when Christianity reigned, transgression and innocence could not be decoupled from repentance, atonement, and forgiveness. Without these, life withers. For the moment—perhaps forever?—the reign of Christianity is behind us. What walks about is a ghoulish and deadly creature that lives by killing the living creatures that remain. It does this by scapegoating them, by attributing to them transgressions that must be purged—and giving them no means to repent, atone, or be forgiven. Identity politics is the macabre confirmation of the permanence of the Christian language of transgression and innocence; and it is the chilling confirmation that the age of Christianity has passed.
In a much longer piece, Anne Applebaum writes,
In the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel argued for the replacement of exactly that kind of rigidity with a worldview that valued ambiguity, nuance, tolerance of difference—the liberal worldview—and that would forgive Hester Prynne for her mistakes. The liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill, writing at about the same time as Hawthorne, made a similar argument. Much of his most famous book, On Liberty, is dedicated not to governmental restraints on human liberty but to the threat posed by social conformism, by “the demand that all other people shall resemble ourselves.” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about this problem, too. It was a serious challenge in 19th-century America, and is again in the 21st century.
America has always been a liberal society, founded as it was on liberal/enlightenment principles. To critique 19th or 21st century America is to critique the liberal society.
I’m not sure tolerance was ever really that much of a liberal value. Scott Alexander’s ‘I Can Tolerate Everything Except the Outgroup’ comes to mind. Tolerance for many people (liberal or not) seems largely only for groups you either already agree with, or groups you don’t mind. People have mentioned that liberalism rose to prominence in part due to the wars of religion, but it should be noted that John Locke, in ‘A Letter Concerning Toleration’ advocates for religious tolerance, except for Catholics (failing to tolerate the largest European religion seems like a recipe for continued conflict) and atheists.
“I will tolerate all except the intolerant, who just happen to be my enemies.”
One funny thing about exercising tolerance is that after a while people you don’t agree with or don’t like much start not to bother you. Most virtues seem to work like that, being a bit difficult at first and then so easy and reflexive you hardly notice. One can be charitable to those who only seem to tolerate those they already don’t mind or agree with by noting they just might have hit that point sooner with those groups. Alas, most don’t deserve that charity in truth…
“…and giving them no means to repent, atone, or be forgiven.”
I disagree with this. It does. You repent, atone, and are forgiven by apologizing profusely, agreeing with them, then fighting for them, then being used by them, then being forgotten. Then you are transformed from an enemy into what Justin above defined as a group “they don’t mind”.
This is why the “eat me last” strategy of these people fails so miserably. The “eat me last” people think that by taking the route above they’ll be spared complete destruction of their lives, when that’s not actually what they want. What they want in the end is your submission, and by giving it you’ve essentially already given them your life, what little it’s worth now that they’ve allowed you to have it.
Your submission has inserted yourself – without their help – into their slave/master heirarchy. You can’t check out any time you like. You will never be allowed to leave.
I thought that the Applebaum piece was good. It’s a bit dry, but there is value in not getting carried away with emotionalism.
Christianity’s promise of divine forgiveness is no match really for the promise of reparations: the accumulated wealth of whites is on display in the butcher shop and the politicians working the counter are going to peddle it away for their benefit until none remains.
Although small Christian communities, particularly those in the Anabaptist and Congregationalist traditions are bulwarks against the creeping tide of grievance greed and race hate, they will survive no better than the Tolstoyan communes did under Stalin or non-Party communes in China did against the CCP. And the race baiters and hate plunderers have infiltrated and won control of much of the rest of Christendom. There are not any inspirational Christian figures around capable of leading a return to Christian values. Personally, I see no future in that direction.
One perpetual fountain of hope, however, is plain old individualism. The wise and esteemed proprietor of this blog has of late, much to his credit, advocated treating people as individuals rather than race units. This is a hopeful and rewarding direction offering both progress and a fulfilling alternative to the all powerful oppressor- victim narrative that defines US intellectual life (if you can call it that).
Individualism is a rich philosophical tradition, yet sadly I rarely encounter anyone familiar with William MacCall’s series of lectures entitled The Elements of Individualism. (free online) MacCall (1812 -1888) offers an alternative harmonizing vision of government (see lecture 18) quite opposite that of the political ideologies normally associated with individualism (anarchism, liberalism, libertarianism, objectivism). His Individualist Creed would make a fine platform for a private school and deserves widespread promotion. Indeed, his notions of individualism seem fairly consistent with those of the Brownist pilgrims who settled New England. Moreover they are sympathetic to the parliamentarian ideals of the English Civil War which are fountain from which the waters of the American Revolution ultimately flow. Christian ideals may parallel those of individualism, but individualism is the current that made progress possible in the past and will restore the possibility of progress in the future.
Christianity was a social innovation aimed at fostering peace, social cohesion, cooperation, and trust. The successor ideology’s goal is to transfer resources from one group to another. It is functioning as intended.
The successor ideology is the kingdom of the tyrant.
“Christianity, as a late writer has pointed out in words well chosen,* is the only system of socialism which commends it self as having a rational basis, and its founder the most practical teacher of it that the world has ever seen. ” The aim of all socialism is the securing of equality in the social condition of mankind, and if equality is to be secured at all it will be secured only by changing the hearts of men, and never by setting to work, in the first instance, upon the conditions.” But the present impulse of socialism is not Christian, but rather one willing to put an end to Christianity. And it is a system of machinery, like the kingdom of a tyrant, not of souls, like that of Christ. Now the Christian system did not rest on force at all. It was communistic, but not socialistic, as the word is properly used; for its very essence was the freedom of the individual will.”
* Socialism and Legislation, Westminster Review, January, 1886.
The Ethics of Democracy by F.J. Stimson. Scribner’s Magazine (1887)
The looting scenario described above by Anonymous is a pretty lurid one. It envisions a future where liberal Christians stand by, while race-hustlers sieze the accumulated wealth of whites who are lulled into passivity in the name of tolerance.
So far this seems unlikely to happen. I live in Minneapolis, which seems like a possilbe test case. The stable and wealthy white neighborhoods that surround the inner city look pretty darn undisturbed to me. Yes, a few race-hustlers like Keith Ellison have high-paying jobs and a few Woke consultants have been hired to do diversity training……but the mass of black poor people are still poor.
What I am getting at is that liberal Christians will sing kum-baya and even create sanctuary cities, but their tolerance disappears when it comes to actual property.
The mass of black poor people will always be poor because they are incapable of saving wealth. If they looted their rich white neighbors, they would largely spend it buying goods and services back from those same white people since they can’t produce anything themselves.
Anyway it will start off as debt, namely government debt. Later when the debt needs to be paid for people will notice how much has been looted. Kind of like how it seemed like living standards were going up for a little while when the Nazi’s were issuing a bunch of MEFO bills and confiscating Jewish property, but then you had shortages, rationing, the exchange rate fell, etc. Technically many people had lots of “money” in the bank but they couldn’t buy anything with it.
I’ve come to see Nathaniel Hawthorne used the Puritans as a proxy for his attack on his contemporary Pietists. The Pietists were the force behind the Civil War, represented in movies as the fire-breathing abolitionist preacher. They were the late 19th century Progressives, but split in the early 20th century with Evangelicals continuing in Christianity and the modern Progressives taking up Marxism as their ideology. All stemming from the Pietists quite well described by Murray Rothbard in his ” introduction to “Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty,” by Lysander Spooner”
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“But by the nineteenth century, unfortunately, such was not the case. Most pietists took the following view: since we can’t gauge an individual’s morality by his following rituals or even by his professed adherence to creed, we must watch his actions and see if he is really moral.
“From there the pietists concluded that it was everyone’s moral duty to his own salvation to see to it that his fellow men as well as himself are kept out of temptation’s path. That is, it was supposed to be the State’s business to enforce compulsory morality, to create the proper moral climate for maximizing salvation. In short, instead of an individualist, the pietist now tended to become a pest, a busybody, a moral watchdog for his fellow man, and a compulsory moralist using the State to outlaw “vice” as well as crime.”
https://mises.org/library/lysander-spooner-libertarian-pietist
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The state as moral enforcer leaves little room for forgiveness