Chaos and the Sliding Scale of Morality
Plato proposed that out of chaos comes the rule of law or tyranny. America now has chaos. We have a written rule of law - one codified in the law itself, the second is inscribed on the tablets of our hearts. And we have tyranny waiting in the wings offering its dystopian dreams in utopian costumes. A recent poll cited that 85% of Americans think the country is out of control. Hopeful leftists danced for joy on the corpses they have left in the streets crying out, “See, the oppressors are the problem, those in power. Let’s vote them out, tear down the system, and establish a transformed society.” However, that is not at all what the majority of the 85% are saying. Many among the 85% are people like me, who believe the country is out of control in major cities because of weakness - cowardly action on the part of mayors and governors who are appeasing the mob, the destroyers, the criminals, and the thieves. Where are the police? Where are courageous leaders who will stand up and stand down the mob?
Having to watch the Minneapolis mayor be shouted off his lawn for having an opinion was disheartening, sickening even. That is what we mean, and I would bet more than half of the 85% who say the nation is out of control are regular citizens who want law and order established. Without that, tyranny will become our way of life. In recent days, on what is called Capitol Hill in downtown Seattle, a new land has been established - Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or CHAZ. It cries out for a poem or at least a rhyme. Once upon a time in a land called CHAZ - you take it from there. It is as though some progressive or permissive [I repeat myself] parents told their kids to have a drunken dystopian orgy at home. Kind of a Home Alone, Eyes Wide Shut dive into the fleshpots of Seattle, and told them, “Be safe, we will clean up in the morning.”
I have lived over seventy years and for the first time in recent weeks the wisdom and necessity of the second amendment has become crystal clear. I do not own a gun, I have never fired one, but it is now clear to me that if any of the far left or right utopian idealists ever get power, why owning a weapon to maintain our freedom and to protect our communities is essential.
I am amazed at the politicians who have a sliding scale of morality, and it is changing at lightning speed. Just compare what our leaders are saying today with what they were saying ten years ago. Any politician who would have called for the defunding of police ten years ago would have been roundly booed, discredited, and not reelected. Of course, after some pushback, they got out their sliding scales and are changing the meaning of words like “defund” which now means “review,” and will soon mean “never mind.” Because they are so weak, so easily wrecked by public opinion, so homeless intellectually, and, unlike Archimedes or Jesus, they have no place to stand. It is a feckless race to power. America has been cooped up for three months, people have been restless and ready to get out and do something.
Then the George Floyd tragedy took place. The people threw off the restraints. Appeasing governors, mayors, and police chiefs, who had complained of demonstrations against their draconian lock downs, now allowed the crowds to overwhelm the police. In many cities the police were told to stand down. They burned the cities with no idea of what would replace them. “They were angry!”, you say in their defense. Yes, they were! They had good reason to be angry and frustrated, but they were, and remain, largely young. A generation cut off from their history and from the reasons for this country. A cut flower generation who are morally confused reeds blowing in the wind.
Older adults have failed them three times. The first way was the destruction of the family unit in the lower economic communities. The fathers have left, the families are fragmented, and the government has treated African Americans like dependents in perpetuating a dependence on government in a cynical crusade to control their vote in order to maintain power. We keep telling minorities that they are victims and that they can’t make it on their own. They are told, get mad, ask for stuff, take what the rich have - it’s yours anyway.
I am with Shelby Steele on this one, a scholar at the Hoover Institute, who says he would take Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton seriously when they, and other black leaders, would turn the focus on the black community and say, “How have we been culpable in our own problems?” What about our absent fathers, or our music that treats women as sexual toys and objects to abuse? Why have we allowed our modern educational masters to continue to fail our children with bad schools? Why won’t they fix our schools or give us better teachers, or at least, an opportunity to get into better schools in our community, not some other community? Our leaders have failed them at the personal family level and moral development level. We have failed them at the local level in the schools. Finally, we have failed them at the national level by telling them they aren’t really black if they don’t appreciate what we have done for them. In fact, we have created and perpetuated and interned them in a servile underclass.
Then there are the white, privileged oppressors under 35 who have become, by far, the largest number of protestors. Among the young whites are Antifa, a militant group whose purposes in joining protests are sinister, revolutionary, and clearly mustering insurrection. They exacerbate, they inflame, they orchestrate looting, violence, and chaos. The vast majority of protestors have been peaceful, but it only takes a handful of agitators to inflame and use a crowd for purposes that the crowd had no agreeable intent.
Charles Malik (1906-1987), the President of the Commission on Human Rights in the United Nations General Assembly, spoke prophetically about what is happening among the affluent young whites in America. Malik spoke to the Christians of his day about their quest to reach the world with the message of Jesus:
“You may win every battle, but if you lose the war of ideas, you will have lost the war. You may lose every battle, but if you win the war of ideas, you will have won the war. My deepest fear and your greatest problem are that you may not be winning the war of ideas.”
Among the protestors are people of every philosophical ilk. Various worldviews fill the night air mixed with smoke, fire, and the sounds of pepper shots and tear gas. Some are there to lament, to show their friends that they mourn what has happened to George Floyd, to the African American community, and to decry the division in our country. Yet what divides us is not always on the surface. It is not so easy to see where the cracks in the national divide begin. This is why I bring up Charles Malik’s statement. The divide is visible economically and racially. But its origins are about ideas, words, concepts, and ideologies held by people long gone from this earth. People whose destructive beliefs live on in the minds of academics, public and professional intellectuals, the media, in movies and television, are reflected in the political class, in actors who simply speak memorized lines, and newscasters who read off teleprompters.
For brevity and clarity, allow me to contrast two ways of looking at the present situation.
1. The Christian WorldView
a. God created every person in his image. Therefore, every person, regardless of color, creed, nation, slave or free, Jew or Gentile, male or female, are of equal value. To deny this or to treat anyone differently based on these things alone is a sin against God and against others, against humanity.
b. Humans sinned in what is called the fall; we have all become sinners. Humans are, therefore, alienated from God and each other. The more tribal we are, the worse it becomes. We need repentance, as individuals, and, in some cases, as organizations.
c. Redemption and forgiveness are available. Not only that, but essential, and God has provided that redemption in Jesus Christ. This can also be adjusted to some other religions and philosophies.
d. Christ came, lived, died, was buried, then raised to new life, and one day will return to bring justice to all people and to the earth.
e. Summarized as Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration.
2. Progressive Culture Worldview
a. No creation story - origins cannot be known or are not really important - agnostic, atheistic, or benign conventional religion.
b. Oppression - society is defined not by what you are as an individual, but what group you are in. This is what we know as identity politics. If you are a white male, then you are an oppressor. It can be classism, patriarchy, white supremacy, toxic masculinity, et al.
c. Redemption - protest, resistance, education, awareness.
d. Restoration- equality, power reversal, justice, diversity, liberation
Some common statements:
1. No more patriarchy.
2. White fragility.
3. Homosexuality is my identity.
4. Systematic privilege.
5. Hear the oppressed voices. They have a right to be heard, but the patriarchy needs to shut up and listen, whatever you say is you trying to protect your privilege.
6. Lived experience is truth, even if it is contradicted by proven reality.
There is a lot more to say and I plan to say it in other writings. This country made a courageous decision in the 1960s. It said, “We’ve been wrong about a number of things, let’s make it better.” That led to discrimination based on race being outlawed. Now we are attempting to live it out. It is painful and it will take humility, but among everyone, not just whites who are “privileged.” Right now, a very dangerous thing is happening, a class of Americans, who think they have become morally superior to other races or classes of people have begun to shame the most understanding and forgiving country in the world.
My word to them is remember who you are; 100% sinners, 100% saints, 100% of the time, whose righteousness is as dirty rags. Come humbly before your God, and one another, and he will heal our land.
“Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.” - 2 Chronicles 7:14, NLT
