Rod Dreher wonders , “Does the secular left realize it has a civility and tolerance problem too?”
It deeply annoys liberals to hear conservative Christians complain about how persecuted they are. They’re right, in a strictly limited way. It’s always unattractive to see people wallow in victimhood, which can become a crutch for excuse-making and self-pity. That said, sometimes people,even people we don’t like, really are victims of bigotry. Conservatives,especially conservative Christians, know that we are held to a double standard on these things — a contradiction of which many self-righteous liberals are unaware.
Having spent 20 years working in newsrooms, which tend to be populated with moralists who take a preacher’s pride in reforming society, I heard my share of nasty remarks about Christians — the kinds of things that would never be said about Jews or Muslims. Once I was in a news meeting in which a very senior editor made a vicious joke about Christians. He apparently felt safe enough to say what he did because he assumed everyone present agreed with him. And he was probably right.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…
