Adventist Today tries to defend its leftist politics

I was noticing when I was reading some comments on the Adventist Today Facebook page, the only place you can comment…well not me but those people who are not banned for disagreeing with Adventist Today.  It was very enlightening to read what Adventist today had to say for themselves when it was pointed out that they are pretty leftist in their articles. Here is the comment:

Pastor Tom Hughes Will Adventist today ever get back to theology, spiritual issues, Church issues and stop force-feeding us with liberal politics? Adventist Today Tom Hughes
1) This piece is one of ten (and counting) published this week—even during a holiday week. We don’t have to “get back to theology, spiritual issues, church issues” since we haven’t stopped covering them. Given your social media posts espousing political stances (not just theology, spiritual and church issues), your partisanship is well-known and your disagreement with this piece unsurprising. Those are your right. What are problematic are the consequent inconsistencies in your criticisms here of AT, for example, claiming that what you do is politically balanced and neutral, denying AT the freedom you assert you can exercise, and complaining about suppression of disagreement despite your multiple comments on this thread. Neither do we mischaracterize your promotion of your views as “force-feeding” those who choose to read them. 

2. Please clarify this comment:
“it has been discussed many times but the black conferences want to keep things the way they are so that they can make sure they have female soccer tuna tees for there pastors to serve.”

This is really a  very telling comment. After all, I very much agree with Pastor Tom Hughes assessment that Adventist Today is mainly posting Liberal politic articles.  Now AT starts out with a rather strange statement about the number of articles posted in a week. As if that has anything to do with things. Let’s say that 8 of the 10 articles were by social justice warriors, how would the number of articles refute Pastor Tom Hughes' statement? It would not at all. If one were to refute the accusation they could point to the numerous political conservative articles or writers posting on Adventist Today. That they don’t, because they don’t have any is a very telling fact that Pastor Tom Hughes is correct about the liberal politics of the articles and writers.

They then followed with something that is very likely true. Political Progressives think their politics are their religion. So they think that all the political statements are just as much theology, spiritual issues, and church issues.  Here is a segment of an article which does a pretty concise job of showing the Progressivism as religion aspects:

“The government must be helmed by the progressive clergy and used as a tool to ensure progress. Social institutions must be torn down and inequality dissolved.  Past sins must be confessed and offerings given as recompense. Good American citizens, so saith the god of progress, vote and act in a way that enables unabated progress toward equality. This doctrine is well-expressed, inerrant in a creed on a commonyard sign: “In this house, we believe: black lives matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal, science is real, love is love, and kindness is everything.”

If progressives and Democrats are good, then by deduction Republicans are evil—and evil must be opposed. Therefore every Republican measure is a heartless measure intended to further inequality. Republicans are moral monsters who love fascism, cheer the victimization of the vulnerable and scramble to push Granny off the nearest cliff. Republican laymen must be ignorant boobs at best and malevolent wolves at worst.

Dogmatism leaves no room for doubt. It even leads to an almost end times-like eschatology. As Matthew Rose recently pointed out in First Things:

“The politics of gender, sexuality, race, and immigration are increasingly eschatological. Their power and appeal depend on the belief that they advance a liberating moral narrative, inspiring a secular Exodus that will lead to a secular Pentecost . . . [H]istory must progress toward greater individual freedom and social equality because any other outcome threatens the moral intelligibility of history itself. The stakes could not, therefore, be higher. Should the next emancipatory chapter fail to be written—or should a future Trump or Brexit alter its forward flow—it would not be a mere disappointment. It would interrupt a story that justifies their deepest commitments, and the theodicy in which they are engaged.”

Conservatives on the other hand, allow for doubt and question utopian thinking. Social programs may in the end lead to further inequality. No individual person is perfect and thus no institution is perfect. Government cannot bring about perfect equality, but instead only keep itself and its citizens from descending too far into authoritarian oppression. https://loneconservative.com/2018/01/11/progressivism-new-religion/

The AT comment goes on to tell us how well they know of Pastor Tom’s social media positions which I know nothing about and even after AT comments I still know nothing about even though as they say: “your partisanship is well-known and your disagreement with this piece unsurprising” Now there is a strong refutation! The accusation, predominately leftwing articles the response you are partisan. Well, wait is not that his complaint, AT can’t deal with the complaint they instead attack the one complaining.

AT continues: “What are problematic are the consequent inconsistencies in your criticisms here of AT, for example, claiming that what you do is politically balanced and neutral, denying AT the freedom you assert you can exercise, and complaining about suppression of disagreement despite your multiple comments on this thread. Neither do we mischaracterize your promotion of your views as “force-feeding” those who choose to read them.”

 Inconsistencies in criticisms, what inconsistencies, would not that be helpful to know I mean the accusation is pretty straight forward, he may have dealt comments to other people, but that is not really AT responsibility to deal with those statements, why not deal with the central issue. Now how is a comment that problematic? He is not writing an article published on AT neither is he denying AT any freedom. “claiming that what you do is politically balanced and neutral, denying AT the freedom you assert you can exercise,” OK Pastor Tom claims leftist lean to AT articles and now suddenly Pastor Tom is denying AT the freedom to be balanced and neutral. Really I am pretty sure that is exactly what Pastor Tom is asking AT for. Then it follows with more subterfuge about how AT is not claiming that Pastor Tom is “force-feeding” his views on others in the comments section. Well, that is certainly big of AT. This is all very classic way of hiding from the accusation by attacking the person making the accusation. It is not a defense, it is not even logical. It also turns out that both AT and Pastor Tom's comments were removed, as I was going to include some of them in this article, but low and behold they are gone now! Of course, the excuse will be they are against policies. Strangely suppression of other views is often done by the excuse it is just because they did not follow the policies.

Sadly logic has little to do with the articles on Adventist Today anymore. For example, the above comments come from the comment section in reference to this article https://atoday.org/why-i-reject-american-exceptionalism by Lindsey Abston Painter 3 July 2019. In which she defines American Exceptionalism as…nothing she does not define it, she does not point to any definition at all. In fact here is her most direct statement on it.:

“I don’t know how to be patriotic anymore. I love America. But I can’t believe it’s better than any other nation, or its people are better than other nation’s people. I can’t believe that God has any special interest in my country over other countries. I deny American Exceptionalism. America is not intrinsically better than the rest of the world. It’s only better if we are better. President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said in a speech, “America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” Is America still great in light of what’s happening on our southern border?

We can infer from what she rejects as to what she thinks American Exceptionalism is. Not that that is what it actually is but apparently she rejects her own incorrect view of what American Exceptionalism is. If she had bothered to even dig as deeply as Wikipedia she would have found that the first two tenents of American Exceptionalism is what makes it important. Not patriotism people from any country can be patriotic that is certainly not the meaning. Here is what Wikipedia says:

American exceptionalism is one of three related ideas. The first is that the history of the United States is inherently different from those of other nations.^[2] In this view, American exceptionalism stems from its emergence from the American Revolution, thereby becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset called "the first new nation"^[3] and developing a uniquely American ideology, "Americanism", based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, democracy and laissez-faire economics. This ideology itself is often referred to as "American exceptionalism."^[4] Second is the idea that the US has a unique mission to transform the world. As Abraham Lincoln stated in the Gettysburg address (1863), Americans have a duty to ensure, "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Third is the sense that the United States' history and mission give it a superiority over other nations.

The theory of the exceptionalism of the U.S. has developed over time and can be traced to many sources. French political scientist and historian Alexis de Tocqueville was the first writer to describe the country as "exceptional" in 1831 and 1840.^[5] The actual phrase "American exceptionalism" was originally coined by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin as a critique of a revisionist faction of American communists who argued that the American political climate was unique, making it an 'exception' to certain elements of Marxist theory.^[6] U.S. president Ronald Reagan is often credited with having crystallized this ideology in recent decades.^[6] Political scientist Eldon Eisenach argues in the twenty-first century American exceptionalism has come under attack from the postmodern left as a reactionary myth: "The absence of a shared purposes ratified in the larger sphere of liberal-progressive public policy....beginning with the assumption of American exceptionalism as a reactionary myth.”

Thanks to Painter we have a good view of the postmodern left’s reactionary myth view. Ignore history, and facts and plead to poorly formed but emotional ideas. Somehow larger than ever illegal border entry suggests to her that there is nothing exceptional about America. I mean why would so many people try to get to this unexceptional country. But it all works as long as your publisher defends the indefensible.