Found the anti-libertarian Sun King article from Dr. Leithart challenging.
Also appreciated this tweet from Pastor Wilson: “A pastor is called to be a garden wall, not the biggest vegetable in the garden. If no wall, and he is biggest, the deer just eat him first.” Is it anti or pro vegetable? Discuss.
Leithart’s article was grand. And I suspect that conservative anti-statism is just another outworking of its own parasitic vision. Conservatism is almost wholly anti-communism. It defines itself in opposition to Marxism. Marxists re-recognized the biblical conflict between rich and poor, with the scriptural blame nearly always falling on the powerful rich. Conservatives had to reject class conflict because it was “Marxist,” but when they did, they had to find some other social entity rather than the rich to blame for social ills. So they blamed the state and made it the key source of social evil. That’s why we get the conservative schizophrenia about power — they’ll claim to embrace freedom and reject massive concentrations of power, but, for them, that only means state power. They refuse to count massive concentrations of wealth, such as corporations bigger than many nations, as power. Only state power can be evil. Scripture, on the other hand, doesn’t make it state vs. individual but mammon vs. Christ. It’s a much broader net than conservatism, and states may or may not be in the grip of Mammon. Enough. Needed to vent.
When covering Marxism, I once asked my students if they thought there would be classes (rich and poor) in heaven. I was really surprised that a number of them seemed to think there would be, based on the notion of “rewards in heaven.” Any thoughts?