I Must Not Tell Lies

No.79: October 25, 2021

Dear Friends,

I am sorry I didn’t get a newsletter out to you on Friday. I was attending and speaking at an event in the Philadelphia suburbs, and just never found the uninterrupted time to write it. I haven’t figured out how to do these things the Jonah Goldberg way: somehow, some way, by hook or by crook, that guy just writes a brilliant letter twice a week, even if it means while smoking a cigar in his car in some random parking lot. It’s impressive.

Anyway, the Twitter Corporation has put me in Time Out. I was a bad boy, and, yes, I kinda sorta double-dog dared them, and sure enough, they locked me out of my account for breaking their rules. The rule in question is the one where you cannot speak the truth about basic biology.

I was reacting to Twitter’s suspension of a sitting Congressman for observing that Dr. Rachel Levine, recently celebrated for being the “first female” four-star admiral in U.S. history, is, in fact, not a female. Twitter scolded said politician for “intentionally mis-gendering” another person. So I decided that I would intentionally gender Mr. Levine (nothing “mis” about it):

That did the trick. So now I have to wait for awhile and they’ll give me the opportunity to express my remorse by deleting the Tweet or some such thing. Which probably means you’ve seen the last of me on Twitter, since I am not at all sorry or remorseful for pointing out that the Emperor’s new clothes aren’t clothes. Thankfully, it is only Twitter, and as comedian Dave Chappell recently pointed out, “Twitter isn’t a real place.” I’ll survive and will likely have to move all my observations and opinions to The Square Inch. I will not apologize for calling this cultural spasm of Trans celebration “misogynist.” It is. It is the erasure of women.

If nothing else, I am happy to have a little something in common with one of my favorite authors, J.K. Rowling, who has withstood intense pressure on this very issue. She’s calculated that she simply cannot be “canceled” since she is not reliant on social media platforms for her gazillion dollars. Well, I’m not reliant on them, either, although I do wish it was because I had a gazillion dollars.

Also, the inconsistency of the enforcement of this “rule” is quite interesting. I mean, Matt Walsh is still Tweeting and posting things like this:

So maybe I’ll get off with a slap on the wrist or something. But I will say a few things about the larger point. The aforementioned Ms. Rowling created a fictional scenario that captures well our cultural moment. One of the greatest villains ever created, in my opinion, is Dolores Umbridge, the sickly-sweet, smarmy, passive-aggressive tyrant who infiltrates Hogwarts to reinforce the Ministry of Magic’s official (lying) narrative and stamp out all dissent. Harry Potter makes the dreadful mistake of, well, unashamedly speaking the truth. Umbridge gives him detention. And in his detention sessions she makes him “write lines.” In particular, Harry must write, over and over again, these words:

I must not tell lies.

Her cruelty is a kind of triple cruelty: Not only does she (1) make Harry pretend that his original spoken truth was a lie, but she now (2) makes him repeatedly write the actual truth (“I must not tell lies”) in service to a lie; and (3) she makes him write with a “special” quill that writes the lines with his own blood. Each time he writes it, the words “I must not tell lies” are carved deeper and deeper into his hand. The act of writing that line is itself a lie, and telling that lie over and over again scars and disfigures him. It is a kind of psychological (and physical) torture.

What a terrific image of what the woke Jacobins are trying to do in our society. In Orwell’s 1984, party member O’Brien tortures Winston Smith by holding up four fingers and demanding that he say there are five. Even when Smith gives in, O’Brien says, “ No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four.” They will not stop until we say the lie and mean it. I mean, that is a great allegory of our times, to be sure.

But making Harry tell a disfiguring, agonizing lie as punishment for telling the truth is right up there with Orwell. I think in some ways it is better: in Rowling’s version, lying disfigures us, sapping the lifeblood from our veins. It is inhumane.

And I’m here to tell you that the number one crying need of the hour is for a groundswell of people who refuse to tell lies.

Rachel Levine is not the “first woman” to achieve four stars or anything else. Because Rachel Levine is not a woman. You can test every cell in his body and the chromosomes will confirm it. I can be sympathetic and compassionate; I can be troubled by his apparent dysphoria, confusion, and disordered desires; I can share the liberating and hopeful news of the gospel of Christ that can and does restore us to what God made us to be; I can share 1 Corinthians 6:11 and the good news that there is room in God’s kingdom for sexual offenders and even the (sexually mutilated) temple prostitutes Paul encountered everywhere in his travels throughout the pagan Roman Empire.

But I must not tell lies.