The decomposition of a conservative journalist, cont.

Rod Dreher writes in the Dallas Morning News:

I don’t see humility in Jeremiah Wright’s Christianity. I see rage and pride as therapeutic theology. Dr. Wright is wrong.

That doesn’t make me a lesser offender than Dr. Wright. Mike Huckabee, the former Republican presidential candidate, said last week that whites should regard him with mercy, considering the likelihood that we would have come through segregation just as damaged as he. “You have to just say, I probably would, too. I probably would, too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.”

Because I am the chief of sinners.

And you know, if in the first year after 9/11 I had sat in a church listening to the pastor excoriate all Arab Muslims with the same inflammatory rhetoric that Dr. Wright uses against his enemies, I can’t say that I would have walked out, even though I would have known it was wrong. I would have told myself that at least I knew where that anger was coming from. And like Barack Obama, I would have stayed silent instead of speaking up or walking out.

Because I am the chief of sinners.

Five years ago, I accepted things I shouldn’t have accepted from my government to justify war against Iraq. I see now that I wanted to believe the war was justified because I wanted revenge against the people who had in some sense produced Mohammed Atta. My own sense of grievance made me believe lies and foolishness too easily, and call it justice. At the time, I didn’t understand what I was doing.

What do I plead to the dead and maimed Iraqis and Americans and their families? Please have mercy and forgive me, for I was angry, and it made me blind and stupid?

Maybe Mr. Atta careened ignorantly down his own blind, stupid path, too. Dr. Wright as well, guided by resentment and self-pity. And maybe, too, that pious crowd in Jerusalem, yelling, “Crucify him!”

So, yes, I could have been flying that hijacked airliner, preaching from that poisoned pulpit, shouting with that ignorant mob. About angry, blind and stupid I don’t know, but what I know about angry, blind and stupid I know chiefly from me. Nobody comes through this life undeceived by passions and undeformed by pride. Humility, the handmaiden of mercy, is our only hope.

LA writes:

Dreher publicly confesses himself to be an irrational mess, a man who, e.g., supported the invasion of Iraq, not to eliminate weapons of mass destruction that might be used against America, not even to “spread democracy” as a way of reducing Muslim extremism, but because in hysterical rage he wanted vengeance on Muslims, any Muslims (while he also implies that that was other people’s motive for supporting the war as well). Then he acts as though this was ordinary human sin, which Christianity is there to forgive, and which is also the equivalent of Jeremiah Wright’s demented anti-Americanism, and also the equivalent of Muhammad Atta’s flying a plane into the World Trade Center. They’re all just understandable emotional reactions to painful life situations for which a person needs forgiveness. Muhammad Atta is the same as all of us. We’re all sinners. All crimes, even the greatest crimes, even mass murder, are relativized as a personal sin driven by Rod Dreher-type rage.

But Dreher’s personal psychology, which he is now making the paradigm for all human sin, is not ordinary sin. It is pathology. He’s an unbalanced person controlled by his own wildly veering emotions.

Also, the fact that he now realizes that he was led by irrational emotions in the past doesn’t mean he is not being led by irrational emotions in the present. To the contrary, his present positions are reactions to his earlier positions, and are just as much fueled by rage as his earlier positions. Previously, by his own account, he was hysterically bent out of shape against Muslims, all Muslims. Now he’s hysterically bent out of shape against the U.S. policies he used to support. He’s also driven by his emotions to take the side of a vicious black America-hater.

A man who openly states that he reaches his opinions on the basis of being “angry, blind and stupid” has no business being anywhere near a keyboard producing words for public consumption on matters of public affairs.

Dreher should get out of the newsroom—he should have NOTHING to do with journalism—and embark on some activity or profession that is about the pure expression of emotions and feelings. I don’t know what that would be. Actor? Protest singer? Childcare provider? Hippie in a commune? Cult leader of Crunchy Conservatism?

Some readers thought I was too harsh on Dreher about his “The Illegal Alien as Texan of the Year” editorial (see that controversy here). This present column shows I was not. The person who wrote that editorial, and later said under his own byline that he agreed with the idea of designating illegal aliens as the Texan of the Year (meaning that Dreher, who claimed to be an immigration restrictionist, was symbolically designating all illegal aliens as Americans), is the same person who wrote this present article relativizing and forgiving America’s enemies.

Paul C. in Texas, who sent the Dreher piece, writes:

Before it’s all said and done, Rod Dreher will announce himself to be an atheist. Readers can see it coming, even if Dreher cannot.

LA replies:

What is your basis for saying that? I mean, he has been actively religious. Are you saying that his frequent changes from one religion to another presage his giving up religion altogether?

I don’t see it happening. He is now steeped in the Mike Huckabee, emotional type of Christianity which says that “everyone even Muhammad Atta is a sinner like me and must be forgiven.” (Notice also that this type of emotional Christian always calls for offenders to be forgiven even as they’re still committing their sin.)

Paul C. replies:

I probably see Dreher’s writings more often than you do—my subscription to the Dallas Morning News hasn’t run out yet. So my speculation about Dreher’s eventual adoption of atheism has to do with the unstable character he reveals in his columns, editorial duties, and blog entries. First, the man is capable of turning on a dime, on both political and religious levels. He changes his most fundamental beliefs in what seems to me quite radical ways. And he has done so with his faith not just once. Not just twice. But thrice. Sooner or later, I believe he’ll discover it’s not the institutions he is angry with but God himself. You can see the beginnings of such a development in this latest column. It may seem saturated in sorrow, but it’s also tinged with anger. Look who Dreher compares himself and his failings to—Atta and Wright! He can’t think or experience anything other than in extremes. Having already rejected the “material” world as he sees it (in favor of organic food, kitchen gardens, and boutique meat slaughtering houses near his home), along with Protestantism, then the Roman church, then the duty of America to defend its own existence, what else could be next on the horizon? God or man? What do you want to bet that the last thing Dreher will reject is himself? Dreher is the anti-Werther. He may lace his writings with self pity and guilt, but he always manages to point a finger at something else as the cause. And eventually he’ll bring God into his crosshairs.

LA replies:

This is very insightful. You’ve put the Dreher phenomenon into a coherent picture.

LA writes:

Dreher writes:

Maybe Mr. Atta careened ignorantly down his own blind, stupid path, too.

This is sheerest ignorance, the result of Dreher’s seeing the world through the lens of his own overwrought psyche. Atta was not a sinner in any conventional sense. Atta was a devout Muslim carrying out the highest duty of a Muslim, which is to kill infidels and die in the process.

So, Dreher, who previously has written very frankly about the Muslim community in America as a threat and a danger to this country, has now transformed the most extreme type of Muslim enemy, a highly disciplined jihadist mass murderer, into a mere sinner, a suffering human bent out of shape in anger like Dreher himself.

It would appear that his Islamo-critical position is going the way of his immigration restrictionism.

Gintas writes:

Dreher writes several times that he is “the chief of sinners.” The Apostle Paul made that claim, and justifiably so, because he persecuted the church and helped in the murder of Stephen. Rod Dreher cannot legitimately make that claim, it’s a pose, a false humility—which is really pride. And that is typical of Dreher’s public life. He has been a preening, prideful man, letting everyone know of his righteous acts and humility in great detail. There is a narcissistic (or Drama Queen) quality about it: my sins are the worst, they are so bad. No, Dreher, you are a banal, run-of-the-mill middle class American sinner. You are not a Celebrity Sinner.

Sage McLaughlin writes:

That is a truly remarkable column. We have here a “conservative” who describes Atta as a man driven by rage, blindness, stupidity—in other words, as a man not in control of himself. It’s a strange characterization. We’re talking about a man who spent years preparing for his heinous acts, who moved and lived among Americans, who socialized in American restaurants and bars, who saw us up close and who cannot have failed to see our common humanity. This man nonetheless slit the throats of innocent women, by hand, using a crude handheld implement made from a razor which had to be manually inserted into a plastic handle once on board the plane. He murdered the pilots, rammed the plane into buildings loaded with innocents, and he did this while exclaiming the triumphant cry of the Muslim jihadist. It was not ignorance, nor blind rage, nor a moment of weakness, nor indiscretion that drove Atta, but a cold and nearly unimaginable hatred bequeathed to him by years of careful study.

I believe Dreher when he says he was motivated to support the Iraq war by a blind, indiscriminate rage. But it was rage in response to something very concrete and specific, that is, to an act of willful murder and the gleeful celebrations it spawned all over the Muslim world. To what, exactly, does he suppose Atta was reacting? What was the source of his “blind rage”? Dreher never says, and probably hasn’t even considered the point. He falls into the modern trap of so many excessively emotive Christians these days, that is, thinking that Christ’s injunction to forgive our enemies requires us to think them better people than they really are. When we are told to love our enemies as ourselves, this does not mean we are to love them in the same measure, nor to think them basically like ourselves—Christ did not say, “Don’t have enemies.” He takes for granted that we shall have foes, but demands that we love them as human beings and that we hate the disfiguring effects of sin on their immortal souls. We must do this, and we must forgive all those who ask our forgiveness—but we do not have to suddenly outdo God, who abandons to eternal damnation all those who turn from Him and walk in darkness.

Dreher is living in a sentimental fantasy world, and it makes him feel pious to draw absurd comparisons between his own unfocused fury with the calculated bloodlust of A Muslim jihadist. If in fact his motives were as low as Atta’s, then he is a calculating sociopath and a dangerous man—but I doubt that is actually the case. Dreher’s fervent desire to live out the Gospels is in itself laudable, but his reckless sentimentality isn’t.

Adela Gereth writes:

I see Ron Dreher has set himself on the path of Wrighteousness. But how can he claim to be “the chief among sinners” when he doesn’t even acknowledge being “stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery” in his laundry list of sins?

Surely that’s the grandest sin of all, since it burdens whites down through the ages, whether or not they or their ancestors ever profited from slavery. Indeed, slavery is a sin so awful that no atonement by whites for it is possible. Of course, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try to atone for it into perpetuity, only that they are doomed to failure.

Seriously, this man should donate his computer to his local Salvation Army or else go to work for The Onion.

Alan Roebuck writes:

We do indeed live in a target-rich environment.

Dreher’s latest column is an expression of liberal Christianity, about which I know a great deal.

The liberal Christianity of the first half of the twentieth cenury was relatively hardheaded, as it retained belief in an objective reality that can be known, to at least a certain degree, by rational human effort. This “classical” liberal Christianity was defined by opposition to the supernatural, and the belief that such a redefined Christianity would be a blessing to individuals and society, as it would be teaching truths instead of errors.

But now we see an irrational, emotion-driven Christianity even within many Evangelical churches, the churches that used to believe in objective truth conveyed by an inerrant Bible. For that matter, you see it even in many Catholic parishes.

The essence of this new, ecumenically-liberal Christianity is emphasis on the subjective. Instead of Christianity being primarily about what God is and what Christ has done for us, now it is primarily about individuals feeling better by engaging in religious rituals and using a religious language that has largely been stripped of any objective content.

I have witnessed the rage emanating from even putatively theologically conservative Christians when their private interpretation of a Christian doctrine or a religious experience is criticized from the standpoint of traditional, (small-o) orthodox Christianity. Aside from the natural human dislike of being corrected, they feel themselves fully justified in, for all intents and purposes, creating their own religion. And it’s understandable that they would feel justified, because this is the Christianity they have been taught.

Dreher, then, is not expressing Christian truths that enable him better to understand the times. He’s applying a subjective mode of being religious, a mode in which an objective evaluation of what’s going on is irrelevant (or impossible), and what is needed is the application of the religious cliche’s that Dreher likes.

I must register a minor disagreement with what you said in your post on the subject. You referred to

… some activity or profession that is about the pure expression of emotions and feelings…. Childcare provider?

As the father of a 4-year old, I know that properly taking care of the young ones calls for discipline, courage, clear thinking and self-control. Perhaps it would do Dreher some good to take such a position.

LA replies:

Mr. Roebuck is correct. Childcare provider was not a good example of what I was talking about.

N. writes:

Your correspondent Paul C. may well be on to something, certainly Dreher has a habit of bouncing from belief to belief, and I salute Gintas for putting a very accurate finger on the careless use of the term “chief of sinners.” I recently heard that phrase used by a 61 year old pastor, and it bothered me but I could not explain why. Now I know why; it is another form of pridefulness.

I disagree that Dreher will become an athiest, though. He clearly has within him that yearning for the transcendent, it’s just that he seems to suffer from a lack of depth. It is more likely he’ll continue to veer further and further into mystery-type religion; possibly he’ll become Bahai, for example, or slide into (further into?) nature-worship while retaining a veneer of Christianity.

Reading the comments section of Dreher’s weblog has been interesting for three reasons. First, the expected accusations of racism leveled by some Obama supporters at critics verify what I expect to happen if Obama is elected President. Second, the resistance of many posters to the gratuitous use of the term “racist” is quite heartening to me, it is good to see that there are people already who refuse to be cowed anymore by those words. Third, I ran across the very useful term “Obamaton” there … and that discovery alone is worth the time expended.

Ron L. writes:

Have you ever looked at the rise of Christian anarchism/liberalism regarding warfare? An increasing number of so-called conservatives seem to take the liberal view that an imperfect war, where any innocent is killed tars America.

This view seems endemic over at Takimag and anti-war.com as well as with John Lofton, who was once a serious conservative.

LA replies:

The phenomenon of conservatives turning against America was discussed by me in my article, “The Antiwar Right’s Bent View of the World” at FrontPage Magazine. Here’s a relevant section:

The antiwar right becomes the anti-American right

George Szamuely, a New York writer who had been associated with the neoconservatives and had worked for the Hudson Institute, was among those who forcefully and eloquently attacked the war [on Serbia]. His articles were published at Antiwar.com, a website that had come into existence for the purpose of opposing the U.S. action in Kosovo. I agreed with his arguments, as I agreed with most of the other writings appearing at Antiwar.com at the time. (I also sent money to support the website.) But then something very strange happened with Szamuely, and with Antiwar.com itself. Not content with merely opposing the U.S.-led war on Serbia, he began retrospectively attacking America’s entire effort in the Cold War against the former Soviet Union. He did this by denying that Communism had ever represented a threat that needed to be stopped. It was as though, once he had switched into an oppositional mode against what he saw as the unjustified use of American power in the case of Serbia, he was compelled by some mysterious dynamic to see any use of American power abroad as wrong or imperialistic, even when that power had been used for such a righteous and necessary cause as resisting the spread of Communism, and even though he himself had previously been an anti-Communist and a supporter of the Cold War.

This came as a shock to me. And the shock didn’t end there. I soon noticed a similar adversarial stance among other antiwar rightists, a wild denunciatory quality that did not confine itself to particular wrongs committed by the United States, but eagerly embraced any assertion against America, no matter how ridiculous. For example, Antiwar.com repeatedly charged that the Clinton administration was “racist” for arresting the Chinese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee as a suspected nuclear spy. The charge was ridiculous. This, after all, was the administration that had been in bed with the Red Chinese, giving them advanced missile technology in exchange for illegal Chinese contributions to the Clinton re-election campaign. This was the president who made multiculturalism our national policy, this was our “first black president,” this was the president who said he eagerly looked forward to the day when America, as a result of continued mass nonwhite immigration, would no longer be a white-majority country. Could anything be sillier than to say that the Clinton administration in arresting Wen Ho Lee was driven by a racial animus against Chinese people rather than by a concern about the theft of nuclear secrets?

Furthermore, why was Antiwar.com, a supposedly right-wing website (though its editor, Justin Raimondo, is a paleo-libertarian rather than a paleoconservative), trafficking in the kind of trumped-up racism charges that conservatives normally see as a curse on our society? The answer, as I came to realize, was that from the point of view of Antiwar.com, the Clinton administration was imperialistic, therefore it was illegitimate, and therefore it deserved whatever it got. Any crazy charge was ok, so long as it made the U.S. government look bad.

The antiwar right’s turn against America, their indulgence in reckless attacks on the good faith of the American government even when it was combating espionage or containing Communism, suggested to me that at bottom many antiwar critics were not motivated by a love of country or a belief in truth, but by resentment. It was exactly the kind of resentment normally associated with the left, the impotent fury at a traitorous father figure or a supposed “oppressor” whom the supposed “oppressed,” seeing himself as powerless and therefore not subject to any responsible restraints, feels justified in striking back at in any way he can. One of the typical forms this resentment took was the notion that the oppressor has no rational basis for doing what he’s doing, but is acting out of insane or evil motives.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 24, 2008 01:34 PM | Send