The heresy of entryism

Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered : let them also that hate him flee before him.

—Ps. lxviii, Exsurgat Deus.

Today is the Feast of S Hilary of Poitiers, Bishop & Confessor. A patron saint of lawyers, writers, and controversialists, Hilary stands for—and ought to be emulated in standing for—the principles that

heterodoxy and heresy ought to be identified and condemned, with reason, charity, and some degree of politeness, but utterly implacably; that

definitional orthodoxy matters as a matter of intellectual honesty, and that people cannot be allowed to profit fraudulently and to insist upon undeserved respect by calling themselves things they aren’t; that

we must not live by lies and must call things what they are, including by not accepting taxonomic nonsense in the entryism of those claiming to be a member of a group whilst not accepting its definitional principles and bleating about ‘big tents’ and ‘minor concessions and accommodations’ until they have a plurality and seize control and expel the actual what-and-who-evers who founded and defined the group; that

politics are an adiaphoron, but dishonesty even in claims of partisan affiliation is dishonesty, and mere passing power does not extend to rewriting facts and definitions; and that,

because earthly politics are an adiaphoron if honestly engaged in (ha! some hope), it’s absurd that people make it their entire identities. For example, I’m not flouncing off in a huff from EffBee or TwXtter and ‘taking my marbles and going home’, precisely because my use of such is purely transactional and apolitical. One doesn’t trouble about the private life or views or politics of one’s grocer or tailor, after all: that’d be daft. It’d be as daft as making an honest political affiliation one’s whole identity.

But what entryism does is to misuse the notions of ‘congenial company’ and ‘freedom of association’ and ‘fairness’ and ‘minor concessions to the conscience of the minority’ to get the noses of a whole herd of camels under the tent … so that they may crowd the tent-owners out and run off with the tent. It was entryism which gave the Bolsheviks power; Hitler’s successive and unending assertions that X, Y, or Z was the ‘last territorial demand I shall make in Europe’ (Putin is his apt pupil) were all entryism; the entryism of ‘just give us this one last indult, this alternate service-book, this exemption just for the few’ is what has—lex orandi, lex credendi, let’s be trendy—destroyed Cranmer’s prose, wrecked the apostolic succession and led to a bunch of deaconesses in togs above their station running about claiming to be in priest’s or even in bishop’s orders, and ruined the Anglican Communion; and it is entryism which has made W&L to be no longer W&L. In far less important spheres (for the Earthly City is ephemeral as the grasses of the field), it is entryism which has allowed Jefferson’s and Jackson’s party to be taken over by shrieking idiot Leftists and has allowed Lincoln’s and Teddy Roosevelt’s and Ronald Reagan’s party* to be taken over by simps for a would-be caudillo.

Heretics and fundies and all the heterodox claiming to be, to be The Only Real, and to speak for, Christians and Christianity; Trumpshirts in the Elephant Party; leftists in my party (the party definitionally of Thomas Jefferson, my ninth cousin seven times removed, of Andrew Jackson, my twelfth cousin six times removed, and Harry S Truman, my fifteenth cousin): all are engaged in fraud, trading under the old name to impose upon the confidence, credulity, and good will of the public.

It must stop. And we like S Hilary are called to oppose it in all spheres, religious and earthly, to point laughingly to the imperial nakedness and to call attention to false pretenses and to insist upon honesty and upon calling things by their right names. A good day to remember this duty: and every day we must remember—and do—that duty.

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* In strict fairness I may as well say that Lincoln is my eighteenth cousin twice removed; TR, my tenth cousin four times removed (well, his mother was a Bulloch from Georgia); and Reagan my thirteenth cousin.