Appalled
March 14, 2010
PAULA S. WRITES:
I am absolutely astonished by how blatantly rude and judgmental all of your posts are. I am a wife and mother and I must say your posts are horrifying, you talk of all the lunatics and dismay in this world, but you are one of them!! Your posts are sick, knocking single moms, military moms and other women who do not share the EXACT beliefs as you!! I am a Christian, and I just can not see how anyone who has any claim to be god-like can spread the animosity and hatred of others that you spread! It sickens me to know that my daughter has to grow up in a world with people like you in it, your hatred runs deep in your blood. Maybe its because you are so unsatisfied with your own life, maybe its jealous. Who knows!! I will pray for you and hope that God can show you some guidance in your life and show you how to accept people for who they are.
Laura writes:
There is not a drop of hatred in my writings. You display the sentiment freely here, actually wishing I did not exist, a sentiment normally directed to those who have committed heinous acts. You hate me for allegedly hating. You criticize me for judging others when obviously you do not believe in non-judgmentalism because you are judging me. Do you see the contradiction? You call me rude, insane, envious, hateful and unhappy, insults I have never directed at others. So it is not judgement per se that bothers you but specific types of judgment.
You obviously disagree with my judgments, with criticism of women who openly promote and celebrate single motherhood, with criticism of those who believe the military should be transformed in pursuit of egalitarianism, with criticism of feminists who are tyrannical and narcissistic, destroying the lives of others and turning our society into a crude free-for-all. You either do not believe these things are serious enough to speak out against them or you believe we should address them only in the most general and impersonal terms.
If you do not believe these things are serious, you are oblivious. You do not see the radical transformation of our society into something that would have been unrecognizable even 50 years ago. But truthfully, I don’t care how it compares to other periods or ages. The fact is, we are staring a catastrophe in the face. Go ahead and dance. You may be among the last to enjoy the party.
If you believe we should only speak out against this catastrophe in the most general terms, you are advocating surrender. Let’s say thieves and vandals took over your neighborhood. Would you just speak out against theft and vandalism in the abstract? Or would you try to direct that criticism to the actual thieves and vandals, perhaps even advocating action?
Well, that’s where we are. Our society has been taken over by vandals and marauders. They are interested in power for themselves and are willing to destroy to get it. We need to speak out on behalf of children, on behalf of women damaged by promiscuity and careerism, on behalf of men exploited by divorce, on behalf of those who are too poor to make sexual libertinism and single parenthood turn out well, on behalf of depressed boys in an anti-male world, on behalf of the neglected old, on behalf of the fatherless, on behalf of all those who have been hurt by fanatically egalitarian principles, on behalf of future generations that may have no civilization at all. You see. There’s the rub. You portray yourself as oh, so, sensitive. Your sensitivity looks like cowardice and self-interest. Either that or it’s some kind of self-induced unconsciousness, the bliss of a lotus-eater.
You say I speak out because I am unhappy. You might just consider that I am happy and want others to have what I have, that I am not imbibing the same inebriating drug. Many people are unhappy and it’s no wonder. These are matters of right and wrong, not simply of one view against another. No one was more judgmental than Christ, none more so than Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Paul and many others among our Christian forerunners. As a Christian, you could not possibly believe in non-judgment or peace at all costs.
Your easy-breezy religion and your convenient fear of offending are not for me. Fortunately, there are plenty of other blogs that offer what you seek. Don’t come back here. I have only just begun.
— Comments —
Laura F. writes:
The lady who was appalled by you reminded me of John Zmirak’s line about how “I’ll pray for you” is Christian-ese for “Go BLEEP yourself.”
James H. writes:
One of your very best responses ever. Congratulations. My guess is you’ll not hear from her again – that is unless she’s too obtuse to realize she’s been taken to the woodshed.
Stephen M. writes:
As a member of a church that very publicly proclaims our belief that the Bible is the literal word of God, it has been shown time and time again that the greatest opposition to the word of God comes not from the drunken heathen, but from those who begin their comments with, “I’m a Christian, but…” The second most commonly heard statement is probably the only bit of Bible that they know – “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” They obviously have no concept of the context in which that was spoken. “Paula S.” managed to score 100% on the Opposition To God scale.
Thank you for standing fast in the truth.
Laura writes:
The greatest enemies are from within, those who wish to convert Christianity into mush, those who abhor any standards but that of acquiesence to liberalism, as if a Christian was a doormat. They sometimes viciously pursue niceness.
Laura adds:
This is a relatively trivial point, but Paula’s reference to grown women as “moms” offends me. Children refer to their mothers as moms; other people should speak of them as mothers or women. To me, this cutesy, sentimental language is a way of shielding women from criticism. This pervasive Mommy-ness is not always as sweet and other-directed as it appears.
Clem writes:
“”The greatest enemies are from within, those who wish to convert Christianity into mush, those who abhor any standards but that of acquiesence to liberalism, as if a Christian was a doormat.”
My brother and I talk about this frequently. It saddens us to no end but the biggest enemy today for the soul of our nation and indeed the soul of our people is the ‘new’ Christian Church. It has been co-opted with this Marxist driven, namby-pamby, pablum filled, feel good doctrine that stands for absolutely nothing.
Keep up the good work and God Bless you!
Laura writes:
Thank you. Anything so easy and self-inflating as this easy-breezy religion should automatically arouse our suspicions.
Charles Stevens writes:
Your response to Paula S. was inspired. It reminded me of some essential truths about Christianity that I had misplaced along the way. Please keep up your wonderful work.
Laura writes:
Thank you.
MarkMark writes:
WWII bomber pilots always knew one truism: The more flak they caught, the closer to the target they were. Rejoice! The fact that you’re catching flak means you’re getting close to the target too.
Laura writes:
Would a fighter pilot be accused of hatefulness and insanity for defending his country? Only by the enemy. To his own people, he would be doing his job.
I appreciate the comparison with precision bombing.
Jake Jacobsen writes:
What is so astonishing about this gal is that she genuinely believes she is a Christian. I honestly don’t know how to break this news to her but she is as much a Christian as I am a Chinaman!
While she wasn’t looking the central tent pole of her faith, Jesus Christ, was deftly removed and replaced with non-judgmental Liberalism. Its much like the churches in our major metropolitan area that use the phrase “social justice” on their websites or literature, we won’t even consider attending them because they are for all practical purposes out of the Jesus business.
Much like your interlocutor here.
Lawrence Auster writes:
Paula S., the non-judgmental, tolerant one, throws a pile of horrible adjectives at you, which you, the horrible judgmental one, have never used against anyone. How can this be? The answer is that her belief in her own non-judgmentalness gives her a license to insult, denigrate, and dehumanize anyone she sees as judgmental.
Paula S. thus reveals the false neutrality of liberalism. The truth is, no one can go through life without judging. But liberals claim that they don’t judge. So, as Laura said to her, the true debate is not between those who are non-judgmental and those who are judgmental, it’s between people who have different judgments. But for that debate to take place, both sides must lay on the table what their standards are for making judgments. This will require her to say, “I don’t hate nothing except hatred, I don’t judge nothing except judgmentalness, I’m tolerant of everything except intolerance.” Such frankness would reveal that the only form of judgment that liberals permit is liberal judgment of non-liberal judgmentalness; which means that no judgment of liberalism itself is permitted; which means that a society ruled by liberals is a tyranny.
Once the liberals have admitted the real nature of their position, then a real debate between liberals and conservatives could take place on their respective standards and judgments. Of course, liberals will never allow such a discussion to take place, as it would reveal the tyrannical nature of liberalism. We have to carry it out for them. :-)
For more on the false neutrality and real tyranny of liberalism, see James Kalb’s 2000 essay, “The Tyranny of Liberalism.” For more on the phony terms of debate that liberalism imposes on us, and the real debate which liberalism prohibits, see the Introduction of my 1990 booklet, The Path to National Suicide.
Kristor writes:
Laura writes, “Many people are unhappy and it’s no wonder. These are matters of right and wrong, not of one view against another. ”
This reminded me of something I read just last night in Cosmos and Transcendence, by Wolfgang Smith. He says, “We speak of ‘the abundant life’ and forget that happiness is not simply play, entertainment or ‘getting away from it all,’ but the spontaneous concomitant of a life well lived. We forget that pleasure does not come in pills or via an electronic tube but through what the Scholastics called ‘proper operation,’ the very thing that authentic art is about.” Proper operation. Is that not a delightful notion? Fun to say out loud, too.
Alex A. writes:
I should like to send my compliments to you for the judicious and lucid reply you gave to Paula’s venomous attack. Your blog is one of the very few worth reading that articulates a Christian and socially conservative point of view. I hope you are never intimidated into silence.
“Paula” strikes me as a phony. Her not quite literate prose and weak reasoning ability gave me the impression of someone who was attempting a demolition job without having the right tools.
Sage McLaughlin writes:
By the way, everybody’s piled on at this point, but I can’t help stating again for the record:
“I will pray for you and hope that God can show you some guidance in your life and show you how to accept people for who they are,” is a facially, even comically, self-contradictory statement. By Paula S.’s own standards, she should accept you for who you are and pray that you never change. (This is like kicking a puppy, I know. But anybody who combines such fatuousness with such smugness is asking for it.)
A.C. writes:
I do hope that your marriage falls apart, your husband becomes violent, and your children hate you later on in life. I hope that in your old age you are left alone to reflect on all the close-minded and hateful things you have publicly displayed. You are a truly repulsive human being, and a pathetic excuse at that.
I wish nothing but suffering and hardship on you so that you may one day see how the people live that you talk down upon on a daily basis.
Crawl back into your gutter, you pathetic, hapless soul.
