Thread by @marywag2947

The Kansas City Star castigates Sen. Hawley for his speech at CPAC.
kansascity.com/opinion/editor…

Here's an opinion piece I never expected to see in a Baptist news org. However, mediabiasfactcheck.com rates them as left-center biased and factual in their reporting.

What does Pelagius have to do with Josh Hawley and White nationalism?
baptistnews.com/article/what-d…

"in light of Hawley’s deceitful and destructive behavior in recent weeks, we have good reason to probe the merits of his political philosophy — both for the sake of sharpening the distinction between his attractive rhetoric and contemptible politics, and to present a case study

in nationalism and nihilism."

“By doubling down on the Big Lie of voter fraud even in the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection, he eschews the truth and exerts his will to power.”

In the above piece, Matt Dodrill cites this column:
nytimes.com/2021/01/11/opi…

"How did we get to the point where one of the bright young stars of the Republican Party appears to be at war with both truth and democracy?"

"Mr. Hawley himself, as it happens, has been making the answer plain for some time. It’s just a matter of listening to what he has been saying."

"Mr. Hawley’s idea of freedom is the freedom to conform to what he and his preferred religious authorities know to be right."

“We are called to take that message into every sphere of life that we touch, including the political realm,” Mr. Hawley said. “That is our charge. To take the lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm, and to seek the obedience of the nations. Of our nation!”

"Mr. Hawley has built his political career among people who believe that Shariah is just around the corner even as they attempt to secure privileges for their preferred religious groups to discriminate against those of whom they disapprove."

"The line of thought here is starkly binary and nihilistic. It says that human existence in an inevitably pluralistic, modern society committed to equality is inherently worthless. It comes with the idea that a right-minded elite of religiously pure individuals should aim to

capture the levers of government, then use that power to rescue society from eternal darkness and reshape it in accord with a divinely approved view of righteousness."

"Christian nationalists’ acceptance of President Trump’s spectacular turpitude these past four years was a good measure of just how dire they think our situation is. Even a corrupt sociopath was better, in their eyes, than the horrifying freedom that religious moderates and

liberals, along with the many Americans who don’t happen to be religious, offer the world."

"That this neo-medieval vision is incompatible with constitutional democracy is clear. But in case you’re in doubt, consider where some of the most militant and coordinated support for Mr. Trump’s postelection assault on the American constitutional system has come from.

The Conservative Action Project, a group associated with the Council for National Policy, which serves as a networking organization for America’s religious and economic right-wing elite, made its position clear in a statement issued a week before the insurrection."

"Although many of the foot soldiers in the assault on the Capitol appear to have been white males aligned with white supremacist movements, it would be a mistake to overlook the powerful role of the rhetoric of religious nationalism in their ranks."

"In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, a number of Christian nationalist leaders issued statements condemning violence — on both sides. How very kind of them. But few if any appear willing to acknowledge the instrumental role they played in perpetuating the fraudulent

allegations of a stolen election that were at the root of the insurrection."

They seem, like Mr. Hawley, to live in a post-truth environment. And this gets to the core of the Hawley enigma. The brash young senator styles himself not just a deep thinker who ruminates about late-Roman-era heretics but also a man of the people, a champion of “the great

American middle,” as he wrote in an article for The American Conservative, and a foe of the “ruling elite.” Mr. Hawley has even managed to turn a few progressive heads with his economic populism, including his attacks on tech monopolies.

Yet Mr. Hawley isn’t against elites per se. He is all for an elite, provided that it is a religiously righteous elite.

His greatest rival in that department is the Princeton debater Ted Cruz. They are résumé jockeys in a system that rewards those who do the best job of mobilizing fear and irrationalism. They are what happens when callow ambition meets the grotesque inequalities and injustices of

of our age.

"Make no mistake: Mr. Hawley is a symptom, not a cause. He is a product of the same underlying forces that brought us Mr. Trump and the present crisis of American democracy. Unless we find a way to address these forces and the fundamental pathologies that drive them,

then next month or next year we will be forced to contend with a new and perhaps more successful version of Mr. Hawley."