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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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The Goal of the Futurist Right is not to create some new orthodoxy that can take the people who put us in our current predicament, and align them properly with the interests of our society.

As a Christian, I must reject this. For the Atheist Right this may your goal, but this is decidedly unchristian, and likely bad even from an atheist utilitarian perspective. Jesus came to save the sinners, taught to love our enemies, and spent his time teaching and hanging out with the lowest scum of society while the experts in the law mocked him and ultimately killed him. The easiest way to become evil is to be so sure that you are good and your enemies are evil that any acts against them are justified.

This is related to though perhaps a slightly different spin on Scott's Guided by the Beauty of Our Weapons. Perhaps a moral rather than rational/bayesian version. If you attempt to ruthlessly crush your opponents, and they attempt to do the same to you, then the stronger one will win with no correlation to who's actually correct. And to what end? You're no more likely to be on the correct side, and if you resort to evil methods in your pursuit of victory then you can rule over an evil society with you on top instead of them on top, I guess.

But if you do what's right, and you are more good and more kind then you will draw people to join you and simultaneously gain strength and build a better world. If you try to convince people that you are right, and they try to convince you that they are right, then if you are actually right you will be more persuasive on average.

Now, it's important not to be naive about this. We don't need to fill our streets with radical leftists and/or Islamists who seek to destroy us and build their own subcultures where they reinforce their beliefs and never convert. Survival as a society and culture is an important goal. But converting other people is also an important goal, not simply because they will be allies and help us but also because they are human beings who matter even when they do evil, and helping them to be better is the right thing to do. Marginalizing people might be positive as a instrument towards disincentivizing their behavior and limiting the damage they can do, but it is negative as an ultimate goal and the actual end goal should be conversion.

Quality contribution! You’re absolutely right. Jesus was compassionate but also discerning. He didn’t naively just stand there and let his religious enemies stone him to death, but he actively engaged in dialogue with them and revealed their hypocrisies.

I don’t know much about Ayaan Hirsi Ali but I’m willing to be charitable to her searching for the truth in Christ. Her ‘road to Damascus’ event may be sincerely in her future. Let’s pray that her heart be softened and receptive to the word.