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Dear Friends,
I have a lot of thoughts swirling about my head today so rather than a single, cohesive essay I think I’ll just break it up and share a few of them with you.
I am preparing a speech I’m giving soon at CCL’s 23rd Annual Symposium in San Francisco—my favorite event of the year. It is an invite-only, closed-door event (no video or audio recordings) and every year is just a cracking time. It’s also my favorite because I get to see, hear, and banter with three of my best friends: Andrew Sandlin, Jeff Ventrella, and David Bahnsen. This year we are tackling the post-liberalisms of the Left and Right. My assigned topic is: “Children Shall Lead Them: Christian Nationalism, National Conservatism, and the New Masculinists.”
I admit that when Andrew assigns me topics for this event I am sometimes guilty of choosing my own topic instead. He also used to ask us to only speak for 15 minutes to allow for more discussion time, but Bahnsen and I really did just ignore him and he’s been forced into more latitude! I will not be choosing a different topic this year, and I will plan on 20 to 25 minutes or so.
It was a year ago now that I wrote my widely read and never-really-answered critical review of Stephen Wolfe’s book, The Case For Christian Nationalism. I entitled that review “A Children’s Crusade.” (Given the substance of that review, I do not think anyone can justly claim that what I am about to write is simply ad hominem.) Having now closely observed the Christian Nationalist movement over the course of the year, I realize that I wrote more truly than I even knew at the time. It is replete with some of the most immature and juvenile antics I’ve ever seen. And I am not talking about the rank-and-file; I am talking about its erstwhile leaders. It is a Children’s Crusade, led by the Lost Boys of NeverNeverLand. The “substance” is wish-casting, utopian dreams, and Internet memes. A titanic, convulsive temper tantrum, just as I quoted from Bertrand Russell: “Sensitive, would-be despots who got angry with the world because it would not obey.”
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