Beating the Left

Rod Dreher has an excellent write-up on the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the state of Indiana, as well as the hysterical reaction thereto.  Most of his analysis is spot on, though I think his strategy in the fight for religious liberty is wildly inadequate.  But before I get to that, I'll offer a brief summary.

The bill would establish a general legal standard, the “compelling interest” test, for evaluating laws and governmental practices that impose substantial burdens on the exercise of religion. This same test already governs federal law under the federal RFRA, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. And some 30 states have adopted the same standard, either under state-law RFRAs or as a matter of state constitutional law.

The leftist press has, shockingly, failed to report the dull truth, instead castigating the law as a "license to discriminate", which it most assuredly is not.  So much of what passes for journalism today is simply rank propaganda.  What matters is not the truth, only The Narrative. 

It's also of interest that a bill that Clinton signed into law roughly two decades ago is now evidence of rank bigotry of the worst sort.  Dreher later quotes Hillary Clinton as saying: "Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn't discriminate against [people because] of who they love." 

Such is the way of things in our Age of the Mob.  What is bipartisan common sense will be, sooner or later, intolerance.  And so the masses gravitate to the next big thing, eager to establish their progressive bonafides as against the retrograde reactionaries. 

Dreher has been voicing concerns about religious liberty for some time.  He summarizes the situation like this:

The Law Of Merited Impossibility is an epistemological construct governing the paradoxical way overclass opinion makers frame the discourse about the clash between religious liberty and gay civil rights. It is best summed up by the phrase, “It’s a complete absurdity to believe that Christians will suffer a single thing from the expansion of gay rights, and boy, do they deserve what they’re going to get.”

This is true, but where he errs, I think, is in his suggestion to oppose the leftist onslaught. 

Voting Republican is no guarantee that religious liberty would be strengthened in SCOTUS rulings in the future, but there is some hope that a GOP president would nominate justices sympathetic to religious liberty concerns. With President Hillary Clinton, or any conceivable Democrat, there is no hope at all...

Religious conservative voters must be focused like a laser on religious liberty, right now. It’s that important.

This puts too much faith in the Left.  There's simply no evidence that the Left has any intention of playing fair.  Consider this very instance.  Did the Left portray the law accurately, or did they condemn Indiana as a bastion of religious zealotry? 

Conservatives have played by the rules before.  We have passed amendments reiterating the definition of marriage, only to see such amendments struck down as unconstitutional.  Against this, what can we say?  It would take a more brilliant satirist than Swift to direct proper scorn at such malfeasance.

The right can vote and plead all it wants and the Left will remain unmoved.  If we are reasonable, that only proves our irrational hatred.  If we are modest, it demonstrates that we are totalitarians who would impose a Christian theocracy, whatever that may mean.

There is a better way.  The Left hates the religious right because it is Christian.  Meanwhile, it adores any non-Christian faith.  But other religious people, like Christians, do care about religious liberty. 

Thus, we can split their hatred of us with their supposed love of Muslims, Jews, Hindus and so forth.  And we can do so with ease.  We can insist that Muslim photographers work, not only at gay weddings, but those between Christians and Muslims.  We can insist that Rabbis marry Christians.  And on and on.

One would not need to go through with any of these instances to make one's point.  A few viral videos should suffice, and if they do not, one could proceed with lawsuits, though one hopes it would not come to that.

It's true that there is something low about this sort of approach.  But to beat a Leftist, you must fight like one.  Conservatives have taken the high road too often.  It is honourable, perhaps, but utterly futile. 

When you keep getting pummelled, it's time to change tactics.