have blogs like yours to counter the rife perversion called “American Progressive Society”. When I see the news anymore, It makes me want to hurl, indeed!

Jane Dunsworth
Jane Dunsworth
9 years ago

Oh, how I hate Disqus. But I understand the necessity of it.

timothy
timothy
9 years ago
Reply to  Jane Dunsworth

I would upvote you, but I hate Disqus too and feel the voting detracts from the discussion.

Jane Dunsworth
Jane Dunsworth
9 years ago
Reply to  timothy

Actually, the ability to vote is something I appreciate here. There are times when I have nothing to add to someone’s comments here, but I would like to offer my support for what’s been said, parituclarly if I’ve been engaged in the same discussion and want to say, “What he said” but feel no need to junk up the discussion with “me too” comments. I do think downvotes detract, but they aren’t visible to anyone but the recipient anyway. And I must admit I AM very happy about being able to edit now, as I’m such a slob about remembering… Read more »

Jane Dunsworth
Jane Dunsworth
9 years ago
Reply to  Jane Dunsworth

Well, except that editing apparently doesn’t work. Whenever I hit the edit button, it loads a completely different, and apparently unrelated, blog post into my browser.

timothy
timothy
9 years ago

@Dan

The Blog changeover hosed the comment thread on the https://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/doing-the-sensitivity-sham.html thread so I cannot proceed with the discussion there.

Kevin D. Williamson, one of the last remaining sane and ballsy voices at NRO addresses a cause that parallels your advocacy for limited Christian speech:

…and there are many voices on the Left demanding that “misgendering” — declining to participate actively in the fantasies of transsexuals — should be made a crime.

It appears self evident that every argument you made in the previous post would apply in this case; is that a fair statement?

.

Mike Bull
9 years ago

For goodness’ sake, Wilson. How about a trigger warning before mentioning clapping?

Kamilla Ludwig
Kamilla Ludwig
9 years ago

“So she wrote back and said that her husband had said that she shouldn’t read any of my emails, and so she didn’t read the last one. So there.”

Priceless!

Mark Hanson
Mark Hanson
9 years ago
Reply to  Kamilla Ludwig

Which part of “feminist” do I fail to understand?

Jane Dunsworth
Jane Dunsworth
9 years ago
Reply to  Mark Hanson

The part where “feminist” means any position that allows her a tangible or rhetorical advantage over non-feminists or men.

Mark Hanson
Mark Hanson
9 years ago
Reply to  Jane Dunsworth

Ah. And here I thought taking one’s husband’s advice to edit input was patriarchal at best. Apparently her fish needs a bicycle.