I’m looking for some help.

New College of Florida, where I’m proud to be working at the forefront of higher ed reform, hosts a series of dialogs we call the “Socratic Stage.”  The program is designed to promote civil discourse and the free exchange of ideas—including from the audience. 

The central property of an “exchange of ideas” is that it works best when there’s more than one perspective presented on stage.  The perspectives need not be antagonistic—though they may be—but they do need to differ.  The purpose of such an exchange is less to persuade than to provoke thought. 

I’ve got a proposal pending for a dialog addressing the question “Is Wokeism a Religion.”  Those of you who’ve been following along here, or readers of American Spirit or Great Awokening?, know that I’ve been working on this question for at least the past few years.  In fact, here’s a recent discussion with my friend Ron Coleman on his podcast, Coleman Nation.

The question is, who can we invite to present a different perspective?

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To be fair, any such discussion should begin with a concession: There is no consensus on either what it means to “be a religion” or the definition of “Wokeism.”  So with the two key nouns in the question gloriously ill defined, there should be plenty of room for differing perspectives. 

I’ll start with a spoiler—my own definitions:

A “religion” is a shared set of metaphysical beliefs helpful in making sense of the world.  Religions begin with answers to the unknowable—life, death, justice, luck, purpose, morality, etc.—then translate these answers into behaviors and expressions.

“Wokeism” is a modern religion, grounded in the utopian tradition, that deploys contemporary language and metaphor to describe its metaphysical beliefs.  Its constellation of beliefs and values includes apocalyptic climate change, the intersectional struggle for equity, the transformational fluidity of gender, enforced communal action in the face of contagion, and (as a reaction to the faiths that preceded it) a disdain for Biblical morality.

The Woke espouse clear and distinctive views of economics, commerce, sexuality, community, behavior, and belief.  They have heroes, villains, martyrs, shrines, chants, holidays, and symbols.  They police blasphemy and dictate righteousness of thought.  They ground their sense of justice in sources they deem unassailably True.  They have well-defined views of repentance, redemption, humanity’s role in the universe, and the end of times.  They have embraced unique rituals and religious garb. 

Pretty clear then that, according to my definitions, Wokeism is a religion.  That means that we should start to treat as one—both in ways that show greater respect for adherents and those that force adherents to exhibit greater responsibility.

So…to make the proposal fly I need to find someone who would like to share the stage with me. 

Good presenters should be serious people, capable of civil discourse, unafraid of disagreement, and able to point to a body of relevant work.

Call today’s posting a request for proposals.  Names are welcome.  Pointers and introductions are even better.

Feel free to direct answers to my New College e-mail or to reply below.

And please share this note as broadly as you can.  My reach works best when magnified.

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For more information about Bruce D. Abramson & American Restorationism, visit: www.BruceDAbramson.com

To learn more about America’s Spiritual Crisis and the new religion of Wokeism, see: American Spirit or Great Awokening?  The Battle to Restore or Destroy Our Nation (Academica Press, 2024). 

To learn more about how America’s elites destroyed the republic, see:  The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021).

To learn more about the ideology driving today’s anti-American leftism, see: American Restoration: Winning America’s Second Civil War (Kindle, 2019).

To learn more about our work at the American Coalition for Education and Knowledge, visit us at The Coalition for America.

To learn more about how I turn the ideas I discuss here into concrete projects that serve the interests of my clients, donors, and society at large, please e-mail me at bdabramson@pm.me.

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Previous:  Message to the Faithful

The End

All good things must come to an end.

When I launched this essay series back in January, I committed to a minimum six-month run.  It’s closer to ten, and I’ve never missed a week.  It’s been fun but the time has come. Today’s is the final entry. I now move into the next stage: updating my thoughts in light of what I have learned since posting them, compiling them into a book, and giving thought to a new series on a new topic.  It’s been a pleasure and a privilege.

I regret deeply, however, that this series is not the only good thing that has come to an end.  The country that once embodied the American Spirit has slipped into history.  The United States today is neither a constitutional republic nor a free society.  It is a bureaucratic elitist oligarchy that fails the primary test of legitimacy laid out in the Declaration of Independence: It neither recognizes nor secures our inalienable liberties.  Fortunately, the American Spirit has been battered rather than beaten.  It’s far from dead.  A republican restoration is possible—but only if we work towards it.

So before wrapping up entirely, let’s take an honest if unconventional look at our history—modeled after a country that, at least in this respect, has been far more honest about its history than has our own.  My model is France.  When Americans first declared independence in 1776, France was an absolute monarchy.  Since then, it’s cycled through four republics, two empires, a restored absolute monarchy, a constitutional monarchy, and a fascist puppet state.  It’s now in its fifth republic, which it honestly calls the Fifth French Republic. 

American Republics

We’ve been remiss in our own labeling.  Though few Americans like to admit it, we’ve changed regimes more than once.  The revolutionary period and the Articles of Confederation (1776-89) gave the world the First American Republic.  It failed.  The Constitution of 1789 gave birth to a far more robust Second American Republic.  That one collapsed into secession and civil war in 1860.  The post-civil war Constitutional Amendments and deletions yielded a Third American Republic with very different takes on equality, citizenship, and the rights of states from the Second. 

That Third Republic ended not with a bang, but a whimper.  No one ever announced that it was over or took a dramatic step to end it.  Instead, the slow rise of the administrative state between Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson morphed it into something very, very different.  It’s likely impossible to put a date on the demise of the Third American Republic and the rise of the Fourth, but most Americans alive today have known only that Fourth American Republic.

Our Fourth Republic was always problematic—in that it seemed to lack a clear Constitutional basis—but one of its bedrock principles was constant insistence upon its fidelity to the Constitution.  That republican virtue died in March 2020, when our leadership dropped all pretense.  The “Covid emergency” and the measures it justified were more than incompatible with the Bill of Rights.  They announced the demise of the entire American idea.

That’s not hyperbole.  Go back to March 2020 and consider what happened.  What was the “emergency?”  In March 2020 the U.S. was experiencing neither widespread death nor widespread disease.  Hospitals reported no capacity issues.  But thanks to the government, press reports, and information fed from foreign powers and NGOs that do not necessarily have our best interests at heart, people—including a supermajority of Americans—were terrified.  Widespread panic motivated allegedly reasonable people to behave unreasonably.  Contra JFK, the call went out “that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe,” sacrifice any liberty, censor any dissent, in the struggle against a viral respiratory disease. 

In response to that fear, the federal government and most of the states engaged in the most comprehensive suppression of civil liberties in the history of the U.S.  The moment that happened, a precedent was set.  From March 2020 on forward, if the government determines that enough Americans are sufficiently frightened (or should be sufficiently frightened), the government may suspend any and all civil liberties.  So much for the idea that these rights are inalienable and that the only proper and legitimate role of government is to secure them. 

(The few governors who realized the error early and moved to correct it quickly deserve immense credit for standing against the crowd, but their efforts were too little too late to avoid having set the precedent.  In March 2020, when the initial lockdowns began, there was not a single prominent American political leader in either party willing to state simply and loudly that the proposed suppression of civil liberties was incompatible with the American idea).

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As a result, in America today, as across the entire globe, there are no inalienable rights.  Period.  The idea that motivated the great American experiment has been buried.  It was a fine idea that brought enormous benefits to the world, but it was the primary casualty of Covid. 

American Restoration

The American Spirit remains alive, though on life support.  If we can revive it, we can restore America’s historic republicanism—breathe life into a Fifth American Republic.  If not, well, as France has shown, there will likely still be a United States.  It may be smaller or even larger—we’ve changed our map and our flag many times since 1776.  It may be Woke or Utopian or something else.  It will not, however, be the embodiment of the American nation forged in the 1776 Declaration.

The choice that faces us today is stark.  We can reinvigorate the American Spirit and give birth to a Fifth American Republic.  Or we can glide aimlessly until we morph into something very different, on current trends likely something very Woke.

What lies in the American future?  The American Spirit vs. The Great Awokening.  One or the other.  The choice is ours.  It’s where I started this essay series.  It’s where I end it.

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For more information about Bruce D. Abramson & American Restorationism, visit: www.BruceDAbramson.com

To learn more about how America’s elites destroyed the republic, see:  The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021).

To learn more about the ideology driving today’s anti-American leftism, see: American Restoration: Winning America’s Second Civil War (Kindle, 2019).

To learn more about our work at the American Coalition for Education and Knowledge, visit us at The Coalition for America.

To learn more about how I turn the ideas I discuss here into concrete projects that serve the interests of my clients, donors, and society at large, please e-mail me at bdabramson@pm.me.

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Previous:  Making My Case

Still Not a Guru

This part of the story is where it becomes relevant that I’m not a wannabe guru: The final part.  So I’ll repeat it:  I’m not a wannabe guru.  I am, however, a professional troubleshooter, problem-solver, and strategist.  Which is fortunate, because American society is in serious trouble, facing deep problems, and in dire need of a strategy to right itself before it’s too late.

Throughout this essay series, I’ve tried to tell the stories of America’s spiritual crisis, the American Spirit, and the Great Awokening in a way that builds towards a solution.  Not that any of these steps are simple, but we’ve got to do three things: 

1.     Find messages in traditional faiths to address the spiritual crisis.

2.     Reinvigorate the American Spirit.

3.     Treat Wokeism like the religion it is. 

The first task is largely out of my purview precisely because I don’t want to become a guru or found my own denomination.  I am not a fan of the many Jewish and Christian denominations of which I am aware (and their counterparts in other faiths of which I am less aware) that simply reinvent their faith’s beliefs, practices, and traditions to suit the taste of today’s parishioners. 

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Jewish and American

As a Jew, I take deep offense at the Jewish organizations and clergy that have untethered Judaism from its rich past.  Judaism places at its center the unity of God, the nation of Israel, and the eternal covenant linking them together.  To Jews, the Torah’s designation of our nation as a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” has essentially set us up as a demonstration project. 

Our adherence to God’s covenant is supposed to set a model for the rest of the world to follow.  Judaism doesn’t simply morph into whatever it is that enough Jews believe.  The land of Israel and the keeping of the Sabbath play enormously important roles in defining the community.  Jewish laws and rituals have remained largely unchanged for millennia.  Jewish positions on controversial topics like abortion, euthanasia, and sexuality were formed long ago—and they do not align with those of Wokeism.  Jewish positions on the environment, taxes, welfare, warfare, and countless other matters of contemporary politics are far more flexible; Woke perspectives may be consistent with Jewish views, but then so too are most non-Woke views.  The contemporary reduction of Judaism to a bland ethical command to “fix the world” (tikkun olam) in a manner that coincidentally aligns perfectly with Wokeism is both offensive and anti-Jewish.

As an American whose personal level of religious observance has varied widely throughout his life, I remain a believer in free will and free choice.  I find the notion of enforced observance at least as offensive as the notion of amorphous traditionalism.  But an individual choice to transgress one or more religious rules can do nothing to alter the tradition—or the viability of the rules.  So too with an individual choice to support politicians and policies that run counter to traditional teachings, ethics, or practices. 

Judaism is what it is, regardless of what any number of today’s Jews may want it to be.  There may be some red lines—in life choices or political choices—that make an individual, even an individual Jew, anti-Jewish (in fact, there almost certainly are such red lines).  But traditionalists must take pains to ensure that such lines are both few and clear.  Moreover, they must be clear that such lines exist not because they run against the Jewish practice of the individual but rather because they threaten to undermine the continued existence or safety of the Jewish people, of Jews to live as Jews. 

Beyond that, by all means, let people know when Judaism expects something of them.  If they choose to live, act, or vote differently—well, that’s the American spirit in action.  It’s also, however, the American component of American Judaism that has allowed Judaism and Jews to thrive in America.  No one ever promised that every traditional interpretation of every faith could thrive in America.  Religious traditionalists of all stripes were invited to find, define, or tailor versions of their traditions to American soil.  That task was always going to be easier for some than for others.  The invitation remains as it was.  I’ve written these essays in part as a call to America’s traditional faith leaders to remember that invitation and its terms, to look in the mirror, and to see what needs to be done to accept it within contemporary American sociological context.

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(continued from The Concepts Formerly Known as Human Rights)

Learning from Islamists

By the end of 2020, Wokeism faced a major challenge: How could it best deploy its enormous power to destroy those who continued to cling bitterly to outdated Biblical morality, traditional religions, and the American spirit?

The history of religion contains many useful lessons.  The Woke were hardly the first new faith to find itself ascendant among a population that was less than fully on board.  How had past faiths defended their Truths against the scurrilous lies of the irredeemably evil?  Fortunately for the Woke, the most directly applicable historical lessons are entirely consistent with Wokeism.  If bad people are going to say or print things designed to mislead those the Woke seek to convert, well, THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW AGAINST THAT!!!  There’s a name for such laws: Anti-blasphemy.

The world has never had any shortage of such anti-blasphemy laws.  They exist, in explicit form, in many parts of the world still so subject to a dominant religion that the lines among faith, economics, society, and culture blur.   In recent decades, Islamists running the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) have sought to internationalize their anti-blasphemy laws using the misleading term “Islamophobia.”  Islamist organizations and communities throughout the Western world have attempted to import them.  Those attempts have proved controversial everywhere, for the simple reason that the West did away with anti-blasphemy laws centuries ago.  The illegality of questioning, challenging, undermining, deriding, or even mocking the beliefs or practices of a faith is incompatible with the ethos that has dominated Western life for a very long time. 

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Anti-blasphemy laws are explicitly counter to the American spirit.  The right to reject religion is inherent in the free exercise of religion.   And the minute you reject a religion, the elements of that religion that require faith begin to look a little silly.  Every faith embodies beliefs whose justifications lie beyond the narrow realms of facts, history, logic, scientific inquiry, open debate, and rationality.  Wokeism is hardly the first.  Jefferson’s introduction of America’s ethically based civic religion was uniquely honest on that account: We hold these truths to be self evident.  Look down Jefferson’s list of allegedly self-evident truths.  Try validating them as self-evident using pre-1776 facts, history, logic, scientific inquiry, open debate, and rationality.  At best, you’ll show that they’re good ideas worth trying.  They weren’t remotely self-evident. 

“We” hold these Truths is a pretty good description of the core particularistic beliefs of every faith.  It doesn’t take much to figure out that indiscriminate murder is detrimental to societal stability.  That’s why the prohibition on murder is more-or-less universal.  Try using only logic and science to derive God’s impregnation of a virgin to bring to earth His only son, whose own death on the cross would atone for the sins of humanity.  It can’t be done.  As a 2000 year-old faith, however, Christianity has matured to the point that (at least most of) today’s Christians understand that though such faith may be central to their lives, those who lack that faith are not a threat.  Wokeism, as a young an immature religion, shows far less self-confidence.

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(continued from Reality Makes Sense)

Dignity

I did not fall into the study of Wokeism casually or happily.  I needed to understand what was happening to the people around me—including many of the people I knew and loved.  Over the years, the mystery deepened.  What began as a casual musing that their commitment to selected apparent insanities was assuming a religious fervor became a theory.  And as a theory, I set out to test it using the only two tests that really matter.  Does it explain what has happened?  Does it predict things before they happen?

My theory passed.  By the early 2020s, Wokeism had well-developed notions of pervasive evil (systemic racism), original sin (1619’s slavery), the soul (transgenderism), the hierarchy of suffering (intersectionality), end times (apocalyptic global warming), affirmative justice (equity), retributive justice (antiracist discrimination), the clergy (credentialed experts and prestigious bureaucrats), a community-forging challenge (Covid), religious garb with semi-magical properties (face masks), impurity (positive PCR tests), rites of passage (Covid vaccines), untouchables (the unvaxed), purification rituals (quarantine plus negative test), virtue (the common good), saintly martyrs (George Floyd), and likely myriad other religious parallels. 

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The notion that government—the font of wisdom and coordinator of the common good—could confer spiritual goods was also in play among the Woke.  The Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell decision did far more than legalize gay marriage across the country.  Justice Kennedy declared civil marriage—a government license, governmental recognition, and government-granted privileges—as a mark of “dignity.”  When Justice Thomas noted in dissent that dignity is an essential component of our humanity, not something that government can confer or withhold, the Woke erupted in outrage.  Their debate was instructive.  From a strictly legal perspective, it’s incomprehensible.  Dignity is not a legal construct; it exists only in the metaphysical realm.   Thomas articulated the traditional view long considered universal: Dignity is an immutable divine gift, conferred when God created Adam “in the image of God.”  Kennedy articulated the view of contemporary Wokeism: Nothing is innate, divine, or immutable.  The government ministers to our spiritual needs as much as it does to our material needs.

Government Dispensation

It was thus hardly surprising that the moment the Great Plague of Covid descended upon us, governments around the world decreed that no human rights were innate.  The concept of natural law underpinning America’s civic religion was tossed on the trash heap of history.  In times of declared emergency—declared by executive fiat with little-to-no public input, deliberation, or debate—individual freedom collapsed from inalienable rights into government grants.  Governments throughout the Anglosphere—the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., and most American states—where the tradition of rights vested in natural law was strongest, simply collapsed into Woke autocracies overnight. 

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(continued from Abundance Doesn’t Bring Meaning)

The Home Stretch

I’ve been posting these essays for the better part of a year, now.  Early on, I told you a bit about myself.  I did so because it’s only fair to let you know who I am and where I’m coming from.  It might be nice if all arguments stood or fell entirely on merit, but they don’t.  Everything embodies bias.  My experiences, background, and personal beliefs all helped shape my arguments.  As we near the end of this series, it’s probably appropriate for me to close out with a bit more personal context.

In assessing my case that Wokeism really is a new spiritual tradition, there are a few additional things you should know about me—and about the analytic methodologies I deploy:  I tend to believe that reality makes sense.  I dislike insanity as an explanation for anything major.  That distaste covers explanations rooted in either the insanity of influential world figures or in some form of mass psychosis.  I also believe that large conspiracies are rare. 

I do, however, believe in mass movements.  There’s no doubt that large numbers of people can quickly come to share a set of beliefs.  Examples of such movements include religions, political and economic ideologies, investment bubbles, fashions, styles, and pop culture trends.  Some of those mass movements are extraordinarily durable, having already lasted centuries or millennia.  Others come and go in weeks.  Either way, they represent a widely held set of shared beliefs capable of directing individual behavior and the course of history notwithstanding the difficulty that many believers would encounter if asked to explain or justify their beliefs.

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When I see things happening that I don’t understand—and that happens a lot—I make certain assumptions about the people driving them.  I assume that both the key players and their mass followers are rational.  As someone who has studied rational decision-making, I like to back out the two components of each decision.  In the technical language of Bayesian analysis, these components are probability and utility.  In casual conversation, they translate into beliefs and values.  Stated simply, when you—or anyone else—chooses to do one thing over another, you base your decisions on both your beliefs of what is likely to follow your action and upon the values you bring to the table. 

To pick a simple example in a political setting, how do you decide which Presidential candidate to support, whether in a wide-open primary or a two-major-party general election?  If you’re behaving rationally, you’d ask yourself two questions: Do I like the things this candidate is proposing?  How much do I trust this candidate to deliver?  The former question is about values; the latter is probabilities.

Suppose, for example, that a candidate promises to raise taxes on the wealthy to ensure that they pay their fair share.  If you agree that the wealthy are taking unfair advantage of the rest of society, you’ve found a candidate who shares your values.  The next question is whether that candidate can deliver.  A promise, for example, to pass a new wealth tax that nearly everyone concedes would be unconstitutional seems like a hollow promise.  The probability you place on your candidate delivering is low.  Perhaps even more importantly, if (like me) you don’t share that candidate’s values, you probably need to look elsewhere.

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(continued from Abundance vs. Human Nature)

Can’t Buy Me Love

Can tradition—and the American Spirit—prevail?  Last week’s essay ended with an imperative.  Traditional faiths will have to learn—from Wokeism—how to set aside pastoral language and metaphor while addressing the fundamental spiritual challenge of abundance.

In fairness, most traditional faiths—along with various schools of psychology—long ago noticed that fundamental challenge.  Abundance does not bring happiness.  It does not provide meaning.  In fact, abundance seems to heighten depression and anxiety.  The evidence is everywhere, and decades of data back it up.  You cannot shop or spend your way to a life of happiness and meaning.  Acquaintances and hangers-on can be purchased; friends and community cannot.  Abundance may pose the greatest spiritual challenge yet to confront a species evolved to overcome scarcity: Having won our ultimate battle and conquered our timeless enemy, we find the victory disturbingly hollow.

Logotherapy posits our internal struggle as the quest for meaning or purpose.  Viktor Frankl’s ability to extract this glorious theory from the ashes of Nazi concentration camps highlights the paradox.  Prisoners at the camp, though far from all affluent, were all products of modern European abundance.  What possessions they may have had—down to the clothes on their backs—were stripped from them.  They entered the camps possessing only what was attached to their bodies and resident in their minds.  The Nazis then worked to dispossess them of their bodies and break their minds.  Frankl’s key observation was that those whose minds clung tightly to metaphysical purpose and meaning were by far the most likely to survive. 

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Therein lies the problem.  Prospect theory—from the very different corner of cognitive psychology—teaches that human utility functions have a discontinuity at zero.  In less technical terms, we are all far more afraid of losing what we already possess than we are of failing to gain what we might want.  Consider, for a moment, the following simple example.  If I told you of an investment strategy capable of doubling your net wealth within three years, would the thought make you happy?  Most normal people would answer yes.  Now here it is in practice: In year one, I will double your net wealth.  In year two, I will double it again.  In year three, I will cut it in half.  The net result is that in three years, your net wealth will be double what it is today.  And you will be miserable.  Guaranteed.  The moment you internalized your year-two ending wealth quadruple where you are today, it became part of you.  Wrenching half of it away ripped a hole in your sense of self.

Positive psychology makes the matter even clearer: The richer a society becomes, the higher the rate of depression and anxiety.  Abundance can make us fat.  It cannot make us happy.  Positive psychology also, however, points us back in the right direction.  Gratitude and acknowledgment can increase happiness.  In other words—to the surprise of no traditional faith—happiness is elusive in the material realm but accessible in the spiritual realm.

Obligation vs. Entitlement

Therein lies the great spiritual challenge of our time—a challenge that Wokeism is singularly unable to meet.  In a world of scarcity, we humans have no choice but to look inward.  In a world of abundance, the outside world always seems to have something tantalizing to offer.  As that outside world expands, so too does its distraction.  We have become so attuned to our possessions that we are rapidly losing the skills that made us human.

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(continued from A Decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind)

The Appeal of Wokeism

With the rest of the world covered, let’s turn back to the challenge we face here in America and what we can do about it.  The elite appeal of Wokeism is not hard to see.  Using only the contemporary metaphors and scientific language with which they resonate, it provides answers to many of their spiritual questions:

Racism provides an explanation for persistent unfairness and inequality far more tangible than some amorphous sense of “evil.”  It relates to events well within American historic memory and manifests itself in current events.

The Trans Movement enshrines the concept of an inner self, far truer than the physical shell of the body, capable of addressing questions of identity, individuality, and uniqueness—as well as those concerning existence before birth and after death.  It does so using language far more concrete and pseudoscientific than references to an immortal soul.

Apocalyptic climate change spins an elegant tale of the end of days.  It provides an organizing theme for an Armageddon worth avoiding, a call for repentance and reformation aligned with the prescriptions of the faith, and a vague set of predictions that can never be disproved.  It achieves these tasks neatly, using only the language of science, without reference to anything as metaphysical as divine judgment or messianic deliverance.

Covid extremism handed this nascent religion a glorious gift.  From inception, it arrived as a plague of biblical proportions that only the appointed, enlightened, elite experts could tame.  Their various pronouncements and prescriptions gave rise to a wealth of religious markings and rituals.

Cancellation provides a mechanism for policing adherence to—or at the very least, recognition of—religious norms that sounds far less archaic and draconian than anti-blasphemy laws. 

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The absence of an obvious deity is far less troubling than it might first appear to be.  It is hardly unlikely that, at some point, some Woke faction will feel the need to define the originating source of Wokeism’s various beliefs.  For most believers, however, the devoted belief itself is far more important than its source.

In short, Wokeism fills many of the same spiritual needs that past humans have felt without forcing today’s urban, credentialed, professional, elite classes to delve into unrelatable pastoral metaphors or deep metaphysics.

In the long run, however, Wokeism cannot succeed.  It cannot succeed because—notwithstanding its ability to avoid antiquated language and concepts that have limited the appeal of traditional faiths—it is no better than those traditional faiths at addressing the primary spiritual challenge of our time.  It is, however, far less attuned to human nature.

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(continued from Chinese Characteristics)

Are We Lost?

So is all lost?  Are we really in it alone?   Suppose American Wokeism cuts a deal with China to roll out the Chinese Model fully, concedes that as a non-European people the Chinese are probably superior anyway, and turns the U.S. into a totalitarian state that permits prosperity?  Suppose Wokeism then joins China in letting Islamists run wild as long as they do it at someone else’s party?  Suppose the EU continues thinking it can be Woker than Wokeism on climate while avoiding the worst aspects of the gender nonsense?  Suppose our sister nations of the Anglosphere—Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—continue their own rapid descents into Wokeism (albeit in a mix somewhat different from the American denomination)?  Where does that leave those of us still committed to America’s founding spirit and the faith traditions that complete it so spectacularly?  Would we really have no friends left on this planet?

The answer is: No.  The American spirit preaches a compelling message.  It has resonated around the world for a reason.  It’s a positive, uplifting, life-affirming message of spirituality.  Though it manifests itself differently among nations other than our own, it continues to attract adherents.  As Woke as host societies may become, many of their people will always answer the calls of America’s founding spirit and compatible traditional faiths.

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Perhaps the most promising recent development in forging our future alliances arrived from an unlikely corner: The Middle East.  In 2020, in the waning days of the Trump Administration, the White House hosted the signing of the Abraham Accords.  The two principals—Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—forged the first genuinely warm peace in the entire region since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.  Several other Arab states signed on quickly; with only a bit of encouragement from the White House, others might do so as well.  While nearly all attention to those accords focused on their implications to the Arab/Israeli conflict, their long-term significance may run even deeper.   Of all the world’s societies, few have spent more time aligning tradition with modernity than have Israel and the UAE.  These are two societies in which the religious, anti-religious, and even Woke coexist—often uneasily—side-by-side. 

Non-American, Pro-American

The hidden message of the Abraham Accords is thus not geopolitical but cultural and spiritual.  In the spirit of America’s founding, two societies oriented around deep non-Christian faiths arrived at a place similar to the one that Jefferson occupied in 1776.  If we can agree upon a basic platform of decency, morality, and coexistence, we can then follow our own traditions to complete the offering.  That makes the Abraham Accords the rare international agreement rooted in a message that transcends the international system.

Other nations have undergone similar struggles to reach similar conclusions.  Central Europe’s Visegrad group—Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary—are all engaged in the challenge of preserving their unique national characters amidst a movement towards European harmonization and globalization.  Brexit proved that many Brits appreciate the genuine exceptionalism at the heart of the Anglo branch of Western civilization—the branch from which America grew.  They understand that it’s been under threat.  They’re willing to do the work to preserve it.  Austria, Scandinavia, and even the Netherlands have begun to demonstrate inklings of the same.  Further abroad, India faces its own challenge reconciling its glorious traditions with the needs of modernity.

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(continued from The Reds and the Greens)

The Chinese Model

The world’s other leading anti-American ideology, the Chinese Model, may be even more pernicious—in large part because unlike Islamism, it dovetails beautifully with Wokeism.  Going back to Deng’s original formulation, this model combines quasi-capitalist semi-free markets with authoritarian social controls. 

Since its introduction in the 1980s, Deng’s model has won many admirers—including much of the American and Western elite.  Stripped to its essentials, Socialism with Chinese characteristics promotes innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth while nevertheless maintaining government control over large swathes of human behavior.  In other words, it’s a manifestly unfree system that maintains selected trappings of freedom, particularly in the economic realm. 

Over the course of decades, China’s Communist elite demonstrated the benefits that social controls of the citizenry confer upon the elites who wield that control “for the common good.”  Western elites, never too enamored with the selfish, backward, deplorable masses occupying space in their own countries, took notice.  Whatever it was that China was doing seemed to work: China’s people were getting richer without getting freer—yet rarely complaining.  Inconvenient, inferior, or ideologically questionable citizens were handled easily; many even proved useful as slaves or organ donors. 

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When China’s elites invited Woke Western elites to share the bounties of its growing markets, learn the Chinese system, and appreciate its benefits, Western Elites swooned.  And why not?  Authoritarians like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can inflict unpopular policies necessary to “serve the common good” far more easily than can their democratic counterparts. 

Supremacism, unequal treatment of strong and weak, and sadism are all “characteristics” the CCP wields with efficiency and pride.  As long they deploy them effectively, they’re not likely to bother the Woke.  Wokeism imported many of them, initially gingerly out of concern for a backlash.  When the Woke read the 2012 election as giving them license to transform America in their image, however, all bets were off.  Their importation of these most important Chinese exports grew increasingly brazen.  Since the March 2020 shutdowns, few among the Woke even bother to pretend that constitutional norms, the needs of a free republic, or our inalienable human rights might slow them down.  Yes, they like insisting that nothing is wrong, but even the efforts expended keeping up appearances have waned with frightening speed.

The Great Reset

By mid-2020, Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum and its Davos confab where the elite Woke like to congregate even published a book called “The Great Reset” noting correctly that global government actions taken in the name of combating Covid effectively “reset” the socioeconomic fabric of the world.  Its new form, he explained, would accommodate China’s status as a rising power—putting in place a “new world order” far more akin to the Chinese model than to America’s founding principles. 

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(continued from The Rest of the West)

Supremacism

Islamism is by far the highest profile contemporary proof that not every denomination or interpretation of every faith tradition is compatible with Americanism—or can serve as a viable completion to the American spiritual platform.  That incompatibility has nothing to do with the Islamic roots of Islamism.  It has everything to do with the supremacist roots of Islamism. 

It's hard to think of any belief more antithetical to the idea that “all men are created equal” than supremacism.  Supremacism starts with the racist belief that there are meaningful and inherent differences among groups.  It moves from there to assert that group inequality is real and appropriate; it establishes a pecking order assigning distinct rights and responsibilities to each group.  It ends its toxic brew by proclaiming the essential superiority of one group over all others.  That supreme group is entitled to rule.  All lesser groups must remain subservient and pay homage to their superiors.  Universalist supremacists believe that that pecking order, the right to rule, and expectations of homage extend to all people at all times.

As obviously anti-American as supremacism is, it has hardly been alien to our history.  White supremacism was central to slavery and Jim Crow, as well as to immensely powerful organizations like the Ku Klux Klan.  Though by the dawn of the twenty-first century we had more-or-less eliminated white supremacism as a significant political, social, or cultural force, it has never disappeared entirely.  Today, it persists in the fever corners of the Internet and social media, where it serves as an inspiration to some of society’s lost, disturbed, violent misfits. 

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Wokeism, in its constant drive to defame Americans, has deconstructed “white supremacism” to include all forms of peaceful coexistence with any society whose history includes the taint of actual white supremacism.  In other words, pretty much any non-Woke Westerner who does not rail against European and American history qualifies as a white supremacist in the deconstructed Woke lexicon.  For the purposes of these essays, we’ll stick to the actual definition of the term.

White supremacism remains worth noting and tracking, but unless you have the misfortune of a personal encounter with one of America’s relatively few bona fide white supremacists, it’s unlikely to play much of a role in your life.  It’s also worth the effort to ensure that it never rises, phoenix-like, from the ashes.  No, in America today, the only indigenous supremacist movements of any consequence come from black supremacist groups like Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, the leadership of groups like Black Lives Matter, a handful of other corners of Wokeism—and from Islamists.

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(Previous: The God of the Woke)

The EU

Having wrapped up our discussion of Wokeism as a new religion that speaks brilliantly to America’s spiritually starved elite, it’s time to turn our attention back to reengaging the American Spirit.  We started parts of this discussion—out of order—long ago, but there’s plenty more ground to cover.  Let’s start in a place that’s less than obvious: The world at large.

At first glance, an essay on the world beyond our borders may appear misplaced in a series on America’s spiritual crisis.  As Thomas Jefferson noted in the Declaration’s preamble, however, “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” is pretty important.  Few of the trends hitting America are localized.  The conflict between tradition and modernity is a defining feature of our time, not of our country.  The shift from scarcity to abundance may have begun in the West, but it’s since gone global.  Every nation, every society, every institution, every faith, and every ideology has had to address it.  We may be focused on some uniquely American responses, but that doesn’t mean we have to pretend that they emerged in a vacuum.  They influence, are influenced by, and interact with other responses to the same phenomena.  So let’s take a bit of a world tour.

Wokeism, as we’ve been discussing, is by far the greatest internal threat to the American spirit.  Because America is unique even among Western nations, the Woke threat has manifested itself differently elsewhere.  That’s perhaps clearest in looking at some of the differences between its status in the U.S. and the EU.  Apocalyptic climate change plays a far larger role in European politics than in the U.S.  As a result, it’s been far more toxic.  It already threatens to curtail German energy and Dutch farming.  It’s devastated once-promising nuclear industries and heightened reliance on Russian oil and gas.  While it may have become an article of faith among the European elite and in certain quarters, it lacks much of the theological edge that appeals to its American adherents.  The difference is even clearer when looking at transgender issues; even the proudly Woke French recognize that America’s Woke push to mutilate and sterilize children is insane and bestial.  When it came to Covid extremism, Sweden—and to a lesser extent, the rest of Scandinavia—led the world in rational responses. 

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These differences are not terribly surprising.  American spiritual traditions and religious history assumed their own trajectory nearly 500 years ago—while Europe’s counterreformation was still raging.  When America was founded as a creedal nation, it rested upon a novel spiritual tradition already well over a century old.  John Winthrop saw us as a shining city on a hill long before anyone contemplated independence from Great Britain.  Europe has had its own complicated relationship with faith and with its own traditions—a relationship that further varies from European country to European country.  It’s unsurprising that the spiritual juggernaut of Wokeism has played itself out differently in Europe.   Woke Europeans may share a great deal with their American counterparts, but they are far less religious and far more willing to downplay the parts of Wokeism that don’t feel right.  For all its anti-Americanism, contemporary Wokeism is also, in many ways, a very American response to a creedal nation mired in a spiritual crisis.

Russia

Wokeism is far less of a force outside the U.S. and the EU.  There are, however, two important anti-American global ideologies aligned with Wokeism’s destructive goals.  The first is Islamism, one of many denominational interpretations of a faith tradition far older than America, namely Islam.  The second, like Wokeism, derived from the utopian tradition.  Deng Xiaoping called it “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” and though many have questioned its fidelity to socialism, the name is apt.  This “Chinese Model” marries the Western utopian tradition to China’s historic reverence for centralized control and authority.  Islamism and the Chinese Model are both deeply antithetical to America’s own spiritual roots.  Not surprisingly, Wokeism has allied with both in its drive to displace and supplant America.

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(Previous: The Woke Soul)

The Deity, Defined

Our discussion of Wokeism as a new religion has studiously avoided one concept that people universally associate with religion: God.  Before moving on to the next topic, it behooves us to at least consider it because the strongest counterargument asserting that Wokeism is not a religion is likely to hinge on the absence of any obvious deity from any of its discussions, beliefs, and practices.

Can Wokeism truly be a religion if it does not embrace an explicit concept of the divine?  Is “god” a spiritual need that all humans must fill?  Will Wokeism eventually—perhaps soon—introduce something to fill that role?  As with many such questions, the answers lie far above my pay grade.  God may be a genuine entity in reality and/or in the minds of many, but the concept of “god” is elusive.  The proper answer to the question: “Do you believe in God?” is “If you define precisely what you mean by ‘god,’ I’ll let you know.  Otherwise, how could I answer the question meaningfully?”

The concept of god pre-dated Abraham’s monotheistic insight.  Many ancient civilizations believed in localized gods.  Travelers routinely paid homage to the god of the places they visited without giving offense to the gods of their own hometowns.  In fact, many in the ancient world (centuries after Abraham) found the monotheistic Judaeans unacceptably rude for failing to do so.  Who were these strange visitors who insisted that their own deity was both everywhere and far more powerful—even in our own town—than our local god?

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Many pagan cultures embraced entire societies of “immanent” gods—essentially superhumans that nevertheless had to operate within the constraints of nature.  It’s hardly coincidental that in recent years, the popular Marvel Cinematic Universe has recast the old Norse gods as aliens from the planet Asgard.  Immanent pagan gods had more in common with today’s superheroes than with anything in the Abrahamic tradition.  For many in the modern world, Abraham, then Moses, then Jesus, then Mohammed, revolutionized the concept so completely that they cannot conceive of an alternative.  They and their followers embraced the idea of a “transcendent” God, beyond full human comprehension, in full command of (and thus unburdened by) the laws of nature. 

Still, definitions aside, a central thesis of this essay series has been that today’s America—and in particular today’s American elite—is spiritually starved.  Wokeism, I have posited, is spreading throughout that population because it addresses unarticulated spiritual needs.  Is god such a need?

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(continued from The Sacred Garb)

Membership has its Privileges

While face masks are a classic religious artifact, the Covid vax became a rite of passage. All decent people got themselves vaccinated at the earliest possible moment. Parents rushed to get their children vaccinated as soon as they were legally permitted to do so. Those with children deemed too young pleaded with the authorities to lower the age limit. They cheered every story of a pharmaceutical company announcing plans to secure legal permission. They tripped over each other to be the first to inject their young children with an experimental serum, conferring no conceivable medical benefit, for a disease that posed zero statistical risk to healthy children.

In a more rational moment these parents would have balked. Adoption was highest among elite helicopter parents, the sort that pore over ingredient lists to ensure that no unapproved preservatives enter their children’s systems. Elite parents who research and compete and evaluate and monitor every aspect of their children’s environment were the first to submit their children for medical experimentation.

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Once again, their behavior seemed to border on the insane. Insanity, however, should always be the conclusion of last resort. Certainly, some of these parents acted out of terror. Others did it to conform with their Woke neighborhoods, communities, and private schools. Most, however, did it because they recognized the vaccine as the precondition for full entry into the Woke flock—much like baptism for Christians, a bris for Jews, or any of the countless rites of passage that have arisen in nearly every tribe, faith, nation, or culture that history has ever recorded.

The Woke leadership sought to enforce their new rites with a coercive conversion far more intrusive, and with even weaker rationale, than mandatory masking. In fact, the greater the accumulated data suggesting that the vaccines were far less protective than originally thought, the harsher their coercion. New York City’s very Woke Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced the country’s first municipal vaccine passport requirement shortly after scientific data established that innocent bystanders could become infected with Covid from the vaccinated as well as the unvaccinated. As news of the vaccine’s shortcomings mounted, the campaigns became increasingly hateful.

The vitriol America’s Woke elite—from the Biden White House on down—heaped upon the unvaccinated was unprecedented. It may have been the first time in American history that the country’s leadership sought to turn a majority of its citizens against a despised minority. Widespread discriminatory laws came into play for the first time since the end of Jim Crow. Serious, prominent people advocated excommunication and the withholding of basic medical services—penalties that have never been seriously considered for smokers, the morbidly obese, helmetless motorcyclists, extreme athletes, or any of the other Americans whose personal choices make them likelier than average to require medical care.

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(continued from The Richness of Ritual)

Random Filtering

The face mask—the first sacred garb of Wokeism—never made any sense in the scientific world. A mask is a filter. Anyone who has ever encountered a filter understands that filters only filter if they’re tailored to a task. To work, a face mask must have openings large enough to allow breathing but small enough to block particles of the undesired toxin. They must also be fitted and worn appropriately. A program requiring everyone to deploy a randomly chosen filter affixed in an arbitrary manner is a bad joke—at least as a matter of science. Furthermore, when the particles in question are spread via aerosol, and the most common masks were either designed to block far larger particles, or repurposed garments designed for warmth or fashion, the entire program makes its participants look ignorant and silly.

None of these observations were either secret or subtle. The government scientists promoting masking all knew them. So did every health care professional in the country. So did anyone who ever worked in construction, an industrial setting, or around chemicals. So did anyone who ever followed Martha Stewart’s guidance in selecting just the right cheesecloth. I don’t fall into any of those categories, and even I knew it.

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Yet compliance—at least in select places and select times—was extraordinarily high. People tripped over themselves to demonstrate commitment to the cause. The rules of common courtesy inverted themselves. Though it had always been considered rude to comment on what other people, particularly strangers, were wearing, such old-style common courtesy flew out the window. The polite were those who adopted the new fashion trend with gusto. The truly righteous loudly condemned all within their purview who failed to conform. Yes, many of them knew that few of their masked neighbors had constructed a setup capable of preventing the aerosol-bound transmission of Covid, but even a poor filter blocks something, they reasoned. In an era of pandemic and panic, every little bit helps!

The belief became so strong and so widespread—prominent politicians, pundits, and celebrities staked their reputations on the virtues of masking—that many saw it as a form of mass psychosis. How else could anyone explain such widespread fidelity and authoritarianism in the name of a practice so obviously incapable of achieving its stated goal?

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(continued from A Plague of Biblical Proportions)

Purification

Few aspects of Wokeism scream “religion” as loudly as the ritualization of public health during Covid. It’s worth taking more than a few words to explore that critical development; though many might have doubted the religious aspects of Wokeism prior to 2020, that ritualization removed all doubt.

While it’s unclear which of the myriad Covid rituals will withstand the test of time, the enormity of the experience provided many rich opportunities. Consider, for example, the practice—popular in Woke communities during the shutdown’s earliest days—of sanitizing mail, groceries, shoes, and anything else arriving in the home from the outside world. While the Woke themselves insist that they were doing little more than spraying Lysol to kill germs, their actions were easily recognizable as standard purification rituals.

The idea that the “outside” world—whether beyond the private home or merely beyond the control of the faithful—contains impurities is quite common among history’s faith communities. Because no faith community willingly brings impurity into its midst, but every community values items or people originating elsewhere, there must be some mechanism for removing the impurity. Gestures, incantations, and blessings are all common. So too is contact with a purifying substance, such as holy water. Lysol and other spray disinfectants are mixtures consisting primarily of water with small or trace elements of other chemicals added in fixed and carefully measured quantities. Trademark law be damned! A modern faith can absolutely deploy Lysol as its holy water—and Purell as an intense form of purification applicable to body parts rather than mere objects.

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The practice of stopping all commerce at your front door, declaring it potentially or likely impure, putting it in contact with a purifying agent, then declaring it fit for household use is hardly new. It is, as is much of Wokeism, a translation of standard faith concepts into contemporary—pseudoscientific—language. In the ancient world, our ignorant, superstitious, spiritual ancestors might have stopped commerce at the entrance to their encampments, declared it potentially or likely impure, sprinkled it with holy water, then declared it fit for community use—but that’s because they were ignorant and superstitious. The modern, enlightened, Woke elite would never adopt such a mindless practice. Unless and until, that is, someone translated it into Woke-resonant language. “Impurity” is a concept for boobs and dullards. “Infection” is a different matter entirely.

That early purification ritual faded quickly from most homes and businesses. Today, only the most devout Woke establishments persist. All who visit such premises are impressed with their piety. Many among the Woke concede that they too should still be availing themselves of the added safety of uniform disinfectant. Like the faithful of all traditions, however, most of the Woke are content to defer purification to special events, braving the prospects of impurity on a day-to-day basis.

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Previous: Racism is Woke Evil

Epic Heroism

For the Woke, Covid was a godsend. Or rather, it would have been a godsend had Wokeism conceded the existence of a god. Given that few of the Woke are willing to do so, and that even fewer accept the notion of a sentient god capable of giving things, the arrival of Covid necessitated a somewhat different metaphor. Perhaps it was merely the gift that kept on giving. Either way, Covid provided Wokeism with two things central to the emergence and spread of a young faith: a community-forging epic and a rich source of ritual.

The epic part is clear. To the Woke, Covid was a plague of Biblical proportions. Only through the concerted effort of noble bureaucrats and credentialed experts—the primary fonts of Woke wisdom and morality—were we able to defeat it. The experience did more than demonstrate the inherent virtue and Truth of Wokeism. It forged a community of the Woke. We were all in it together! Those of us who FOLLOWED THE SCIENCE made it through unscathed. The skeptics and deniers fared poorly. Mississippi and Alabama—two of the least Woke states—posted the highest number of Covid deaths per million! The Science is Great!

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Of course, not only was Covid not a plague of Biblical proportions, it never threatened to become one. Early worst-case scenarios operating with weak data and unrealistic assumptions—say, the famous Imperial College Model of early 2020—projected that 4% of those infected would die. While that’s a staggering number—particularly if applied to the global population of over eight billion—a bit of perspective is in order. Europe’s last major bubonic plague outbreak wiped out 25% of London in less than six months in 1665. And if you want to get literally Biblical, the tenth plague eliminated every first-born Egyptian male.

Perhaps more to the point, the 4% forecast was an entirely unrealistic, absolute worst-case prediction of what might happen it the world ignored the virus entirely. Anyone with any background in data integrity and statistical modeling—even without specific knowledge of epidemiology—could have poked enormous holes in the model (as many of us did). Marginal improvements to the model and modest mitigation efforts would have brought the projections, and more importantly the actual numbers, far lower; the Great Barrington Declaration pointed the way.

The truth was known early on. There were clear categories of vulnerability for which the infection-fatality rate might have reached 4%. For the population at large the rate was well below 1%. For otherwise healthy children it was statistically indistinguishable from zero. No matter. Wokeism needed a plague of epic proportions, so a plague of epic proportions Covid became. Polls repeatedly show that among the most Woke communities, perceptions of the death rates were orders of magnitude greater than reality. Governments around the world declared emergencies, suspended rights, imposed discriminatory rules, coerced vaccinations, and incarcerated citizens.

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(continued from Racist Woke Antiracism)

Original Sin

To the Woke, racism is not merely the relabeling of “evil” in terms lacking theological connotations.  It is also the original sin that gave birth to America.  The Woke 1619 project dismisses 1776 as the founding date of America.  In its telling, the 1619 arrival of a slave ship birthed an America indelibly tainted with racism.  That assertion may be laughable as a matter of history, but it’s no less plausible than traditional stories explaining the pervasiveness of evil.  Though I’m loathe to challenge Biblical narratives, there is indeed greater empirical support for slave ships in 1619 than for a tree of knowledge, a talking snake, or the Garden of Eden.  Original sin is original sin.  Its stain remains even when the direct perpetrators have long since faded into memory. 

Some beliefs require faith, and it’s wrong for non-believers to insist that the faith of others conform to the contours of the historical record or boast empirical support.  The Woke are entitled to the same tolerance and indulgence we accord to other faiths.  Or at the very least, they will become entitled to it when they concede that theirs is a faith, and that much of what they profess requires faith to believe.  As long as they insist that their assertions rest upon factual and historical bases, we have every right to insist that they use standard definitions, long-accepted meanings, actual facts, and the historical record.  On those bases, the overwhelming majority of Woke assertions fall flat. 

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All Americans can agree with the Woke that actual racism is evil.  After all, actual racism runs afoul of America’s most basic spiritual tenet, namely “that all men are created equal.”  Racism, however, is far from synonymous with evil.  The world, sadly, is overrun with evils that have nothing to do with race.  Contra intersectionality, many struggles are distinct.  Though all exploitation hinges upon the identification of difference, not all differences are equal.  In the history of America, race has been the most common distinction forwarded to justify discrimination.  In the history of the world, however, religion, tribe, and language have been far more common. 

Evil abounds, evil is real, and the ability to recognize evil appears to be a deep spiritual need.  The Woke, most of whom deny the entire realm of spirituality, and even more of whom have rejected the collected wisdom of the ages enshrined in mature faith traditions, had to find it somewhere.  They found it in sociology.  Because Wokeism needs racism, however, it cannot let the rest of us transcend it.  That’s why the most vocal of the Woke antiracists reject the teachings of Martin Luther King. 

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(continued from The Concepts Formerly Known as Human Rights)

Learning from Islamists

By the end of 2020, Wokeism faced a major challenge: How could it best deploy its enormous power to destroy those who continued to cling bitterly to outdated Biblical morality, traditional religions, and the American spirit?

The history of religion contains many useful lessons.  The Woke were hardly the first new faith to find itself ascendant among a population that was less than fully on board.  How had past faiths defended their Truths against the scurrilous lies of the irredeemably evil?  Fortunately for the Woke, the most directly applicable historical lessons are entirely consistent with Wokeism.  If bad people are going to say or print things designed to mislead those the Woke seek to convert, well, THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW AGAINST THAT!!!  There’s a name for such laws: Anti-blasphemy.

The world has never had any shortage of such anti-blasphemy laws.  They exist, in explicit form, in many parts of the world still so subject to a dominant religion that the lines among faith, economics, society, and culture blur.   In recent decades, Islamists running the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) have sought to internationalize their anti-blasphemy laws using the misleading term “Islamophobia.”  Islamist organizations and communities throughout the Western world have attempted to import them.  Those attempts have proved controversial everywhere, for the simple reason that the West did away with anti-blasphemy laws centuries ago.  The illegality of questioning, challenging, undermining, deriding, or even mocking the beliefs or practices of a faith is incompatible with the ethos that has dominated Western life for a very long time. 

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Anti-blasphemy laws are explicitly counter to the American spirit.  The right to reject religion is inherent in the free exercise of religion.   And the minute you reject a religion, the elements of that religion that require faith begin to look a little silly.  Every faith embodies beliefs whose justifications lie beyond the narrow realms of facts, history, logic, scientific inquiry, open debate, and rationality.  Wokeism is hardly the first.  Jefferson’s introduction of America’s ethically based civic religion was uniquely honest on that account: We hold these truths to be self evident.  Look down Jefferson’s list of allegedly self-evident truths.  Try validating them as self-evident using pre-1776 facts, history, logic, scientific inquiry, open debate, and rationality.  At best, you’ll show that they’re good ideas worth trying.  They weren’t remotely self-evident. 

“We” hold these Truths is a pretty good description of the core particularistic beliefs of every faith.  It doesn’t take much to figure out that indiscriminate murder is detrimental to societal stability.  That’s why the prohibition on murder is more-or-less universal.  Try using only logic and science to derive God’s impregnation of a virgin to bring to earth His only son, whose own death on the cross would atone for the sins of humanity.  It can’t be done.  As a 2000 year-old faith, however, Christianity has matured to the point that (at least most of) today’s Christians understand that though such faith may be central to their lives, those who lack that faith are not a threat.  Wokeism, as a young an immature religion, shows far less self-confidence.

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(continued from More Important than Good)

The Centrality of Race

Racism plays the role in Wokeism that evil does in traditional faiths.  The Woke preach an intense, burning hatred of racism.  What the Woke call “antiracism” is a central element of the Woke identity.  That Woke antiracism requires racial categorization, disparate treatment, group rather than individual identity, and a focus on immutable characteristics is irrelevant.  It’s impolite to notice that leading Woke theorists of antiracism preach explicit racial discrimination.  It’s hateful to highlight that Woke antiracism is a blinding, explicit, textbook example of a racist ideology—as racism was understood for many centuries prior to the Woke deconstruction.  It’s beyond the pale to explain that racism, which was once a very respectable ideology, is reviled today precisely because of the ideological properties that Woke antiracism has embraced. 

At least, such is true in Woke circles, where “racism” is jargon for the initiates and intentionally misleading to ensnare the well-intentioned uninitiated.  To the Woke, “racism” has truly Manichean properties.  All Woke beliefs, assertion, propositions, and actions are antiracist even when they are blindingly racist.  All anti-Woke beliefs, assertion, propositions, and actions are racist even when they have nothing to do with race—and explicitly racist when they challenge or subvert the racial categorizations at the heart of true racism.  Colorblindness is perhaps the clearest example of an antidote to actual racism that racist Woke antiracists view as supportive of a systemically racist status quo, and therefore racist.  (Bonus points for readers who followed that last sentence).

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The centrality of “racism” to the Woke worldview, however, runs far deeper.  Like most all-encompassing core theological concepts, it can be hard for the uninitiated to grasp.  The Woke insistence that its discussions are sociological rather than spiritual make it even harder. 

At one extreme, Woke “racism” overlaps with the way that speakers of American English understand the term.  Dylann Roof, for example, was a white supremacist who shot up a Black church in Charleston, SC, in June 2015.  Everyone in America recognized that he was a racist and spoke out forcefully against him.  Roof found almost no support from anyone other than his fellows in the tiny fringe white supremacist movement.  Woke and non-Woke were in complete agreement that he and his actions were both racist and evil. 

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