This episode of Iron Sharpens Iron caught my eye as it
touches on a larger topic of attitudes about food and what is 'natural' that
have emerged in more extreme Right-wing Christian circles. I have notes and a partially
completed piece on this topic that's been on the back-burner for a couple of
years. God willing I'll get to it before the end of this year. It's important
and discussions like this remind me of this fact and the need to counter these
assumptions.
In the meantime someone needs to be on record challenging the
absurdities of this conversation even though I know that many (and certainly
most listeners to the show) are likely to resonate with it.
As usual Arnzen squanders his programme and the topic isn't
really touched on until the show is well past its half-way mark. But along the
way there's a great deal of nonsense.
I had to laugh upon hearing the exchange at about the 15:00
minute mark wherein the guest Jim Mogel says something about his German
Reformed background in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. His church would eventually
join the UCC.
He mentions that his family and many of the people in that
context were Democrats. This isn't too surprising as many immigrant
communities, factory workers and farmers (and certainly conservative
Southerners!) were aligned with the old Democratic Party. This would be back
before the upheaval unleashed by Lyndon Johnson and Civil Rights in the
mid-1960's. By the 1980's many of these people had migrated over into the GOP
under Reagan and yet the process started in earnest under Nixon. There's a
whole history here regarding American political parties and their shifts and
realignments throughout the latter half of the twentieth century – a point also
critical in understanding the rise of the Moral Majority in the late 1970's.
The key point was not that Evangelicals were awakened from their supposed political
stupor but that conservative Christians were at last aligned under the auspices
of one movement and eventually one party.
Apparently Arnzen knows nothing of this and thinks that the
Democrats of that era (and all eras it would seem) were Leftists. During the
interview he once again utterly confuses theological liberalism with 'Leftist'
ideology or politics. He obviously knows little about Mainline Christianity in
the mid-twentieth century. There were many individuals, thinkers, and
denominations heavily affected by theological liberalism but in no way could be
described as Leftist just as there were many conservatives within the
Democratic fold and not a few social liberals within the Republican Party –
many of whom have migrated over into today's Democratic Party.
Arnzen is ignorant of this history and when Mogel makes it
clear that they weren't liberals or leftists, Arnzen thinks they must have been
Democrats because they were pacifistic. I could not suppress a smile when I
heard this. Mogel also disavows this charge and insists they were all
pro-military patriotic-minded people. This is not surprising but it leaves
Arnzen confused and maybe even shocked. He wrongly assumed that German Reformed
people in Pennsylvania were somehow influenced by Anabaptism which was not the
case.
Of course Mogel erases any credibility he might have gained
when he (foreshadowing the episode's Bircher-driven narratives) denounces all of
today's Democrats as communists, a patent absurdity. Mogel sits on the board of
the Mid-Atlantic Reformation Society. Their website provides a list of
recommended links most of which are Theonomic. But right in the midst of their
links is The New American, the flagship publication of The John Birch Society.
Literally it was like listening to tweedle-dee and
tweedle-dum. Neither of these men have a clue as to what they're talking about.
And the rest of the interview only affirmed this.
Their abbreviated discussion of liberals vs. leftists was
also unenlightened as neither term is defined nor does there seem to be an
understanding that there is spectrum to the libertarian ethos Mogel endorses.
As far as the convergence or seeming convergence of Left and
Right-wing elements around the issue of natural or organic foods and scepticism
regarding government regulation and the like, there is a clear enough narrative
that explains this – but they don't touch on it or seem aware of it.
Some elements within the American Left combined with
influences from the hippie movement embraced an anti-industrial ethos and a
kind of neo-romanticism with regard to the pre-industrial agrarian past. Their
re-embrace of folk music expressed scepticism with regard to the government and
the nature of its democratic and liberal claims. It was instead viewed as
warmongering, corrupt, and controlled by sinister polluting corporations. As
such, there was a great interest especially in the 1960's and 1970's of getting
back to the land and sometimes aspects of this were tied in with communal thinking
and drug culture.
In Right-wing circles the path to government scepticism and
agrarianism was very different. On the one hand you had the emergence of a kind
of Neo-Confederate ethos which also emphasizes the evils of industrialism. But
this is not cast in terms of capitalist evils but in an Industrial North/Agrarian
South narrative. Great moral stock is put in the Southern model while the North
is portrayed as corrupt and anti-humanist – every bit as much as the South was under
the slavery regime. The South is romanticised and its evils are softened by the
contrast with Northern evils and the dehumanising aspects of industrialisation.
The Christian version of this narrative also focuses on the theological
liberalism, unitarianism, and feminism of the North which is then juxtaposed
with the traditionalism of the South. Some defend slavery, others spin it, and
others downplay it by means of this juxtaposition. It was bad, but the North
was bad or worse it is effectively argued.
Alongside this current you had with the conclusion of the
Vietnam War a host of narratives about betrayal, communist infiltrators and the
like. It was all in keeping with Bircher narratives from the period before
Vietnam. The John Birch Society was on the fringes but the ideas associated
with it lived on and permutated. Disgruntled Vietnam veterans felt betrayed
with regard to the course of the war and the scandal surrounding POW's left
behind – a theme in several late 1970's/early 1980's movies and television
shows. From Chuck Norris, to Rambo, to The A-Team and other shows this bitterness
was a constant and recurring theme that cast the government as treacherous and
evil but for reasons very different than the perceptions on the Left.
The 1970's experienced a crime wave and the collapse of
metropolitan centers. The spread of minority ghettos and things like forced
busing added a racial element to the perceived betrayal.
Now when you factor in the various strands of apocalyptic
thinking which emerged in the 1970's pop culture consciousness – the pending
collapse of American society, the threat of nuclear war, communist takeover,
and various other fears perceived to be associated with Biblical prophecy,
there was a growth in survivalism/prepper thinking, which tends to dovetail
with militia/paramilitary impulses and so forth. Combined, this ideological
soup generates no small degree of scepticism regarding the state and the
globalist or communist forces perceived to dominate society. As such, the
ground was prepared for all the anti-vax thinking regarding autism and the like
as well as fears of genetically engineered foods – movements which emerged in
the 1990's. As always there's overlap,
not every person involved in one of these areas is necessarily caught up in all
the others but as time passed more and more people started to be affected by
this spectrum of ideas and narratives.
Additionally in the 1990's, the Cold War had ended and many
dark secrets emerged – something that was also echoed in the pop culture, in
various movies and television shows such as The X-Files and the like. Fears of
globalism, computers, the United Nations, and changes in medicine and science
also fed this growing angst – as did a general directionlessness in the country
and culture. All of this opened the door to scepticism regarding food,
medicine, and for many the perception was (and is) that large corporations are
somehow in on the government plot. For those on the Right these huge
multi-billion dollar conglomerates are not bastions of capitalist wealth and
success but the faces of a secret communist plot.
Many go to the extreme and believe that these millionaires
and billionaires are secretly plotting to destroy not just their companies and
wealth but the economy and the whole of society. Their Upper East Side private
jet lifestyles are a front – what they really want is to wear Mao suits and
live in proletarian austerity. They are working to undermine all the power,
influence, and wealth they have accumulated. Obviously the people who fall for
this kind of thinking exhibit a basic lack of understanding with regard to not
just the theories involved but historical realities and perhaps even something
of human nature.
One of the frustrations is that there are legitimate reasons
to be concerned about some of these things – but the framing for the concern
needs to be quite different if it's going to line up with reality – and we
haven't even touched on anything regarding New Testament attitudes and ethics
let alone post-lapsarian cosmology which alone is sufficient to dash any
discussions of 'natural goodness' with regard to nature and food. The
assumptions behind this kind of thinking are not just scientifically ignorant,
they also represent a defective kind of theology. Mogel, the guest on Iron
Sharpens Iron exhibits both and while he keeps using the word Biblical, he
never makes the case. He hints at works like 'Born Again Dirt' which are loaded
with Dominionist assumptions. Beyond this all he can offer is a philosophical
set of ideas that he uses as the basis for deduction – ideas which are more
Birch than Bible. For some, especially some factions of Evangelical and
Reformed theology this is all that's needed. Such deductions are as good as the
gospel. But they are fatally flawed at the outset and in their very
methodology. The end result is error both in thought and action.
Mogel is critical of how the big agricultural corporations
and the government exist in a kind of symbiotic relationship. He's right. They
certainly do, but it's not the result of a globalist or communist conspiracy.
Instead it's the monopolistic end result of capitalism. The corporations are
the ones largely calling the shots and driving the regulation. The regulators
are not robust but weak and subservient. But even this explanation is too
simplistic as there are other concerns that have to be factored in – insurance,
the threat of lawsuit and many other things.
Mogel strikes me as incredibly naive when it comes to these
topics. He keeps pushing the libertarian argument for local food – which is
slightly different from some of the left-inspired arguments for the same. Mogel
doesn't want regulation, he wants the market to determine what food you buy or
don't buy. And one of the ways to facilitate good decisions (he argues) is to
know where you food comes from. Know the farmer, know the rancher who raises
the meat. Is this realistic?
Limiting the conversation to Pennsylvania, there are
certainly rural parts of Pennsylvania Dutch Country, but even that kind of 'rural'
is rather populated and busy compared to the Central and Northern parts of the
state. In fact, I always comment on how coming down Route 322 on my way to
Harrisburg, Carlisle, or even Philadelphia – there's a point just before you
hit the Susquehanna River in which I just feel the energy building. It's
palpable. Then you come to Duncannon and cross the river and just like that – I
feel like I've emerged from Appalachia and I've entered the Eastern Seaboard –
the vast continuous urban zone that stretches from Richmond, Virginia to the
southern reaches of Maine. There are breaks of course and Dutch Country is one
of those 'breaks' and yet driving through that area I still feel like I'm on
the Eastern Seaboard. Despite the farm fields, the area is heavily populated
and very busy. This also explains why the more determined segments of the Amish
who don't want to make their money from tourism tend to relocate. The area
associated with them is just too urbanized. I guess Dutch Wonderland doesn't do
it for them.
Arnzen's show has recently promoted a Theonomic gathering –
the Mid-Atlantic Reformation Society Future of Christendom conference due to
take place in mid-September. Mogel is part of this and on the board. The venue
for the conference is outside of Lancaster – I know exactly where that sports
complex is just off Route 283 near Mannheim and Mt. Joy. That's not a rural
area and while there are rural areas nearby, it's all part of that heavily
populated Eastern Seaboard. We enjoy the area – places like Lititz and
Carlisle. When visiting the book stores there I have wondered more than once if
I would run into Arnzen himself. I get the impression Mogel is also located
nearby.
In some of those areas, yes – one can interact with farmers
and ranchers. But not everyone can. There are far too many people. And for most
people on the Eastern Seaboard this is not a possibility. I immediately thought
of my many travels in the UK back in the 1990's. The population density is such
that the notion of knowing your local farmer and rancher would strike most
people outside of Wales, Scotland, and maybe Yorkshire as utterly ridiculous.
Like Pennsylvania Dutch Country, there are rural areas to be sure but the
populations are such that most people are not going to be likely or able to
interact with the pockets of farming communities. Like many Libertarians, Mogel
is thinking on small-scale individualistic terms and has not thought through
the magnitude of what he's suggesting nor the real demographic, resource, and
logistical challenges of contemporary urbanised society.
On that note, I have noticed in the past that Arnzen doesn't
always resonate too well with these types of guests and there's a reason for
that. He's an East Coast guy with all of his roots in the New York City
metropolitan area. For people living in Queens, Long Island, Northern New
Jersey, or places like Arlington or South Boston, the idea that you're going to
know your local farmer is just fantasy. Mogel like many Libertarians is stuck
in the nineteenth (and even eighteenth) century. There are people living in
rural places like me who can indeed know local farmers and so forth – but for
the vast bulk of the country this just is not realistic – nor can those local
farmers provide food for the metropolitan area near them. One might say it's a
good thing everyone doesn't catch Mogel's vision – it wouldn't work. It's not
possible, and so once again his arguments are revealed to be tailored and
individualistic. They are not universal and therefore to speak of them as
applicable in universal moral terms represents erroneous thinking. His
arguments and even his premise must be rejected.