The proliferation of vice is arguably the most underrated issue facing American culture today. Vice isn’t just behind store counters or in seedy areas anymore. It’s at your fingertips. It’s accessible in your own home.
How this plays out in the future is cause for concern.
Our society had good empirical reasons to prohibit prostitution, gambling and drugs when it did so, in most cases, over 100 years ago. But over generations we forget what it was like in the before-times. Contemporary views of history assume that these laws were made for puritanical religious reasons or from bigotry. In recent times, well-organized lobbies of enthusiasts and entrepreneurs spread the myth that these activities are harmless. If we understood our history better, we would be less inclined to make the same mistakes over again.
It's not just the decline of Christianity; it's a decline in the quality of Christians themselves as watchdogs for ethics and morality. One of the most disgusting, dispiriting things in my adult life has been watching adults and religious figures from my 90s childhood shift from solemnly insisting on the critical importance of "character" for public servants when Clinton was in office to the most obscene mental backflips to excuse everything Trump (or any other national Republican figure) did or does. Christians all of them....ostensibly.
To enforce doctrine, Christians need to be able to threaten credible penal and political consequences. In the current environment that is not possible. For the first time in almost a couple thousand years, Christians everywhere are facing life as a minority sect, or even as a disfavored and barely-tolerated sect. Yes it is sad and dispiriting, but to avoid being wiped out, unsavory alliances will be necessary.
We made the character argument in the 1990s and lost it, resoundingly, with the voters. That was in what Aaron accurately describes as a "neutral world." Since then, the public influence of Christianity has declined still further, and we now live in a "negative world." Christians no longer have the "watchdog" power (if they ever did) to control whom the Republican Party nominates, let along whom the voters put in office. The best we can do is to pick a side and to make the best deal we can in a transactional relationship. Accepting that may be dispiriting, but it's neither disgusting nor obscene. It's just realism.
The problem was in 1998 the argument about a tawdry affair had no relevance to public matters- unlike in 1974 when Nixon's bad behavior very much impacted public matters. Recall that in 1800 Jefferson's cavorting with Sally Hemmings failed to matter to people, neither did Grover Cleveland's love child in 1884. Or Grant's drinking in 1868. Warren Harding is ill-remembered for Teapot Dome- but not for his thing with Nan Brittan.
I agree with this. In the positive world, public Christian leaders had tangible influence on large numbers of voters and politicians were wise not to cross them. The failed impeachment of Clinton was a flashing red sign that that kind of influence no longer existed. Shrewd Republicans decided not to hold their candidates to a higher moral standard than their opponents. I agree that the conservative flip-flop on presidential character is terrible optics, but that was more a result of the decline of Christian influence than the cause of it.
In my recollection, one of the points when hostility toward Christian conservatives really spiked was the Terri Schiavo episode. At the time, I was in an email thread with some extended family members. A couple of them were centrist libertarians at the time. They thought that congressional action on the Schiavo case was an outrageous invasion of her husband’s privacy and not a federal issue. This all took place long before Trump was in politics. Now they are hardcore anti-Trump liberals who are hostile to all but the most liberal expressions of Christianity. They hate Evangelicals because Evangelicals support Trump, but their anti-Christian leftism started long before Trump was on the scene.
There is a lot of irony in the Clinton impeachment and the aftermath of it since then. The Clinton impeachment saw a lot of attacks on hypocrisy. This led to less condemnation of bad behavior, which ended up hurting society in the long run. It’s common to see charges of hypocrisy now used frequently today. A cruel irony for the Clintons is Donald Trump used that same playbook against them in 2016.
An irony of the Clinton impeachment is that while he survived politically, many in later years who did the same thing he did, in the private and public sector, lost their jobs. Many of those folks who made those firings, were probably against Clinton being forced out of office.
Great article! Keep up the good work!
The proliferation of vice is arguably the most underrated issue facing American culture today. Vice isn’t just behind store counters or in seedy areas anymore. It’s at your fingertips. It’s accessible in your own home.
How this plays out in the future is cause for concern.
Our society had good empirical reasons to prohibit prostitution, gambling and drugs when it did so, in most cases, over 100 years ago. But over generations we forget what it was like in the before-times. Contemporary views of history assume that these laws were made for puritanical religious reasons or from bigotry. In recent times, well-organized lobbies of enthusiasts and entrepreneurs spread the myth that these activities are harmless. If we understood our history better, we would be less inclined to make the same mistakes over again.
It's not just the decline of Christianity; it's a decline in the quality of Christians themselves as watchdogs for ethics and morality. One of the most disgusting, dispiriting things in my adult life has been watching adults and religious figures from my 90s childhood shift from solemnly insisting on the critical importance of "character" for public servants when Clinton was in office to the most obscene mental backflips to excuse everything Trump (or any other national Republican figure) did or does. Christians all of them....ostensibly.
To enforce doctrine, Christians need to be able to threaten credible penal and political consequences. In the current environment that is not possible. For the first time in almost a couple thousand years, Christians everywhere are facing life as a minority sect, or even as a disfavored and barely-tolerated sect. Yes it is sad and dispiriting, but to avoid being wiped out, unsavory alliances will be necessary.
We made the character argument in the 1990s and lost it, resoundingly, with the voters. That was in what Aaron accurately describes as a "neutral world." Since then, the public influence of Christianity has declined still further, and we now live in a "negative world." Christians no longer have the "watchdog" power (if they ever did) to control whom the Republican Party nominates, let along whom the voters put in office. The best we can do is to pick a side and to make the best deal we can in a transactional relationship. Accepting that may be dispiriting, but it's neither disgusting nor obscene. It's just realism.
The problem was in 1998 the argument about a tawdry affair had no relevance to public matters- unlike in 1974 when Nixon's bad behavior very much impacted public matters. Recall that in 1800 Jefferson's cavorting with Sally Hemmings failed to matter to people, neither did Grover Cleveland's love child in 1884. Or Grant's drinking in 1868. Warren Harding is ill-remembered for Teapot Dome- but not for his thing with Nan Brittan.
I agree with this. In the positive world, public Christian leaders had tangible influence on large numbers of voters and politicians were wise not to cross them. The failed impeachment of Clinton was a flashing red sign that that kind of influence no longer existed. Shrewd Republicans decided not to hold their candidates to a higher moral standard than their opponents. I agree that the conservative flip-flop on presidential character is terrible optics, but that was more a result of the decline of Christian influence than the cause of it.
In my recollection, one of the points when hostility toward Christian conservatives really spiked was the Terri Schiavo episode. At the time, I was in an email thread with some extended family members. A couple of them were centrist libertarians at the time. They thought that congressional action on the Schiavo case was an outrageous invasion of her husband’s privacy and not a federal issue. This all took place long before Trump was in politics. Now they are hardcore anti-Trump liberals who are hostile to all but the most liberal expressions of Christianity. They hate Evangelicals because Evangelicals support Trump, but their anti-Christian leftism started long before Trump was on the scene.
There is a lot of irony in the Clinton impeachment and the aftermath of it since then. The Clinton impeachment saw a lot of attacks on hypocrisy. This led to less condemnation of bad behavior, which ended up hurting society in the long run. It’s common to see charges of hypocrisy now used frequently today. A cruel irony for the Clintons is Donald Trump used that same playbook against them in 2016.
An irony of the Clinton impeachment is that while he survived politically, many in later years who did the same thing he did, in the private and public sector, lost their jobs. Many of those folks who made those firings, were probably against Clinton being forced out of office.