Letters to a Middle-Aged Contrarian
(Update: Check out the comment section on this one – turned out fairly interesting.)
Finally. I present to you another post that is not about the man Douglas Wilson. This time, I write only about the men. There are, of course, tens of thousands of Douglas Wilsons currently in the world.
And Pooh cried from a dark corner of the Wood, “Christopher Ritchens! Help!”
Sure enough, a mixed story leans momentarily to the good. He came. My Inbox has been full of good advice from my new friend. I will copy and paste my favorite selections. (Imagine having to re-type them all out, what an enormous task that would be.) Here is Christopher Hitchens’ advice to a middle-aged contrarian:
_______________
You rather flatter and embarrass me, when you inquire my advice as to how a radical or “contrarian” life may be lived.
. . . It may be that you, Michael, recognise something of yourself in these instances; a disposition to resistance, however slight, against arbitrary authority or witless mass opinion, or a thrill of recognition when you encounter some well-wrought phrase from a free intelligence. If so, let us continue to correspond so that I may draw from your experience even as you flatter me by asking to draw upon mine. For the moment, do bear in mind that the cynics have a point, of a sort, when they speak of the “professional nay-sayer.” To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist. And there is no decent or charted way of making a living at it. It is something you are, and not something you do.
. . . Henry Kissinger, challenged on television to meet my accusation that he was responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, responded with a maniacal and desperate attempt to change the subject, and denounced me as a denier of the Nazi Holocaust. . . . I tell you about it not just in order to boast, though there is that. It went to make up for many, many other months, when the celebrity culture and the spin-scum and the crooked lawyers and pseudo-statesmen and clerics seemed to have everything their own way. They will be back, of course. They are always “back.” They never leave. But the victory is not pre-determined. And there are vindications to be had as well, far sweeter than anything contained in the meretricious illusion of good notices or “a good press.”
. . . The essence of an independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks The term “intellectual” was originally coined by those in France who believed in the guilt of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. They thought that they were defending an organic, harmonious and ordered society against nihilism, and they deployed this contemptuous word against those they regarded as the diseased, the introspective, the disloyal and the unsound. . . . the figure of Emile Zola offers encouragement, and his singular campaign for justice is one of the imperishable examples of what may be accomplished by an individual.
Zola did not in fact require much intellectual capacity to mount his defense of one wronged man. He applied, first, the forensic and journalistic skills that he was used to employing for the social background of his novels. These put him in the possession of the unarguable facts. But the mere facts were not sufficient, because the anti-Dreyfusards did not base their real case on the actual guilt or innocence of the defendant. They openly maintained that, for reasons of state, it was better not to reopen the case. Such a reopening would only serve to dissipate public confidence in order and in institutions. . . .. . . . the partisans of Dreyfus therefore had to face the accusation not that they were mistaken as to the facts, but that they were treacherous, unpatriotic and irreligious; accusations which tended to keep some prudent people out of the fray.
There is a saying from Roman antiquity: Fiat justitia-ruat caelum. “Do justice, and let the skies fall.” In every epoch, there have been those to argue that “greater” goods, such as tribal solidarity or social cohesion, take precedence over the demands of justice. It is supposed to be an axiom of “Western” civilisation that the individual, or the truth, may not be sacrificed to hypothetical benefits such as “order.” But in point of fact, such immolations have been very common. To the extent that the ideal is at least paid lip service, this result is the outcome of individual struggles against the collective instinct for a quiet life. Emile Zola could be the pattern for any serious and humanistic radical, because he not only asserted the inalienable rights of the individual, but generalised his assault to encompass the vile role played by clericalism, by racial hatred, by militarism and by fitishisation of “the nation” and the state. His caustic and brilliant epistolary campaign of 1897 and 1898 may be read as a curtain-raiser for most of the great contests that roiled the coming twentieth century.
. . . . It’s always as well to remember, when considering “miscarriages” of justice, as the authorities so neutrally and quaintly like to call them, that the framing of the innocent axiomatically involves the exculpation of the guilty. This is abortion, not miscarriage.
. . . One of the hardest things for anyone to face is the conclusion that his or her “own” side is in the wrong when engaged in a war. The pressure to keep silent and be a “team player” is reinforceable by the accusations of cowardice or treachery that will swiftly be made against dissenters. Sinister phrases of coercion, such as “stabbing in the back” or “giving ammunition to the enemy,” have their origin in this dilemma and are always available to compel unanimity.
. . . Quite often, the “baptism” of a future dissenter occurs in something unplanned, such as a spontaneous resistance to an episode of bullying or bigotry, or a challenge to some piece of pedagogical stupidity [or perhaps both in my case]. There is good reason to think that such reactions arise from something innate rather than something inculcated.
. . . this is what I have been telling writing classes for years. You must feel not that you want to but that you have to. It’s worth emphasizing, too, because there is a relationship, inexact to be sure but a relationship, between this desire or need and the ambition to rely upon internal exile, or dissent; the decision to live at a slight acute angle to society.
. . . If you care about the point of agreement and civility, then, you had better be well-equipped with points of argument and combativity, because if you are not then the “center” will be occupied and defined without your having helped to decide it, or determine what and where it is.
. . . I was heartened to have your reply. It is true that the odds in favor of stupidity or superstition or unchecked authority seem intimidating and that vast stretches of human time have seemingly elapsed with no successful challenge to these things. But it is no less true that there is an ineradicable instinct to see beyond, or through, these tyrannical conditions. One way of phrasing it might be to say that injustice and irrationality are inevitable parts of the human condition, but that challenges to them are inevitable also. On Sigmund Freud’s memorial in Vienna appear the words: “The voice of reason is small, but very persistent.”
. . .Conflict might be painful, but the painless solution does not exist in any case and the pursuit of it leads to the painful outcome of mindlessness and pointlessness; the apotheosis of the ostrich.
. . . Perfectionsists and zealots can break but not bend; in my experience they are subject to burnout from diminishing returns or else, to borrow Santayana’s definition of the fanatic, they redouble their efforts just when they have lost sight of their ends. . . . If you want to stay for the long haul, and lead a life that is free from illusions either propagated by you or embraced by you, then I suggest you learn to recognise and avoid the symptoms of the zealot and the person who knows that he is right. For the dissenter, the skeptical mentality is at least as important as any armor of principle.
. . . In the average day, you may well be confronted with some species of bullying or bigotry, or some ill-phrased appeal to the general will, or some petty abuse of authority. If you have a political loyalty, you may be offered a shady reason for agreeing to a lie or a half-truth that serves some short-term purpose. Everybody devises tactics for getting through such moments; try behaving “as if” they need not be tolerated and are not inevitable.
. . . Every day, the New York Times carries a motto in a box on its front page. “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” it says. It’s been saying it for decades, day in and day out. I imagine that most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. I myself check every day to make sure that the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there.
. . . I am not a supporter of materialist individualism in the Ayn Rand style, nor do I yearn for Nietzschean status. However, there is something irreducibly servile and masochistic about the religious mentality. And the critical and oppositional stance does ultimately rest on a belief in the capacity and pride of the individual, while religion tends to dissolve this into a sickly form of collectivism (remember “the flock”). Even at its most beautifully expressed this has a coercive undertone; as a matter of fact the bell does not always toll for thee, however much you may believe in human solidarity. Religion is, and always has been, a means of control. . . . Karl Marx was right when he stated in 1844 that “the criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism.” “Science,” as we call it, or objective and disinterested inquiry as it should be called, has helped contain and domesticate religion and vulgar Creationism but will never succeed in dethroning it.
. . . Many are the works of genius now in public libraries that would have been incinerated if a roll of opinion had been called. And, since I appear to you to be fixated on this point anyway, I trust I will lose none of your respect if I remind you once again that the forces of piety have always and everywhere been the sworn enemy of the open mind and the open book. Do not think for a moment that I have exhausted this point!
. . . [A number of years ago], I decided in my own mind that the then-president of the United States was even more of a crook and a liar than his most dogmatic ideological opponents had claimed.
. . .one must also be unafraid to criticise those who reach for the lowest common denominator, and who sometimes succeed in finding it.
. . . One is sometimes asked “by what right” one presumes to offer judgment. Quo warranto? is a very old and very justified question. But the right and warrant of an individual critic does not need to be demonstrated in the same way as that of a holder of power. It is in most ways its own justification. That is why so many irritating dissidents have been described by their enemies as “self-appointed” . . . I am happy in the ranks of the self-employed. If I am stupid or on poor form, nobody suffers but me. To the question, Who do you think you are? I can return the calm response: Who wants to know?
. . . I have never myself been in a situation of apparently hopeless oppression, or had to try to recruit the personal courage to resist such a state of affairs. But from observing those who have, I conclude that the moment of near despair is quite often the moment that precedes courage rather than resignation. In a sense, with the back to the wall and no exit but death or acceptance, the options narrow to one. . . . Noam Chomsky, a most distinguished intellectual and moral dissident, once wrote that the old motto about “speaking truth to power” is overrated. Power, as he points out, quite probably knows the truth already, and is mainly interested in suppressing or limiting or distorting it. We would therefore do better to try to instruct the powerless. I am not sure that there is a real difference in this distinction. Ruthless and arrogant though power can appear, it is only ever held by mere mammals who excrete and yearn, and who suffer from insomnia and insecurity. These mammals are also necessarily vain in the extreme, and often wish to be liked almost as much as they desire to be feared.
. . . Those who need or want to think for themselves will always be a minority; the human race may be inherently individualistic and even narcissistic but in the mass it is quite easy to control. People have a need for reassurance and belonging.
. . . The essential element of historical materialism as applied to ethical and social matters was (and actually still is) this: it demonstrated how much unhappiness and injustice and irrationality was man-made. Once the fog of supposedly god-given conditions had been dispelled, the decision to tolerate such conditions was exactly that – a decision. . . . Distrust any speaker who talks confidently about “we,” or speaks in the name of “us.” Distrust yourslef if you hear these tones creeping into your own style. The search for security and majority and is not always the same as solidarity; it can be another name for consensus and tyranny and tribalism.
. . . I want to urge you very strongly to travel as much as you can, and to evolve yourself as an internationalist. It’s as important a part of your education as a radical as the reading of any book. . . . In one way, traveling has narrowed my mind. What I have discovered is something very ordinary and unexciting, which is that humans are the same everywhere and that the degree of variation between members of our species is very slight. This is of course an encouraging finding; it helps arm you against news programs back home that show seething or abject masses of either fanatical or torpid people. In another way it is a depressing finding; the sorts of things that make people quarrel and make them stupid are the same everywhere. The two worst things, as one can work out without leaving home are racism and religion. . . . And when you hear the bigots talk about the “other,” it’s always in the same tones as their colonial bosses used to employ to talk about them.
. . .I make a minor specialism out of the study of partition. . . I have crossed most of the frontiers that freeze stupidity and hatred in place and time. The Ledra Palace Hotel checkpoint in Nicosia, the Allenby Bridge across the Jordan, the “demilitarised zone” at Panmunjom in Korea (uncrossable still, though I have viewed it from both sides), the Atari border post that cuts the Grand Trunk Road between Amritsar and Lahore and is the only land crossing between India and Pakistan, the “Hill of Shouts” across which divided villagers can communicate on the Golan Heights (which I’ve also seen from both sides), the checkpoints that sprang up around multicultural Basnia and threatened to choke it, the “customs” post separating Gaza from the road to Jerusalem. . . I’ve stood in the sun or the rain and been searched or asked for bribes by surly guards or watched pathetic supplicants be humiliated at all of these. Some other barriers, like Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin or the British army’s bunker between Derry and Donegal or the frontier separating Hong Kong and Macao from China have collapsed or partly evaporated and are just marks in my passport. The other ones will all collapse or dissolve one day, too. But the waste of life and energy that has been involved in maintaining them, and the sheer baseness of the resulting mentality. . . . In some ways I feel sorry for racists and for religious fanatics, because they so much miss the point of being human, and deserve a sort of pity. But then I harden my heart, and decide to hate them all the more, because of the misery they inflict and because of the contemptible excuses they advance for doing so. It especially annoys me when racists are accused of “discrimination.” The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members of one “race” to be the same, the racist precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.
. . . Much depends, therefore, on how one handles the tedious part . . Few things, for example, are more forbidding than the elementary civic duty of taking up the case of the wrongfully imprisoned. Visits to the jail, writing letters to indifferent elected officials, meeting with demoralised or paranoid relatives, sessions with lawyers . . the Dreyfus moment almost never comes. A lot of class warfare can be the same way, keeping up the spirits of the strikers who have no savings, looking up dismal and complex records to find out where the corporation has hidden its money, trying to interest a reporter in telling the story honestly. In the case of some ground-down or ethnically cleansed faraway country, explaining to uncaring people where it is on the map and why it might either matter to them or be, in some way they may not whish to hear, their own responsibility. I don’t mean to make any of this appear to be soul-destroying; it will only seem like that if you hope for instant results. The great reward, if that’s the right word, lies in the people you will meet when engaged in the same work, the lessons you will learn, and the confidence you will acquire from having some experiences and convictions of your own – to set against the received or thirdhand opinions of so many others.
. . . do not worry too much about who your friends are, or what company you may be keeping. Any cause worth fighting for will attract a plethora of people. . . . Those who try to condemn or embarrass you by the company you keep will usually be found to be in very poor company themselves; in any case they are, as I was once taught to say, tackling the man and not the ball. In point of fact, I have never found myself in the same galere as an outright fascist, and I have never found, even when making common cause with neoconservatives, that I’m in the same camp as Henry Kissinger. So there may be some platonic discrimination that saves one from the worst and acts as a kind of unseen compass.
. . . as often as not you will find that – whatever the high-sounding pretext may be – the worst crimes are still committed in the name of the old traditional rubbish: of loyalty to nation or “order” or leadership or tribe or faith. . . . The high ambition, therefore, seems to me to be this: That one should strive to combine the maximum of impatience with the maximum of skepticism, the maximum of hatred of injustice and irrationality with the maximum of ironic self-criticism. This would mean really deciding to learn from history rather than invoking or sloganising it.
. . . . Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the “transcendent” and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you. . . . may you keep your powder dry for the battles ahead, and know when and how to recognise them.
___________
I would recommend buying the book.
Posted by metzler on Saturday, April 11, 2009, at 8:05 pm.
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More father hunger. You must be starving. To whom will you turn when Hitchens lets you down?
Comment by No Way Jose — April 14, 2009 @ 10:05 am
Thank you for the warm, rational illustration. You guys are always “back”.
Comment by metzler — April 14, 2009 @ 2:36 pm
Michael, is there any chance ‘No Way Jose’ actually read your post?
Comment by Bob Moore — April 14, 2009 @ 7:58 pm
Bob,
I think there is a chance. Such muttering – Kissinger an example perhaps – often flows from the cognitive dissonance derived from the reading of rational and veridical prose aimed against the mutterer’s exorbitant and otherwise comforting beliefs.
Comment by metzler — April 14, 2009 @ 8:25 pm
Robert,
Yes I read it, did you?
I have to wonder why a middle aged man would write “And Pooh cried from a dark corner of the Wood, “Christopher Ritchens! Help!”
The rest of the post is permission from Michael’s new father figure for him to behave badly.
No cognitive dissonance here.
Comment by No Way Jose — April 16, 2009 @ 6:34 am
Not attacking, but I’ve been wondering for the last couple of posts.
Do you consider yourself a Christian anymore, or are you fully in Christopher’s camp?
Comment by Matthew N. Petersen — April 16, 2009 @ 12:58 pm
Mr. No Way,
I suspect Robert’s inquiry is a result of your behaving somewhat like the spin-scum clerics Hitchens references here in this post.
Please take a look at my discussion guidelines if you have not already done so, and note my current tolerance. You insult my identity while concealing your own. What precisely are you afraid of? Are you Wilson, Nolan, a terrorist, Nate, a freshmen at NSA, a law student at Yale getting some kicks, a friend trying to help me out and illustrate what I have had to put up with from the Kirk? Perhaps your opinion just embarrasses you? Or perhaps this is not your real opinion, hence the irrelevance of identity? Do you plan to come back as ten other anonymous people so that your vote is unanimous? I have little way of knowing.
As for your psychological analysis, I remind you of the history: one arbitrary day, Douglas Wilson announced that I suffered from “father hunger.” Something like this was an eventual necessity; the watching world had grown tired of Wilson’s refusal to follow the only other course of action open to him: to treat me with the slightest bit of decency and answer a single point of argument or fact. This insulting allegation of “father hunger” was never explained, supported by evidence, or even illustrated via a single example. I do not necessarily object to this. This is rather fitting, since it was obvious that the announcement of “father hunger” had only two purposes: to generate more social violence against me and to further psychologically maim Wilson’s recent student and parishioner. In other words, it was announced for rhetorical effect, and effect it would obviously have for Wilson’s followers (Wilson implicitly claimed personal pastoral knowledge of me over the course of a decade). Hence, Wilson was just playing his part as a good spin-scum cleric.
The reason why a middle aged man would write “And Pooh cried from a dark corner of the Wood, “Christopher Ritchens! Help!” is because the Kirk thrust the title of “pooh” on him a number of years ago and he subsequently started a blog called “Pooh’s Think.” The discussion culture that Pooh’s Think generated was metaphorically called ‘the Wood’ by one of his friends, which has been a helpful and light-hearted source of analogies ever since. Two salient facts: 1) I have already used this humorous call of pooh for Robins in a different context and 2) Pooh and Robins hardly have a father-son relationship in the way you imply here (Robins must abandon the Wood altogether once he gets older).
If there is anything about this clarification that you feel is insufficient, please do continue to press the issue. I say this in jest, really, since I doubt you have any honest intention in recycling this old “maniacal and desperate attempt to change the subject” in the first place.
This is not to say that I think there is something necessarily wrong with having a “father figure.” It is just that Hitchens, a world class public intellectual and veteran journalist and internationalist, has here humbly given me advice that I not hunger for a father. I respect his opinion on this point, an opinion that resonates well with the lessons I have learned from the dungeons of the Kirk and the hands of Father Wilson. I think Bob’s perplexity is perhaps similar to mine: “father hunger” is quite a bizarre comment given the explicit content of the post it is attached to.
Comment by Michael Metzler — April 16, 2009 @ 4:39 pm
Mr. Petersen,
I appreciate your sensitivity to the fact that myself and others would rightly assume you were writing to attack me regardless of the content and tone of your comment. If you are a Kirk thug, then it would seem inevitable that you would eventually begin walking, talking, and smelling like a Kirk thug.
But I do not believe your denial. I also do not believe that you come with a spirit of self-critical inquiry with this interesting curiosity over which “camp” I now fall in (as if Hitchens’ denial of your exorbitant beliefs is something I can ‘enter’ once leaving “Christianity”).
I have a question for you. Can you give me two examples of my lies? Just two. I would request only one, but two would be more interesting. I would like to give the other readers a couple examples of your just observations while handling an older, grown man in your religious community. This should not be asking too much since anyone curious about me could have googled my name over the last two years to discover that I was a liar. I accidentally discovered this fact a few weeks ago. On Wednesday, September 13, 2006, you posted:
I am not surprised to see a Kirk ‘friend’ attempt to publicly scourge and humiliate me. I was surprised to see it done for the mere purpose of getting some comments on your lonely blog. Given the rampage of the racist kinists at the time, you were insured to get something in return, which you in fact did.
Welcome “back”. You will do well in the Kirk and have learned one of her most important lessons. Although, I do see you are at least beginning to see the pathology of some of the more virulent Wilson whoopers, such as Witmer. Any chances you would be willing to leave your Mother of War?
Comment by metzler — April 16, 2009 @ 4:45 pm
Michael,
Sorry for the cheap laughs. I don’t believe a word in that post, nor did I. That post was a joke. I said to myself “I’m not getting any comments. This is frustrating. How can I get more comment? Well, everyone reads posts on Michael Metzler. When Josh Gibbs posted on Michael Metzler he got way more hits. Let’s put up a post that says Michael Metzler over and over again, with something ridiculous like ‘is a liar’–maybe if I put his name in all caps it will spike the number of hits–to try and catch interesting google searches. Note that I mocked myself in that post “Did everyone suddenly realize it’s foolish to rebuke an ass.” is a reference to me. I’m the ass no one is disagreeing with. But if the post bothered you, I’m sorry. It was a joke making fun of how I couldn’t get any comments. I wasn’t intending to hurt you at all. I’m sorry that I did. I didn’t mean a word in that post, the joke was “I can’t get comments. No matter what.” Notice that even when I posted that, no one commented (till two that I only discovered today, and which were posted more than a year after the original). But again, “As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am not I in sport?” I’m sorry. If you’d like, I’ll take it down.
Note also that I poked fun at Christ Church in that same post. Wouldn’t it be funny if everyone from Christ Church wore the same cultish black shirt that said “we are not a cult”?
Regarding my status at Christ Church: I am still at Trinity Reformed, though two weeks before Palm Sunday I would have said I wasn’t. That said, I am a loyal student of Pr. Leithart, and don’t have any intention of leaving. And though I may often disagree with Pr. Wilson and the neoconservatives on his blog, he’s my family. I fight with him as one may fight with his brother. We may (often) disagree. But he’s my brother.
But as to whether I’m just a CC cult member: I have had my share of run-ins with Pr. Wilson. There is, for instance, this post where I take Pr. Wilson’s posts on The good of affluence head on. And as you read Pr. Wilson’s post, I think you may have noted that I signed off as “Iphigenia” a couple of times–a reference to what seemed to be ritual violence executed against me. It’s all in Girard, man. You have probably also noticed that Steven Wedgeworth really dislikes me and thinks I go to Pr. Wilson’s blog to attack Pr. Wilson and rile up the Reformed. You may have noticed how strongly I disagreed with Pr. Wilson last summer about D. B. Hart, and theodicy. CC may be a cult (though I don’t for an instant believe it, she’s a fallen institution with her fair share of problems, but yet an institution, like any church, which is Christ on earth), but if she is, I’m hardly the googly-eyed cultist. I’m rather perhaps the counter-example to the claim that she is a cult.
Comment by Matthew N. Petersen — April 16, 2009 @ 6:07 pm
Michael,
You ever feel like the Verizon commercial… “Can you hear me now?”
Bob
Comment by Bob Moore — April 16, 2009 @ 7:52 pm
Matthew,
In my comments on Molly Worthen’s article, I noted the very real change in Moscow over the last couple years. This comment from you would seem to further evidence this change. I have never received a response like this from someone with your kind of association with the Kirk, but for those Kirkers who were directly supportive of my preliminary efforts in the Wood. I am thinking particularly of the word “sorry” and the apparently honest statement: “I wasn’t intending to hurt you at all.”
But there are a number of significant problems that remain. You give the impression that you have been some sort of local opposition to Wilson and provide a link as evidence for this, but from everything I see, this appears disingenuous. In my random sampling, I have only seen a follower of Wilson in you in the comment sections recently (as a general rule, I do not follow Wilson’s blog much. I have been taking a keener interest just the last two months). You recently noted, for example, how funny Wilson was. Further, the link you provide does not, on the face of it, suggest any sort of skirmish at all. You have no link to Wilson’s blog and it is not clear on a first skim how it is you are so much as disagreeing with Wilson. (Feel free to provide more evidence)
You go so far to suggest that there “seemed to be ritual violence executed against me,” whereas I still have no start to understanding what you are referring to, and you offer us a blowing and sucking paradox: “CC may be a cult . . . I don’t for an instant believe it.” You leave us with the warm suggestion that Wilson is your family, a brother, and recycle that same asinine, unexplained, and pompous kill-1000-birds-with-one-stone-remark that Wilson has recently used to refer to Pooh’s Think part 2 and not that long ago to publicly insult his own brother Evan: “It’s all in Gerard, man.”
That your claim – Metzler is a liar – was a complete joke is already very difficult to believe – not impossible, but with certainty, difficult. But with all of this dubious language that follows on the heals of this allegedly sincere testimony to my veridical habits, I can only pause and wonder for a few more brief moments. And my skepticism – or at the very least my full bewilderment – grows as I recall what it was like in the Kirk back in 2006 when you made that post. One month after your post “Michael Metzler is a liar,” Douglas Wilson fashioned his own post with the same claim. Just a few months before your post, Douglas Wilson wrote me an email stating that everything I was saying was not true and that I knew that it was not true. In other words, Wilson was emphatic: Michael Metzler is a liar. So how is it, that at the same point in time that your “brother,” or “family,” publicly and privately declares in all seriousness that Michael Metzler is a liar, a claim no serious Kirker would have dared disagree with, you go on record publicly stating that, with a conversational implicature intended to be self-evident, that Michael Metzler is not a liar. We are all just supposed to get the joke. Of course Metzler is not a liar. The things you hear in the alley ways and the gossip dens of old ladies! The trouble is that Pastor Wilson’s blog is no alley way in the Kirk, and his pronouncements against an enemy X-Kirker is not hearsay. It is an order.
All this, Matthew, is very vexing to me. This might be an understatement, but I shall ponder a bit longer and see what happens. However, I do make note of the fact that you almost recently converted to Roman Catholicism, that you are at Trinity and not at Christ Church, and that you find your loyalties more with Leithart, rather than Wilson. If, when you posted your ‘joke,’ you were not acting as an apologist for Wilson nor going along with Merkle’s campaign at New St. Andrews over Metzler’s losing his grip and spiritual implosion, then you are just one of the Kirkers who sat on the side-lines – entertained a good deal as evidenced by your funny post – shrugging your shoulders and eventually turning away once the gore of torture began to disturb your triumphant Christian living in the Kirk of 2006, when Wilson was at war with Moscow.
Not sure why you must be “loyal” to Leithart as a teacher. He is in error on some very important matters; loyalty to your teacher qua teacher is not the best way to locate just what matters these might be. And why do you have “no intention” on leaving? Undoubtedly, if what Wilson has made the Kirk out to be is the truth, you would be a fool to leave. But if the kirk really isn’t The Kirk, then why your ‘loyalty’ to a half-frozen mud pit in North Idaho? It has its charm for sure, but should not a young man of 27 see something of the world after receiving years of narrow-minded brain training in a small religious community centered on loyalty to a few Dear Leaders?
Comment by MIchael Metzler — April 16, 2009 @ 8:57 pm
Michael,
I’ve always been a bit of an outsider at Christ Church, when I was an NSA student, I attended All Souls, then the next year, though I was a member of Trinity Reformed (in her first year), I lived at the Big Haus. After graduating college–one of my degrees was in Philosophy, and many of my favorite classes were with Dr. O’Rourke–I taught at Montrose (where the E. Wilson kids attended school, and where E. Wilson is on the board). Several other friends of mine, from Christ Church, taught at Montrose, so this wasn’t an act of rebellion or anything, but it isn’t a CC school, and it does show my willingness to fellowship with E. Wilson. And my family has been friends with Morins since my parents left CEF when Pr. Wilson became paedobaptist. I celebrated Easter with Mr. Morin and his family just last Sunday.
I don’t mean that I’ve become a local contrarian–Lord have mercy if I have!–but simply, that if CC is a cult (which I deny it is) I’m hardly the googly-eyed cultist. As to skirmishes with Pr. Wilson, I spent most of last July arguing with him about D. B. Hart, and Calvinism, those posts can be found here, if you want to spend hours wading through it all. More recently, there’s this, where I accused Pr. Wilson (or at least some of the readers of his blog) of executing ritual violence (see also here) against me (where a society finds its self identity through attack and exile of the other) by taking the moniker “Iphigenia”. Thus “It’s all in Girard, man” in my earlier post was said with a wry smile to explain not your actions, but the treatment I received on Pr. Wilson’s blog. And the post I linked to above was a response to these posts. But again, I don’t mean this post as an attack on Pr. Wilson, but rather a defense of him. I sharply disagree with him often. But I’d probably disagree with Jesus if He were still living among us in His flesh. Yet I remain at Trinity, though I had every opportunity to leave. Yes, Pr. Wilson makes mistakes. Were I without sin I would say “then neither do I condemn you.” But I don’t get that far in the story. It says, the older men left first, so I’d probably be one of the last around with a rock. But yet, I lay it down, and refuse to cast the first stone. He’s not a cult leader–how could Ibe at Trinity if he were?–and as does his father, I have a lot of respect for him.
And I think my experience does provide a counter-example for the idea that the Kirk is a cult. (I said she may be above because I tend to be deferential to others beliefs; not because I myself have any thought that she may be a cult, and indeed, “may” was intended to convey something of a contrary to fact mood.) If she were a cult, why is there someone like me in it?–I don’t know that I’m even a 1 point Calvinist. I think Luther and the Orthodox understand the sacraments better than Calvin. I have a post up on my blog, arguing for the Immaculate Conception, and another questioning Heidelberg, both of which I still agree with. Or at least, (because communities often contain black sheep who help define the community by their contrariness) why is there someone like me, who is well liked by both Pr. Sumpter and Pr. Leithart, and who gets along with everyone at Trinity or Christ Church? (I don’t interact with Pr. Wilson much save online so he’s not included in the list of Pastors, but otherwise he would be.) And why if it is a cult, was there not more social pressure put on me to keep me at Trinity?–the elders clearly told me they thought I was making a mistake, but they also told me I’d be permitted to leave, and treated me with utmost friendliness when I saw them later (as for instance when I ran into Chris Schlect on the bus to Pullman, or when I’d ask Pr. Sumpter for pastoral advice); and my other Christ Church (and I mean Christ Church, not Trinity Reformed) friends treated me similarly.
This perhaps explains how I could say what I did when I did. I’ve always been kinda like the Irish nobleman C. S. Lewis went to school with (as described in Surprised by Joy) who misses everything social. Particularly, I’ve always been on the fringes of Christ Church. And I don’t recall knowing much about what was going on with you. Particularly, I didn’t know of the private email Pr. Wilson sent you challenging your honesty, and by the time he questioned your honesty online, I’d almost entirely forgotten about my own post.
Regarding my loyalty: If Bill Simmons can praise LeBron, saying he expects him to stay in Cleveland because he is a loyal person, can I not choose to stay at Trinity because of loyalty? So I don’t have the career I’d have elsewhere. Havel Havalim, haccol havel! A common fate overtakes them all. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Why lay up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, and thieves break in and steal? And in my opinion, I have found no place where I am strengthened to strive for that Bread which perisheth not, and fed that I may labor to lay up treasures in heaven.
And let me note in conclusion, though I may often disagree with Pr. Wilson, I have a lot of respect for him, and my loyalty extends to him too. I do not mean in any way to drive a wedge between Trinity and CC. I have opposed to the face people who would attack him. And I do not believe for an instant that he is power hungry. He is, of course, fallen, and sins. But he is a better man than I and I would not hesitate to go to him for council, particularly in practical matters.
Comment by Matthew N. Petersen — April 16, 2009 @ 10:10 pm
Matthew,
You are a rare breed indeed, on a number of fronts. You went through NSA while attending All Souls, experienced Wilson’s blog while attending O’Rourke’s classes, and are hanging out with the Baptists Evan and Terry while considering joining the Roman Catholic Church. This is eclectic for sure. It reminds me of the eclectic position I was in before moving back to Moscow for the last time. I suspect something has to break at some point. And from the looks of it, you have just given Wilson the signal to help make that happen. What on earth got into you to tell Wilson publicly that he failed to act with class? “Perhaps you don’t mean it that way, but your most recent comment seems to lack a lot of class.” And if that wasn’t enough, you decided you would go ahead and place a sign and seal on your now soon approaching execution by claiming Wilson employed dishonest rhetorical tactics: “And the way you’ve set this post up, if people disagreed with you about the quality of the film, they come across as bad people.”
My goodness! There is no better way to get that big gorilla throwing bananas. But then you act surprised:
Let me guess: Wilson did not call you on the phone for a warm pastoral chat. I would not take this personally. Wilson rarely gets to enjoy winning an argument these days, and must be desperate for some domineering rhetorical moments after having to call off the local war only to then tour with Christopher Hitchens. You merely provided a therapeutic opportunity.
This all happened about a week and a half ago. I will not here predict what will happen next, since I do not want to give Wilson a head’s up about what not to do. But I can assure you, that by staying here in the Wood, you will find a good deal of safety – you clearly do not understand what you are getting yourself into (writing like this here is a huge no-no to add to your already large heap).
In reality, I see you as somewhere between what I call the third and fourth tears of the Kirk, which means you are really not much of a Kirker at all. I say this primarily because of your admitted social distance from the Kirk as well as the very non-Kirker rebuke to the big gorilla – and of the precise kind he does not like. Your situation would be much different if you had more social dependences within the Kirk – formal and informal, emotional and financial. However, you still live in that broader community and certainly find your future life involving the Kirk. You are going to be motivated to some degree by that. Since Leithart is your respected teacher, and since you are a ‘virgin’ in need of a nice Kirk wife (what better place to find one than in the Kirk while living in the frozen wilderness of north Idaho?), I suspect that your motivation to remain on good terms with Wilson and the Kirk are fairly strong. Your concluding remarks are precisely the way Leithart would have you put it:
Although, one statement of yours just before this seems geared not so much to Leithart as to the Kirk girls: “I have opposed to the face people who would attack him [Wilson].” Brave. Heroic. Sexy. The young Kirk virgins will no doubt be impressed, but this is not a convincing tale for one suspecting a cultish relationship between you and this local pastor.
Now to this “cult” business of yours. You use this word as if it represents a main thesis of Pooh’s Think. Yet, to my knowledge, I have used this word once here in the Wood, Part 2, and it was in reference to my experience with the Boston Church of Christ on the East Coast two years before I moved to Moscow. On the face of it, your constant employment of this word reveals a significant misunderstanding. In my book, I write:
But even if there was not a misunderstanding, your arguments would not be to the point. It does not follow that Wilson is not a cult leader just because you are a member of Trinity. For one, your friend Gibbs explained once that he was at Trinity because the Kirk was a cult! Second, Trinity was designed as a way to move the right kind of Kirk members away from the center of Wilson’s social power. It was a way to institutionally mitigate whatever hostilities might have been growing between Wilson’s form of leadership and some of the members of Christ Church (this was in the heat of the local war). That Wilson’s father has respect for Douglas Wilson also says nothing. Wilson has incessantly honored his father as the indirect founder of the Kirk – strategically and theologically – and Wilson’s father is in some ways as nuts as his son, who admits openly that it is the duty of the Christian to deceive local unbelievers as to their subversive purposes. Wilson’s father is apparently even a strong source of the Kirk’s past dominating metaphors of violence and warfare.
You further attempt to relieve my concerns about any cultish connection you have with Wilson by explaining that you argue with Wilson, just the way you would likely argue with Jesus himself. Something tells me that you are indicating the opposite of what you hoped to here. You say that there would be pressure on you when you wanted to leave Trinity. But this again just reveals your naivety about the role this secondary institution plays. Trinity exists in part so that folks like you can gradually disperse into the community with no spats or messes. You want me to consider Chris Schlect here? Schlect, the Kirk’s resident connoisseur of ecclesiastical justice, was scheduled to help me file formal charges against Douglas Wilson. At the last moment, however, he deiced to rather wash his hands of the deal and explained to me in writing that he had always just considered me “creepy.” I am unmoved by your personal to-do with the man. You write: “the elders clearly told me they thought I was making a mistake, but they also told me I’d be permitted to leave.” This is evidence that you are not involved with a cult? You were “permitted to leave”? Once again, your illustration appears to betray your rhetorical purpose.
A further problem with ‘cult’: you are at places using the word differently than I would. I am inclined to reserve ‘cult’ as a description for certain forms of social control found in small religious groups. But you seem to use ‘cult’ primarily to describe the a groups isolation through schismatic claims on unique doctrinal purity; on these terms, a ‘cult’ is the “truly” people. In this respect, I would agree. In fact, I think that in this sense the Kirk is less cultish than mainstream PCA and OPC denominations in many instances. Consider, for example, the attacks on Wilson by the “truly reformed.” Aiming at the social reality of the Kirk, however, your protest is of little use:
I still urge you to consider leaving Moscow for a while. Your argument from the comment on LeBron is unconvincing: “The more I watch him, the more I wonder if such an intensely loyal guy would ever say, ‘Thanks for the memories, everybody,’ dump his teammates, dump his hometown and start a fresh life elsewhere.” It is LeBron’s profession that generates the need for loyalty here. This kind of loyalty appears to be apart of the public role a professional sports player has in society. This is a helpful analogy, but your situation seems much different to me. As Eric Schwitzgebel argues, it is healthy to change academic settings:
You need exposure to a different academic culture with different intellectual assumptions. Changing your social situation is important too, I would argue. I conducted exit focus groups for graduating seniors at the University of Idaho, and the almost universal take-home message from the students in various departments was that education requires travel. If you do not go and live for a time in other cultures, your education can only be half-baked. Hitchens here in this post strongly encourages the free intellectual to travel as much as possible and to become an internationalist. You have been in a very narrow, isolated situation even with your broader connections and education at the University.
You write: “I’ve always been kinda like the Irish nobleman C. S. Lewis went to school with (as described in Surprised by Joy) who misses everything social.” Indeed, the “apotheosis of an ostrich.” If you were around the Kirk and online in 2006, certainly it is an ignorance that is to some degree willful that you admit: “And I don’t recall knowing much about what was going on with you.”
You say that you pray you would not be a contrarian; this desire seems well compatible with your yearning to live within a world more imaginary than even Wilson’s Kirk:
You offer a form of monastic activism as helpful as Mother Teresa’s (see The Missionary Position, 1995): “A common fate overtakes them all. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” And I never seek to be amazed at how those in subjection have so little idea of the abuses of power and tyrannies that surround them – those very people born as a free citizens in a free world. You are like the southern slaves interviewed about their kind masters:
Where do you get this moral authority to shrug your shoulders at a politician’s abuse of power as if we were talking about Joe Six Pack’s marital struggles? Just what does New St. Andrew’s teach their students about the wars of nations, political philosophy, the corruption of power, and totalitarianism? No, do not tell me, I either already know or can imagine. I do hope you in fact do not fit into the narrative of John 8 as you suppose. I still have more hope in the role you have played in the Kirk. I fail to believe that you have been one of the power hungry religious leaders unjustly dragging innocent women into the streets for stoning only to put down your political opponent – I trust you would be the first to drop the rock. All I am asking is that you begin drawing in the sand with me.
You write: “And in my opinion, I have found no place where I am strengthened to strive for that Bread which perisheth not, and fed that I may labor to lay up treasures in heaven.” Isn’t this tautological? And if it were not: How would you know?
Lastly, please do not confuse the life of a contrarian with the life of platonic theological ‘controversy.’ The two are actually mutually exclusive. For the seeker of truth who has no emotional need for boastful and isolating debates over ‘doctrine,’ the “incessant clashing of theologians grows monotonous in a day and intolerable the day following.” (Menken, A Religious Orgy in Tennessee)
I have now come up with a name for your particular monastic order in Moscow: the ostrichian friars. Leithart seems to be the enabling holy Father of the order, enculturating the youth with the monastic practice of the Ostrich.
Comment by metzler — April 17, 2009 @ 8:39 pm
Michael,
This is a particularly odd week for you to make this particular error regarding Mother Theresa. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust?
Have you not heard!
Christos Anesti!
As of yet, only the Blessed Virgin has received back her beloved, destroyed by wicked men. But all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well:
As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive
What authority have I to forgive Pr. Wilson’s mistreatment of me and others?
si enim dimiseritis hominibus peccata eorum dimittet et vobis Pater vester caelestis delicta vestra si autem non dimiseritis hominibus nec Pater vester dimittet peccata vestra.
And have I not done worse to him?
Christos Anesti!
And may I remind you of that passage from Matthew 6, and the later one about the forgiven servant who did not forgive his fellow servant. Sic et Pater meus caelestis faciet vobis si non remiseritis unusquisque fratri suo de cordibus vestris.
Has Pr. Wilson offended you? Forgive him. And go to him privately. And what is it to you if he is unpunished? Shall not Christ judge justly? Trust Him.
But have you offended Pr. Wilson? Then leave your fight on the altar, and go be reconciled with your brother. Learn from Fr. Zossima, and learn the great good news that you are guilty before all. Humble yourself and seek his pardon.
Has he scourged and mocked you and arayed you in a crown of thorns? “Who was the guilty- Who brought this upon Thee? Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone Thee. ‘Twas I, Lord, Jesus, I it was denied Thee! I crucified Thee.” Forgive him and find your salvation by being guilty before him. “Learn that of a truth each of us is guilty before all for everyone and everything.” And discover the great Gospel. As Fr. Zossima’s brother said “why, I myself want to be guilty before them, only I cannot explain it to you, for I do not know how to love them. Let me be culpable before all, and then all will forgive me, and that will be paradise.”
The Lord is king, and hath clothed himself with majesty.
May God not stop with my head, but bury the whole me. I had rather not put the seed at any disadvantage.
Christos Anesti!
Matthew N. Petersen
Comment by Matthew N. Petersen — April 17, 2009 @ 11:07 pm
Matthew,
I had enjoyed our discussion and thought we were making progress. But you seem opposed to making progress. Your reply is positively pious, religious, and – so I would argue – therefore borders on the irrational. Although, there is one issue I sought to press in my last reply to you that you do seem to address with complete rational cunning. You seem to understand the pressure I was applying to your world view on this one point and you were determined to relieve that pressure immediately. You succeeded, with the efficiency of a nuclear missile. You hit it head on – a sledge hammer to a thumb tack. As to tyranny, totalitarianism, abuse of power, unchecked and unbalanced social dominance, slavery, and the evil oppression of the weak and defenseless, you shrug your shoulders, hail Mary, enter your ostrichian monestary to greet your Father Leithart and close the doors tight behind you.
You have succeeded not in demonstrating what is so lovely and merciful about your brand of religion, but precisely how it is positively evil, irrational, and unmerciful. Your Christianity is not good for the world, precisely because what it recommends is so immoral. This stance to human suffering and social brutality stands opposed to the progress of civilization itself, along with the wisdom contained within her institutions of justice and order.
Go forgive and wish well those who seek to destroy us and society itself. Go bless the Catholic child rapists, make a monument to Steven Sitler while you pooh-pooh the protesting pooh, go visit the grave of the callous ideological bitch Mother Teresa and while you are there, Hitler. By pretending everything is all right with the world, you do violence to the down-trodden begging for mercy and justice. You make clear that even if there was a weak soul scandalized by the powerful right in your small community, right in plain view, you would simply stand on the side of the street in the midst of the stupid crowd of whoopers for any one of your Dear Leaders of the town, shrug your shoulders, feel guilty about what a sinner you are, and pray for forgiveness for all the creatures of the world – the baby bird, the antelope, Charles Manson, and the big gorilla.
Thank you for reminding me of the importance of this entry here in the Wood. There are two words that sum up the life of the contrarian: truth and justice. You, young sir, are almost completely devoid of both. I once again encourage you to leave your little religious community and go breathe some air that is not filled with the beast’s rotten, living breath.
Comment by Michael Metzler — April 18, 2009 @ 9:01 am
I like this piece on its own terms. I’ll also admit I haven’t watched or read the debates and don’t know what was addressed and what was not. I’ll just say this: Hitchens’s credibility was lost in his support for the invasion of Iraq. Atheists who support non-defensive wars and all their accompanying brutalities (such as torture) in the present are not in a good position to lecture Christians about morality, even though Christians are guilty of the same things.
Even if we concede that faith in God, or particularly the Christian God, is foolish, it is even more clear that faith in the State and its wars is just plain mad.
Comment by James Leroy Wilson — April 19, 2009 @ 7:55 pm
James,
I have seen this concern tossed about. To what extent and in what way precisely do you think Hitchens lost his credibility? There were many in support of the invasion originally, right? I was surprised to hear he was in support of the invasion, but I hesitate in thinking this fact is entirely confounding when considered alone. First, interpretation is always much different after the fact, particularly looking back on anything the Bush administration was involved in – if for no other reason their success at secrecy. Second, was not how the war was planned and implemented one of the primary problems, rather than the mere decision to go to war.
I would certainly need to see evidence if I were to think Hitchens endorsed torture. What are you thinking of here? Did you hear of his water boarding experiment?
Anything particular you would recommend reading regarding Hitchens’ support of the war? Thanks.
Comment by metzler — April 19, 2009 @ 8:15 pm
A few years ago you earned a reputation as the Internet Assassin because of your blog attacks against anyone who ever pastored you or slighted you. They called you Michael Metzler, the Internet Assassin. That’s the only reason I choose this form of communication and I alluded to it in my first comment which you didn’t publish.
Who is Christopher Ritchens if he’s not Christopher Hitchens and what does he have to do with Christopher Robins? Did you ask Christopher Robins for advice on how to live a radical or contrarian life or did you ask Christopher Hitchens? Of the two, which one do you know better? If you’re still alive in 25 years, would you want your children to ask a complete stranger how they should live their lives or would you want them to ask you? Why is a middle aged man asking this question in the first place?
Just curious.
Comment by No Way Jose — April 20, 2009 @ 5:42 am
There were also many opposing the war initially, and they always had the stronger argument that a) the claims of WMD’s and Al Qaeda connections are bogus, b) Saddam was already contained militarily and economically, and c) the war would be a diplomatic disaster and strengthen Al Qaeda. Indeed, there was never, ever, anyone who could refute Bush Sr.’s reasons for not invading Iraq in the Persian Gulf War.
Advocating war when it’s not necessary reflects poorly on a pubic intellectual’s a) judgment, and b) worldview.
I think Hitchens compounded his error by endorsing Bush in 2004 and then supporting Giuliani – after we had learned about Justice Dept memos regarding torture, Abu Ghraib, and the Patriot Act. This is not to say Hitchens endorses torture, but torture is frequently an accompanying part of war.
Of course, supporting the war even more severely discredited countless evangelical leaders. To their credit, the Pope and, yes, Doug Wilson, called it right.
Comment by James Leroy Wilson — April 20, 2009 @ 9:01 am
James,
From what I do know, which is not going to be as much as you know (partly because I was on the ground for the Moscow war at the time), this situation was complex (and grows more complex as new public opinion intermixes with the invasion’s now growing history). In such a situation, that “many” opposed the war does not unsettle me too much, although not to be, admittedly, downplayed at the start.
I was glad to see Wilson getting some exposure, but initially I was not too keen on Hitchens. I wrote an old professor of mine a few months ago and explained that I thought Hitchens was likely an immoral sophist because of his stance on the war in Iraq (that I had only heard faint rumors about) and whatever his relationship to his first wife allegedly was. But my interest in Hitchens has grown for a number of reasons, foremost because I had been a Christian apologist for 16 years before encountering his work and debates on religion, and I have never seen anything nearly like his approach.
The new waive of atheistic works are all a bit unsettling. Harris startles and dazzles on the moral issues in a very efficient style (although lacks a careful philosophical underpinning). Dennett is too powerful a philosopher for any mere popular writer to dare touch unless they wish to embarrass themselves before the intellectuals. I am not sure yet what I think of Dawkins – Plantinga was willing to challenge the ‘logic’ of his argument and I am not too impressed with ‘the writing’ on the little I have read so far. But Hitchens thunders with sermonic and literary understatement, latent with careful philosophy, that seems to grab everyone’s attention (not counting the boobies and whoopers for our Dear Leaders – although, I guess their attention is at least ‘grabbed,’ much like the peasants before Shakespeare’s plays). This is not a new anti-theist ‘argument’ getting tested. This is western civilization itself finally spitting up Wilson’s cardboard classical reformation or else the thin analytic philosophy of the evangelicals.
Hitchens’ focus on totalitarianism mirrors wonderfully just what it was that was necessary to launch my journey out of fundamentalism, and is precisely where I think his ‘worldview’ is grounded – although I do not like this word all that much. My intuition on how I might seek to offer a reply to your concerns was supported by what I have just read in his Vanity Fair essay from the October 2003 edition. This is a moving piece of journalism following his productive, second visit to Iraq. As for torture, Hitchens had dinner with a judge who had been
Second to last paragraph, Hitchens writes:
Earlier in the article, expressing his horror of what Iraq was like under Saddam, Hitchens says: “I insist that I saw all this with my own two eyes, and I would never have known of it if I had relied on the grudging and defeatist mainstream press.”
Personally, I am inclined to trust – as a provisional first approximation – the words of a self-employed, on the ground, veteran anthropologist more than an armchair newsperson working for the boss.
As for the social and political revolution that was possible after the invasion: “I haven’t seen anything like it since the Portuguese army overthrew the fascist dictoatorship in Lisbon in April 1974.” The army tried to “dislodge the torpor and backwardness of decades.”
Veteran soldiers and families of soldiers who spilled their blood in those deserts of oppressive barbarism, who at least carved a way for a new civilization of justice, peace, and education, are inspired by Hitchens’ article to hold in balance their humility before history’s adjudication against the entire human race – as well as unconstitutional action and embarrassing secrecy and propaganda – with a sense of justified pride and dignity. So it seems to me anyway.
It was the radical libertarian’s duty to oppose the war at the beginning and the politician’s self-serving interest to oppose it now. Hitchens did not seem to dance to the climate of opinion’s piper before or after, which makes him, if not right, at least a consistent contrarian.
No?
(As to your point about Wilson, I think you point to evidence supporting the opposite of your view. Wilson does not fumigate over political issues as a public intellectual, but as a spin-scum cleric always on the prowl for the next emotional hot button he can find to whip up a larger, adoring conservative crowd.)
Comment by Michael Metzler — April 20, 2009 @ 3:53 pm
Mr. No Way,
Your language still drips with deceit, and in a way that I find very particular. I suspect my patience with your anonymity that remains in opposition to my discussion guidelines is therefore running a bit thin. It seems as if you cannot write an honest statement. Consider:
You say that you are “just curious,” which is rhetorical deceit. You say that I earned a reputation as a Internet Assassin, period. This is implicit deceit: See the “praise for Pooh’s Think” link to the right for a sampling – I include samples of criticism as well. The racist, anonymous kinists have likely used the phrase ‘internet assassin,’ but only by adopting the tools of Wilson, who attempted to rhetorically associate my accountable, non-anonymous writing with anonymous attack sites.
You say that I earned the title “Internet Assassin” because I attacked anyone who ever pastored me. This would seem to be a direct lie, since I do not know what slander you could have derived this from. I was in warm personal contact with my pastor just preceding Wilson when I launched Pooh’s Think and have never said anything negative about him. I in fact praised the pastor preceding that pastor, and I have never said anything negative about the other men who have played pastoral roles through the years. You say that I attacked anyone who slighted me. This is also deceit: How would you know this? And given the limited range of characters I have taken on, certainly this could not be the case. The fact is that I have called out and criticized probably 5 percent of those who mistreated me during the launch of Pooh’s Think, Part 1. I will be adding to this list in my book, while still attempting a judicial, ginger release of personal information.
Your bizarre line of questioning betrays a previous act of deceit or else a new one: You either have not read the content of this post, as you claimed, or you are pretending not to know what that content is.
You claim you alluded to some important piece of information in a comment I was not willing to publish. Well, here it is, March 7th: “You’re wandering, and given your past track record, this is not a healthy direction for you.”
Is it mystifying as to why I did not bother posting this ambiguous tripe? This was your comment to my first post on the Moral Argument. And we see here yet more deceit: you claim that you alluded to your fear of getting assassinated in this unpublished comment. I cannot imagine how it is you are referring to any such thing. Further, please point out my successful “assassinations” of the past when folks dare use their real name in addressing me. Given that you cannot write a single sentence without directly or implicitly lying, I will not hold my breath for a single truthful example.
You are, of course, still welcome to follow my discussion guidelines, and reveal your identity to me (which, under normal circumstances, I will keep private). I have always been apposed to anonymous activity on the internet, as has Pastor Wilson, and I have never been shy in elaborating on why. The manipulative and deceitful rhetoric you continue to employ, in order to follow through with your implication that everything the reader finds here in the Wood (this has at least been Wilson’s traditional use of this tactic) is simply the result of my psychological disease of father hunger, betrays why you would be motivated to conceal your identity. Anonymity is far more conducive to your preferred method. I have found that those who wish to ramble off claims that they know are not true like to do so behind a mask.
And now I am ‘just curious’: why would you take the time to implicitly defend Douglas Wilson by employing the very method he vehemently attacks?
Comment by Michael Metzler — April 20, 2009 @ 6:40 pm
Michael,
You continue to amuse. Your fright of Mr. Petersen’s question and your systemic dismantling of his ethos is stunning, and you’re spelling a lot better than you used to.
And your admiration of Hitchens is also rather scary.
Comment by Hiding behind a mask — April 22, 2009 @ 3:05 am
The important difference in character between those posting anonymously and those writing with their identity attached is evident enough just in this one thread of comments. By continuing to let in commenters that are determined to hide behind a mask I only encourage the practice and continue to erode the utility of my ginger discussion guidelines.
Comment by metzler — April 22, 2009 @ 8:08 am
I dunno, Mike. I might resurrect poohsthink.wordpress.com. Open commenting is the way to truth, man.
Comment by Hiding behind a mask — April 22, 2009 @ 8:21 am
‘Your’ poohsthink.wordpress.com attracted only anonymous, libelous muttering (as well as the strongest outlet for the racist kinists), and never did it succeed in creating a constructive rational discussion – whether for or against pooh. You confirm my point perfectly. ‘You’ can go spend time giving Mr. No Way’s deceit a public stage (notice the failure of Mr. No Way to provide a single example of one of my assassinations), or you can write like a real person here and say just about anything you want. For all we know, you are Mr. No Way and Douglas Wilson. Since you are no doubt aware of ‘your’ site’s failure to have anything to do with “truth,” this reads like a mere threat to unleash harm. But, hey, like I dunno, man. Cool.
Comment by metzler — April 22, 2009 @ 8:43 am
Mike,
I am writing like a real person. In fact I am a real person.
I’ll answer any question you like, except that I don’t feel like identifying myself. You, on the other hand, as several people have pointed out, can’t even answer Matthew’s question. You’re more interested in getting the juicy gossip about how to pull Douglas Wilson down.
You’re right that the site turned into a haven for the kinists. Oh well, such is the Internet. I stuck to my principles: everybody gets an equal voice, even the anonymous sinners.
One other thing: If you actually move on from Wilson (hasn’t happened in over four years) and start posting something worth saying, then I’ll come back and interact substantively. Cross my heart.
Comment by Hiding behind a mask — April 22, 2009 @ 5:24 pm
As I said before, you’re afraid of real dialogue — you just want a site like Douglas Wilson’s, where you can be king and moderate all the posts. Fine — suit yourself.
Comment by Hiding behind a mask — April 23, 2009 @ 11:02 am
Why do you not feel like identifying yourself?
Comment by metzler — April 23, 2009 @ 2:05 pm