The Dreher chronicles

I've never especially followed what Rod Dreher might be saying:  he's quite popular with people at Catallaxy, which is a good sign he is a wrong headed and probably offensive conservative.  But I had noticed that he had become one of the Right's fanboys of Hungary and Orban - and this marks him as "conservative willing to discard democracy if it means propping up his losing side in the culture wars" and therefore not worthy of serious consideration.  

However, I can't resist noting the well deserved ridicule he has received on Twitter and elsewhere for his lack of a self filter when discussing circumcision.   It's also hard to believe he couldn't see the reaction he would get.  Is he just dumb, or did he run with "let's just see how much Twitter chatter I can provoke"?

Update:   One of the ideas of Dreher's that is lately often mentioned favourably at Catallaxy is his "Benedict Option":

There was a time when Christian thinkers like Dreher, who writes for The American Conservative, might have prepared to fight for cultural and political control. Dreher, however, sees this as futile. “Could it be that the best way to fight the flood is to … stop fighting the flood?” he asks. “Rather than wasting energy and resources fighting unwinnable political battles, we should instead work on building communities, institutions, and networks of resistance that can outwit, outlast, and eventually overcome the occupation.” This strategic withdrawal from public life is what he calls the Benedict option.

I find it a pretty laughable idea, but here's Melbourne's sometime depression sufferer Arky speculating on the same thing, more or less:

Human’s require each other for economic, social and procreation reasons. In order to enjoy all the benefits of human society you have to move in proximity to other people. However, as these times of raving covidity prove that more and more of our fellow humans are complete douche nozzles of the lowest order, the question sneaks into our consciousness: Is it really worth hanging around with these complete penises?

If in order to work you need an, at this point, open ended series of jabs with weird concoctions; if schooling means sending your child to a progressive indoctrination centre where they might also require an open ended series of those weird concoction stabs for zero net benefit to themselves; when socializing means being harangued by cultists; if being entertained requires also to be lectured; if indeed, the entire structure of the society you live within is riddled with that which you find repugnant; is the warmth worth the pain anymore?

Mind you, here he is in comments in a different thread:

I have said in other places that it feels mean to criticise a guy who writes posts explaining that he has suffered depression, but he now spends all his time catastrophising about how Australian government response to COVID has all been about e-vil control over the population, and despairing that people were not rebelling against it.  He is, of course, against COVID vaccination.  

I am sorry, but I have little sympathy for a person, whether prone to depression or not, if he does not have enough sense to contemplate that he might be the one who is wrong and being led up the garden path by bad faith, blind culture war warriors.   He also sounds like he has serious anger issues.

Anyway - my message to all the Benedict Option fans at Catallaxy (and libertarians anywhere longing to set up their new utopia in the middle of no-where):  please, go ahead and do it.  You're a danger to the rest of us.