They Did What Was Right in Their Own Eyes
Where do rights come from? Do they even exist? Let's ask a Politico reporter!
Friday’s news cycle was demoralizing. So many emotions.
We learned that Ottawa County Administrator John Gibbs—a man I had to tell a lot of angry people not to vote for in the 2022 Republican Congressional primary—is effectively bat-poo crazy. I already knew he was lazy. I took a lot of flak for that one (in a professional capacity) from people who swore he was God’s gift to politics and governance, but now he’s being pushed out by his own previous supporters. Figures.
I had not looked into the Alabama IVF court ruling yet, and was just going off of chatter I read. I should not have been surprised at all, but I learned the case was entirely different from how people were characterizing it. The case was actually brought by couples who did IVF! They wanted to sue the fertility clinic for negligence in letting a random person wander into cold storage who killed their “wanted” embryos. The Alabama Supreme Court simply said yes, they deserve restitution.
The Media immediately began using the case as a political cudgel, and many Republicans sensing unpopularity raced to the nearest microphone to laud the wonders of IVF. The whole case exists because of the cavalier attitude of an unregulated and unscrupulous fertility industry, but the end result of their own negligence in Alabama probably means they will end up with even less regulatory oversight and more immunity from abusing their customers. They are able to wield the emotion of infertile couples being able to have children as an endless “I win” button to bypass all rational thought, no matter how badly they hurt other people or society itself.
I think here especially of people who were told to DO NOT EVER MARRY YOUNG, delayed starting a family, realizing only too late they’ll never have kids of their own and society lied to them. The fertility clinics aren’t too sad: they are tens of thousands of dollars richer from such cases, and have plenty other prospective clients to fleece with promises of a child of their own.
But the most depressing story of all was watching an MSNBC talking head segment discuss “Christian Nationalism.” Politico reporter Heidi Przybyla defined Christian Nationalists as those who believe their rights come from God, and not any earthly authority. Oof.
Hearing that, every American should have alarm bells ringing in their heads and pull the red FIRE handle on the wall.
Like Squealer and Napoleon in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the elites of our nation have their will expressed by such people as Ms. Przybyla, who boasts in her bio of her multiple years at several media enterprises and getting Joe Biden to bad mouth the Hyde Amendment, which restricts tax-funding of abortions. She goes out there to say things that the barnyard animals are to just accept and shrug off if it’s radically different from what they heard before.
America’s elite now fundamentally reject America’s mission statement: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Before I continue, a word about Christian Nationalism. I am not a Christian Nationalist, though I would prefer to live in an explicitly Christian nation.
As the Alabama IVF case shows, there is nowhere close to enough support in America to establish a state on an explicitly Christian doctrine. I doubt many Christian Nationalists would disagree with me there. Really, the whole Christian Nationalism or Catholic Integralism conversations are about what this blog details: American decline. More specifically: how can we foolproof a government to prevent it from falling into the crushing dark singularity of wokeness? Obviously, the American foundation was not enough to prevent the current troubles.
Well, the sad truth is, no such foolproof foundation exists. Being a Christian means accepting that every human being is fundamentally flawed, and perfection is impossible. No matter how soundly we build a government or how impressive our constitution is written, we will break them in the end. Human history is one long lesson that nothing can be truly done to prevent a decline. Certainly some declines are longer and more severe than others, but the human condition is unavoidable. When we become well off, we always seem to become complacent and addicted to good times. Like any addict, too much of a thing causes problems to pile up. No addict is ready to reform until they hit rock bottom.
Thankfully, everyone’s rock bottom varies. Hopefully America’s rock bottom is soon to come.
There is no example in history of a powerful civilization that has avoided a period of decline. The Israelites were given government directly from God, who physically and visibly led them for decades. They turned away at every opportunity. You think anyone else can do better?
This principle is true of anything in life: order is the exception to chaos. I can think in my own life of projects or groups or plans I left to someone else in perfect working order, and they were ruined so quickly, not even out of malicious intent or sheer laziness. My first house was totally redone and flipped by the previous owner, and by the time I was done with it and selling it to someone else, it was not of the same quality or care that I inherited…
While many of our founding fathers probably believed what they were setting up was the best thing ever conceived, I doubt most of them (especially the sharpest ones) believed the Republic would last forever. They were keen students of history and knew perfection was impossible. No better formulation of the problem of government has ever been expressed than James Madison in the Federalist Papers:
“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
I don’t want to say Christian Nationalism is necessarily a fool’s errand, but any effort to accomplish something close to that is probably going to take generations, and then will inevitably be undone some generations after that. Any conservative conception of politics should understand that.
So, if Christian Nationalism is mostly just a fantasy or academic theory at this point, why is Ms. Przybyla and company freaking out about it so much? Well, progressivism is a totalitarian ideology. It must have total control in order to succeed. It must constantly have a foe to organize resistance against. Christian Nationalism is that foe and the threat of the current moment. They need it to exist, and would invent it if it didn’t. After all, look how they characterized harmless, milquetoast Mitt Romney in 2012!
All forms of left-wing ideology (and “right-wing” if you consider fascism) have the same creative beginning and destructive end. They identify a real problem, pick an unpopular target as the main cause of the problem, present themselves as the only solution, and when the solution doesn’t work, point to either the original problem or a new external threat as the reasons the solution isn’t working. It’s basically an elaborate confidence game; a civilizational Ponzi scheme of power instead of money.
So, for example, the Soviets said the Capitalists and landowners were to blame for the inhuman conditions of the new industrial economy, or the Russian royalty’s wickedness. After murdering the capitalists and taking total control over their nation, the Soviets then managed to mess everything up, starve millions of their own citizens, and killed millions of people who may rebel themselves. They ended up with an even more greedy and bloodthirsty ruling class than the Russian czars. The Soviets blamed the Americans and the existence of non-communist nations abroad as the reasons for failure and the constant threat requiring them to stay in power.
As Squealer said in Animal Farm:
“Comrades!” he cried. “You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples. Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back! Yes, Jones would come back! Surely, comrades,” cried Squealer almost pleadingly, skipping from side to side and whisking his tail, “surely there is no one among you who wants to see Jones come back?”
Modern woke ideology is the same story. It’s a reactionary ideology that obsesses over why communism didn’t work. It blames the failure on other, more insidious forms of repression than just class and economics: gender, race, sexuality, etc. Only when all of these things are abolished can the Revolution finally succeed. Only when the entire foundation of humanity is ground to dust can a new one be built. And if you question the insanity of their plans, like cutting off the genitals of children experiencing serious mental illness, why, you just want those Christian Nationalists to come back in power, don’t you? They’ll take America back to the Dark Age of 1965, where inquisitors ride around in black hoods with bloody scythes, murdering young women left and right to maintain a vice-like grip on power, all justified under the false compassion and authority of their made-up religion!
America was not founded on a woke basis, or one where rights are derived from earthly authorities. America was founded on the proposition that rights supersede earthly authority. There is no “divine right” of kings: all human beings have inherent value, and though government is instituted among Men by their Creator, His authority is not wholly delegated to the king; the government is the trustee of God’s authority. And kings generally stink at that, so we gave a Republican form of government a try. Yet, sadly, Mel Gibson’s character in The Patriot was right:
“Would you tell me, please, Mister Howard, why should I trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as easily as a King can.”
True rights can only exist if they are secured by an authority above the government, whether it’s by one king, or 100 senators, or some weird future techno-democracy where everything is decided by a majority vote on our smartphones. Otherwise, “rights” are whatever the government says they are. In that case, they aren’t rights, but mere privileges. Allowances.
So, using Ms. Przybyla’s definition of rights, the Nazis were right to gas the Jews, because that’s what a majority of Germans wanted. The rights of Jews were wholly dependent on what the German government said they were.
Of course, I have no doubt Ms. Przybyla would vociferously object to that: she’s been immersed in our civilization, which still sort of claims to believe in objective truth and true rights. I guess in a certain sense she is correct: the entire concept of human rights fundamentally depends on a religious worldview that every human has inherent value as an infinite being made in the image and likeness of God. So, Thomas Jefferson, who once rewrote the Bible to fit his own ideas, is a Christian Nationalist, because he believes rights are endowed by the Creator, rather than determined by earthly authorities, be they a king or a legislature.
How can people have such cognitive dissonance to believe in fundamental human rights while also believing other human beings grant those rights? How do they square the circle of saying rights are dependent on earthly authorities, but earthly authorities can be wrong and must be overcome?
I think it’s two reasons, working together at the same time. First, as I already mentioned, they have to believe they must have total control over government, and any conception of God is a fundamental threat to their worldview. Their Revolution will never succeed as long as a single human being believes in a source of authority above or outside the Revolution.
That means they are essentially lying about what “rights” mean, because it sounds better to the average person. No, milk and apples are not necessary to the well-being of a pig, but if “Science” says so, the sheep will go along with it, right? “Four legs good, two legs baaaaad,” until it’s time to have them say “four legs good, two legs better!”
For them, the issue is never the issue; the issue is always the Revolution. Whatever “issue” is being discussed is not important itself; it only matters in how the issue can be twisted to advance their broader goals. It doesn’t matter that those couples who did IVF in Alabama who wanted to have future children—after spending tens of thousands of dollars—were fundamentally wronged by the negligence of their fertility clinic and deserve restitution; what matters is advancing abortion and shaming prolifers for electoral gain. How dare they want to tell people “no” about something they want!
They can lie (even if it’s to themselves), because they are the ultimate authority and only answer to themselves, not some god. They do whatever is right in their own eyes.
And that’s the second reason for such a cognitive dissonance: the sheer emotional force of doing whatever they want. The idea of rights sounds great to them, so they go with that, no matter the consequences to their other beliefs. They are emotionally incapable of following their claims to their logical ends: if all government authority derives from mankind, than whatever the government decides is right. If Trump wins and changes their rights, that’s the new and only legitimate definition of rights. There is no objective truth or morality.
Of course, Ms. Przybyla would be the first to take to the webpages of Politico to object if her “rights” are violated by some earthly authority—especially Mr. Trump. If America tomorrow decided in a vote to ban abortion, she will not accept that authority, ever. No, she doesn’t actually believe in fundamental rights or objective truth, nor does she really believe rights are determined by electoral majorities; she wants whatever seems to benefit her in the moment. She believers in “her truth,” so she’s not really lying, from a certain point of view. It’s pathological narcissism masquerading as political philosophy.
Whether it’s purposefully lying or emotional coping, the end result is the same: woke progressives do not believe in human rights. They only believe in whatever plausible-sounding excuse or confabulation works for the moment, for themselves and the general public. They only believe in themselves. Their end goal is simply feeling great all the time: the beatific vision in Heaven they’ll never get, because they don’t believe Heaven exists.
This new constitution MSNBC seeks to form America under is even worse than the divine right of kings. At least in a monarchy, while you peasants may not have the right to question the king’s decisions, the king will ultimately answer to God as the final judge. If evils are committed, they will be rectified in the end. Justice will be done.
Under the earthly right of Heidi Przybyla, there is no ultimate judge, except her own emotional state. And since she’s just an organic machine that will soon break down and be lost to endless time—like tears in rain—whatever horrific decisions she and her compadres make won’t have to be lived with for very long. Justice is nothing.
So, if you believe in objective truth—that something is wrong because it’s wrong, even if every human being on planet Earth tomorrow decided it was good in the moment—you should be horrified that such a discussion took place at a major news outlet. You should be horrified that so many didn’t speak up about it. The enemies aren’t just inside the gates; they are now running the king’s court.
But, if you just want to do whatever is right in your own eyes, praise the Earthly Authorities and pass the ammunition.