in an op ed titled The Swine of Conservatism.
Due warning — given that it is Douthat, you will not be surprised to find that he has to frame what he is writing by providing the “balance” of attacking liberals, including the expected digs at the likes of Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein. But it is when you get beyond that that the column becomes worth reading. Very much worth reading.
Consider: he tells us that
it’s worth doing a quick typology of the predators that flourish among the godly and moralistic and traditional.
and immediately follows that with this paragraph:
One type is what you might call the rotten patriarch. This is the man who depends on the trappings of spiritual or familial authority to exploit the young and weak, shame them into silence, and pre-emptively discredit them.
I am not going to quote the paragraph in which he expands upon this type, although it is very much to the point.
Let me quote two other brief paragraphs expanding his typological analysis, first this
But there are other styles of predation that flourish within conservative communities. For instance, there is the burrower, the networker, the institutionalist — the predator who embeds himself within a hierarchical system that protects him because it wants to protect itself.
and then this
Then finally there is the serial repenter — the creep who relies on the promise of forgiveness to keep his place and his powers and his opportunities to prey again.
What makes the column worthwhile is the further analysis that Douthat offers, starting with the notion that there are things unique in conservative styles of predation. Consider this
One lesson is that any social order that vests particular forms of power in men needs to do more, not less, to hold the male of the species accountable.
Then consider this:
Another lesson is that the impulse to hide or dismiss scandal because it hurts the short-term cause, which is common to all institutions but particularly strong for conservative ones, is a path to self-destruction in the long run.
Douthat illustrates this in part by referring to the long-time problem the Catholic Church had with predatory priests.
As I read the words I have just quote about a pathto self-destruction in the long-run, I could not help but think of the unwillingness of so many Republicans to be willing to accept the words of Moore’s accusers, accounts now confirmed by the Wall Street Journal as well as the Washington Post, as exemplified by the repetition by so many of the caveat “if true.”
Douthat warns that the experience undergone by the Catholic Church is something now facing the Evangelical community as well, warning that if they think it important that the war against liberalism requires them not to call the likes of Roy Moore to account:
It’s a theory that makes sense if you think only of today’s elections, but in the long term it’s cultural suicide — because it tells your neighbors and your children that your religious convictions are always secondary to your partisanship.
Douthat, who views himself as a devout Christian, quotes the Biblical text of Luke 8:17 about hidden things becoming manifest as applying to all, before closing with these words:
But the Christians have particular reasons to meditate upon them — and to consider that they don’t just apply to sexual predations, but to the worldly impulses that make otherwise decent people into defenders of the indefensible.
Given Douthat’s prominence among some religious but thoughtful Conservatives, I could not help wondering whether any sermons today might reflect upon both that verse, as well as the moral implications of the behavior of Moore and some of his defenders?