With the Boy Scouts requesting bankruptcy protection in the wake of law suits regarding abuse by adult leaders, I suddenly had a rush of memories about George Will. I don’t think much about George will very often but when I do it is because of a devastating comment he made years ago. The Catholic church was under assault for allowing vulnerable young men to be placed in the care and supervision of older homosexual men, while the Boy Scouts were being sued for not allowing young men to be placed in the care of older homosexual men. Will called that an example of insanity which it certainly is. It is also the perfect American shakedown, but that would take the kind of analysis that only a man like Will can undertake. The shakedown is pretty simple – sue people for a moral or religious stance and call them bigots for the fears that arise out of that stance. When you get your way in the law suit you can turn around and sue when the fears of the bigots take place, and you accuse them of not exercising due diligence. It is a great scam and it will continue.
The coincidence is that I get up this morning and find that I have a new copy of my “Concordia Journal” and Dale Meyer the President of Concordia Seminary, has an article entitled “Preach Politics” that is, in part, about George Will and his new book; “The Conservative Sensibility”, New York, Hachette Books 2019. I knew that Will has a handicapped child who is probably a grown adult now. I now that he loves baseball. I know that he is a great commentator. What I did not know is that he is the grandson of a Lutheran minister and like so many sons of Lutheran ministers, he raised his son George to be “an amiable – low voltage atheist”.
This really shows one of the truly sad realities of the world in which we live. People my age received a marvelous heritage and we sold it for a mess of political pottage. We heralded a wishy washy inability to judge anything unless it was judging. We turned morality into private affairs and tut tutted about folks that pried and became fans of the folks who took after the “Harper Valley PTA”. We did as George Will’s dad did and raised up a generation of low-voltage atheists. We dropped the amiable part of the equation along the way.
