Discernment Knows Better
July 20, 2026 Leave a comment
History and current events reveal that anything can be rationalized when politics is everything and power its ultimate goal. The same holds true when empathy is everything and the pursuit of inclusion its ultimate goal – anything can be rationalized.
Wayward Christian empathy covers the interior of the oldest cathedral in England in graffiti, making it look like an underground car park, in order to represent the voices of “marginalized communities.”
Cosplay Christian empathy speaks with Christian platitudes and acts out the story it tells itself listening to the MSM narrative about immigration. Its theatrics would have us place a high value on a foreign invader’s human dignity to discourage deportation and place a negative value on immigration law, law enforcement, the country, and thereby, the human dignity of those living here.
The destructive effects of open borders – the flooding of communities and neighborhoods with unvetted foreigners, many with diseased bodies and diseased mindsets – are ignored in MSM narratives and the echoed Coplay Christian stories. Coplay Christians want to be the heroes of their own narratives, as I wrote in my post Self-Central Casting.
Tell me. Have you seen reports on MS NOW or CNN about those invaders who kill, maim, rape, drug to death our neighbors, and do horrible things to our children (See Arrested: Worst of the Worst)?
Tell me. Have you seen those outlets report on those who take jobs and housing and resources from those living here? Have you seen those outlets report on those who want to overthrow the country? Have you seen those outlets report on those who want to turn (colonize) areas of our country into Islamic no-go zones and force Sharia law on the everyone in the area?
See what you see and not what MS NOW or CNN or the NYT wants you to see.
Careless regard toward our neighbors by forcing foreigners upon them via an idealism of “welcoming the stranger” inclusion is not Christianity. Rather, it is coercive Marxist-like redistribution of resources and it is authoritarian, just like what is projected onto Christian nationalists.
The plea for acceptance of the idealist boot on the neck of our neighbor and for Progressivism’s ‘anything goes’ terms of Christianity comes from Christian leaders without discernment and with a desire to be relevant.
From the May 31, 2026 post No Country for Old Men Without Borders:
In the past six months I’ve come across two pastoral letters imploring Christians to think kindly toward the millions of foreign invaders who have illegally crossed our borders to appropriate our country’s resources and thereby impacting the future of our neighbors and the country.
Like with the end game of politics, when empathy is everything and the pursuit of inclusion its ultimate goal, anything can be rationalized.
And that’s how the Rev. Kate Penney Howard finds a way to equate Christian nationalism with the KKK.
The following Facebook post was forwarded to me for comment. I am not on social media and thankfully so. https://www.facebook.com/rev.kate.penney/posts/10243888131684638/
My response is below the post.
Response:
One can expect generalizations and projection in opinion pieces, and that is what you get in this snappy op-ed.
Pastor Howard begins with the generalization “we” referring to Hoosiers and goes on to relate a story about the Indiana KKK that the “we” are retelling themselves.
Her history redux, a 1920s story of “churchgoing” people seeing the KKK as a Christian movement and moral crusade, is projected onto current Indiana citizens that she believes are promoting Christian nationalism involving political will. She warns “we are telling ourselves a story we have told before. It did not end well.”
What are the “we” to do with this op-ed sermonette claiming that Christian nationalism is KKK-like by deciding “who belongs and who does not?” What’s the implication? What’s the sermon’s application? The reader is left to speculate as to the “who” she is referring to and about what “belongs” means to her. Maybe her Facebook followers take in the same media as she does and know what she is inferring.
When empathy is everything and the pursuit of inclusion its ultimate goal, anything can be rationalized. And others can be slandered.
Equating Chrisitan nationalism with the hate-group KKK . . . is she, while decrying Christian nationalism, advocating in a backhanded way for a national policy of inclusion – open borders illegal immigration?
Is she against the Spirit-filled wanting to exercise their right as an Indiana and U.S. citizen to vote for the candidates and polices that decide who’s in and who’s out of the country for the safety and flourishing, not to mention the human dignity, of their family, their neighbors, their communities, and for the common good of all citizens? Would she consider them to be Christian nationalists and therefore KKK-like?
I wonder. Is she inclusive about everything? For example, is she OK with men in women’s sports and women’s locker rooms? Does she ever draw the line? Set boundaries? Exclude?
What does national exclusion and setting boundaries look like in scripture? Let’s ask Nehemiah.
Why did you rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, Nehemiah?
“It was done to restore the city’s protection and honor. The walls had been broken down, leaving the city vulnerable and causing shame among its people. Without fortified walls around the city, the people were left defenseless against enemies. Opponents could easily enter and cause “great trouble” to the people. Rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem was a sign to the enemies of Israel.” (Read more here.)
What did you tell Israel’s enemies, Nehemiah?
“The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding, but as for you, you have no share in Jerusalem or any claim or historic right to it” (Nehemiah 2:20).
I know that Nehemiah is OT and not ‘enlightened’ or WOKE as progressive Christians are today, BUT, it sure looks like Nehemiah was a Jewish nationalist and that he rebuilt the walls to keep out bad elements. Apparently, not all the strangers encountered in the Bible are the “strangers” that open borders sermonizers want us to welcome with open arms.
Nehemiah didn’t do the Deuteronomy 10:19 “stranger” thing. He didn’t do the Leviticus 19:34 “stranger” thing. And, fast forward, he didn’t do the Matthew 25:38 “stranger” thing.
Remind me. Did Jesus cast out Jewish nationalists or did he cast out unclean spirits – the demonic forces of the strong man in human vessels that were making havoc in the territory around Galilee?
Let’s review the tactics of the forces of the strong man. Those are to smear, slander, poison, accuse, lie, destroy, negate, censor, produce fear to bring about submission, and grab power and more power and more power.
Didn’t Jesus cast out what was trying to corrupt and usurp his kingdom on earth? (Read Mark 5.)
Pastor Howard states “We are hearing pastors and politicians say God has chosen a side.”? I’ve never heard a pastor or politician say this, but Nehemiah and others in the OT have.
Nehemiah certainly says that God had chosen a side. And, he is not alone in his declaration of confidence in God being on his side, a side he understands as aligning with God’s purposes for the defense and good of Israel.
The shepherd-king David, when going to fight Goliath, said “The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.” He also said “The Lord is my shepherd” and “The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer.” That’s imperious of him, in pastor Howard’s way of thinking.
And when he became king, David’s accountability didn’t disappear because God didn’t abandon him. We learn that David couldn’t justify his adultery and murder before the prophet Nathan. He received the consequences of his actions.
Would you choose a president who acknowledged God and invoked his favor or someone like Obama who considered himself and invoked his ideology?
Contrary to the reverend’s misleading projection onto our nation’s founders about what they understood about claiming divine authority, they (and Abe Lincoln) did align themselves with divine authority and assigned that authority to safeguard their efforts.
The Founders concluded the Declaration of Independence by stating, “For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
The Founders, building a republic and not a theocracy or a utopia, did decide who or what belongs and who or what does not.
Clauses like the Naturalization Clause and the Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution’s framework establish a strong federal role in immigration, to regulate immigration and naturalization.
Congress has almost complete authority to decide who may enter or remain in the United States. Congress can create rules for the admission of aliens.
(The recent reckless Supreme Court ruling, Trump v. Barbara, regarding birthright citizenship was decided by four women and John Roberts. The dissenting opinions rightfully claimed that the majority decision was a misread of both the Constitution (the intent of the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866) and American history. John Roberts decided that English common law was the basis for US. Citizenship. The Constitution says otherwise. Roberts apparently didn’t want to be subject to the jurisdiction thereof. More below.)
With the following, the reverend projects onto Christian nationalism her understanding of what the founders rejected:
“Our nation’s founders [understood] what happened when governments claimed divine authority, how quickly God became a justification for control, exclusion and violence, and they made a choice.”
The founders did reject a state religion such as the Church of England that held significant influence over religious and political life. So, “The Constitution does not mention Jesus.”
But the founders did use religion as justification for “control, exclusion and violence.”
As The Library of Congress records, “Religion played a major role in the American Revolution by offering a moral sanction for opposition to the British–an assurance to the average American that revolution was justified in the sight of God.”
Many Revolutionary War clergy argued that the war against Britain was approved by God. In this sermon Abraham Keteltas celebrated the American effort as “the cause of truth, against error and falsehood . . .the cause of pure and undefiled religion, against bigotry, superstition, and human invention . . .in short, it is the cause of heaven against hell–of the kind Parent of the Universe against the prince of darkness, and the destroyer of the human race.”
The Founders, when establishing the federal government and a framework for conceiving of government and justice, did claim divine authority in the form of God’s providence as revealed in the Judeo-Christian scriptures and nature.
The Founders believed that humans are created in the image of God. They believed that human beings are inherently sinful and there would be no utopia on earth. They believed that God is the source of moral standards and that legislation should be in agreement with moral law. And, they believed that religious liberty is a God-given right and must be protected. The Left in America does not accept any of grounds for government and that is why Christian nationalism is seen as a threat.
The founders were the original Christian Nationalists. America’s earliest statesmen put national interest first.
Perhaps the reverend and her Facebook followers should read the following to gain insight into the founders:
and
Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World
What about a version of Christianity that rejects what the founders established? What about disregarding immigration laws? What about disregarding your neighbors for the sake of better-than-thou religious beliefs? What about promoting open borders globalism? What about the deceitful religions of Progressivism and socialism that undermine reality and the Constitution?
Pastor Howard’s oblique use of “side” is the crux of the op-ed. What “side” is she on? The right way of thinking side as opposed to the “we” side that “feels faithful while it is happening?”
If people want to restore the nation to its Judeo-Christian bearings, is that Christian nationalism? Our heritage is worth preserving. The heritage of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to bear arms is worth preserving. Even now, Democrats are working to do away with all that in order to produce a secular totalitarian communist state that they believe will heal all wounds. Discernment knows better.
Anything can be rationalized when politics is everything and power its ultimate goal. The same holds true in Christian circles when empathy is everything and the pursuit of inclusion its ultimate goal – anything can be rationalized.
If people want to restore law and order and justice in the courts, is that picking sides or sound judgement? If people want to remove foreign invaders that came to plunder the homeland, is that KKK-like or removing that which is trying to corrupt and usurp what the founders established?
History, which has “a way of exposing what we would rather keep comfortable” has it that there was a coercive demand for the right way of thinking in the Soviet Union. Perhaps the reverend is more comfortable with the ideological orthodoxy of a closed society than the cultural pluralism of an open society she pretends to offer. (Listen to the podcast on the sidebar.)
The reverend reveals her side, her right way of thinking, when she condemns her opponents: “Certain policies were once political preferences but are now divine mandates. Opposing them is seen as rebellion against God.” What are the policies and divine mandates she is referencing? We are left to speculate. Is this about closing the border and deporting illegal migrants?
She says Jesus didn’t want or need political power. OK. But then she says “God does not need a government to do God’s work.” Is she thinking Jesus did away with nations and borders and now everything is open to inclusion and needs her Christian touch?
Yet, God did use government to do His work.
When Jesus was born, Rome had unified much of the world under its government. Under Pax Romana, the empire was relatively peaceful, travel was possible. This allowed Christians to spread the gospel. The Septuagint, the gospels and epistles and other texts handed down to us were not censored.
Romans 13 teaches that all governing authorities are established by God. The role of government is to maintain justice, restrain evil, and serve the common good. Governments provide security and order. Open borders and the Illegal immigration of millions is chaos and anarchy.
While Jesus did say “My kingdom is not of this world” he also taught his disciples to pray, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Government, in part, enables the latter. A government founded on Christian principles empowers the latter even more so.
The most dangerous thing about smearing Christian nationalism is that it feels faithful while it is happening. It wraps itself in inclusion theology but speaks the language of SPLC. It makes opposition into the KKK. Discernment knows better.
~~~
I cannot impute a motive onto Rev. Howard for her op-ed in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette other than concern about Christian Nationalism. But I can ask if she is concerned with other exclusionary isms.
Is she concerned about the Democratic Socialists of America and their plan to destroy America and bring in communism? Communism will exclude those who don’t align with it. See history.
Is she concerned about the political rise of red-green alliance, a fusion of progressive socialism and Islamism? This alliance will exclude those who don’t align with them. See Mamdani’s NYC.
I can impute a motive onto the hate-funding Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Demonizing others is what the nasty Southern Poverty Law center (SPLC) does with hate maps and reports. “Democracy is threatened by anti-democracy extremist white Christian nationalism” is a SPLC narrative and an outright lie to produce fear.
For, Progressivism/globalism/socialism/communism – tyranny itself – cannot take over along as there Christians who are not controlled opposition. Projecting authoritarianism and tyranny onto Christian nationalism is a means to frighten people into submission to their lies. (Fear has also been used to produce submission to the COVID and climate crisis narratives.)
Because the narratives from the nasty Southern Poverty Law center (SPLC) are so pervasive as they filter through various media, it would not surprise me that there are Christian leaders who take them in and then feed these same narratives to their flock (and to social media) using one-part “Christianese” and one part media narrative while thinking they are being apolitical.
Learn about the SPLC. Learn how people are being manipulated:
Mike McDaniel writes Just when you thought SPLC revelations couldn’t get worse… – American Thinker:
A large part of what the SPLC did was to brand innocuous organizations like Turning Point USA or the Family Research Council as “hate” groups. The evidence of that “hate” was that they opposed Democrats and organizations like BLM and Antifa, which somehow were never so SPLC-branded. . .
It’s hard to imagine an organization and people more depraved. Should the allegations be proved, and it seems likely they will be, the SPLC defamed innocent, decent Americans, enriched and helped small groups of evil but largely ineffective people, and badly damaged America by stirring up racial hatred that wouldn’t have existed without their behind-the-scenes manipulations. They knew what buttons to push among black Americans and played on white guilt like harps from Hell, and we’re all the worse for it. (Emphasis mine.)
Even Red States Quietly Use Content from the SPLC | Headline USA:
Parental rights organization Defending Ed published an investigation revealing that nearly 200 school districts and 30 state government entities spread across 42 states and Washington D.C. publicly promote curriculum materials from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The SPLC currently faces a federal wire fraud indictment. Prior to these charges, the organization became infamous for including mainstream conservative groups on its “hate map.” The Justice Department also opened a criminal investigation into claims the group directed funds to individuals tied to white supremacist movements and allegedly poured millions into efforts to influence Southern elections. . . .
Just the News documented how certain school districts employ aggressive tactics to conceal curricula, psychological programs, and information about which adults interact with students. These same districts, however, openly advertise their partnerships with the SPLC.
The SPLC’s “hate map” designated groups including the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, Defending Ed, multiple Moms for Liberty chapters, Alliance Defending Freedom, Gays Against Groomers, and the Family Research Council. The FRC’s placement on that map motivated a terrorist attack against its Washington headquarters in 2013.
“The content often pushes or reinforces far-left cultural and political ideologies such as left-wing activism, anti-racism, Black Lives Matter, gender ideology and queer theory, white privilege, white supremacy, whiteness, and transgenderism,” according to Defending Ed. (Emphasis mine.)
More about the SPLC:
Superseding Indictment Alleges SPLC Funded “Ku Klux Klan garments” and “Cross-Burning Events”
SPLC – Creating Hate To Fundraise To Fight Hate
SPLC charged with offering would-be KKK, Neo-Nazi defectors salaries to stay in, spy on hate groups…
SPLC boss funneled $1.2 million to lover in neo-Nazi group — pair even had joint bank account – AOL
CEO of the SPLC confirms it stands by its May 2025 decision to add TPUSA to its ‘hate map’…
SPLC’s Hate Inflation Strategy…
~~~
History has a way of exposing what Democrats would rather keep comfortable.
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was closely associated with the Democrat Party, especially in the South, where most Klansmen were Democrats during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Klan supported Democrat efforts to establish one-party rule and suppress black political power through violence and intimidation.
The Democrat Party is not against using KKK tactics while denouncing the KKK. They are not against spewing negativity and hate 24/7/365 online and in the media. Read the NYT op-eds. Watch MS-NOW. Watch the View and late night TV Democrats want the strong man’s power to take control.
History and current events reveal that anything can be rationalized when politics is everything and power its ultimate goal.
~~~
Todd Bensman refutes the left’s narrative in Is Trump Trying to Deport Venezuelans to Earthquake ‘Hell’?:
In June 2025, the Supreme Court cleared the administration to send illegal aliens to agreeable safe third countries other than their own. Since then, the administration has collected formal agreements with 15 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean with more coming.
The administration and all those who support its deportation goals have facts in pocket to smoke the patently false binary choice being peddled that it can either heartlessly send Venezuelans straight to “hell” or let them remain illegally in the U.S.
Beyond its opportunity to beat down a fake narrative, the administration possesses the moral and legal authority—and a rich buffet of options it probably didn’t realize it had—to actually speed up this large new deportation project.
~~~
The four women on the Supreme court ruled in favor of birthright citizenship . . .
Helen Andrews wrote in The Great Feminization | Compact
“Wokeness is not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a result of post-Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently . . .
Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition . . .
“The threat posed by wokeness can be large or small depending on the industry . . . The field that frightens me most is the law. All of us depend on a functioning legal system, and, to be blunt, the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female. The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tugs at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic.
“The problem is not that women are less talented than men or even that female modes of interaction are inferior in any objective sense. The problem is that female modes of interaction are not well suited to accomplishing the goals of many major institutions.” (Emphasis mine.)
Here’s a woman with discernment:
American Thinker Takeaways, July 6, 2026
~~~
Guiding the left is the fear that if permitted to go unchecked, the fact that America is indeed a Christian nation as designed would not be questioned. And so the left continues its enduring war on faith by trying to make it so that you’re an outcast simply for trying to insert the Judeo-Christian God into the conversation. Divide and conquer.
And so we have a battle today where a minority would have you believe that America is not a Christian nation, that if it can’t defeat Christianity through persuasion, it will do so by generating sheer numbers of imported people from other countries who practice other religions; by destroying anyone who would dare to mention their Christian faith in public life; and by shunning anyone who would openly and unapologetically profess his or her faith in Hollywood, the entertainment industry, or in the news media; and by marginalizing Christian faith in academia and in the schools. (Emphasis mine.)
On America 250: A Prayer for Our Country – PJ Media
~~~
The most damaging decision of the term, however, was Trump v. Barbara. In a ruling that will stand as a stain on the Court’s legacy, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett joined the liberal justices to effectively preserve near-blanket birthright citizenship. This was a profound misreading of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. The authors of that Amendment, including Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois — a close friend and ally of Abraham Lincoln — made clear on the floor of the Senate that the clause was intended to secure citizenship for the children of emancipated slaves, not to create a magnet for illegal immigration or confer citizenship on the children of foreign nationals who owe no allegiance to the United States.
Not only the 14th Amendment, but the Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed by the same Congress, expressly limited citizenship to those “not subject to any foreign power.” That phrase, alone, signaled congressional intent to end blanket birthright citizenship. (Emphasis mine.)
The 2026 Supreme Court — a ‘C Minus’ at Best – American Thinker
Trump v. Barbara: Suicide by Cop-Out – American Thinker
~~~
Added 7-28-2026:
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Cindy Wity 
A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Hand Over
December 8, 2025 Leave a comment
When we hear someone say crazy things, we might say “Yeah, right” and shrug it off. But when a group of people say crazy things and a group of people agree with said crazy things, we wonder “What in the world is going on?”
Objective reality – the existence of things as they are – is obvious to everyone. And so are the values, accumulated over several millennia, of what is true and of what works and what hasn’t. But not everyone accepts the obvious and the values based on time proven objective reality. Some see themselves as Progressive in rejecting both.
Today’s academic, artistic, media, and political elites, a vanguard of Progressive Groupthink, reject the existence of things as they are and do so within the safe space of their ranks thereby creating an illusion of invulnerability and inherent morality. Members of this vanguard suppress dissenting opinions and avoid critically evaluated alternatives so as to maintain the group’s shared illusion of unanimity.
The vanguard’s conformity is maintained with mind guards – the media reports “right thinking” about a matter – and with self-censorship of deviations from shared beliefs and with shared views of the enemy – those who present a reality contrary to the groups’ notion of reality.
When we hear the vanguard’s irrational take on what is going on in the world, its roiling Doublethink, its name calling and shunning of voices outside its collective choir, and its dysfunctional decision-making which objective reality tells us will result in disastrous, dehumanizing, and even deadly outcomes, we ask “Where is this coming from and where is this going?
Those of us who keep an ear to the ground in order to hear what is approaching will answer “History is repeating itself.”
The objective reality of the murderous totalitarian regimes of the last century, which Progressives willfully ignore to promote their glorious future of equality via the same means, will help us understand the denial-of-reality collaboration of today’s intelligentsia – those who hold to one way of thinking – and their quest for total domination of the body, mind, and soul with Progressive Groupthink.
Specifically, Russian Soviet history will help us understand the conformity dynamic behind today’s intelligentsia. For this understanding I turn to one of the most informed scholars of the Russian history of ideas as communicated in its literature: Northwestern Professor Gary Saul Morson.
***
In Morson’s magnum opus Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter Morson details how politics and literature, in the writings of realists, idealists, and revolutionaries, played against each other during the Soviet period.
He describes Soviet thinking that rejected the realism and the real people depicted in nineteenth-century Russian fiction and required that reality be written to include “not only of the observable present but also the inevitable future in the making” and with Socialist Realist heroes – utopianism made flesh.
Writers of Russian realism – Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Solzhenitsyn, and others – wrote about what they saw and experienced. They are the “wonder” in the title. They represented the world as it was in their writings about the Gulag, mass starvation, torture, unspeakable violence, about how people thought about and dealt with what was going on, and about how many succumbed to the imposed Soviet mindset.
Russian realist authors confronted those of the “certainty,” those who wrote redefined reality in terms of the “observable present and the inevitable future in the making” and in terms of “positive heroes.”
The “positive hero” was to set an example for the reader’s behavior. A Soviet cosmonaut, for one example, became a “positive hero.” A cosmonaut’s space trip was seen as science, materialism, and atheism triumphing over the transcendent values held in the U.S., the enemy of the Soviet Union.
The “certainty” writers followed the lead of the embodiment of “certainty” – Vladimir Lenin. Lenin mocked his opponents’ self-characterization as ‘seekers’ of truth. He held that dialectical materialists do not seek truth; they already possess it. And so, the party-minded “positive hero” refused dialogue, refused to see any alternatives to the Marxist-Leninist-materialist-atheistic “truth” espoused by the party, the representatives of Karl Marx’s class-struggling proletariat.
From Wonder Confronts Certainty:
“The Soviets would label fidelity to present facts “bourgeois objectivism.” It was the best that could be expected from the age of realism, but must give way to socialist realism, which shows the ideal world inevitably coming. The socialist realist author was expected to focus on the people of the future, “positive heroes” exhibiting complete “Party-mindedness.” True positive heroes do not have bring their thinking into accord with the party, a process requiring effort; they exhibit Party-mindedness so thorough that no effort is required”
“Party-mindedness”, we learn from the writings of Russian realist authors, was propagated through the means of propaganda, show trials, random arrests, and the constant terror that there might be any hint, any innuendo, any false statement that would convict one of not being party-minded.
The “party-mindedness” of the 20th century Russian intelligentsia, its conformity to only one way of thinking, is replicated today.
***
Here’s Morson in his Touchtone article Beyond Belief: Literary Reflections on Thoughtless Conformity:
“I happened to witness two professors waiting for an elevator. To make conversation, one voiced an opinion on some political question to see if the other agreed. When she did, they chattered away on a dozen other topics with perfect assurance that they agreed on those, too. Evidently, their beliefs came as a package. Subsequently I noticed this way of thinking many times, as I imagine many of my readers have.
The process works something like this: a person first chooses the group with whom he wishes to identify and then adopts its opinions. He believes as strongly in gun control, let us say, as he does in supporting Planned Parenthood, defunding the police, and banning fossil fuels. It is evident that no arguments or evidence can shake his opinions on any of these topics because arguments or evidence had nothing to do with why they were adopted.
To be sure, a person who thinks this way can cite facts and reasons to justify his opinion, but they have been acquired in the same way as the opinion itself. They are the same reasons others in the group have learned to give. I used to find it eerie to hear repeatedly the same arguments expressed in the same phrases, as if I were listening to a recording rather than to highly educated people who imagined that, unlike their intellectual inferiors, they had arrived at opinions rationally and would change them as evidence warranted. I thought of Jonathan Swift’s observation that no one was ever talked out of an opinion he was not first talked into.”
***
Reading Morson’s article, I was reminded of the easy-going liberal mindset of the Stiva Oblonsky character in Tolstoy’s Russian realism novel Anna Karenina.
Behind Stiva’s smile, his self-possessed mannerisms and hedonism is what Tolstoy described as “the liberalism of the blood.”
From the novel:
“Stepan Arkadyevitch took and read a liberal newspaper, not a radical one, but one advocating the viewpoint maintained by the majority. And even though neither science, nor art or politics held any particular interest for him, he firmly maintained the same views on all these subjects that were maintained by the majority and by his paper, and he changed them only when the majority changed them, or, better put, he did not change them at all; they imperceptibly changed within him . . .
“And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.”
Stiva, we learn in in the novel, does not recognize his conscious when it speaks to him. And that is aided by his living-in-the-moment forgetting. He did not want to remember any unpleasant thing.
Self-deception and romantic ideology play key roles in Anna’s life.
***
Czeslaw Milosz, Polish American poet, novelist, translator, critic, and diplomat, is best known for The Captive Mind (1953). His essay collection focuses on intellectuals, specifically poets and other writers.
As Charles Haywood writes in his 2019 article The Captive Mind (Czeslaw Milosz), [Milosz’s] “book shows how mental gymnastics, rather than coercion, caused writers under Communism to adhere to Communism. Thereby, indirectly, it congratulates writers who believe their minds free from such, or other, contortions.
“The West incorrectly sees “might and coercion” as the reasons those in Eastern Europe submit to Communism. But, rather, unwilling to face either physical or spiritual death, many choose instead to be “reborn” through taking these metaphorical pills, because “[t]here is an internal longing for harmony and happiness that lies deeper than ordinary fear or the desire to escape misery or physical destruction.” Intellectuals, and artists especially, do not want to be “internal exiles, irreconcilable, non-participating, eroded by hatred.” So they swallow the pills and adopt the “New Faith” (a term Milosz uses throughout the book) which offers the intellectual the certainty he is both correct and virtuous, and therefore gives him a sense of belonging, gives him a feeling of being “warm-hearted and good . . . a friend of mankind—not mankind as it is, but as it should be.”” (Emphasis mine.)
Returning to Morson’s article about package thinking, Morson relates
“What really matters, [Czeslaw} Milosz explains, is “the intellectual’s feeling of belonging.” His defining “characteristic is his fear of thinking for himself.” For this reason, as well as to prosper, he must root out all the old ways of thinking. Milosz describes a phenomenon with which university people are all too familiar, the always incomplete process of teaching oneself to say the right things (in the right words), and avoid saying the wrong ones, so that one never makes a slip entailing ostracism or worse. Of course, the best way to do this is to get oneself actually to share the prescribed views. Milosz describes how
after long acquaintance with his role, a man grows into it so closely that he can no longer differentiate his true self from the self he simulates, so that even the most intimate of individuals speak to each other in Party slogans. To identify self with the role one is obliged to play . . . permits a relaxation of one’s vigilance. Proper reflexes at the proper time become truly automatic.”
***
One obvious feature of our culture’s downward trend toward mindless conformity is critical thinking’s easy alternative: clicking on a machine to receive packaged thoughts.
Why think when packaged thoughts are there for the clicking? And why expand one’s personal bandwidth when you can reaffirm your tribal identity with a click?
Why research and consider a range of ideas and thoughts when clicking on machine AI is ready to do away with mystery and your curiosity, wonder, and impatience? And why think outside package thinking when life is short – shortened by every minute clicking on a machine.
Why read classic literature to gain wisdom, insight, and understanding from other people in other places and in other times, when you can click on a remote for package thinking entertainment.
Have you bought into the globalist, academic, secular and progressive (GASP) package (a feature of Wikipedia) that censors alternative views as “extremist” or “fringe theories” or “conspiracy theories” or “racist?”
Did you buy into the globalist open borders “welcoming the stranger” package where millions of unvetted illegal invaders entered the country as simple or criminal or terrorism opportunists? Did you accept the package thinking that allows third world invaders into our country to replace American workers and American values and do all manner of harm to its citizens as empathy, as what Jesus would do? Take a look at the strangers welcomed: Arrested: Worst of the Worst | Homeland Security And, there’s this: They Called It ‘Compassion’ — But it was Child Trafficking – American Thinker
Are you buying into the central planning democratic socialism package where everyone, except certain individuals who hold more power and privilege, must be made equal no matter the human cost? Are you buying into the central planning democratic socialism package and willfully forgetting the objective reality of the horrors of socialism/communism? Are you willfully handing over your life, your thoughts, to “Party-mindedness”?
Did you accept the “don’t question the science” COVID package thinking of mandates, masking, social distancing, vaccine passports, isolation camps, vaccine efficacy, and of COVID’s origin lies? America’s COVID Response Was Based on Lies
Likewise, did you not question the package thinking of “climate experts” who announced their verdict that the world would end if we didn’t act now. Not long ago, woven into almost every weather report on local and mainstream media when major weather events (floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires) occurred was the narrative that climate change was behind them – without ever mentioning large-scale natural phenomena such as solar cycles, ocean currents and volcanoes that have been affecting weather for many millennia.
The Green New scam was behind Biden’s $93 Billion Crony Climate Heist. Will declassifying carbon dioxide (necessary for all of life) as a pollutant and the end of carbon dioxide regulation mean the end of the Green New scam? Are we now seeing The End of the Green New Scam? | The Rude Awakening? Matt Ridely thinks so: The end of the climate cult – The Spectator World
(A climate expert I trust: https://judithcurry.com/about/)
Do you go along with the package thinking of the [John] Rawlsian theory of ad hoc justice that, for example, releases someone arrested 40 times, is not considered a “criminal” because of their minority status, and is released by a judge back onto the street where he sets a woman on fire?
Do you buy philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s notion that “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” – the package thinking that says that people are entirely products of their environment, of their society, of their age, and that’s why they do what they do. Therefore, they are not responsible for what they do because of external influence. That’s the package thinking behind the Rawlsian theory of justice and behind the executions and horrors of the French revolution working to change social environment.
Have you agreed with the insurrection thought package being espoused by The Seditious Six imploring military service members to “refuse illegal orders” thereby implying that orders coming out of the Trump administration are considered illegal by them and therefore military service members should disobey their commanding officer and join the club of the “Party-minded.” Remember, package thinking has only one train of thought – gaining and maintaining power over reality.
Have you agreed with the insurrection package thinking espoused previously by NYT’s op-ed columnist David Brooks? Do the values of your party-minded package thinking allow you to hamstring a DEMOCRACY! elected president with the rulings of party-minded federal court judges that will be overturned. Do the values of your party-minded package thinking justify the deep state, in the labyrinth of government, to sabotage the efforts of a Democratically elected President?
Do the values of your package thinking allow you to call for uprisings by any means necessary, to burn down buildings, to destroy property, to destroy businesses, to steal, do violence on others, to defund the police, to create pipe bombs, to assassinate? To ignore your conscience?
Did you accept the “Danger to our Democracy” thought package the media delivered during the last presidential election cycle? It should be obvious from the likes of David Brooks, that the “guardians of democracy” are the ones who want to tear it down.
Have bought into the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) playbook that conforms and coerces everyone to identify with Soviet style party-mindedness package thinking?
Have bought into viewing everything including humans through the lens of materialism?
Have you bought into package thinking so as to not be considered an outsider? Have you bought into conformity for conformity’s sake?
Is censorship the worst thing that can happen to a people? Or, is it “Party-mindedness?”
When we hear someone say crazy things, we might say “Yeah, right” and shrug it off. But when a group of people say crazy things with the smug air of certainty and people agree with said crazy things, we wonder “What in the world is going on?” and “Where is this coming from and where is it going?”
What happened in Russia didn’t stay in Russia. And a mind is still a terrible thing to hand over.
What happened in Russia didn’t stay in Russia . . . Britain Is Lost | ZeroHedge
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You can put your ear to the road and hear what is quickly approaching. Download and listen to the following podcasts:
London is falling – or has it fallen already?
Liz Truss, the 56th prime minister of the United Kingdom, in her very first episode of The Liz Truss Show discusses how bad things are in Britain with a mass migration and economic doom loop – and how to defeat the deep state who have let this happen
https://justthenews.com/podcasts/liz-truss-show/london-falling-or-has-it-fallen-already
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Interview with Professor Gary Saul Morson on Tolstoy, Faith, Package Thinking, and The Importance of Critical Thinking
Professor Gary Saul Morson shares his thought-provoking definition of an intellectual—someone who seeks truth independently, values ideas for their own sake, and stands apart from identity-driven thinking. Whether discussing classic Russian Literature or analyzing modern society, Professor Morson is one of the most insightful and consequential scholars of our time. Discover how this interview, and its exploration of timeless topics, can inspire bold, principled leadership and innovation within today’s business environment.
Interview with Professor Gary Saul Morson on Tolstoy, Faith, and The Importance of Critical Thinking – The Profitable Table Fed by Woolco Foods | Acast
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The Moral Imagination – Michael Matheson Miller
Gary Saul Morson Ph.D.: Thinking Like Lenin
Vladimir Lenin’s ideas are alive and well today: Party-ness, politics as win-lose, zero-sum game, Who-Whom, rejection of truth, ideology, violence, philosophical materialism, adherence to lying.
Ep. 15: Thinking Like Lenin, with Gary Saul Morson
Is Hope Naïve in a World Like Ours? | Esau McCaulley & Gary Saul Morson at Northwestern
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Quotes:
In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea … gain their instant acceptance and applause. On the other hand whatever is brought forward against it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or with hot rage – if indeed it does not make them ill. Beside themselves with passion, some of them would not be backward even about scheming to suppress and silence their adversaries. I have had some experience of this myself. … No good can come of dealing with such people, especially to the extent that their company may be not only unpleasant but dangerous. Galileo Galilei
If the Brave New World cannot insert a square peg into a round hole, it will redefine “roundness” until a perfect fit results.
-Jerome Meckier, from Aldous Huxley: Satire and Structure
…a sense of unity is opposite of a sense of uniformity. Uniformity, where everyone “belongs”, uses the same cliches, thinks alike and behaves alike, produces a society which seems comfortable at first but is totally lacking in human dignity. Real unity tolerates dissent and rejoices in variety of outlook and tradition, realizes that it is man’s destiny to unite and not divide… Unity, so understood, is the extra dimension that raises the sense of belonging into genuine human life.
-Northrop Frye, from The Bush Garden
Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something. -Plato
“The past is our always-available counterculture, and it’s a rich one. Every minute you spend attending to something not-immediately-present, you are helping to build a counterculture.” ― Alan Jacobs
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Links:
Why are intellectuals — those whose thinking is supposed to be most refined — so susceptible to totalitarianism? Gary Saul Morson offers three explanations from the treasury of Russian literature.
https://tomklingenstein.com/mind-forgd-manacles-why-intellectuals-conform/
The greatest depiction of woke totalitarianism was written 150 years ago in Russia
Anti-Communism Week has been marked for November 2025. Writer-producer Julie Behling’s documentary “Beneath Sheep’s Clothing” warns of communism’s devastation: “Globally, communism claimed the lives of approximately 150 million people in the 20th century.”
‘Beneath Sheep’s Clothing’: Communism’s Capture Of America | ZeroHedge
Totalitarian governments cannot afford that its citizens remain autonomous persons. This poses a threat to their quest to consolidate power. Individual liberty threatens the theoretical, utopian foundations of promising the re-distribution of goods, and equality; communism ultimately fails to re-distribute the essence of human nature.
10 Habits of Mind to Avoid Ideological Thinking
Everyday Habits That Reveal a Low IQ (Backed by Psychology)
Everyday Habits That Reveal a Low IQ (Backed by Psychology) – YouTube
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Added 12-15-2025:
Sam Faddis (formerly with the CIA) sits down to talk about the reality of the ongoing Marxist revolution in America.
The Revolution Right Here At Home – by Sam Faddis
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Filed under 2025 Current Events, Communism, cultural Marxism, Culture, Democracy, History, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary, totalitarianism Tagged with Communism, Democracy, groupthink, history, Marxism, mind control, package thinking, party-mindedness, politics, progressivism, russia, Soviet Union, totalitarianism, Valdimir Lenin