The unifying theme of the content here at Precipice
Deepening the sense of community that brings us here
It might be useful to revisit the Precipice “About” page at this time.
New visitors, new subscribers and old-timers alike might appreciate a re-grounding in just what makes this site a unique addition to one’s regular cultural-observation reading.
On that page, I offer an invitation that I think is pretty big-tent:
You won’t find pat answers. I consider myself a Christian - albeit a rather crummy one - but I don’t serve up platitudes, cliches about how since all is well in the eternal realm we needn’t fret about our current juncture, or attempts to recruit the uncommitted.
Rather, I invite you to join me on a journey, a search for genuinely solid ground, on which we can plant our feet and not feel perilously close to free fall.
And in a post from last August entitled “How Not To Be Above The Fray,” I gave a description of the narrow sliver of retrain I inhabit, implicitly asking if it looks like your natural home as well:
A quick summary of the steep cliffs that hem me in on various sides may be in order:
I obviously can’t come anywhere near Trumpism, for reasons I’ve given repeatedly. It’s a cult in thrall to the most solipsistic, narcissistic, bombastic, sybaritic, cold and developmentally stunted figure to ever enter American politics.
The Republican Party has continued to show that it has no room for anyone who is not a coward, nut or sycophant. Trumpism’s grip on it is not lessening to any significant degree.
Signs of drift in some of the institutionalized efforts to provide a safe harbor for actual conservatives concern me. All too often, The Bulwark lends credence to Trumpist mockery of it. On any given day, one finds articles that sign on to collectivism, abandonment of acknowledgement of a transcendent order, and equating political success on the part of Joe Biden with doing a good job. The leadership at Principles First has likewise recently dismayed me, with its position that households headed by two parents of the same sex ought to be encouraged in the name of strengthening the family as society’s cornerstone.
Theologians I admire, such as Andrew T. Walker and Russell Moore, continue to bravely assert sound doctrine regarding human sexuality, but they’re not reaching anywhere near the number of people that icons popular culture and self-appointed arbiters of what is good and true are reaching. They certainly don’t figure into the above-mentioned efforts to provide conservatives a safe harbor.
Democrats offer nothing but identity politics militancy, climate alarmism and wealth redistribution.
If I were going to revise this bullet-point description of that terrain, I might strike a more hopeful tone regarding the theologians I admire. The Truth that Christ was and is will ultimately be shown to be the only safe harbor, one way or another.
As 2023 unfolds, I’m looking at some things differently than I ever have. That’s probably a product of a combination of getting more involved in the church that has become my home and deeper reading to which I’ve been steered - by what? - my intellect? By grace?
One thing I hope quickly becomes clear to new visitors to Precipice is that I have nothing and no one for which/whom I’m shilling. I glance at daily headlines about inside-Beltway or even inside-statehouse machinations and what they indicate about shifting advantages and prospects for how the land is going to lay in a given election cycle, and I have no dog in the hunt.
You can’t get me excited about Ron DeSantis as a foil to Trump. It’s not just because of moves by the governor that strike me as grandstanding, such as flying a planeload of immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, or partisanship that is unwarranted in a transformed Republican Party, such as campaigning for Kari Lake. I suppose there’s a 13 percent chance that he could be our next president, and that would have positives that a Democratic presidency certainly wouldn’t have. (A completely different approach to education comes to mind).
But the operative word in the paragraph above is “transformed.” There is, of course, The Base, those voters who, from the start in 2015 - and still - gladly overlook the incoherence and phoniness of the Neo-Trumpist vision of American politics and governance. There’s most of the rest of Republican voters, who will be satisfied with any candidate who can mouth a sort-of-recognizable conservatism, who is at least not on board with the Left’s permeation of each and every institution in our society.
But this is a party that has expelled Liz Cheney, who had a considerably more conservative going record in the House than her replacement, Elise Stefaniak. It’s a party that has motivated Ben Sasse to bail on his Senate stint in mid-term.
It’s a party that is convinced that some level of political “winning” is going to restore some kind of basic rightness about American life. This is short-sighted in the extreme. Suppose the dog actually catches the car. What next? I posed the mirror opposite of this question in a post last month entitled “And Then What?” The Left also hasn’t given much thought to what would happen if its vision achieved some kind of total “victory.”
I’m still basically driven by absolutes and certainties, but I can now see that much of what I used to vociferously champion doesn’t really mount their effective defense.
The task - or, maybe we should say the question - before us is (how) to unravel four centuries of modernity, to reintroduce the notion that the purpose of human existence is to discern the real nature of this universe we inhabit, to see that it was created by a sovereign and transcendent God, and conduct ourselves accordingly.
Why have I taken you through this thought process this morning?
Because I think that among you readers and subscribers there is a similar desire to address this question on the deepest level possible.
We’d like to see a world in which human dignity - real human dignity, the kind that we learn about from reading the great thinkers who laid the foundations of our civilization, not the faux dignity that whiny identity-politics militants prattle about - is at the core of policy and the building of institutions.
We’d like to see a world in which the deepest human needs - and here, I’m not talking about food, shelter or “social justice” - are met.
That’s the basis on which I hope we’re building some kind of community here.
I’m going to open a chat thread for this post. I hope you’ll chime in with some observations and do some rich sharing among yourselves.
There’s not many of us, and I think the basic message of Precipice to you is. “You’re not alone.”
Thank you for being here, and I hope you’re finding a perspective that serves you.