Needlehooks: "The Intoxication of Moral Superiority"

I occasionally come across quotations that snag my attention like a needle-hook to yarn.  I may or may not agree with the writer's perspective, I may find them derivative or vulgar, but they represent something that stirs my curiosity and, sometimes, thinking.

From time to time, I'll share them and their source, but caveat emptor.

I thought love trumps hate. That’s what I’ve been led to believe by an effusion of t-shirts, bumper stickers, and social media postings from the self-styled anti-Trump Resistance™. As my friend Roger Kimball likes to say, there really is nothing like the intoxication of moral superiority.

The syrupy slogans promulgated by the ruling class, ruling class wannabes, and fellow travelers on the Left aren’t fooling anyone, not even, I would guess, the people who say, wear, and post them. Truth is, they really don’t like the rest of us. No problem, we have our own lives and families. But it’s only not a problem until such disdain is combined with a sense of political entitlement and the coercive power of government.

Not long ago, while at a clergy meeting, I imagined that, were I not clergy and not used to common conversation within the Episcopal Church leadership, I would understand that it was an organization dedicated to hating the current occupant of the White House and seeking a deity's intervention in punishing him for not being as morally evolved as clergy.  Actually, the word I heard more than once in regard to the current occupant was "loathing".  There was also considerable commentary noting that the current occupant was not a member of the same social class as eastern Episcopal clergy.  We are, of course, all free to believe what we want about ourselves and our relation to the greater world, but it's hard to reconcile this attitude with a church that states in its Baptismal Covenant that we strive to "respect the dignity of every human being".

I wondered if it has occurred to anyone that one of the reasons for the rapid decline in membership in the Church is that it is determined to associate with an increasingly narrow band of the American public.  Nah.  When I mention this, my colleagues either fall silent or respond with "Who would want those people, anyway?"  Oh, well, as they say: Get Woke, Go Broke.

Speaking as a half-breed, Midwestern hillbilly, if I extend that attitude, it means I'm not wanted in The Episcopal Church, which makes me rather glad that our spiritual life is in the hands of God, rather than those intoxicated by their sense of superiority.