The Devil Doesn't Bother Anymore
No. 53: April 9, 2021
Dear Friends,
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have taken a nice lengthy break this spring from following or commenting on whatever daily outrages are consuming media oxygen. The last four years were positively exhausting, and I just needed the break. I had my own “garden to tend,” and I didn’t need the distractions. I’ve been trying to practice what I preach, in other words.
This week I find that cultural developments have reached a kind of critical mass for me, and I need to opine—okay, vent—on some of them.
Live Not By Lies
That is the title of Rod Dreher’s new book (which I recommend), but he cribbed it from Soviet dissident Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. The Apostle Paul commands us: “Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to one another, for we are all members of one body” (Eph. 4:25). Paul has in mind here the church (“one body”); the church is to be a place utterly devoted to the truth, a community contrasted with the wider world by its integrity.
Truth is a big deal. Romans 1 tells us that one of the inevitable fruits of human rebellion against God is that we “exchange the truth of God for the lie.” Jesus calls the Devil the “father of lies.” Liars will not inherit the kingdom of God (Rev. 21:7).
It has been a pretty bad week for truth. Liars are becoming more brazen—well, maybe not. They’ve always been brazen. What is happening, however, is that liars are becoming more and more influential. Take, for one example, the falsehoods concocted and instantly broadcast about the rather benign new Georgia voting law. Expanded early voting, expanded use of absentee drop boxes, restrictions on electioneering at polling places, and identification requirements to receive an absentee ballot were heralded as the return of “Jim Crow,” designed to disenfranchise black people. Never mind that these are laws consonant with a multitude of other states; in fact, there’s almost nothing unusual about them.
All it takes is to say something is “racist” and, voila!, it is therefore racist. Nobody actually needs to defend the charge; indeed, if you don’t agree that it is “racist” it simply means that you yourself are a racist. As an aside, I do not know how much longer the black community will tolerate this kind of condescension—the subtext is always that black people don’t know how to get a government-issued ID and are too ignorant or incompetent to obtain and return an absentee ballot—but it needs to stop. How utterly degrading. Really, who is the racist here?
At any rate, Major League Baseball, on the basis of the mere accusation that this law is “racist” and designed to suppress votes, decided to move the All-Star game from Atlanta. They did not even attempt to explain what is wrong with the law or why it is so shocking to the conscience that the league cannot play an exhibition game within the borders of the state of Georgia. I cannot help but notice that the Atlanta Braves are still playing all 81 of their home games in Cobb County. Why isn’t that a problem? I mean, if Georgia really has returned the bad old days of segregation, and if MLB feels so strongly about it, one would think the franchise would face some pressure to move. What is MLB going to do if the Braves make the World Series this year? Make them play in another state, which will in all likelihood have the same voting laws as Georgia?
So, I am angry about the brazen lies. I am angry about the cultural power of those brazen lies—that power exhibited by the fact that the lie feels zero obligation to defend itself. Once spoken, it is simply…. true. But more than that, I am upset that Major League Baseball has decided to wade into partisan politics. We cannot allow our every institution to become politicized. This is what the Manichaean Left wants; everything, every single institution, must be weaponized in the culture war. It is all or nothing, you’re either for us or against us. There can be no neutral ground, no public space where people of all colors and creeds can gather together as one and put aside their political disagreements for nine glorious innings and enjoy the drama of a game well-played. It is degrading to the game, insulting to a diverse fan base, and Rob Manfred should be ashamed of himself. It is a dereliction of his stewardship of the game.
As I was saying, liars have had quite a week. Watch this video. It is CBS’s “60 Minutes” segment on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his vaccine rollout plan involving the grocery chain Publix. First is their report. Second is what actually happened. See if you can see some tiny smidgeon of difference:
Pretty brazen, isn’t it? CBS has now responded to criticism, saying that they edited the Governor’s remarks “for clarity.” I am not making that up. I know that media bias has been around a long time (“RatherGate” was almost 20 years ago!), so I won’t linger on it. It’s low-hanging fruit. You should know that this report was so outrageous that a Democrat leader in Palm Beach County immediately called out 60 Minutes for lying about Governor DeSantis. What’s alarming is that this disregard for truth in the cause of left-wing “progress” is spilling out into every sphere of life, particularly corporate America.
Here’s an eye-opening story you haven’t heard. Do you remember John Schnatter, the founder of Papa Johns Pizza? His face used to be everywhere but you haven’t seen it in awhile. Really, his is an amazing American story. He sold his Camaro in 1983 for $2,800 and got a $3,500 bank loan and bought some used kitchen equipment. He set it up in a broom closet in his father’s struggling tavern and started making pizza. He turned it into a multi-billion dollar pizza company. A few years ago John Schnatter got hounded out of his own company because he allegedly used a racial slur. Do you want to know the real story? Dan McLaughlin painstakingly reports it here. He did nothing of the kind. He was expressing disdain for a person who used that word. A bunch of woke progressives who didn’t like his fairly conservative politics purposely set him up in an interview, with malice aforethought, and then lied about what he said. The audio is now available and can listen for yourself.
If you are interested in how we might actually push back on progressive activism in corporate boardrooms, I recommend this interview with Jerry Bowyer.
President Biden announced yesterday his plans for executive action regarding gun violence in America. My thoughts on gun policy will have to wait another day, but I have to point out that I am not sure he spoke a single true sentence in the entire speech. No, you cannot just walk into a gun show and buy a gun from a dealer without a background check. No, the Brady ban did not, in fact, lower gun crime. Others on Twitter like to say things like “I want to live in a country where it is easier to vote than buy a gun.” I guess it might be useful to know that such a person has either never voted or never tried to buy a gun. But I digress.
What I’m noticing more and more is that no one feels the need to even try to make falsehoods resemble the truth. Whole-cloth fabrication is the order of the day. Somehow in a declining culture and society the Devil doesn’t even bother disguising himself as an Angel of light. No, that’s putting it too coincidentally: that the Devil doesn’t bother is the tell-tale sign that we are a declining culture and society.
Lies, lies, and more lies. Welcome to the post-Christian world, which not coincidentally is the post-truth world. We’ve marinated in moral relativism for so long many consciences are simply seared. They see nothing wrong at all fabricating narratives, so long it’s for the “cause.” I wish I could say that’s just a left-wing political thing, but, well, the last four years have thoroughly disabused me of that quaint notion. This is culture wide and it is going to get worse before it gets better.
Live not by lies, indeed.
Miscellany
My letter to Commissioner Manfred:
I wanted to write something about immigration and the border this week, but it was getting too long. Another time. But this is a story that should enrage you. Incentivizing people to send their children to America either alone or with smugglers is gravely immoral. Last month the United States picked up 19,000 unaccompanied children crossing the border. NINETEEN THOUSAND. In one month. That is a humanitarian crisis.
A controversy broke out in the UK this week, when Labour Party leader Keir Starmer apologized for an appearance he made at a Christian charitable ministry. He didn’t realize, you see, that this Christian group was a bunch of bigots and haters. Rev. Matthew Roberts—and old classmate of mine—responded with this truly brilliant Op-Ed.
There’s nothing new under the sun:
Check this out:
This is the most detailed model of a human cell to date, obtained using x-ray, NMR and cryoelectron microscopy datasets. “Cellular landscape cross-section through a eukaryotic cell.” - by Evan Ingersoll and Gael McGill. digizyme.com/cst_landscapes…
Looks like a random cosmic accident to me. What say you?
To help you answer that question, Peter Robinson’s recent Uncommon Knowledge program hosted Dr. Stephen Meyer on his latest book, The Return of the God Hypothesis. If you like science, faith, and intelligent design, you’ll love this conversation.
I’ll sign off this week with the thrilling voice and talent of Sarah Jarosz—whom I congratulate on her recent Album of the Year Grammy!—singing a U2 classic:
This is exceptional, Brian. And exceptionally true.