- RL on Snorkeling in Scripture: Joshua Sears on Why Latter-day Saints Need Study Bibles: “Looks like some updates in the policy manual with take a friendlier stance to other translations in personal study including a “Bible list.” Also updates on AI: “38.8.40.1?. Editions and Translations of the Holy Bible (revised title; updated guidelines to state that some members may benefit from doctrinally clear Bible translations that are easier to understand than Church-published editions; added reference to a list of such translations?)”” Dec 15, 18:50
- on Delighting in bloodshed: “Mortimer, I disagree strongly that religion is inherently political. Churches existed long before and continue to exist outside our political order. I would say instead that political choices have unavoidable moral and religious implications. I agree with you about working for change. I don’t believe that was an option presented in LeGuin’s story. I don’t think “Why doesn’t the Church speak out” is useful. It’s like the people saying, “Why don’t the Democrats do something?” instead of just, you know, doing something themselves without waiting. Would I enjoy seeing President Oaks rebuke Republicans? Sure. But President Oaks has to speak to members in 200 countries and worry about the spiritual welfare of people across the political spectrum, and he has to weigh the utility of speaking out against the consequences, and none of that is my call to make. I can only choose when I speak and what I say. Lots of people and institutions have lots of reasons for doing or not doing something.” Dec 15, 17:00
- on Catholic Integralism and the Constitution: “For anybody interested in reading one man’s journey in postliberalism and the Church, I recommend the surrealist blogger Bobdaduck, who blogs at a Substack called the Duckstack. There’s also the EXIT Newsletter by Kevin Dolan, aka Bennett’s Phylactery, and a film critic podcast called the Granite Mountain Movie Club. All of these are Latter-day Saints at least adjacent to postliberalism or the New Right.” Dec 15, 16:28
- on Catholic Integralism and the Constitution: “I’m not as familiar with the young dissatisfied left as I am with the right, but I do interact with them when they come to clash with the right, and I very much disagree with your confidence that “on the let, all ages have gained a greater appreciation for classical liberalism and the idea that the government should not be telling you how to live your life.” The government telling you how to live your life is (a) what they already do if you take the libertarians seriously, and (b) FAR from the worst evil in the possibility space here. The young left shows an astonishing comfort with violence as a tool of political change, far in excess of anything I am privy to on the young right. Hasan Piker and Steven Bonnell (both streamers with audiences that rival Fuentes’) are very comfortable with endorsing the murder of right-wingers. There is a very healthy subculture on the left where the assassination of conservatives is seen as nothing to worry about. I was frankly horrified by the open celebrations of the murder of Charlie Kirk by a man who personally participated in these subcultures. The same is true of the veneration of Luigi Mangione, who murdered the CEO of United Healthcare. The most recent idea ascendant on the political left is decolonization, in which Western structures are systematically deconstructed in favor of indigenous alternatives. In Canada the government has begun granting title of privately owned lands to the local First Nations tribes. The Church will not find mercy from this lot any more than they would from the integralists. The decolonialists will be interested in informing us that the Book of Mormon is a work of neocolonialist mendacity and reverting Temple Square to the Núuchi-u.” Dec 15, 15:36
- on Delighting in bloodshed: “Jonathan Green, There is no such thing as a non-political institution, including religious organizations and especially not Christian institutions whose second greatest commandment is to love their neighbors. Politics is not mud wrestling with pigs (although some bad politicians devolve to that level). Politics actually reflects our shared decisions about how we treat one another, from our local communities to the global stage. Politics should be an advanced expression of charity and love, given structure through intelligent and just laws. The notion of neutrality ignores the reality that every system already reflects values and power. The brethren’s recent statements about media use and anger are PROFOUNDLY INSUFFICIENT. They are so vague and carefully tip-toe around the parties, names and movements involved that they UTTERLY FAIL to confront the clear and present spiritual dangers named in your excellent post including political indoctrination, authoritarianism, bloodthirst, and the resurgence of extremist ideologies. By never naming what is actually happening, these messages speak to everyone and no one at the same time, offering moral fog instead of a beacon light from a lighthouse. The result is predictable. About 2/3rds of US Saints have been duped to sincerely believe that cruelty, dehumanization, and MAGA-aligned violence are necessary evils to our might and strength. Nephi gloried in plainness and truth. But our conference talks, FP announcements, and news reports are so nebulous that they are NOT plain and therefore not particularly truthful. As a result, the do not protect the flock. Equally telling to how their messages are MEANT to be wishy-washy and non-direct is how they are delivered. Urgency is NOT conveyed through hushed reverent tones, nor is is buried in dozens of unrelated correlated topics. Life doesn’t just go on as normal when THIS is the threat. When something this grave is at stake, it should be THE main message. But, there are plenty of messages that help placate us to think of only the simple good shepherd Jesus. No need to think about the current storm or how Jesus’ own example was to speak out against and ultimately lose his life in political opposition to the violent, tyrannical, unjust occupiers. The story of Omelas IS relevant because it exposes a choice we all face once our eyes are opened to suffering. We can either turn away and enjoy the calm of privilege, or accept responsibility for what we now know. Like the citizens of Omelas, we have three choices. 1) to continue as normal and consent to the evils you described in the name of our might, power and prosperity. 2) To leave the city. (Now not possible as this tide covers the earth) 3) WORK TO CHANGE what should never be tolerated. I believed, and actually I still believe, that Jesus’ church should champion that kind of moral courage, and push back against acquiescence. I’m bereft that we “shrink and shun the [moral] fight”. The Church may claim to be “neutral”, yes, but it RESERVES the right to “take a position on matters that it believes have significant moral or ethical implications or that directly affect the mission and teachings of the Church.” So again, I ask- where are the watchmen on the watchtower? Where is the voice of warning? Not a muffled mention drown in 10 hours of conference talks each season, or the 432 pages in the adult Come Follow Me manual, or the millions of pages on lds.org, but a real emergency bell?” Dec 15, 14:27
- on Catholic Integralism and the Constitution: “J.D. Vance is a fan of Deneen, Yarvin, and other post-liberals. If he is Trump’s heir, we can expect the Republican party to continue in that direction. That probably doesn’t mean a coup that explicitly replaces the Constitution. The role model is Orban in Hungary, who successfully converted a liberal democracy into an illiberal sham democracy by taking over the institutions of society and making them functionally organs of his party. Trump’s attempts to make the media, universities, law firms, tech, and big business in general bow the knee to him are not just ego; they are an attempt to do the same thing in the United States. (Putin’s Russia is also a role model for the end goal, in particular its ethnonationalism and use of Russian Orthodoxy.) Now, as far as I know Vance hasn’t talked Catholic Integralism about specifically, which would alienate the evangelicals that are so critical to Trump’s coalition. I can easily imagine Catholic Integralists thinking of evangelicals as useful temporary allies, to be led along with promises of Christian supremacy and who will realize only too late that the people they’ve put in charge don’t consider them proper Christians. So, basically how evangelical Christian Nationalists think about Latter-day Saints. To be clear: religious freedom is part and parcel of classical liberalism. Post-liberals generally do not believe in it. The founding fathers were classical liberals, and the Constitution is based on it. Even if President Oaks never gives another political talk, Love Your Enemies (October 2020), Defending Our Divinely Inspired Constitution (April 2021), and his University of Virginia speech in November 2021 are strong endorsements of both classical liberalism and the Constitution, and rejections of post-liberalism in all its forms. We know where he stands and where he thinks we should stand. But we older folks need to realize that all the rising generation has seen in Washington DC is hyper-partisanship, gridlock, and dysfunction. We may think that fixing it is mostly about replacing people, or tinkering on the margins, and then we can get back to the more-or-less functional government we had in our younger days. It should not be a surprise that the rising generation thinks more fundamental change is needed. But it is my sense that on the left, all ages have gained a greater appreciation for classical liberalism and the idea that the government should not be telling you how to live your life, even if the younger generation is very willing to replace the Constitution with something “more democratic.”” Dec 15, 13:40
- on Snorkeling in Scripture: Joshua Sears on Why Latter-day Saints Need Study Bibles: “I’ve enjoyed my Zondervan NRSV study Bible. I wish I were equipped to evaluate it compared to the ones mentioned here.” Dec 15, 12:33
- on Catholic Integralism and the Constitution: “Stephen, Thank you for your kind words. I do want to clarify that, though I move in similar currents, I do not speak as a postliberal and definitely not as a Catholic integralist. I agree with a lot of their descriptions of our current condition, but a very common postliberal belief is that this state of affairs was always inevitable, that the logic and incentives of liberalism would lead us inexorably here one way or another. I don’t think that’s true, my acquaintance with the historical record leads me to believe that there was a lot more contingency involved than pop-postliberal theory would acknowledge. I’m acknowledge that mass democracy imposes an incentive structure that inhibits solutions to a lot of our problems, but I’ve not thrown in the towel. I admire the Founders and don’t want to toss their achievements aside, and I have no plans to provoke the wrath of God by setting up a king here. Those motivations, though, are themselves not very “liberal” – they come from a love of historical tradition and religion. The more liberalism deconstructs those sources of value, the more it saws off its own branch. Postliberals can be critical of the Constitution but not universally so – like every ideology, there are mild and extreme strains. Vermeule, for instance, is not really critical of the Constitution as a whole, though he’s criticized this-or-that clause. Rather, he’s critical of the common-law juridical tradition that controls our Constitution’s interpretation. We inherited that from the English. Roman law (also called “civil law”), in contrast, dominates the jurisprudence of the European continent. The difference boils down to precedent. In Anglo-American common-law, precedent is entitled to deference from the Court. In Roman law, the text of the law is what matters, and precedent is only an indicator of where the Court might go – they are free to judge each case based on the law, the merits, and their conception of the common good without the interpretive strictures of precedent. Vermeule prefers this, since it allows the government to flex a little with the times and makes the Constitution more of a “living document” (there’s some horseshoe theory for ya). Of course, Vermeule’s ideas about how we should flex are more “the Due Process Clause only guarantees whatever process the legislature says is due” and less “the Privileges and Immunities Clause guarantees the ERA.” If you’ve ever encountered the term “common-good constitutionalism,” that’s Vermeule’s term for what he advocates. That’s about as postliberal as you can get at Harvard Law. This strain of postliberalism is the strongest, I think. Even a lot of Catholic integralists want Catholicism to be the religion of the state governments – which the federal Constitution does permit, or at least did at the beginning, though most state constitutions do not. A state religion of all fifty states will become functionally the religion of the feds, after all. I don’t see a whole lot of appetite for tossing out the Founding Charter even among the integralists – the Venn Diagram of integralists and monarchists is far from a perfect circle. However, there is a LOT of Supreme Court revisionism, so to speak. Basically the Constitution is valuable as a Schelling point, a central organizing point to keep the country together, as long as we reinterpret it pretty aggressively in some ways. However, I would be very remiss if I did not address the monarchists in the room – I don’t want to sanewash. These guys are overwhelmingly extremely online and young, the archetype we’ve been discussing here. They’re mostly acolytes of Curtis Yarvin, an Internet-famous political theorist who was recently profiled by the New Yorker. There’s also a host of online influencer-philosophers who emphasize vitalism, physical-fitness-as-moral-signifier, hereditarianism about IQ, and a few other positions that also tend towards the same principle: hierarchy as a conferral of moral validity. If you’ve ever heard the names Bronze Age Pervert or Raw Egg Nationalist – this is what we’re talking about. Their general idea is that the United States and other liberal societies has coasted on cultural capital from the Before Times – cultural intuitions about social organization from a pre-liberal age that had not yet been deconstructed by egalitarianism – but the nature of egalitarianism eventually interrogates and deconstructs all value judgments and social hierarchies no matter their function, collapsing all into the “oppressed v. oppressor” dynamic of critical theory. Egalitarianism in their thought has all the function of an autoimmune disorder. Therefore the end of liberalism can be seen from the beginning and “globohomo” was written into the DNA. As part of that DNA the Constitution is an obstacle for the most part, though I’ve never seen a coherent plan for what would come next from this group – they don’t think they can predict what comes next and are therefore satisfied with ushering it into being and vanquishing the devil they know. When asked they mostly quote their midcentury luminary Julius Evola: “ride the tiger.” Groyperism, the personal following of Nick J. Fuentes, is a thing all its own. It is a cult of personality and a collection of behavioral tics, not an ideology with substance (I rather dislike them and that will come through here.) A lot of the more intellectual postliberals make fun of them, especially after Charlie Kirk was murdered and Nick Fuentes telegraphed that he was going to try to fill Kirk’s vacated niche. Fuentes is a troll, a talented streamer and entertainer to be sure, but a troll. He and Kirk had a sort of civil war for the soul of the youth which Kirk was winning handily before his assassination. Fuentes is all about provocation for its own sake, and that is his ideology: the modern world sucks and is upheld by a set of moral codes, therefore break those codes to break the spell. To be quite honest, Fuentes and the groypers are spiritual heirs of punk. Whereas the punk scene violated taboos against emo presentation and Satanism, the continuing liberalization of society removed all the taboos for them to violate…except for the taboos against Nazism and ethnic bigotry, the windmills against which they joust. However, provocateurs generally aren’t good at voter outreach, executive staffing, or getting favors done. Kirk was always much better at that, which is why the President of the United States got a football stadium for his funeral and Fuentes streams from a basement. The whole thing is gross, but I’m not as worried about it as I am the monarchists – Fuentes’ actions after Kirk’s murder seem to have burned his bridges with the gatekeepers of the actual Republican Party. Kirk was a generational talent at organizing, communicating, recruitment, and building bridges within the coalition, and he was deeply beloved by mostly everybody with any connection to the party structure. Fuentes is not, and his presumption has earned him great ire. Without him, there’s really nothing to groyperism.” Dec 15, 11:41
- on Snorkeling in Scripture: Joshua Sears on Why Latter-day Saints Need Study Bibles: “Thank you! I guess I’ll reup when it comes out” Dec 15, 09:36
- on Catholic Integralism and the Constitution: “To build off of Hoosier’s excellent description, another piece of the puzzle is that a lot of younger conservative people think that the Constitution has already been subordinated to a religious-political ideology for a while. Christopher Caldwell argues in his book “Age of Entitlement” that the 1964 Civil Rights Act basically created a second Constitution with a mandate to liberate every last racial or sexual minority from any and all oppression. His analysis has some bite – since the 60s, the Supreme Court has used the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to conjure up constitutionally protected rights out of whole cloth (abortion, contraceptives, same sex marriage etc.) You can argue about whether those are good or bad – but having them imposed via judicial fiat under the aegis of “the Constitution” made a lot of people think they were being conned. If “the Constitution” just means advancing whatever the bleeding edge of progressivism is at any given time then conservative people are going to wonder what the point of it is. There’s also kind of a prisoners dilemma problem here. Both major political parties in America seem fine with violating constitutional and governmental norms when they have something to gain from it, but turning around and waving the constitution like a bloody shirt when it’s done to them. I think seeing “the Constitution” deployed that cynically is going to make a lot of people view it as just another tool that’s subordinate to their actual religious or political aims.” Dec 15, 09:00
