This was a very insightful article, applying the concept of "fourth generation warfare" to the culture war. Since conservatives are in a weaker position than liberals who control most of our institutions, the use of asymmetric tactics to win at the moral level makes a lot of sense.
The group that must be persuaded by conservatives are the moderates since liberals are mostly out of reach. One factor that may weaken the effectiveness of these asymmetric tactics, however, is the mindset of the moderates. Everyone in our population today is hectored to accept the liberal position on social and religious matters, or at the very least, to “don’t ask, don’t tell” if he disagrees. This ranges from the subtle, such as the use of plural pronouns to avoid using masculine or feminine pronouns, to the coercive, such as the likelihood of being disciplined at work if anything is said that could be construed to be less than exalting to a member of any protected group. How we act affects how we think. The effect of this winnowing enforcement of liberal orthodoxy is mind control. Either a person is internally conflicted much of the time, or he simply learns to master avoidance, that is, he gives no thought to anything that might arouse the slightest controversy. Then he is free to flip his hamburgers in peace and watch the game of the week.
So now, if this moderate sees a Christian doing good work and being sensible, he is likely to immediately ignore him if he catches even a whiff of something that runs counter to his mind control. There will certainly be plenty of liberals around to decry the Christian's activities. Aaron gave a good example of this when he mentioned a church doing social work and being disliked by liberals for displacing a function of the state. The problem in a nutshell is that this mind control is sinister (satanic) and not something we have had to deal with on such a massive scale for centuries. One would have to go back to pagan times in the early church to find a parallel.
Of course, the early church did persevere and ultimately changed the world. So it can be done. It's just that it's going to be a lot of hard slogging to make progress. Antisymmetric warfare seems like a good description of what we need. Challenges will abound.
Though the biggest struggle I see is how to deal with high-profile failures. This probably is exacerbated by a highly nationalized media environment, at the same time that Americans continue to decrease our involvement with real-world people and organizations while increasing the amount of time we spend absorbing media messages.
Most people don't look at statistics. They might look at people around them, but if they don't personally know any evangelicals very well (which is increasingly likely), they'll default to making assumptions about groups based on the actions of high-profile individuals. Who will often be high-profile on account of their failures.
Case in point: to the outside world, I'm pretty sure Josh Duggar's name is much more famous than Tim Keller's.
And then there's also a figure like Osteen, who I call out particularly for living very well. Asceticism seems to be a lost virtue on both sides. Lenin was famously ascetic, and it probably had a lot to do with his success in comparison to his corrupt and out-of-touch opponents. Leftist elites these days see very little value in asceticism. The idea of paying for carbon offsets is probably the epitome of this; even leftist leaders who assert that CO2 emissions are a possible extinction-level catastrophe can't be bothered to live simpler lives and reduce their personal emissions that way. Al Gore is usually the most central example here but far from the only one.
But one problem with asceticism is that those high-profile failures again suck up all the oxygen in the room. Many pastors are struggling. And then there are long-term missionaries, making personal sacrifices to live abroad in often unpleasant places for the sake of the Kingdom. But no one knows or thinks about them; they think about Osteen. As a result, many people still think that "pastor" is on average a highly remunerative occupation.
I don't know how to solve this; I'm just calling it out as a problem.
This was a very insightful article, applying the concept of "fourth generation warfare" to the culture war. Since conservatives are in a weaker position than liberals who control most of our institutions, the use of asymmetric tactics to win at the moral level makes a lot of sense.
The group that must be persuaded by conservatives are the moderates since liberals are mostly out of reach. One factor that may weaken the effectiveness of these asymmetric tactics, however, is the mindset of the moderates. Everyone in our population today is hectored to accept the liberal position on social and religious matters, or at the very least, to “don’t ask, don’t tell” if he disagrees. This ranges from the subtle, such as the use of plural pronouns to avoid using masculine or feminine pronouns, to the coercive, such as the likelihood of being disciplined at work if anything is said that could be construed to be less than exalting to a member of any protected group. How we act affects how we think. The effect of this winnowing enforcement of liberal orthodoxy is mind control. Either a person is internally conflicted much of the time, or he simply learns to master avoidance, that is, he gives no thought to anything that might arouse the slightest controversy. Then he is free to flip his hamburgers in peace and watch the game of the week.
So now, if this moderate sees a Christian doing good work and being sensible, he is likely to immediately ignore him if he catches even a whiff of something that runs counter to his mind control. There will certainly be plenty of liberals around to decry the Christian's activities. Aaron gave a good example of this when he mentioned a church doing social work and being disliked by liberals for displacing a function of the state. The problem in a nutshell is that this mind control is sinister (satanic) and not something we have had to deal with on such a massive scale for centuries. One would have to go back to pagan times in the early church to find a parallel.
Of course, the early church did persevere and ultimately changed the world. So it can be done. It's just that it's going to be a lot of hard slogging to make progress. Antisymmetric warfare seems like a good description of what we need. Challenges will abound.
I really like these thoughts and agree overall.
Though the biggest struggle I see is how to deal with high-profile failures. This probably is exacerbated by a highly nationalized media environment, at the same time that Americans continue to decrease our involvement with real-world people and organizations while increasing the amount of time we spend absorbing media messages.
Most people don't look at statistics. They might look at people around them, but if they don't personally know any evangelicals very well (which is increasingly likely), they'll default to making assumptions about groups based on the actions of high-profile individuals. Who will often be high-profile on account of their failures.
Case in point: to the outside world, I'm pretty sure Josh Duggar's name is much more famous than Tim Keller's.
And then there's also a figure like Osteen, who I call out particularly for living very well. Asceticism seems to be a lost virtue on both sides. Lenin was famously ascetic, and it probably had a lot to do with his success in comparison to his corrupt and out-of-touch opponents. Leftist elites these days see very little value in asceticism. The idea of paying for carbon offsets is probably the epitome of this; even leftist leaders who assert that CO2 emissions are a possible extinction-level catastrophe can't be bothered to live simpler lives and reduce their personal emissions that way. Al Gore is usually the most central example here but far from the only one.
But one problem with asceticism is that those high-profile failures again suck up all the oxygen in the room. Many pastors are struggling. And then there are long-term missionaries, making personal sacrifices to live abroad in often unpleasant places for the sake of the Kingdom. But no one knows or thinks about them; they think about Osteen. As a result, many people still think that "pastor" is on average a highly remunerative occupation.
I don't know how to solve this; I'm just calling it out as a problem.