Came across an interesting essay tracing the rise and fall of Samuel Francis. Francis was a conservative thinker and writer whose early writing was marked by a certain abrasive insight. But as time went on, he drifted out toward the fringe and sailed right over the border into Crazytown. The article describes a highly intelligent but… odd man who had a tendency to take good political points and taint them with bizarre, sometimes racist ideas.

When the conservative establishment started distancing itself from him, he just took his alienation as confirmation that his theories (and his sense of victimhood) were correct. By the time he died, the weirdness and racism of his waning years understandably clouded out any positive contributions his writings might have made:

Sam Francis came to Washington as one of the bright young minds of the New Right in the late 1970s….

But Francis was not a good soldier in the conservative movement. His personality and evolving ideological interests led him into direct conflict with the very movement that had nurtured his early career. He became the house intellectual of the Buchanan breakaway campaigns and the theoretician of the anti-Bob Dole, anti-George Bush paleoconservative movement. And, as he became estranged from mainstream conservatism, he veered into the “racial creepiness” racialism of journals like The Occidental Quarterly.

This was my first exposure to Francis’ story; perhaps some of you are more familiar with him. Francis’ life story is a reminder that even smart people can get obsessed with crazy ideas—and furthermore, a smart person’s belief in crazy ideas doesn’t make him or her less smart; it just means that his or her good ideas are now hopelessly bound up with the crazy ones. And it illustrates some of the weird appeal of the fringe right, which for all its creepiness seems to attract some genuinely smart people.

I stumbled across this via a Ross Douthat post about the Ron Paul racist newsletter controversy. Douthat observes that once you’ve waded out into the political fringe and taken up common cause—willingly or not—with the crazies you find out there, it’s awfully hard to ever return to the mainstream again.

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Kim has posted some interesting thoughts in response to my earlier post about pregnancy, emergency contraception, and other topics I’m not really qualified to discuss. Just in case you were interested in a slightly different take on the subject.

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Umm… wow. What a charming bunch!

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The controversy over Guantanamo Bay, prisoner abuse, and the torture of captured terrorist suspects makes me angry.
It makes me angry when some conservative writers and websites not only defend the torture of prisoners, but make light of it, as if this is some sort of hilarious joke that we should wink at and laugh about.
It makes me angry when certain people who since 2000 have been regularly referring to evangelical Christians as bigots, idiots, mindless sheep, and Taliban-like zealots wonder disdainfully why evangelicals aren’t standing at their side to criticize our president’s missteps.
It makes me angry that when the question of torture first came up, President Bush could not (and stunningly, unbelievably, still cannot) make a clear, unambiguous, plain-language, strongly-enforced condemnation of any type of torture.
It makes me angry that if President Bush had made that clear, unambiguous statement, that his critics would not praise him for it, but would drop the torture issue and immediately begin the search for another scandal/political vulnerability with which to take down the President they hate so much.
It makes me angry that in our polarized political world, I have to choose between supporting Bush’s general policies and tacitly condoning torture, or refusing to compromise on the torture issue and risking the political collapse of a foreign policy that is, after decades of appeasement and looking the other way, bringing the hope of democracy to a tyrant-infested corner of the world.
It makes me angry that some major conservative bloggers, many of whom I respect greatly, spend post after post focusing on inane political tidbits but manage to somehow never post about the constantly-in-the-news issue of torture.
It makes me angry that some of the people shouting loudest against torture also fought tooth and nail to keep the U.S. from taking down a dictator who liked to feed his enemies through an industrial shredder.
It makes me angry that some people in the military and intelligence agencies–far, far too many people–made the decision to treat prisoners without humanity, then shrugged and hid behind the shield of “vague policies from on high,” as if unclear memos prevented them from recognizing that torture is wrong.
It makes me angry that many people who would tell me I’m a hypocrite for being a Christian and not speaking out loudly against torture, would also tell me that I’m a crazed idiot for wanting to stop what I see as the butchering of thousands and thousands of unwanted, unborn babies each year in this country.
It makes me angry that the government stalls, obstructs, and ignores attempts to expose misbehavior, instead of throwing open the doors and welcoming the public to see exactly what is going on.
It makes me angry that certain Christian spokemen react immediately and forcefully to even the faintest hint of “pro-homosexual” legislation, but look at the current world situation and, impossibly, see nothing in our treatment of prisoners and the torture controversy that contradicts God’s law.
It makes me angry that some torture critics cannot and will never acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, addressing the scandal of prisoner torture is not as critical as ensuring that democracy survives and grows in Iraq.
It makes me angry that the honor and integrity of my country has been stained because of the actions of a few reprehensible individuals and a bureaucracy that can’t seem to fashion basic, binding moral guidelines on important issues like this.
Most of all, it makes me angry that after years of this, I still don’t know what to think, and I don’t know what I, a Christian citizen of the U.S., should be doing about it.

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An interesting, if somewhat depressing, piece on the challenge of being politically conservative in the librarian profession.

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Huh.
[insert witty commentary]

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Christianity Today has an excellent analysis of media coverage of the Bush commencement and accompanying protests at Calvin, my alma mater. Although I’ve followed this whole chain of events closely, I wanted to wait until the commencement had come and gone before commenting on it. Now that it’s over, I have two observations.
First, while I disagreed with their views, I was deeply impressed by the attitude of the protesters as evidenced by the much-publicized ad they took out in the local paper:

This is, in my opinion, a rare thing of beauty in our world of nasty politics: an expression of both genuine respect and serious disagreement. I almost want to print out this historic document and frame it as a model for reasoned political discourse. To the crafters of this ad: I salute you, and am glad you’re a part of the Calvin community.
My second observation is a bit harsher: at least one Calvin professor’s public statements during this event were rude and inappropriate. This is Ken Pomykala, chair of Calvin’s Department of Religion, quoted in the Washington Post:

Calvin is confessionally Reformed/Presbyterian (in other words, Calvinistic — no surprise there, I guess), with a much more positive view of the intellect and participation in the broader culture than is characteristic of American evangelicalism, much of which is anti-intellectual (e.g. ‘creation science’) and escapist (e.g. the Left Behind series), not to mention morally barbaric (e.g. opposition to stem cell research; anti-gay)…. As a faculty member, I’m required to attend commencement, but I plan on reading a book during the president’s speech — probably My Pet Goat.

This is the most vicious, elitist, and insulting partisan comment to emerge from the entire affair. (While you’re at it, read Bush’s commencement address and then re-read Pomykala’s comments above, and ask yourself: who is really guilty of using the commencement event as a platform for making partisan political statements?)
I have several extremely serious questions in the wake of Pomykala’s statements. First, why is the chair of Calvin’s religion department publically voicing such open disdain for a large swath of his brothers and sisters in Christ? Wouldn’t the position of Religion department chair place upon its holder an extra responsibility to be tactful, discerning, and respectful of other beliefs, especially other Christian beliefs? Are conservative-leaning students in Mr. Pomykala’s classes taught that it is “morally barbaric” to disagree with his views on ethically difficult issues like stem cell research?
Calvin is an amazing Christian institution of learning precisely because of its strong roots in and support from the evangelical community, conservative and liberal and everything in between. It is not an excellent institution because its “enlightened” views on political and theological issues have somehow elevated it above the huddled masses of evangelical Christendom.
It is true that politics brings out the worst in people. I’m glad that those disagreeing with Bush’s presence at the commencement did so honorably and in a Christian manner. I am sorry that Calvin’s religion department is chaired by somebody who holds me and millions of other evangelicals in contempt.

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