Douglas Wilson can’t give up his Boomer addiction to Enlightenment ideals:
A summary of Doug Wilson’s argument in “Mere Christendom” insisting that the Magistrate should not enforce blasphemy laws.;
As a theonomist Wilson believes in “the need to restore the Bible as the quarry from which to obtain the needed stone for our foundations of social order” (149), he strongly argues against state imposed punishment for blasphemy. He reminds us that “those who want the government to have the right to kill blasphemers are also asking for the government to have the right to kill those who rebuke their (the government’s) blasphemies” (157), and “When you give the state power to punish a blasphemer, you are giving the state the power to blaspheme with impunity” (171). Wilson argues that inherent protection of free speech by limiting the state’s power “is the theo-political genius of Christianity” (171). He argues that “The founding of our nation really was exceptional, because the men who drafted our Constitution knew that American politicians, taking one thing with another, would be every bit as sleazy as the same class of men from any other clime” (201).
There are political wolves in sheep’s clothing just as there are religious wolves in sheep’s clothing. Evil men are going to do what evil men do, regardless of what good Christian men do. We already know, we have a massive surfeit of knowledge, of what happens when Christian men do not enforce Christian societal norms.
What this reveals is that Wilson is more dedicated to his Enlightenment ideals than his Christian ideals. I have no doubt that he is also an ersatz nationalist, which is to say, a common Churchian civnat who makes positive noises about tribes and nations, but as with blasphemy, refuses to acknowledge the right of the state to enforce the nation’s will.
The protection of free speech has literally nothing to do with Christianity, much less represents its “theo-political genius”. That is pure bafflegarble worthy of Jordan Peterson his own babbling self. Free speech is just another false virtue no more worth of state protection than equality, diversity, anti-racism, or the free movement of peoples.
Iron Ink is correct in his dismissal of Wilson’s Churchian drivel. “Rev. Wilson’s operating principle at work here is: give no one the power for good if they can use it for evil. Which of course reaches beyond absurd into the zip code of Nutville.”