Some of the toxicity of Dissident Right thought comes from the adoption of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt's "friend/enemy distinction."

So here's a quick explanation of what it is and why it should be rejected: 1/ 1) Schmitt believed that the "final distinction" on which politics rests is the friend/enemy distinction, just like economics rests on the profitable/unprofitable distinction (p.26). The political enemy is the one who "intends to negate his opponent's way of life" (p. 27). 2/

The phrase #WokeRight is not a meaningless or oxymoronic insult.

It refers to ***people on the Right who are embracing the ideological framework of critical theory.***

Before you insist "NO ONE IS DOING THAT," here's a thread of evidence from primary sources. 🧵

1/ Here's Sam Francis, a prominent New Right thinker, recommending Neomarxist Antonio Gramsci:

“While Gramsci and Hitler sought to develop their cultural strategy for totalitarian ends...the same strategy can be used for conservative purposes" 2/
fpparchive.org/media/document…

I keep seeing awful takes about how "nO oNe iS qUaLiFiEd tO hOmEsChOoL," so here's a quick thread.

First, it's crazy for college-educated people to claim they can't homeschool. Can you read? Can you multiply? That's K-3rd right there (long division isn't until 4th!) 1/ This objection is particularly strange because -when I was a kid- lots of my classmates were already reading when they entered kindergarten. Who taught them? Their governess?

And if you understand fractions and percentages, you'll be fine through 6th grade, at least. 2/

I just finished a section on queer theory for my new book. Check out this fascinating example of queer theory's inherent instability.

Here's the original "Genderbread Person," created by cartoonist Sam Killerman in Jan. 2012. Notice the four categories and double arrows: 1/ Fast forward to March 2012. This is "Genderbread Person 2.1"

Each double arrow has now split into *two* separate arrows because the original figure implied that you exist at one place on the woman-man spectrum. Note also the extra text explaining how complicated gender is. 2/

Enjoyed @AbigailShrier's excellent talk at UNC last night. Some selected (rough) quotes from my 5-pages of notes:

"Gender ideology is a religion: gender identity is the secular version of a soul and gender transition is baptism."

1/ To parents of college students:

"Schools are not your friends. They will undermine you at every turn... If your Ivy League kid declares they're trans, ditch your Ivy League dreams and pull them out or you'll look back and wish you had." 2/

Story time:

My wife and I first attended Summit 13 years ago. There was a small coffee bar in the foyer and the church bulletin was well-designed and glossy. There were video trailers before the sermon.

I was offended.

I was thinking of my old church in New Haven, CT.
1/ It had no money. The church bulletin was printed five minutes before service by the church secretary. We rented space from a SDA church.

"That's a *real* church," I thought to myself. "Not this Joel Osteen stuff."

But we stayed for the service.
2/

What happens after the normalization of trans?

The normalization of pedophilia through abolishing age of consent laws.

Am I being alarmist? Thread:

Queer theory argues that the gender binary is an oppressive social construct. Women are "constructed" as weak and helpless, 1/ while men are constructed as strong and competent. Thus, "liberation" requires us to expose and deconstruct the gender binary.

But the gender binary is just one of *many* oppressive binaries. Here's Wilchins in Queer Theory, Gender Theory (46-47) 2/

What’s the optimal way to play poker? I was curious, so over the weekend, I solved a simple version of this problem.

The results were fascinating: 1/ Let's imagine a game called "poker-lite." Two players each put an ante of $1 into a pot and are each given a card numbered 0 to 100.

Player 1 can either fold (Player 2 wins the pot), or bet $1.

Then Player 2 can either fold (Player 1 wins the pot) or also bet $1 to call. 2/

Greetings new followers! Here is a thread of articles I've written about the incompatibility of Christianity and critical theory.

"critical theory is a serious and growing threat to the church" 1/
thegospelcoalition.org/article/incomp… ""the central ideas of contemporary critical theorists must be rejected by Christians...they have adopted a framework that is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity in numerous ways." 2/
christianlegalsociety.org/sites/default/…

The argument "you should love your neighbor; therefore, send your kids to public schools, even if they're bad" is a bad one.

If it sounds selfish to value the welfare of your children over some vague common good, consider the analogy of elderly parents: 1/ Imagine your elderly parents needed medical care that you could not provide. Would you put them in a substandard nursing facility where you knew they would be neglected on the grounds that doing so would help the "common good"?

Would you argue that you should put them there 2/

Ok games, who's interested in some Space Station Zero probabilities? Check out these calculations.

Here's the probability of rolling N d12s and getting a particular number of successes (taking into account critical failures and critical successes): 1/ Obviously, the more dice you use, the more success you're likely to achieve. And, as expected, since a even role counts as a success, the average # of successes increased as roughly 0.5*N

But here's where it gets interesting. 2/

Last week, I saw a number of people comment on Ligonier's "State of Theology" survey.

Two things are true:
1. People with an "Evangelical" affiliation generally have bad theology
2. People with other affiliations generally have worse theology. Let's dig into the data. 1/ The figure above shows the % of people who "strongly agreed" with the incorrect answer, by their affiliation: Evangelical, Black Protestant, Mainline, or Catholic.

A negative # means a lower % of incorrect answers than average (good!)
A positive # means a higher % (bad!) 2/

In 2000, The Atlantic published an article about people who desperately want to have their healthy limbs amputated.

Read it. It's like stepping into a time-machine. Quotes to follow: 1/
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… "I have been struck by the way wannabes use the language of identity and selfhood in describing their desire to lose a limb. 'I have always felt I should be an amputee.' 'I felt, this is who I was.' 'It is a desire to see myself, be myself, as I know or feel myself to be.'" 2/

Here are word clouds for the last 1k Tweets from the evangelical Twitter accounts with the top follower engagement.

#1 @LeahBSassy 1/ #2 @scott_m_coley

Imagine I meet a young man whom I wanted to befriend. During our conversation, he asks "Who's that annoying woman over there?" I reply: "That's my wife. Yeah, I hear you. She can be very annoying. Obnoxious. Opinionated. Not very smart. Sorry."

Let's talk about winsomeness: 1/ At its best, Christian winsomeness is about "becoming all things to all men," showing "gentleness and respect," "doing good to all," etc. These are non-negotiable biblical commands.

But, at its worst, it can look like the above scenario: throwing fellow believers under a bus. 2/

Powers professed faith in Christ in 2013 through Tim Keller's ministry. At the time, she was one of the first reporters to break the Gosnell infanticide story and savaged the media for refusing to cover it. Her views on abortion have clearly changed.

Why mention this? 1/

https://twitter.com/KirstenPowers/status/1521336730942685184

Try as we might to separate "morality/theology" from "politics," they're inextricably linked. What you believe about human beings, God, the Bible, and sin *will* influence how you live and how you vote.

But this is where we need to pay attention: IT WORKS THE OTHER WAY TOO. 2/

Ok, this is so cool and provides independent confirmation of my map construction methodology. The most-retweeted accounts in each group are displayed for reference.

Look how many accounts are retweeted by other accounts in their own group or in "nearby" groups.

Group 4: Group 5:

"Critical Grooming Theory"

When some people hear "groomer," they immediately apply a Western, individualistic lens. But they fail to realize that "grooming" is a systemic, structural problem deeply embedded in our "ways of knowing."

A thread. 1/ When I, as a Critical Gooming Theorist (CGT) say that all progressives are groomers, I'm not saying that they personally support grooming, as defined by the dictionary. I'm saying that they benefit politically from "systems of advantage" that harm children. 2/

Good thread. See my thoughts below. 1/

https://twitter.com/JoshDaws/status/1496130105843847171

First, be *sure* to read this clarifying exchange between @rcsprouljr and @JoshDaws 2/

https://twitter.com/rcsprouljr/status/1496133881879318534

I just realized that my evangelical Twitter Map can help distinguish actual in-group criticism from out-group criticism masquerading as in-group criticism.

For example, if I said "POC like myself need to recognize the dangers of 'wokeness'!!!" 1/
shenviapologetics.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/map5fi… that might be valid criticism, but it would not be in-group criticism. Why? Because my Twitter in-group is not "POC" but "anti-woke people."

In the same way, when Robert Jones says "White evangelicals like myself need to recognize our racism" that might be valid criticism 2/

LONG-AWAITED EVANGELICAL TWITTER MAP #3. Accounts are grouped by the algorithm into various clusters/subclusters by the number of shared followers alone.

Needless to say THIS IS NOT NECESSARILY INDICATIVE OF SHARED IDEOLOGYENNEAGRAM SCORE/FAVORITE DISNEY PRINCESS 1/ This version can be read as a kind of "relief map." The "peaks" are regions with darker background that indicate a higher percentage of shared followers. As you move "down" the contours, larger and larger clusters generally have smaller shared follower overlap. 2/