Making Excuses for Violent Tyrannies
It is not only conservatives who have noticed progressive hypocrisy. For years, European and American governments reflexively chanted the slogan “never again” and declared to the world that they would never let genocide of any sort or anti-Semitism go unchecked. But in the third decade of the 21st century, not even a century after the Final Solution and the mass murder of Jews, Western governments have sat idly by while Xi Jinping and China’s communist government set up what the Human Rights Foundation noted were very literally concentration camps in western China for the purpose of so-called reeducating Uyghurs.
In November, the municipal government of San Francisco, Calif., took to the streets to clean up the filthy mess that the city had become over the last half decade. Homeless men and women were shunted into shelters and syringes and human excrement were removed from the streets, but not for a visit from the president of the United States, or the British monarch, or for another major Western leader, but instead for the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. This is the man who has spent the better part of a half-decade openly engaging in genocide against Muslim Uyghurs in western China.
A week earlier a Jewish man had been clubbed to death by a pro-Hamas demonstrator in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Far from being isolated and disconnected events, San Francisco’s welcome of Xi Jinping and the death of a Jewish man on the streets of a California city are directly tied together. They are both evidence of the absolute hypocrisy of the Western world.
For years the slogan “never again” has been trotted out by progressives to ensure that the legacy of the Holocaust was remembered and that outright genocide and anti-Semitism would be finally removed from Western society.
Related Posts:
You Might also like
-
What’s Happening in Schools? Why We Need Educational Freedom
The Times told about a 15-year-old girl who had been identifying as a boy at school. The mom saw a boy’s name on a homework assignment: When she asked about the name, the teenager acknowledged that, at his request, teachers and administrators at his high school in Southern California had for six months been letting him use the boy’s bathroom and calling him by male pronouns. The article went on to explain that the California school “is one of many throughout the country that allow students to socially transition – change their name, pronouns, or gender expression – without parental consent.
We know that there are good teachers and good schools out there. Many teachers are Christians – they go into the profession because they love God, love children, are passionate about their subject matter and have a gift for helping children learn.
Many do excellent work, and I’m thankful for the great teachers my children had and the good schools they attended.
But at the same time, I’m very aware that our education system has serious problems. The news is filled with stories about bad things happening in public schools – and some private – across the country.
It really feels overwhelming and like we’ve reached an urgent tipping point: Parents must have educational freedom – to give their children better opportunities to learn and grow, to protect them from chaotic classroom environments and underperforming schools, and to safeguard them against radical and sexual ideologies.
Here are just a few examples of problems in education that have been reported by news outlets. They illustrate why parents need school choice and educational freedom.
Violence and Bullying
Rod Dreher, author of Live Not by Lies, recently highlighted a story from The San Francisco Chronicle. He writes:
A Ukrainian refugee girl fleeing the war in her homeland is so disturbed by violence and anarchy in her San Francisco school that she wants to go back home — to a war zone!
The Chronicle reports that the young girl, Yana, thought school in America would be like what she saw in television shows, “idyllic settings where teenage conflict and angst ironed itself out by the end.”
But when she and her mother left Ukraine, Yana was terrified by “the chaotic scenes in her middle school classrooms … the verbal abuse, hallway conflicts and classroom outbursts.” Students stole her cell phone and threatened her.
Teachers are growing concerned, and not just in San Francisco. The Chronicle reported:
Across the country, teachers say student violence overall has more than doubled since the pandemic began and that they are “increasingly the target of disruptive behavior in the classroom,” according to a survey released Thursday by education research firm EAB.
The survey also found that 84% of teachers believe current students lack the ability to self-regulate and build relationships compared with peers prior to the pandemic.
Yana’s school “offered her a security action plan to make sure she felt safe.” But she just stopped attending and is trying to transfer to a different school. “Yana just wants to go back to her hometown in central Ukraine, back to the only school she knew before the war,” the paper reported.
Lack of Transparency
The New York Times, somewhat surprisingly, recently ran a story about teachers hiding children’s “gender identity” from parents. The paper reported on parents who were upset by this, but seemed to sympathize more with school administrators and teachers.
Read More
Related Posts: -
Winsomeness Redux: Focusing on the Virtues Expected of Christ’s Followers
Given that history, we would be better served to abandon the desire for winsomeness and all attempts to repurpose it and make it our own, and to instead return to Scripture’s ideas and terms regarding the multi-faceted virtue which is to be exhibited by the followers of Christ. President Kruger is right in his aim and practice, but we could wish he finds a better theory and terminology in which to dress it. For the excellencies of the Spirit-filled life do not fit well in the rhetoric of contemporary American culture.
The debate over the desirability of winsomeness continues. In a recent entry no less eminent and praiseworthy a gentleman than President Kruger of Reformed Theological Seminary – Charlotte has come to the defense of winsomeness with a polite but unyielding article asserting that instilling winsomeness is a key part of his institution’s efforts. He maintains that character matters; that it affects how our message is likely to be received; and that the Reformed world is in need of much improvement on this point. Those three points are indisputably true, but it is not clear that they have the close relation to winsomeness that President Kruger maintains.
Central to his argument is his contention that being winsome is simply embodying the fruits of the Spirit in our own lives. Let it be stated very plainly that if to be winsome is to be kind, loving, patient, and all the other fruits of the Spirit, then we are indeed under obligation to be winsome. No believer is permitted to disparage the Spirit’s works or embody the works of the flesh (Rom. 8:13), and if President Kruger’s aim is only to inculcate a Spirit-directed life in his students and audience (comp. Gal. 5:25) it is wholly appropriate, and all Presbyterians ought to wish him Godspeed.
I disagree with his definition, however, and assert that while his ministerial efforts are laudable his scheme of classification is mistaken. The essence of winsomeness does not lie in the sundry fruits of the Spirit or being like Christ. The conception of winsomeness that Kruger and others praise regards winsomeness as something in the person who is deemed winsome. Indeed, Kruger uses winsome as a synonym for virtuous or Spirit-filled.
But winsomeness, like attractiveness, is in the eye of the beholder. Its essence does not lie so much in what one is, but in how he or she is perceived by others. We describe other people as winsome when we regard them as charming, likable, pleasant, polished, and generally enjoyable to listen to or keep company with. Such people tend to be many of the things that Kruger regards as essential, such as kind or peaceable, but their winsomeness does not lie in those things as such, but in how those things lead us to have a positive esteem of them. One can only be deemed likable or charming if his character has charmed others or made him likable to them.
If this be doubted, consider how people talk about others. How often have you heard someone say something like ‘He’s a good guy, nice and easy to get along with, but –‘ followed by some caveat that means that his kindness, peaceableness, gentleness, patience, and goodness notwithstanding, the person in question is not likely to be called winsome. In practice there are many people who are kind, good, pleasant, etc., whom we find only partly likable, at best, and who do not inspire that feeling of fondness and positive impression that leads us to praise them as winsome or to take their position in disputed matters.
Note also the contexts in which winsome appears. I have yet to see someone refer to himself as winsome – which is well, for it would be about the most unwinsome and revolting thing he could do. But I have read Robert Burns use it to praise his wife as a delight (“My Wife’s A Winsome Wee Thing”), and I have read many a book review or profile of a prominent figure whose subject was described as winsome by an admiring author.
The problem with the view of Kruger and others is that they have effectively enshrined winsomeness as the preeminent virtue, the one in which in principle all others are found and from which they flow. What arête was to the ancient Greeks or honor to the antebellum Southerner, so is winsomeness to the contemporary evangelical. Again, Kruger defines it as consisting of a conscious embodiment of the fruits of the Spirit and imitation of Christ.
There is an alternative to winsomeness which I will delineate in a subsequent article. For our purposes here I will mention only three more things. One, the worst people in the world can often be described as winsome. Any time you meet a winsome person you ought to tread carefully, for there is a good chance that person is a deceptive, manipulative fiend with bad intentions, an adulterer, con man, abuser, or some other form of blackguard who is compelled to hide his true nature to accomplish his foul aims (comp. 2 Cor. 11:13-15).
Two, my disagreement with President Kruger et. al., does not concern how we are to behave. We are all agreed that we are to imitate Christ, walk by the Spirit, and embody virtue in all that we are and do. The disagreement is merely over what terms and concepts we should use to describe such a manner of living. If anyone comes away from this article with a poor impression of President Kruger or imagining that we are to be curmudgeonly or uncivil, he has misunderstood me entirely.
Three, winsome is an ancient English word that fell out of use until it was revived by eighteenth century Scottish poets such as the aforementioned Robert Burns (Online Etymology Dictionary). Burns was a fierce critic of the Church of Scotland.[1] Consider the thick irony that we are all running about desperately trying to be winsome, ultimately, because an opponent of our Scottish forebears revived the word. For the whole history of the church people have been talking about the goodness of being merciful, just, loving, virtuous, etc. Only in the last generation or two has the emphasis shifted to being this one thing, winsome, and this has only been possible because a critic of the church re-popularized the term in previous generations.
Given that history, we would be better served to abandon the desire for winsomeness and all attempts to repurpose it and make it our own, and to instead return to Scripture’s ideas and terms regarding the multi-faceted virtue which is to be exhibited by the followers of Christ. President Kruger is right in his aim and practice, but we could wish he finds a better theory and terminology in which to dress it. For the excellencies of the Spirit-filled life do not fit well in the rhetoric of contemporary American culture.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.
[1] It must be noted that the Church of Scotland of Burns’ day was by most accounts unhealthy, however, and in need of reform.
Related Posts: -
The Decline of a Formerly Christian Empire
“What kind of country do we want to be?” The liberals have been pushing for a secular society for a number of decades now, leaving behind our Christian foundations, and look at where that has got us. We’re at a crossroads: We must soon decide which values we want to adhere to and maintain. The future of civilized society as we know it will depend upon our answer to that question.
I was saddened to see the recent census data in England and Wales show that the only demographics in marked decline are the English and Christians.
Liberal commentators have been claiming it’s a fine thing to see high levels of immigration because it is immigrants propping the Church up. Well, that cannot be true if we have had record highs in immigration in recent years, reaching 1.1 million immigrants arriving in the U.K. last year, and Christian numbers keep falling. Moreover, the number of Christians is still plummeting, putting us in the minority for the first time in modern history.
The U.K. has always been a Christian country. There are those who would argue Joseph of Arimathea arrived in England as the first missionary, the very man who buried Jesus. It has been claimed that St. Paul arrived in England during his journeys West. King Lucius, a second-century king of the Britons, is credited with requesting Christian teachers be sent to this land from the Bishop of Rome. His letters to Pope Eleutherus speak of the Christian conversion of Britain.
Read More
Related Posts: