Having grown up in a fundamentalist Baptist church, I can assure you there is no limit to what level virtue signalling can be taken to -- not long enought hair for women, no pants siuits, no movies, no TV, teens not allowed to swim "mixed" (boys and girls in the pool), no dancing ... the list is totally endless, and each new virtue requires stong signalling and "separation". We can't associate with THOSE people!
Thus, BOistan reaches the point were the Press Secretary for the duly elected president of this failed state is denied service, because, well ... "virtue".
“I’m not a huge fan of confrontation,” Wilkinson said. “I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”I've just started on what looks like an excellent book by Jonah Goldberg, "The Suicide of the West" ... which makes the point that we all know -- absent some shared transcendent values / morals, "morals" are purely situational and tribal. "Our morals" are the morals that our tribe says are important -- and the most powerful tribe gets to lord their "morals" over others. Kick them out of their restaurants even.
The nice thing about Biblical Morals was that they were written down and static -- you were not allowed to shit on your neighbor tomorrow because they "voted for Trump", or even if they happened to be his Press Secretary. In fact, you were supposed to not only TOLERATE them, but treat them with LOVE! Wow, what a far cry from throwing them out of your restaurant to show your virtue.
We are ALL driven by our human pride to want to trumpet our "virtue", which Christ declares to be "filthy rags". He spends WAY more time, and is WAY more direct in his condemnation of the pride of the Scribes and Pharisees than he is of common fornicators, adulterers, drunks, etc.
PRIDE is the killer because you are likely to proffer your sin in the Washington Post as virtue, and they are likely to agree with you -- "I passed judgement on my neighbor and threw them out of my business and I'm not only PROUD to have done it, YOU OUGHT to do the same thing too!"
And so it goes ... then someone has to blow up her little business to "make a statement", followed by more and ever escalating hatred and violence.
We once rose above tribalism, honored differences of opinion ... even REALLY nasty ones like slavery yes/no. We rose above tribalism on the Grace of God, and now we fight -- with the elites who are certain that tribalism is a virtue.
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