David French writes in the National Review that Christian students in American universities need to fight back:
Ever since the Battle of Indiana, Rod Dreher has been quoting anonymous e-mails and other conversations with conservatives in higher education. The message from each of them is roughly the same: It’s worse than you think, if our views were known, we’d have real trouble on campus, and the campus is closing to Christian thought — with even Christian campuses bowing to the PC gods.
I have two responses to this. First, anyone facing social exclusion or career adversity because of their Christian or (especially) Christian conservative beliefs has my sympathy. Imagine, for a moment, working your entire life towards a career goal and then realizing that all that work could be rendered meaningless if your colleagues understand that you believe the Bible, that you can recite every word of the Apostles’ Creed (and mean it). Imagine the financial insecurity and the stress on your family at the thought that the wrong word at the wrong time could cost you your hard-earned job. I’ve been a Christian in Ivy League higher ed — both as a student and a teacher — and I know what it’s like. It’s not easy.
Second, man up anyway. You’re part of the problem.
Except advocating Christian doctrine about sex, sexuality, gender relations, and a host of other issues is already banned in the codes of student conduct and speech codes in all significant universities — particularly those in the Ivy League.
It’s already an offense that can result in expulsion to be an honestly professing Christian, at least of the older strain. So what French is advocating is for Christian men to up and get themselves expelled.
I don’t really care what you do or don’t do on the American campus. What should be made clear is that these institutions belong to the left, entirely, that they’re not nonsectarian institutions, and that any conservative who goes there is going to be a hated minority at best, and become themselves subverted at worst.
People like French seem to be under the bizarre delusion that they have some sort of right to attend an institution run and managed by the political opponents of the people that he’s writing for. They don’t — and there’s a lot of precedence for conservatives rolling over for some of their most important beliefs being made impossible to express on campus. These institutions belong to the left. Leave them to the left. And deny them any resources you can, by any means, because they’re sectarian political institutions.
Could the same also be said for most if not all institutions of civil society throughout the West, and particularly in relation to establishment-conservative parties of the mainstream?
Including National Review.
Yes. The conservatives are just padding the legitimacy of institutions entirely controlled by the left.
So, rip off the padding.
Mainstream Christians are ridiculous on this matter. They are hoping to preserve some space for traditional Christianity at the university, but this is like hoping to preserve some space for Christianity in the temple of Baal. The answer isn’t to speak up about how Baal-worshippers need to respect the Christians among them; the answer is to get the hell out of Baal’s temple.
A lot of slightly older Christians seem to have very fond memories of various campus ministries — the same ones brought to heel by ‘interfaith dialogue.’
The answer is to realize that Christianity itself is a strange hybrid of Baal-worship (or its neopagan descendant) and Judaism.
No offense. But he who says A must eventually say B.
If there’s no difference between Jew and Gentile from a divine perspective, then eventually there is no difference between men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals, etc. etc. If you can shortcut your way to the kingdom of heaven after death by having some guy die for you, you can eventually shortcut your way to heaven on earth through various other logical exceptions. And certainly in that heaven on earth there can be no difference between all of the categories listed above.
So, any observed differences must be due to some sinister influences which must be exposed and eliminated, since they are getting in the way of establishing heaven on earth. Which is exactly what we see in modern progressive thought.
The idolaters, according to Maimonides, did not originally see their idols as independent entities worthy of worship in and of themselves. They saw them as stand-ins for different aspects of G-d, who is One and unknowable and indescribable. Through their idolatry, they wished to worship Him. Eventually, they took the proxy for the thing it represented, leading to a positive feedback spiral. Likewise, the Progs did not originally see equality as an inherently good thing, but now it is the focus of their worship and sacrifices.
This is what Moldbug spoke of when he said that progressivism is just an advanced strain of Protestantism. But Protestantism is an advanced strain of Christianity. The “Christian Right” is, in effect, saying “remember when that tumor was benign? Before it lost its remaining growth inhibitors? Let’s go back to those days!”
I think too few realize the importance of the “8chan Model” of exiting and starting up parallel institutions focused on quality over quantity. For example, a homeschooler is doing nothing more than setting up a parallel institution to the gigantic, and awful, public school system in his own living room. Its purpose is to educate his children, not to run a kiddie warehouse in order to free up bedraggled parents to go be corporate drones from 8 to 5, nor to pad the ranks and salaries of unionized public schoolteachers.
Can a parallel institution to the university system be set up? Yes, definitely. We just have to decide what exactly it will look like, and implement it.
Agreed. However, it’s not only time to start up some parallel institutions with a specifically Christian and conservative identity, it is also time to start actively undermining the existing enemy-occupied ones. If you think I’m advocating for the right to pick up the Alinsky playbook, though, your severely mistaken.
The right doesn’t need to fight Alinsky style, it just needs to actually start fighting back. In particular, it needs to make use of its most devastating native weapon – the truth.
For the Christian alternative to thrive, it would help if the anti-Christian competition’s dirty tricks and habits were exposed for all to see.
There are a number of fronts to attack on and a number of methods to employ. Lawfare (think Paul Nungesser’s case against Columbia), ridicule, agitating for a student loan jubilee, BDS efforts, Project Veritas-style exposes and community style organizing efforts are.just a few of the methods at our disposal.
*you’re* severely…
Jesus, I can’t believe I did that.
Those tricks and habits have been exposed, but no one cares – specifically the ones who attend these colleges.
That is the problem.
I’ve noted this before, but there are about 5 or 6 colleges that are ALREADY doing this. The crown jewel in my mind in Christendom (Front Royal, VA), staunchly Catholic, doesn’t accept federal money. It’s mere existence is creating a staunch Catholic eco-system in the small town of Front Royal. Ave Maria has also had some success with this. I think Wyoming Catholic is trying to do this too. On the Prot side, only Patrick Henry College (AFAIK) is doing anything similar.
I would LOVE to have been able to send my kids to Christendom, but we just couldn’t afford it. But once you’re red-pilled on the Higher Ed Bubble, it’s not too difficult to find other, most cost-effective alternatives.
That sounds pretty wonderful and I didn’t know about that before. Seems like a sensible kind of project.
Also hating the colleges is going to be a popular stance at some point in the future as the student loan farce kicks in. For once the right will be on the humanitarian side of an issue and able to point and sneer at obvious leftist hypocrisy.
Agree with Anti-Dem. What we need to do is align ourselves with the stream of the future (mixing up the metaphors there). The future trends I see coming (in Australia anyway) are all centrifugal forces – p2p, disintermediation, families fleeing the inner-cities, telecommuting, decline of broadcast culture etc. As the institutions (ie centre) are against us, this ain’t so bad. We should tailor our message along those lines.
O/T I see you re-tweeted something from Ace of Spades similar to his recent post which actually called for secession. He is almost a WN without knowing it these days.
That has more or less been my inclination.
Three words: Student Loan Jubilee.
It’s perfect because its:
1. Going to target the leftist academic establishment directly (and globalist financiers indirectly) with very little collateral damage to institutions held by the right.
2. The mother of all gibsmedats, so the left will have a hard time arguing/moving against it.
3. Going to do immense, lasting and systemic damage to the incomprehensibly corrupt university system, allowing functional and healthy alternatives to take its place.
Also re your twitter feed – here is my favourite Waterhouse (seen it a hundred times at the local art gallery) –
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/media/collection_images/7/720%23%23S.jpg
Note the bourgeois chicks sneering at the visionary philosopher living in a jar. A true metaphor for the alt right, right there.
The joke for this one, also, is that the caption is “I identify as barrel-kin.”
I object to the framing of dissenting views (e.g., on sexuality, life ethics, etc.) as per se religious. Christianity is neither necessary nor sufficient to arrive at the truth, once obvious to peoples of all races and creeds, on such issues. So it seems to me to be a species of special pleading: “Preserve my space in academia (or don’t make us pay for abortions) because… Religious Freedom.”
At best, it’s the plea of the vanquished for mercy from the victor–a pathetic whine that our overlords will live up to some abstract principles we think they ought to believe in. At most, it buys time.
The culture war is over. The good guys lost. The good guys need to start their own institutions and figure out ways of keeping them safe from the barbarians. Period. It’s the only gambit left to us.
Yes. It’s the equivalent of a backseat general telling his soldiers to occupy a low position that the opposition has pre-sighted for bombardment.
“Go there! 90% of life is showing up!”
It’s not cowardly to say “that’s a bad idea, we have to back off until we can meet the opposition on terms that favor us on grounds that favor us.”