Ken, being a salesman is a different gig than being Speaker of the House. Johnson is now in the line of succession, and his beliefs are not compatible with the pluralistic society that our Founders envisioned. It's clear to me that Johnson does not believe in individual liberty, and if given the opportunity, he would use the power of the federal government to control the lives of everyday Americans.
When Tom Nichols did his take on "The Screwtape Letters" back in 2019, Screwtape was riffing about men like Johnson in part 7:
"In either case, do you see the strategy here? You take what the man values and defends, and then force him to lie about it in order to protect his sense of himself. In a very short time, you will find that he ends up caring only that he can stay near the continual narcotic of power. Without even realizing it, he will be driven by ego and by a growing fear of being found out for the hypocrite he is. Soon, it will become second nature to him to mobilize his religious beliefs as self-serving protection while the actual voice of the Enemy, if he hears it at all, will be only a dim and muffled annoyance."
So Johnson is free to believe and free to worship as he sees fit. But when that belief is weaponized in the service of obtaining political power and transforming America into a theocracy, that has to be stopped.
It pains me so much that right wing Christianists keep dropping C.S. Lewis' name. It's passages like the one you cited that show how much he would have disagreed with them. Probably, like the Bible, they've never read the Screwtape Letters or the Great Divorce. I found Lewis' works a comfort growing up in Southern Baptist Land.
Cheryl, to be clear, the excerpt I provided was written by Tom Nichols in his take on "The Screwtape Letters". Tom wrote eight installments back in the spring of 2019. I've been going through the original works letter-by-letter over the past week or so. I can't speak for Tom and can only convey my interpretation of what Screwtape was attempting to teach Wormwood. Keep in mind the context of these new letters: ostensible "Christians" and men of piety like Bill Bennett, Mike Pence, Ralph Reed, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr., and others through their lot in with an unrepentant adulterer and sociopath because they recognized they had a chance to claim power and enforce their will on the country. Think of those men when you read this passage Tom wrote in the seventh letter:
"The word тАЬbutтАЭ is your ally here. When faced with the Old ManтАЩs lavish immorality or his petty cruelty, for example, your man must say тАЬbutтАЭ and then follow it with a non-sequitur about virtue. It should become an unthinking reflex for тАЬbutтАЭ to leave your patientтАЩs lips before he even knows he has taken enough breath to form the word."
So these guys and their allies in Congress know that Trump's a piece of shit, and they don't care.
The "Old Man", in case you're wondering, has to be Trump:
"I should remind you that the Old Man is in the hands of a conclave of the most experienced demons currently serving in the High Command..."
By the way, Peter Wehner is not the first person to observe the moral degradation of the American Christian right. Mike Lofgren has written extensively about the threat of guys like Mike Johnson for the past dozen years. When someone is that far down the Fundamentalist rabbit hole, there's no reasoning with them. For them, any sort of compromise is tantamount to capitulation.
Ken, being a salesman is a different gig than being Speaker of the House. Johnson is now in the line of succession, and his beliefs are not compatible with the pluralistic society that our Founders envisioned. It's clear to me that Johnson does not believe in individual liberty, and if given the opportunity, he would use the power of the federal government to control the lives of everyday Americans.
When Tom Nichols did his take on "The Screwtape Letters" back in 2019, Screwtape was riffing about men like Johnson in part 7:
"In either case, do you see the strategy here? You take what the man values and defends, and then force him to lie about it in order to protect his sense of himself. In a very short time, you will find that he ends up caring only that he can stay near the continual narcotic of power. Without even realizing it, he will be driven by ego and by a growing fear of being found out for the hypocrite he is. Soon, it will become second nature to him to mobilize his religious beliefs as self-serving protection while the actual voice of the Enemy, if he hears it at all, will be only a dim and muffled annoyance."
https://www.thebulwark.com/the-screwtape-letters-part-7/
So Johnson is free to believe and free to worship as he sees fit. But when that belief is weaponized in the service of obtaining political power and transforming America into a theocracy, that has to be stopped.
It pains me so much that right wing Christianists keep dropping C.S. Lewis' name. It's passages like the one you cited that show how much he would have disagreed with them. Probably, like the Bible, they've never read the Screwtape Letters or the Great Divorce. I found Lewis' works a comfort growing up in Southern Baptist Land.
Cheryl, to be clear, the excerpt I provided was written by Tom Nichols in his take on "The Screwtape Letters". Tom wrote eight installments back in the spring of 2019. I've been going through the original works letter-by-letter over the past week or so. I can't speak for Tom and can only convey my interpretation of what Screwtape was attempting to teach Wormwood. Keep in mind the context of these new letters: ostensible "Christians" and men of piety like Bill Bennett, Mike Pence, Ralph Reed, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr., and others through their lot in with an unrepentant adulterer and sociopath because they recognized they had a chance to claim power and enforce their will on the country. Think of those men when you read this passage Tom wrote in the seventh letter:
"The word тАЬbutтАЭ is your ally here. When faced with the Old ManтАЩs lavish immorality or his petty cruelty, for example, your man must say тАЬbutтАЭ and then follow it with a non-sequitur about virtue. It should become an unthinking reflex for тАЬbutтАЭ to leave your patientтАЩs lips before he even knows he has taken enough breath to form the word."
So these guys and their allies in Congress know that Trump's a piece of shit, and they don't care.
The "Old Man", in case you're wondering, has to be Trump:
"I should remind you that the Old Man is in the hands of a conclave of the most experienced demons currently serving in the High Command..."
By the way, Peter Wehner is not the first person to observe the moral degradation of the American Christian right. Mike Lofgren has written extensively about the threat of guys like Mike Johnson for the past dozen years. When someone is that far down the Fundamentalist rabbit hole, there's no reasoning with them. For them, any sort of compromise is tantamount to capitulation.