No One Will Like This Piece

I don't watch Duck Dynasty. I watch very little television -- mostly Yankees baseball and New York Rangers hockey -- and I have no particular interest in life in rural Louisiana, even if the protagonists are Christian multimillionaires and devoted family men with prodigious shooting skills and extremely impressive beards. I'd much rather read...or write.

That having been said, let's get to the A&E / Phil Robertson dustup.

Whatever A&E's motives were in arranging for Phil Robertson's interview by "Gentleman's Quarterly," the Robertson family patriarch was unwise to accept it. "GQ" -- an Orwellian title for a periodical if ever there was one -- had a single, quite obvious motive for the interview: to denigrate the Robertson family and the lifestyle it practices. The interviewer was determined from the first to portray the Robertsons as idiots at best, repulsive backwoods bigots at worst. The audience to which "GQ" caters is heavily left-liberal and fop-friendly. It's guaranteed to view the Robertsons, their faith, and their practices with repugnance.

Phil Robertson appears to have the sort of nature to which Christians aspire, and which few of us manage to maintain in the face of temptation: that of a charitable and trusting soul who's unafraid to express himself candidly. That made him virtually ideal bait for the "GQ" types, who -- as with most leftists -- see nothing wrong with reframing a Christian's statements of belief to suit their own agenda.

As the saying goes, the subsequent uproar was "baked into the cake" in all its ugly particulars.

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A&E's suspension of Phil Robertson from the filming of Duck Dynasty involves the First Amendment's protection of freedom of expression in no way whatsoever. All the participants in this mess are private persons with an absolute right to freedom of association, including commercial association. The only limits on that right arise from contractual provisions to which the parties involved have freely assented.

(I don't give a BLEEP! what the courts have said about the obligations of wedding-cake bakers and photographers to accommodate homosexuals who imagine that they can actually marry one another. The courts are wrong, the homosexuals and enablers who cheer them on are wrong, and the whole sorry mess is just part of the approaching storm that will shortly tear this country apart. But that's a subject for another tirade.)

All that having been said, A&E has exhibited both extreme cowardice and poor judgment in its actions to this point. Popular sentiment is running heavily against the suspension. The Robertson family, which has already displayed considerable courage of conviction, might just pull the rug out from under the A&E network. That won't hurt the Robertsons at all, as numerous other outlets are openly slavering over the chance to host the most popular show on cable TV.

However, one element of this dustup about which I have inadequate information is just how important to A&E's finances is its backing by homosexuals and their enablers. Those communities of perversion and idiocy are overrepresented in the arts and communications trades generally, which is partly why they wield so much influence over what appears on TV. Besides, left-liberals have "taken one for the team" before, even when significant financial loss was involved. How this one will play out is something I cannot predict.

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The core issue illuminated by the A&E / Robertsons contretemps is the war being conducted against Christians, Christian living, and Christianity generally by the Left. In a country 74% of whose residents self-identify as Christians, you'd think the correlation of forces would make such a jeremiad unwise. However, there are other factors involved that significantly cloud the matter:

• The Left's disproportionate influence over the entertainment media;
• The homosexual-activist community's disproportionate influence over the Left;
• The federal government's cooperation with the homosexual-leftist agenda;
• The difficulty Christians have in mustering significant resistance to the attacks on them.

As the song goes, "They got the guns; we got the numbers." But numbers don't always prevail over firepower. Ask the Sudanese about the Battle of Khartoum...preferably from a safe distance.

Atop that, the Left has a powerful objective interest in extirpating Christianity, at least the public expression thereof, from these United States. Hearken to T. L. Davis on the subject:

There is a deep necessity of those on the left to abolish Christianity. Now, I would say religion, but that is not true. They are accommodating of almost any religion, even phony religions, but not Christianity. To them, Christianity must be banished from the public eye. All references to Christianity must be stricken from the record, banned from the schools, ripped from the monuments....

Is it that they (Marxists in general and their stooges) intend to obliterate, defame and denigrate our founders to make change that much easier? They have already done what they can to link them with slavery, with racism, with every evil under the sun. They speak of them as if they were doddering old, racist fools who clung to religion and guns just like our friends in Pennsylvania. "Old White Men". Why do they need to pretend that Lincoln, their hero, was not a Christian? He was not of a particular religion, but he was extraordinarily well versed with the Bible and could quote from it verbatim.

The whole reasoning behind the Revolution is undermined if God is taken out of government, because it is religion that founded this nation, gave it spirit, emboldened its revolutionaries and sustained them in the darkest days. Think of George Washington dropping to his knees and praying for his troops, for the survival of the new republic.

Any fight for liberty includes the right to practice religion, of any kind, freely, openly, without fear of reprisal by the government. In today's society George Washington would have been reported to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and replaced by a more sensitive, diverse general, who would have promptly lost the war and everything could return to normal with the king.

Christianity is and has always been the stoutest of bulwarks against the encroachments of the Omnipotent State. By contrast, the other religions of the world are pillars of statism. Only Jesus of Nazareth dared to separate religion from politics -- "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar, and unto God the things that are God's" -- and sin from temporally punishable crime -- "Whoever among you is without sin, let him cast the first stone." It's a great part of the reason why Caiaphas and his buddies on the Sanhedrin were desperate to see Him killed.

We in the Right often speak of the "intermediating institutions:" the organizations, practices, and traditions that stand between the individual and the State, helping us to resist its overreaches. Not one -- not family, not community, and not commerce -- is nearly as important as the Christian faith. Indeed, without Christianity, it's doubtful whether these other things could survive, at least in the forms to which we're accustomed. If I may paraphrase a famous atheist, George Bernard Shaw, Christianity is the idea that, put into a coward's head, turns him brave -- brave enough to resist subjugation to the last drop of his own blood, as many a historical incident will attest.

Left-liberalism is the Creed of Government Uber Alles. It knows Christianity to be its principal opponent in the all-important war of ideas. Therefore, Christianity -- all traces of it if possible; the public expression thereof if not -- must be destroyed.

If you're looking to fight in a war, there's no more righteous not critical battlefield than this one.

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As a writer of Christian-themed fiction and an outspoken Christian opinion monger, it should be obvious which horse I back in this race. That doesn't mean I'm confident of victory.

Millions have already rallied to Phil Robertson's defense. That's extremely heartening. But whether those millions will "hold the line" against the considerable media counterforces of the Left remains to be seen. Christians have all too frequently accepted a mess of pottage in exchange for conceding the public square to their enemies. We've grown far too comfortable with our public marginalization and exclusion.

As with the ultimate outcome of the A&E / Phil Robertson clash, whether it will be the falling stone that looses an avalanche of stouthearted reprisal against the enemies of Christianity cannot be predicted. For the reasons stated above, I am mildly pessimistic about the matter. Silence and deliberate disengagement have become habits for too many of us.

However the thing plays out, the Robertsons will not be harmed. Their "intermediating institutions" have served them well. They will not fail them at any time to come. The rest of us should draw the moral.

Be not afraid.