Maybe it is time to stop with the talking points

We live in an era where violence and stigmatizing is across the board. We saw seen four policemen shot, one killed, in two days in our neck of the woods. We just witnessed two separate attacks on Jewish Americans, resulting in fatalities. People in every demographic are facing the results of our modern society's insistence that we break apart and hate each other. So why is this particular group somehow uniquely harmed by this so as to take it to the next level? Just saying 'mistreatment or stigmatized' - especially in our age where across our nation the LGBTQ community is almost deified, celebrated, defended and endorsed and supported - just doesn't cut it.  Again, the days of just yelling 'Bigots!' as the all explaining answer to everything is fading, at least if we really care and want to solve the problems.

I will give JD Vance credit

He is willing to call out the BS and mendacity that has come to define our post-Christian, postmodern era:

That we have taken an entire generation and told them that every word uttered should affirm them as the gods of their realities, or they should unleash endless hatred or commit suicide - either being an understandable reaction - shows just how low we've sunk.  The only thing worse is how so many of our institutions that should know better (ahem, hello Christian Church), have pretty much gone along with it.  And have done so no matter how disastrous the results. 

We'll see how it goes.  Vance better be good enough to die for the sins of humanity, because even the slightest discovered transgression will be hyped more than Pearl Harbor was.  And more than that, almost everyone left of center, and the bulk of those who have settled into our post-Christian status quo, will jump on him like rabid inquisitors.  

Fact

Only if you believe this is true and not humor:

Can you not see the problem here:

And in case you think this is something out of context or they aren't real stories, here is the NBC story, and here is the CBS story.

Yep.  Of course this isn't new.  Go back to any time ever, and you'll have different conclusions arrived at by different sources.  Eventually we figure out who is right, if anyone.  We then move on.  That's fine. 

But we live in an ago of 'shut up and obey the [conformist] experts'.  We are told to accept whatever the proper experts say on any given day.  Period.  Even if it contradicts itself.  

We don't see them held accountable if they are wrong.  We're told it's fact, shut up, obey, or face the music.  And this is possible due to all of those in various leadership positions around our nation and world that we imagined would safeguard us from such tyranny of the stupid. 

Blinded by not science

I'm sure we all remember with fondness that famous tirade Bill Nye gave, in which he unwittingly used philosophical arguments to argue that philosophy is a waste of time. To be honest, I've not seen much of him in the MSM since then. Perhaps coincidence.

It looks like Neil DeGrasse Tyson is quickly stepping into Nye's shoes as the new pop-"scientist" to remind us what science isn't.  He is the latest scientist who speaks to anything because, well, lab coat.  In this article, he leans heavily on the infallibility of the latest progress to argue boys and girls are a thing of the past because we say so.  And today, we must be right.  As opposed to yesterday.  That seems to be his message in a nutshell. It's not a debate worth having.  Since proper science has declared it true - by ignoring or attacking dissenting views - it's true.  Therefore let's get those guys into girls' locker rooms  and girls' sports pronto.

The shocking point in all of this is that it doesn't seem to be helping the transgender cause.  I still see articles about how suicide is a scourge across the transgender community.  Naturally that is blamed on transphobic bigotry.  Just like the story I saw earlier in the year that reported on the most recent stats about HIV.   According to the CDC, the latest stats once again show that the overwhelming majority of new HIV cases are men who have sex with men. Why is this true? Why, because of homophobic bigotry, that's why.  What does that even mean in 2023?  I have no clue.  But Science!

It's quite amazing.  For generations we've been throwing out what Tyson calls 'the old view of the world.'  From human relations to gender roles to raising children to sexuality to moral priorities, we've gone through the conventional wisdom of the ages like a weed eater.  Tens of mullions dead from AIDS later, unprecedented suicide rates among our children, mass killings in our schools, tens of millions dead from drugs, unparalleled drug dependency, mental health problems, depression and staggering levels of physical unhealthiness, and yet we keep trotting along like a tripped out Pollyanna.  Look how much smarter we are. Look how better we are every day.  We're so right about everything.  Isn't it great that we are better than that old world and its old world views? 

In ages to come, ours will likely be the Age of Arrogance.  After all,  as one of my sons pointed out, when your generation has a noticeable dearth of lasting accomplishments, arrogance is all you have left.  Yet people will look back at us and shake their heads.  If we're remembered at all in centuries to come, it will be as a cautionary tale. 

2SLGBTQI+?

I remember when writing something like 2SLGBTQI+ was a joke, a slight.  An insult.  It was a way of digging the LGBT community back in the day.  The community that, instead of confronting the question of just what makes a bi-sexual person only bi-sexual if a gay person is a matter of birth, simply added bi-sexual to the list of 'born that way.'  Because of course it did. 

Most non-conformists saw the problem, and stupidity. At that point, however, we should have realized the precarious position we were in for having allowed a generation of barn bat crazy kvetches ascend to the level of 'authoritative expert'.  We should have done something about it while there was still time. 

Many leftists blast Babylon Bee for not being funny.  In fairness, they are correct.  I seldom find BB to be terribly amusing.  That's because its sympathies swing toward conservative, and thus it spends its time trying mock and lampoon liberalism.  But when you see what liberalism has become, that's a mighty tall order.  How does one mock such a thing that is well beyond mockery?  Except to remember this is an official release from a Western government in the 21st Century world. 

I've quoted my son before but it bears repeating.  With each passing day the Left drags the world into this pit of madness and duplicitous turpitude, it becomes easier to sympathize with the Germans who lived in the 1930s.  

When I think of the effectivness of our modern Expert class

 I think of this:

My sons call our modern society a Theoriocracy.  We live in a world based upon theories, founded upon theories, derived from theories, centered on theories, and planted on ideas that are often nothing more than wild guesses, dead end suggestions and outright idiocy.  

In addition, our experts don't necessarily have to actually, you know, produce anything.  There is no accountability.  They don't have to fix a problem.  Heck, the problems can get worse under their guidance and nobody ever seems to bother asking if we've been listening to the wrong experts give us the wrong advice.   Yet this idea of a loftier than Babel expert class that knows better because it always right, is peddled by our media, and not really challenged by - anyone.  

This came to my mind as I listen to the endless news stories interviewing experts on what to do about kids going back to school now that it's that time of year.  Experts tell us how to dress them.  Experts tell us how to get their bedtimes ready for a new year.  Experts tell us how to help the kids overcome nerves.  Experts tell us how to plan for healthy lunches. Experts tell them how to deal with new kids they meet.  Experts tell us how to prepare them for possible mass shootings.   Though that last one is fair, since I recall no such concern growing up, therefore there is no wisdom passed down through the ages where school safety in the face of mass shootings is concerned.

But you get the point.  

The only thing worse than Sam Rocha's post about Robert E. Lee

 Is that it had 75 likes and 8 reposts:

This is standard leftwing boilerplate. Simply make an accusation, no matter how demonstrably false.  I can't think of anyone I've ever met who denies seeing racism or argues there is no definition of white supremacy.  When that accusation is made, typically it means someone who has failed to conform 100% to Left-think.

Of course Rocha goes after Robert E. Lee, as if Lee and Racist White Supremacy are one and the same.  Like Donald McClarey, it sickens me what the Marxists* have done to history in the West. Typical, but sickening nonetheless. 

In any event, as one who has seen racism, and studied enough history to know white supremacy when I see it, I can assure him I deny neither.  I also admire Lee, because as a non-leftist Christian, I am bound by ideals of forgiveness, reconciliation, humility and not casting stones too speedily.  Those ideas which, until recently, were safety bumpers for the West, no matter how many would have liked to see our approach to those past sinners be what the Left has made it today. 

But as I have said before, in my recollection there is no movement in recent times more self-righteously judgmental, intolerant or close minded than the modern Left.  Which explains the 75 likes and 8 reposts.  Though the low quality of the post from a paid professor also explains the dismal knowledge base of our modern educated generations.  

*Given the growing library of posts, articles, and editorials extolling the virtues of Marx, Marxism, communism and comparing communist countries favorably to the US and the West while calling hellfire down on capitalist imperialism as the source of all evil in our modern world, I think it's safe to start calling a spade a spade.  I'm not saying they could all pass a graduate exam on the writings of Marx or communist thought.  It's enough that the influence is clearly there and a motivating factor. After all, consider the speed with which you are accused of being a fascist, white supremacist, racist, or white nationalist merely for questioning a liberal pronouncement.  I think, given the low bar they have established for being called a white supremacist fascist, Marxist is easily a fair appraisal of what we're seeing today. 

What?

 What in the world does he even mean:

I read this five times and still can't figure it out.  Is he suggesting that if something, say a particular industry, is failing therefore nobody within it can be good at what they do?  For example, is he saying that if the music industry experienced a decline in sales there can be no talented musicians?  I have no clue, since I can't believe he would mean something that ridiculous.

Sam Rocha is my former editor at Patheos, and I don't remember him acting this goofy back then.  Like so many, he's beyond being a cautionary tale.  He has become a symbol for that malady we suffer under today in which an entire class of self-appointed experts with diplomas of the college decide they must be more brilliant than the hoi polloi because they have diplomas of the college.  

God save a nation when that is what constitutes being in the societal driver's seat. 

That might explain things

Deacon Steven Greydanus, who is also a film critic of some note, is now a contributor at RogerEbert.com.  Obviously it is a site born of the late, and often cantankerous, film critic. It has several film critics now who throw in their two cents where movies are concerned.  Here is Deacon Greydanus's debut article.  

When I see things like that, I think of things like this:

Remember him?  He was a young fellow who rose to prominence following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.  He was one of the few such youth activists who didn't have to be swept under the carpet for embarrassing gun control advocates by going crazy extremist.  

If you recall, it was discovered his college exam scores were a bit sub-par, at least where Ivy League standards are concerned.  But in a surprising turn of events, it was off Harvard he went.  Now he's a Harvard graduate.  

Sometimes it's difficult to fathom how rational human beings could accept the madness being peddled by the modern Left.  But then sometimes it isn't. 

NPR helps celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day instead of Columbus Day

By posting a silly map that shows who took the land our European ancestors eventually settled on.  Of course that's not the way it's framed.  In the anti-Western narrative, the people who were here had magically appeared and remained in the same places for about 20 thousand years until the first Europeans arrived.  See here for a treatment of that narrative.  

All in all, what we are learning about our past would no doubt have made Joseph Stalin or Nikita Khrushchev very happy.  The shocking thing is how many in the West seem to be made happy with this narrative as well. 

How we lost the West

I recently mused on this, I think the earliest piece I did on the anti-Western narratives becoming common in our nation.  Back then there were plenty of anti-Columbus types.  You had that when I was in college.  I've often said my generation straddles that shift from 'Columbus as brave explorer bringing the bounty of Western benefits to the New World' to 'Columbus, slave owning genocidal racist inflicting Nazi horror on a Utopian paradise..'  

Truth  be told, it wasn't to that second part quite yet when I was in college, or even graduate school in the 1990s.   But the roots were there, and on the fringe of scholarship and sociopolitical activism you could see that narrative taking shape and gaining acceptance. 

Now, of course, Columbus is popularly seen in the same camp as Hitler or Himmler or Billy Graham or any other Euro-American Christian.  Here in central Ohio, there is a small, but vocal and growing, movement to change the name of our capital city.  At least one local news network no longer speaks of Columbus, but uses the name 'C-Bus' instead.  The old Santa Maria replica that was downtown was taken away years ago, long before my youngest was able to visit.  Columbus State Community College joined the city of Columbus and removed its statue of Columbus that once adorned the front of teh main buildings.  And across the country cities and states are celebrating 'Indigenous Peoples Day' in lieu of Columbus Day.  Just as we're hearing calls to replace Thanksgiving with a National Day of Mourning. 

In terms of historical developments, this is pretty fast action.  I think one of the great failures of those guardians of our heritage and values was that we confused not assuming worst motives with assuming no motives.  In any event, it's likely that in a few more years Columbus Day will be a thing of the past, as well positive references of Jefferson, Lincoln, Washington, and anything to do with America's - or Europe's - history. 

Again, I believe the speed with which this has all developed caught most people - even more conservative types - off guard.  Many never believed we'd live to see the end to almost everything to do with the Christian West.  And not only that, but we'd see them increasingly endorsed by all of the institutions that will mandate and determine what future generations learn about reality. 

I know enough about Eastern European affairs

To know I know little about Eastern European affairs.  And that includes the tangled mess that is Russian History.  One could spend a lifetime studying that monster and you'd still only scratch the surface. 

My chief problem is the divisiveness that tends to dumb down discourse.  You get a million experts running around and calling down hellfire on this or that topic.   Naturally I defer to those who are in Russia, or Ukraine.  But even then, only with caution.  It's not like going east will suddenly make you honest or always right.  Still, I've had the chance to befriend several over the years who call east of the Danube their home, and it's been a revelation to be sure. 

When I was in graduate school, one of our best friends was a fellow named Alexander and his wife, Luba.  He was from Russia, she was from Ukraine.  It was then I learned the most important of all lessons: never say a Ukrainian is Russian.  Their perspectives on life in the USSR, even in its waning days, was an education to be sure. 

Likewise, in my years with the Orthodox Church I had the chance to meet and talk to many from those regions: Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia, Ukraine, and Romania.  Again, it was an eye opener.  My favorite was a Romanian professor who often spoke about his life in the Soviet and post-Soviet system.  He eventually immigrated to the US in the late 1990s.  He also had perspectives about the increase of Muslim immigration and the designs of the Russian government in these post-Cold War years. 

In any event, like those from the Middle East we became friends with during those years, I learned the stories we are told in America are seriously deficient when it comes to what people in other parts of the world see.  That may always be the case.  It's likely they don't get being American.  But it's enough to know most of the punditry and talking points is likely missing big pieces of the puzzle. 

Hence this:

Well, if you have any knowledge at all of the Russian Orthodox Church, you wouldn't be shocked in the least.  Much less disappointed.  It would make perfect sense, as many Orthodox Christians outside the dominant circle of Russian Orthodoxy often lament. Even those Russian Orthodox struggle with the church's allegiance with the State in light of the need to protect the Church against those modernist forces that would happily see the Church put back in the chains  it wore during the Soviet era.  It isn't simple, and likely shouldn't be commented on as quickly as I believe the stories were wanting us to. 

In fact, I can't help but think part of what Deacon Greydanus sees is based on that modern progressive narrative that assumes the very best in anyone except those in my own circle of neighbors.  That is, 'the East' isn't us, therefore he sees it through those modern, progressive rose color lenses.  Which is why it's shocking that things may be as complex anywhere else in the world as we should admit they really are here.  But that's for another post.  For now, I'm shocked that he's so disappointed if he knows enough about the history of the Russian Orthodox Church to think he should be disappointed.

Therefore, during this time I'll keep trying to focus on the prayers for peace, and those who are clearly trying to find ways to mitigate the suffering and seek paths toward realistic ends to the conflict.  I will ignore those who talk like experts when their talking makes it clear they're anything but experts.

Whenever I see something like this:

I think of nothing so much as this:

And this was written almost 30 years ago. It's only gotten worse since.

Yep.  Most of what passes for academia and scholarship today would make Cliff Clavin blush.  Your average Neanderthal would call it out for the stupid crap that it is. But for generations now, the world of intelligentsia has forged its own cant, filled to the brim with jargon, multisyllabic buzzwords, and linguistic codes that only the inner cliques of exclusive same-thinking research clubs can decipher.

In short, acting like snake oil salesmen, they've learned how to hide the fact by sounding like someone wiring the latest space shuttle.  In reality, they're just shoveling manure. 

Yet with a combination of almost mandatory secondary education, and a sympathetic media and Washington sympathizers propping them up as geniuses and sages, they're the prophets proclaiming the laws of the new godless paganism here to drive out the One, True God.  The results of the last fifty years more than speak for themselves. 

Don't shoot the underlings

So I saw this story float by.  A young social media user claiming that there was no such place as Ancient Rome.  Nope.  The whole thing was a giant conspiracy of Spanish Inquisitors. What?  Welcome to 21st Century scholarship. In the end, she's merely an intellectual underling parroting the level of scholarship that has come to dominate academia in our generation. 

For instance, while scholars who are sympathetic to any attempt to tarnish Christianity gave kudos where they could, many still thought that Candida Moss's assertion that there was no real Roman persecution of Christians in ancient Rome was stretching things a bit.  Her claim is that, save for about twelve years of very limited persecution, the whole story of martyrs to Rome was lies and propaganda.  A twist on Holocaust denial aimed at the Christian Faith.  FWIW, critics say she relies on a torture of the historical record that makes Jack Chick's appraisal of Dungeons and Dragons seem spot on. 

Yet these are hardly new.  My whole life I've seen tabloid scholars chasing after this or that headline under the calling that one must publish or perish.  The best way to do this is to insist you've made some bold discovery that nobody has ever thought of before - whether it is true or not.  Never mind the biases and agendas that can be behind such dribble.  In the age of the Internet, however, something like Ms. Moss's book, or even this misguided child in the above story, can suddenly become prophets of revealed truth - because of course they are.   Remember, what passes for scholarship, research and even science can at times have less objectivity than a poetry reading in Greenwich Village.

Nonetheless, we laugh at such things at our own peril.  After all, the young girl in the story is simply a misfired bullet of stupid that went off a little too early.  If she backed up and said there was no Ancient Roman persecution of Christianity, she could be on her way to awards and honors and doctoral degrees in any one of a thousand of our fine institutions of higher learning today. 

And tomorrow the next generation will begin to catch up with her.  After all, if I went back twenty years and told you people today could risk official retaliation for claiming that there is such a thing as boys and girls, you'd likely have laughed me out of the room.  So much for laughter. 

They used to be called Human Toothaches

That was a phrase Mark Shea used to describe various radical leftwing groups, especially atheists when they would swoop in to remove a memorial cross or some Christian tribute on public ground.  I always liked that because it fit.  They are the type of people you wouldn't mind seeing take a seat on a commode at Jurassic Park. If this story is halfway true, it certainly applies to them. 

To be gracious, knowing the proud contempt that many millennials and post-millennials have for history of any type, it could be that they've never heard of Pearl Harbor or anything to do with it.  Or, on the off chance that they have, they don't link it to any particular date.  I'm willing to believe that for the sake of giving the benefit of the doubt.  If that's the case, then they don't deserve the label Human Toothache.  For why single them out for being as ignorant as our media, culture and education institutions have wanted them to be. 

Why we homeschool in one easy image

 

Yep.  From Broward County public schools.  Taking kids to a field trip at a local gay bar, for gay bar is what it is.  

Life would be infinitely better for us if we didn't homeschool.  Since becoming Catholic, we've been jumping from one frying pan to the next, with occasional dips into the fire.  In most worlds, we wouldn't homeschool because, if for no other reason, we are hardly set up to do so financially.

Nonetheless, the above is not the exception, but simply an extreme example of the rule today.  And this doesn't count the 'hate yourself white people' race hate, the anti-Americanism, the pro-Marxism (my sons' World History textbook gave kudos to such luminaries as Marx, Lenin and Mao, as opposed to our own racist and imperialist presidents), the secular template for religion, and the various leftwing indoctrination tactics that have kept us homeschooling.

I've said before that class content wasn't why we chose to homeschool.  Even a decade ago, things weren't this bad.  But when the bureaucracy steamrolled one of our sons, in the absence of a local Catholic school or even private school, we went radical.

Back then, one of Mark Shea's most celebrated post subjects was his 'why we homeschool' threads. When I emailed him for advice on a homeschool curriculum, he posted that and the readers posted multiple suggestions in the comments section.  We settled on the Kolbe Academy, based in California, accredited, and able to bestow an actual high school diploma on the students.  It's also a classical based education curriculum. 

For that post and advice at CAEI, I'm forever grateful.  It helps keep the boys grounded and able to see past the bilge, lies and ruinous values promoted by our schools - and society - today.  But such is life in a country whose faith is a godless paganism.  So whatever the cost, in the foreseeable future, it will be homeschool all the way.   It beats my son being taught to hate his skin color while being shuttled over to the nearest gay bar.  

The lie of multiculturalism for Columbus Day

Is best displayed in this, that popped up on a history Facebook page I follow:

You see that?  I hope this is fake and no actual Indian ever said this.  But if it's genuine, then Indians were ... perfect.  Without sin.  Never did anything wrong.  Wonderful.  Fabulous.  Better than Jesus.   Just like those Bushmen in The Gods Must Be Crazy.  There simply was no sin, evil or wrongdoing before Europeans came to the lands. So says this meme that strongly suggests it's the opinion of an American Indian. 

Which is stupid, wrong, a lie and false.  Indian culture was like any and all cultures.  It had plenty of wars, genocide, slavery, imperialism, conquest, thieving, wrong doing and politicking that would make Machiavelli blush.  Just like all tribes and cultures and kingdoms and nations since the beginning of time. 

Multiculturalism was supposed to teach us Western children of Western Imperialism what the world was really like.  It functioned under two basic premises. One, that us Americans (and Westerners in general) never knew Western culture did anything wrong or bad.  Two, our views of the world were skewed because of our racist imperialism imposing our ideas of the world on the world instead of seeing the world from its own vantage point.

Therefore, there were two solutions.  First, emphasize, perhaps over emphasize (can you really overemphasize?), the sins of America and the West to wake people up to our own imperfections and egregious sins.  And second, allow other cultures to tell us just what their cultures and civilizations were really like. 

On the surface, the first solution doesn't appear terrible.  Repentance and admitting to sin is a very Christian, and hence Western virtue, as long as it is done with the correct purpose in mind.  The second was a problem from the beginning.  It should be obvious that simply asking American Indians or Hindus or Africans or Japanese or Muslims or any people in the world about their own culture might actually meet with the same skewed or dishonest picture that Americans were supposed to have.  Especially since cultural repentance and admitting ancestral and cultural sin is not a universal trait. 

But so it was, and so it is.  When my son had a cultural anthropology class, the line was already moved from my anthropology classes in college.  Back then, it was 'who are we to judge?'  In fairness, that was also how we were told to look at our own sins: the Inquisition, the Witch Hunts, Slavery.  We condemn the sins but not the sinners.  

Today, we condemn the sins and sinners of the West, and go beyond simply not judging the sins of the rest of the world to almost embracing them.  In my day, we said human sacrifice or infanticide or child sacrifice were bad, but we don't judge the Aztecs or the Celts or the Native Americans who did such things.  In my son's class, they don't even know why we're fussing.  After all, in their course the question of human sacrifice itself is up for debate.  We know Global Warming is the threat of the ages and too many people are causing the world to die.  Therefore, it's perfectly acceptable to look at those Aztecs or Celts and think they may have been on to something when it comes to population control. So said his class's discussion.  

Because we know from Multiculturalism, if it ain't Western, it's good.  We know this because people from those cultures are happy to say so.  Likewise, the idea that those things like child sacrifice or terminating the weak and sickly were bad comes from old white Western, Christian ideals.  And we know those were always and altogether bad.  Therefore, it's time to give sacrificing the baby to the fires a second look.  After all, if the worst civilization in history - Western that is - said it was bad, there might be something to it after all!

Happy Columbus Indigenous Peoples Day.  Celebrated not despite the savagery and barbarism of those non-Western cultures, but increasingly because of them. 

The ghosts of Covid

By, of all things, CNN.  I read through this, chuckled, sighed and rolled my eyes.  It's a propaganda piece for Covid of course, telling about cases where those who died due to Covid have been reaching out from beyond the grave to their loved ones.  Not that I have a problem with the premise itself, but that it's soooooooo wrapped around Covid Press is the difficult part to stomach. 

Naturally CNN, being CNN, has to believe that unless a lab-coat-science-guy can label it, it's not credible. Sadly, that seems to be many church leaders', and church traditions', approach.  Assume more or less an atheistic model of the universe, primarily material, explainable by science and only science ,,, but if that doesn't work then spirit and miracles stuff is a nice fallback. 

With rising suicides, drug abuse, depression, diseases, cancer rates among younger and younger age groups, dementia and Alzheimer's being found among younger and younger age groups, food allergies skyrocketing, and a plethora of other ailments and syndromes being diagnosed, you'd think we'd question this dogged veneration of STEM and the latest Research (TM).  

More than that, as we look at the last half century of applying 'science and research' to all of our problems, and see rising rates in these and other problems - not to mention how often the latest 'revelation by the 'experts' turns out to be dismissed by generations of later experts - we might want to consider the possibility that STEM isn't the end all answer to everything.  

Maybe mental health is a lucrative industry, but a poor substitute for religious devotion and spiritual enlightenment.  And perhaps there are parts of Creation, both visible and invisible, beyond the reach of STEM, lab coats, modern scholarship and the "experts", opening up the door for religion to step in and reassert itself.  You'd think, wouldn't you. 

Just who are the dumb ones?

For most of my life the dominant cultural narrative was that, with the exception of William F. Buckley, Jr., conservatives are stupid and liberals are smart.  But then it was also the narrative that conservatives were intolerant and liberals were open-minded, conservatives were judgmental and liberals were accepting, and conservatives were violent and liberals were peaceful. So there you go. 

Nonetheless, I've often wondered about that narrative given the head-up-a-donkey's-butt lunacy you sometimes hear coming from people to the left of center. Take for instance this gem from some time back.  Note how easy it was for reader Nate Winchester to own the stupid criticism that the Bible isn't like books we write today. 

In keeping with that trend, I saw this headline:

Candace Owens mocks Harry Styles for wearing a dress.  Did she forget about Jesus? 

It's from over a year ago, and it's an attack piece on every leftists' favorite black woman to hate, Candace Owens.  Like all things liberal, we hear that it's racist to assume blacks have been duped by liberals and Democrats because that suggests blacks are stupid.  But then the same liberals assume any black conservative or non-liberal black commentator has been duped by white racists because the golden rule of the left continues to be 'how dare you do unto us the way we do unto you.'

But just look at that headline.  It was brought to my attention because of the sheer dumb.  I looked and thought it must be a hook.  You know, a headline meant to appear one way that, once you read the article, doesn't really represent the meat of the content.  

But no.  He's actually arguing that Jesus wore so-called dresses because apparently anything dropping lower than waist level in any culture in history was a dress in the way we understand dresses today.  Wearing a toga or wearing a thawb or wearing a kilt is wearing a dress because all fashion in all of history in all of the world is measured according to today's standards (one of the byproducts of the left's obsession with presentism nowadays).  They were dresses because apparently Liz Plank believes men in Saudi Arabia wear dresses?  Because fashion in 500 BC Greece must mean the same thing it means on a fashion model runway in Manhattan in 2021?  That's good scholarship and top notch journalism. 

In kindergarten, we understood and were taught that people in different ages and cultures did things differently than we do.  In fact, in a bizarre twist, we were taught it was wrong when Europeans insisted indigenous people stop dressing their way and dress the way Europeans dressed. How does that square with this piece? 

This is the side that insists it's the smart one.  And for some reason, conservatives often act as if that's a premise that must be overcome.  Part of why this gets a pass within progressive circles is because not caring about anything is a dominant trait for the modern leftwing era.  Really.  They just don't care.  Appeal to this argument, appeal to that fact, appeal to the other reality, and they just laugh and call you names.  Like Moe from the cartoon strip Calvin and Hobbes.  A grunt and a 'yeah, so what?' will do.  Whatever to win the latest argument or advance the agenda is true for the moment. 

But don't ever think they own the intellectual high ground.  And don't be fooled by the press's tendency to ferret out examples of someone who might be a conservative who says something dumb as proof conservatives are dumb.  If they do, never forget this gem at the always reliable MSNBC.  After all, this is hardly a one time goof on the part of those to the left of center, and those who refuse to take a knee before the juggernaut should remember that. 

My one question for Pope Francis

Do our religious beliefs have any bearing on our salvation? 

Just in my first glance - and admittedly, it's only a glance - of his new encyclical, I'm just not seeing anything that suggests my religious beliefs hold any importance for my eternal destiny.  In fact, I'm seeing little that suggests what I do on a day to day basis is all that important.  The same goes for his call for a global brotherhood of man. 

What seems to be important is where I stand on vast geopolitical and socioeconomic philosophies and theories and policies meant to make this life better.  It's as if Jesus said, "Many will come to me and say, 'Lord, Lord', but I say screw you, I'm not interested in what you did, but which political policies and socioeconomic movements you supported.'"

Perhaps that's unfair, and a more careful reading will lead to a different conclusion.  I'm sure there will be some good things in his latest encyclical. Most things ever presented in history had at least some good things, or nobody would follow them.  But on my first perusal, I'm seeing scant differences between the words of his encyclical and the words of this:

Except Lennon sings for no religion, and Pope Francis seems to embrace all religions, I'm not catching much difference.  Living for today perhaps?  I dunno. And yet this is how the Church has been orienting itself for some time.  Given that the only thing that makes the unprecedented number of Catholics abandoning their Catholic Faith look good is that it's better than those who remain but no longer believe the Catholic Faith, I can't imagine why we still think this is the correct approach. 

I'll admit I admire those who can continue promoting losing strategies and game plans as much as the next person.  But when failure has eternal consequences, it's no longer funny. Unless, of course, we no longer believe that what religion we do or do not embrace has eternal consequences, which brings me back to my initial question for Pope Francis: Does religion have any bearing on our eternal destinies, or is being good as laid out by the encyclical, or most things he says, good enough?