,
11 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
I've had a few more thoughts since writing yesterday's newsletter about civility, decency, and political discourse among conservatives right now.
If you sat down LGBT activists and asked whether "too much civility" was why conservatives are losing that cultural battle, I suspect they'd enjoy a very hearty laugh.
I suspect today's progressive anti-liberalism on that issue is still shaped more by narratives about how social conservative activists--not legal minds, but activists--conducted themselves in California around Prop 8, and (more importantly) in Colorado around Romer vs. Evans.
I'm convinced the manner in which Romer was fought set the course for the culture war on that issue--and from the LGBT side, socons did not display anything approaching civility or decency in their disputes.
As recently as 2012, a prominent socon organization that has since fully embraced Trump gave an award to someone who made repugnant comments about gay and lesbian individuals (and did not rescind it). mereorthodoxy.com/friendship-frc…
So if we're going to talk about letting go of civility and decency and the like in order to win, we should at least recognize that some people think the evangelical public witness suffered from a dearth of it--which helped contribute to our losses.
Note the "evangelical" there. I think the asymmetries between Catholics/evangelicals with respect to Trump continues to be overlooked. Catholic illiberalism needs rank-and-file evangelicals to even be plausible. But that means evangelicals are saddled with Trump in a unique way.
I said "illiberalism," but post-liberalism would have been better. I actually don't mean to make anything more than a descriptive claim there....especially as I've sometimes described myself as a 'theocratic liberal.'
At any rate: I've explored those asymmetries elsewhere. But they make me think there's a distinctive vocation for *conservative* evangelical critics of Trump like @DavidAFrench. americamagazine.org/voices/matthew…
When this is all said and done, Catholic conservatives will argue their relationship to Trump is transactional--and will probably be believed. Evangelicals will claim the same, but no one will listen.
Anyway, that's more than enough for the day. Other duties call.
