{"id":4521,"date":"2020-11-25T16:14:55","date_gmt":"2020-11-25T16:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/?p=4521"},"modified":"2020-11-25T16:17:59","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T16:17:59","slug":"going-underground-the-school-of-nice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/2020\/11\/25\/going-underground-the-school-of-nice\/","title":{"rendered":"Going underground (the school of NICE)"},"content":{"rendered":"
Taken from here<\/a><\/div>\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n
JMSMITH<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

I see it was two years ago tomorrow that I posted<\/span>\u00a0a notice<\/a>\u00a0of Handel\u2019s very long and trenchant\u00a0<\/span>review<\/a>\u00a0of Rod Dreher\u2019s book,\u00a0<\/span>The Benedict Option<\/em>. \u00a0Well, Dreher has written a new book, Handel has written a\u00a0<\/span>new review,<\/a>\u00a0and I have written this new notice.<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
\n

Dreher\u2019s new book is called\u00a0Live Not by Lies<\/em>\u00a0and, like\u00a0The Benedict Option<\/em>, it aims to prepare Christians for persecution and life\u00a0underground<\/em>. \u00a0Handel\u2019s new review (not so long but no less trenchant than the first) once again says, to quote Aragorn speaking to Frodo at the Prancing Pony:<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you frightened.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cYes.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cNot near frightened enough. I know what hunts you.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It seems that a large part of Dreher\u2019s new book is devoted to description of underground Christians who survived Communist persecution behind the Iron Curtain, most especially in eastern Europe. \u00a0While this is certainly a story worth telling, Handel demurs against Dreher\u2019s telling of it on three counts. \u00a0The first count is that those who have survived hard totalitarianism have little to teach those who now face soft totalitarianism. \u00a0The second is that Dreher has a sentimental soft spot for the alleged aims of the Left. \u00a0The third is that he provides precious little in the way of practical advice to persons facing life underground.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

You must read Handel to learn everything he has to say about soft totalitarianism, although some of it is relevant to Kristor\u2019s\u00a0recent post<\/a>\u00a0on the prophetic power of Lewis\u2019s\u00a0That Hideous Strength<\/em>. \u00a0In my view, the heart of that prophesy is that NICE will appear nice. \u00a0Unless, of course, you cross it, in which case it will turn very nasty indeed.<\/p>\n

As I explained in a\u00a0recent post<\/a>, soft totalitarianism wears a \u201chumanitarian mask.\u201d \u00a0I took the phrase from the Louisiana writer Charles Gayarr\u00e9, who used it in 1877 to discredit the moral pretensions of the triumphant northern states. \u00a0We find the same insight in the Southern writer Donald Davidson, who warned against,<\/p>\n

\u201cthe subtlest and most dangerous foe of humanity\u2014the tyranny that wears the mask of humanitarianism and benevolence\u201d*<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The tyranny of soft totalitarianism will appear to be nice. \u00a0NICE will appear nice, unless you cross it, and thereby reveal yourself as an enemy of all that is nice (and NICE). \u00a0In which case NICE will give you what you had coming.<\/p>\n

Handle explains that when NICE persecutes you for not being nice, you should not expect the consolations of a martyr who suffers the wrath of hard totalitarianism. \u00a0Indeed, a solution to the martyr problem is one of the great evolutionary adaptions of soft totalitarianism. \u00a0A dissident becomes a martyr when his punishment entails what we nowadays call the \u201cbad optics\u201d of apparent brutality. \u00a0Tank columns, prison camps, helicopter rides, show trials. \u00a0These instruments of hard totalitarianism crush dissidents, but they also create martyrs, and by creating martyrs they sow the dragon\u2019s teeth that sprout into more dissidents.<\/p>\n

But as Handel explains,<\/p>\n

\u2018Soft\u2019 is totally different.\u00a0 People will still have choices, but if they choose \u2018wrong\u2019 in the eyes of the elites, then they will just be seen as weirdo losers and low-status pariahs, not martyrs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Our own Bonald (whom Handle cites favorably) has often complained that the boundaries of forbidden speech are nowhere defined, but Handel explains that spurious freedom of speech is a tool of soft totalitarianism. \u00a0Under soft totalitarianism, freedom of speech is simply an invitation for mugs to publicly declare themselves \u201clow status pariahs.\u201d \u00a0Free speech is, in effect, the signup sheet for those who declare themselves deserving of \u201csocial consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is bad optics when a court of law sends a dissident author to the salt mines for writing that which is explicitly forbidden by law. \u00a0It is good optics for \u201csociety\u201d to deplatform and unemploy a dissident author who writes that which hurts and excludes some vulnerable and protected class of\u00a0weepies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In other words, NICE is nice to everyone who is nice. \u00a0And everyone who denies that NICE is nice gets what they have coming.<\/p>\n

* * * * * *<\/p>\n

Handle also demurs against Dreher\u2019s sentimental soft spot for the\u00a0alleged aims of the Left, not excluding the Bolsheviks and anarchists who took possession of the Russian state. \u00a0Dreher is therefore at least partly taken in by the \u201chumanitarian mask\u201d of the Left. \u00a0Thus he is alarmed and disgusted by the tyrannical abuses of Bolshevism, but nevertheless believes that Bolshevism began as a humanitarian response to the even more tyrannical abuses of Czarism.<\/p>\n

This is an example of the view, so common among conservatives, that Progressives have been right about everything, and conservatives have been wrong, until Progressives went too far just the week before last. \u00a0As I recently\u00a0wrote<\/a><\/p>\n

We should despise those \u201cconservatives\u201d who spinelessly admit that Progressives were essentially right about everything, from the regicide of Charles I, right down to whatever picayune thing got up their nose and made them \u201cconservative\u201d the week before last.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

The subtitle of Dreher\u2019s book is \u201cA Manual for Christian Dissidents,\u201d but Handle tells us that this verges on false advertising because\u00a0Live Not by Lies<\/em>\u00a0contains very little practical advice. \u00a0Indeed, he tells us that the book does not even embody the apparently practical advice of its title, since Dreher prudently omits to name the lies by which a Christian should not live.<\/p>\n

I daresay that this is because the lies by which we should not live are pretty lies,\u00a0nice\u00a0<\/em>lies, lies it is gauche, boorish and unsociable to point out.<\/p>\n

But the bottom line for both Dreher and Handle is that Christians must prepare to live\u00a0underground. \u00a0<\/em>Handle different from Dreher in believing that it may be too late for us to learn how to burrow, and that the surveillance system of our soft totalitarian state requires an altogether new sort of burrowing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*) Donald Davidson,\u00a0The Attack on Leviathan: Regionalism and Nationalism in the United States\u00a0<\/em>(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1938), p. 12.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Share this:<\/h3>\n
\n