ACTIVE PASSIVE RESISTANCE IN AN ERA OF WOKISM

 

The midterm elections of 2022 are over, and pollsters were wrong again. Instead of a “red wave” of renewed GOP dominance, it was more of a red trickle. Once again, we are told that conservatives are not talking to pollsters or just plain lying, thus skewing their results. (it seems to me that if this is true, the skewed results would favor the Democrats, but I am digressing here.)

So, the main question for me is why are conservatives not talking to pollsters, or for that matter, not putting candidate signs on their front lawns or political stickers on their vehicle bumpers? I can immediately think of several reasons why.

First, it is being called foul names. Whether you are a youth on a field trip in Washington DC being a called a racist by media networks, a suburban white woman voting Republican being compared to a cockroach by a national political commentator, Trump voters being placed in a basket of deplorables by the opposing presidential candidate or concerned parents attending and speaking at school board meetings being tagged as domestic terrorists, we conservatives are always open to being labeled with disgusting descriptors.

Second, the doxing and canceling can occur. Business owners may be boycotted and picketed if they are not “woke.” Although unlawful, protesters gather at Supreme Court justice’s homes attempting to influence their votes. Addresses of parents may be leaked to the public by school board members over political differences.

Third, conservatives can be physically attacked. And, of course, progressive liberals, also.  Regardless of grievances, violence us unacceptable.

Therefore, during these hostile political seasons we can take a few simple actions-

1.     Do not place political signs on our lawns.

2.     Do not place political bumper stickers on our vehicles.

3.     Do not post political items on social media.

4.     Do not talk with pollsters.

5.     Do not share your political views with anyone you do not know and trust.

6.     Do not wear political attire.

7.     Vote our consciences as often as possible.

8.     Everyone we meet or communicate with, regardless of differences,  is worthy of dignity, courtesy, and respect.,

The above eight actions are good for a short-term strategy, but conservatives need to possess a long-term strategy for dealing with wokism and political correctness in a world gone crazy. In this essay I am offering ideas for Christian conservatives to develop a strategy for the long-term. I also share ideas from others.

First, develop a theological perspective as a foundation for your active passive resistance. We are strangers and sojourners on this planet. Earth is our temporary abode and Heaven will be our permanent home. Only Jesus, not the Republican Party or any other political movement, can save us. The tweet from actress Patricia Heaton following the 2022 election is worthy of our consideration-

"For those of you who are Christians and who feel disappointed or despairing of the election results, it is a blessing to be reminded that our security does not rest in men or governments, which are finite and will eventually crumble, but in God alone who is ever sustaining.”

 

Second, do not take actions against progressive liberals in kind  if what you feel is abhorrent when taken against you. Public name calling and violence of any kind is not permissible for Christians. Defend yourself appropriately if attacked verbally or physically but not reply in kind. Rebuke other believers if they are reacting in non-Christlike actions.

Third, focus on your Christian growth. Rick Warren, retired senior pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California, lists six ways for us to prepare for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ which will radically alter politics and history as we currently know-

1.     Clean out the garbage in our lives. (James 1:20-21)

2.     Stay connected to Christ. (1 John 2:28)

3.     Use trouble to stay spiritually strong. (1 Thessalonians 5:23)

4.     Practice loving everyone. (James 2:8)

5.     Invest in the bank of Heaven. (Luke 12:33)

6.     Use the gifts God gave us to reach others. (2 Peter 2:15)

Fourth, if possible, find ways to collaborate  with progressives in your communities on issues such as poverty, illiteracy, police misconduct, environment, etc.  Be alert to insure both methods and results are congruent to biblical beliefs and values.

Fifth, read to be aware of the resources and options available to you.. To start, I recommend an article by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a book by  John Howard Yoder, a book by Eric Metaxas, a book coauthored by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon and three books by Rod Dreher-

·       “Live Not By Lies” by Solzhenitsyn is a powerful warning to the West that lies, or enforced ideologies, imposed on others is, as a commentator states, “(gives an) illusion that human nature and society can be reshaped to predetermined specifications. Solzhenitsyn was a Russian dissident imprisoned in the former Soviet Union and eventually exiled to the West.

·       Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus is a theologically rich book for Christians to learn from Jesus to lead apolitical lives to effectively deal with power, status, and right relationships. Yoder was a Mennonite theologian who taught at Notre Dame and Baylor, among other schools.

·       In Letter to the American Church, Metaxas describes disturbing parallels between the German Church of the 1930s and the Dietrich Bonhoeffer as well as William Wilberforce. Metaxas is a leading biographer of Bonhoeffer.

·       Resident Aliens is the first of two books by Methodist theologians Hauerwas and Willimon who taught at Duke. As resident aliens Christians live in a colony surrounded by a contemptuous secular society. This first volume discloses the theological foundation for resident aliens. The second book details practical ideas for believers to use.

·       That Where Resident Aliens Live is a manual of practical ideas for Christians to live out their faith.

·       Crunchy Cons is the first of a trio of books on this subject by Dreher, a journalist of the Orthodox faith tradition who currently lives and works in Hungary, A conservative (con) eating granola (crunchy) is Dreher’s metaphor for conservative Christians not wedded to the Republican establishment but seek out allies, regardless of partisanship, to deal with mutual concerns. The book is built around a Crunchy Con Manifesto-

o   We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream

o   Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff

o   Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government

o   Culture is as important as politics and economics

o   A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and stewardship- especially of the natural world- is not fundamentally conservative

o   Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract

o   Beauty is more important than efficiency

o   The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom

o   The institution most essential to conserve is the family

·       The Benedict Option alerts American believers that we now live in a Post-Christian nation. Dreher states that we will  be entering a Dark Age that will plunge the entirety of Western Civilization into decadence and dissolution. Thus, he calls Christians to embrace the Benedictine Order as a strategy to combat the moral chaos around us. Like Saint Benedict following the fall of Rome in the sixth century we can retreat to form small monastic communities founded on order, hospitality, stability, and prayer to save civilization.

·       Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents is Dreher’s way of expanding upon Solzhenitsyn’s essay to add detail on the characteristics of “soft” totalitarianism and how Christians can effectively resist with the family as the primary resistance cell.

 

There are three models of living as active passive resisters in our contemporary culture. Each model is an option for believers based upon our unique personalities, the set of spiritual gifts God has given us, and God’s calling upon our lives.

1.     Resident Aliens- This model has the most adherents. Christians are scattered throughout the wider secular culture and are employed mainly in secular jobs and primarily send their children to secular schools. Resident Aliens meet on Sundays for worship and Bible study and perhaps attend other church activities throughout the week.

2.     Intentional communities- Some Christians intentionally choose to live close together for mutual support while engaging with the wider secular culture. More children in this model attend private religious schools or are homeschooled. Historic examples of intentional communities include the Clapham Sect of south London from 1790s- 1840s which included William Wilberforce and fellow reformers and the Koinonia Farm founded in southwest Georgia in 1942 by Clarence Jordan and associates.

3.     Monastic communities- A fewer number of Christians will choose to almost completely withdraw from their culture and live together for mutual support and worship and prayer throughout the week.. While Catholic believers take holy orders to live in same-gender monasteries Protestant monasteries can take various forms and shapes. Children in this model tend to be homeschooled.

Deciding on which option to choose can be a demanding and complex one for some believers and easy for other Christ followers. God, in the end, grants us the freedom of choice in this regard. Let us choose wisely.

 

 

 

 

ON REPARATIONS FOR SLAVERY

 One of the ideas presented recently by the Progressive movement in the United States is a renewed emphasis on the United States government paying descendants of African Americans legally enslaved in our nation before the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. And some go as far to advocate reparations for descendants harmed by Jim Crow laws in various states until these laws were outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1963 and subsequent federal legislation. In this essay I will briefly examine a framework for reparations as well as some historical examples of reparations the Federal and state governments have paid for past injustices. I will then predict how a reparations system in the United States would work in the United States with the unintended consequences of reparations.

A Framework for Reparations

Rhonda Howard-Hassmann, professor at Wilfrid-Laurier University in Ontario Canada, provides a framework for consideration of reparations by listing nine conditions by which the payments for reparations will be much easier-

1.     The number of victims is relatively small.

2.     The victims are easily identifiable.

3.     Many of the direct victims are still alive.

4.     The injustice took place during a relatively short time period.

5.     The perpetrator is known.

6.     The injustice is easily identifiable.

7.     The injustice offends values of equality, personal safety, and/or the right to own property.

8.     There is a symbolic victim around whom advocates for reparations can rally.

9.     The amount of reparations asked for is not so large that the public will find it unreasonable.

As comprehensive the conditions listed by Howard-Hassmann are, I find it incomplete. To avoid using contemporary customs and standards to view much earlier ears of historical customs and standards as a basis for grievance to ignite advocacy for reparations I add a tenth condition-

10. The conditions for injustice must be understood in light of the customs and ethical standards when the conditions were normative and not considered unjust in light of contemporary views.

THistorical Examples of Reparations

There are several historical examples of reparations to which advocates of reparations point to demonstrate the reasonableness of reparations. The first example is the fate of Japanese Americans living on the west coast of the United States at the beginning of World War ll.

Thousands of Japanese Americans lived in California, Oregon, Washington, and the Territory of Hawaii in 1941-42. Viewed in the larger historical lens of the “Yellow Peril” fears of Euro-Americans for decades prior to World War ll, the next series of events seem almost a natural, yet regrettable, climax of these fears.

War fears of spying and sabotage exuberated the situation. The Army general commanding the West Coast defenses requested the removal of Japanese-Americans. His request was supported by civilian leaders in the western coastal states, one of the most notable being Governor Earl Warren of California. President Franklin Roosevelt approved and issued an executive order that resulted in 120,000 Japanese-American citizens to forfeit their properties and be relocated to internment camps in isolated parts of the American West.

The detainees in these camps were under armed guard so these Americans were for three years denied fheir freedoms to property, association, and travel as practiced by their fellow citizens. Unfortunately, these camps are often referred to as concentration camps giving rise to a possible close relationship to the brutal death camps of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during the same time period.

Japanese Americans in these camps were not tortured or murdered. While indeed hindered by racism, cruelty, and frozen winters, they demonstrated the can-do spirit so often demonstrated by immigrants- they build houses of worship, schools, sumo wrestling pits, and kabuki theaters. The high school at the Heart Mountain Camp near Cody Wyoming fielded a football team that in 1943 had an undefeated season against teams from surrounding towns.

Young men in these camps were also patriotic despite the actions of their government. Many voluntarily enlisted in the US Army and were assigned either to the 442^nd Regimental Combat Team or the 100^th Infantry Battalion of the Hawaii National Guard. Both units distinguished themselves in the European Theater of Operations. In particular, the 442^nd RCT became the most decorated Army unit in the war. Unfortunately, back at the home front, others in the camps were drafted and many of those young men who refused to serve were imprisoned for draft resistance.

Reparation advocacy for Japanese Americans grew after World War ll which culminated in the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Over 80,000 Americans of Japanese descent, symbolically led by US Senators Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga, each received a check for $20,000 for a total of about $1.6 billion. This reparation made all of the first nine conditions as listed by Howard-Hassmann and in addition, met the tenth condition I listed as German Americans and Italian Americans were not likewise interned for possible security concerns in such a massive way.

The second example occurred in Florida. In 1923, the predominantly African American community of Rosewood was entirely destroyed by white aggressors and the residents driven out permanently.

On May 4, 1994, a two-year campaign resulted in then-Governor  Lawton Chiles signing a bill to compensate survivors $1.5 million as well as allotting $500,000 to cover property damage inflicted in the attack on Rosewood and a  fund for descendants and other minorities. The scholarship is still available today.

“It was not money they truly enjoyed,” said Sherry Dupree, who runs the Rosewood Heritage Foundation in Gainesville. “These people were old…most of it went to health care.” The state reparations met or all of the Howard-Hassmann conditions as well as my addition.

Reparations for Slavery

I will now turn to the question of reparations being paid to the descendants of slavery in the Unites States using the framework conditions listed earlier in this essay to reach a determination for payment,

Condition #1- The number of victims is relatively small- NO. There were four million slaves in the United States per the 1860 census. Descendants today would reach “Abrahamic” numbers. For example, persons who identify as African American are about 12 percent of the current US population or about 40 million people.

Condition #2- The victims are easily identifiable- NO. All the direct victims of slavery are deceased. Of the approximate 40 million African Americans in the US today, not all are descended from slaves for several reasons. In 1860, there were 0.5 million free Blacks in the US, many of which had never been slaves. Then and now many African Americans are descended from other than American Blacks. For examples, Barack Obama’s father was Kenyan (his mother was a White from Kansas) and the parents of Kamala Harris were from South Asia and the West Indies. Finally, many Americans who do not identify as Black have some ancestors who were. For example, my ancestors were overwhelming European (99.1%) and at the same time I have some ancestors who were West African (0.7%).

To properly identify descendants of slaves who would be eligible for reparation payments would require a massive effort. We cannot rely upon the “Elizabeth Warren method” of ancestry identification by using family stories only. Proper identification of eligible recipients will require legal documents and records as well as DNA testing. One unintended consequence of the identification could result into major government overreach into our privacy.

Condition #3- Many of the direct victims are still alive- NO. None of the direct victims of slavery are still alive.

Condition #4- The injustice took place during a relatively short time period- NO. American slavery existed from 1619- 1865, a period of 246 years.

Condition #5- The perpetrator is known- YES, There are multiple perpetrators- African tribes, Great Britain (until 1776), United States (after 1776), and various colonial and state governments.

Condition #6- The injustice is easily identifiable- YES. Injustices included imprisonment indefinitely without trial, loss of property, torture, and other various punishments without due process.

Condition #7- The injustice offends values of values of equality, personal safety, and/or the right to own property- DIVIDED. In terms of contemporary values- YES. In terms of values for most of the period of slavery- NO.

Condition #8- There is a symbolic victim- PERHAPS. Howard-Hassmann suggests that perhaps Michelle Obama could be chosen since both her grandfathers were grandsons of slaves.

Condition #9- The amount of reparations requested is reasonable- NO. If 30 million Americans were approved to have legitimate ancestry and each descendant was paid $20 thousand, the amount in reparations would be $600 billion dollars.  

Condition #10- Is slavery considered immoral by both the wider culture from 1619-1865 and from 1865 to the present day- NO.

 

So, the conditions laid out in the framework provide us with a mixed record. While I believe that the reader believes, along with me, that American slavery system with tis fixation on the inferiority of African and other dark-skinned peoples was immoral and unethical way of relating with others. Even so, American slavery lasted over two centuries, we have no direct victims, descendants of slaves today would be difficult to identify, and the process of reparations would generate a massive shift of wealth unprecedented in our history so that the process would be rife with corruption and abuse. Therefore, I do not support future reparations for slavery.

And what do I mean by “future” reparations? What I mean that reparations by another name have been or have already been paid. I desire to emphasize three key points:

1.     Blood has been shed  to end slavery. The Civil War cost us a total of 620,000 lives at a conservative estimate- 330,000 from the North and 290,000 from the South. The end of slavery cost us a whole generation of young men. Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address explains,

“Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

2.     Beginning with the Great Society initiated by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965,  billions of dollars have been distributed to Blacks (and others) through federal and state welfare programs. Granted, this distribution of monies was not intended to be reparations, but in all practicality, the monies served the same purpose. Social commentator Christopher Caldwell in his book The Age of Entitlement speaks to the expense involved,

“Civil rights transformed the country not just constitutionally but also culturally and demographically. In ways few people anticipated, it proved to be the mightiest instrument of domestic enforcement the country has ever seen. It can fairly be described as the largest undertaking of any kind in American history. Costing trillions upon trillions of dollars (emphasis mine) and spanning half a century, it rivals, in terms of energy invested, the peopling of the West, the building of transcontinental railways and highways, the maintenance of Pax Americana for a half century after World War ll, or for that matter, any of the wars the country has fought, foreign or civil.” (p.9)

And, finally, I believe slavery reparations would be unconstitutional according to the equal protection section of the Fourteenth Amendment.

These concerns along with the privacy and corruption concerns stated  earlier would make slavery reparations, now or in the future, impossible to legislate, organize, and implement, now or in the future.

Bonus

The complexity of this issue was seen in a televised interview between CNN commentator Don Lemon and Hilary Fordwich, a Brit royals expert. Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom had just died during the past several days and King Charles lll had gaine the throne. Lemon asked Fordwich if  this would be a  good time for the UK to consider paying reparations for the slavery of its past. Fordwich replied this is indeed a good time for consideration of reparations since Britain had been the first nation to abolish slavery. (She was wrong- Haiti had been the first nation to do so,)

Then she caught her stride, For reparations to be paid, she said, one needs to consider the beginnings of the supply chain- the African tribes which supplied slaves to the Europeans. Then Fordwich told Lemon that after the descendants of the tribes paid reparations then payment would need to be considered for the descendants of the two thousand sailors and marines of the Royal Navy who died from disease or injury while on duty to stop the slavers. Lemon was not expecting this line of argument so when Fordwich ended her reply, Lemon concluded with “Good discussion” and stopped the interview.