Perhaps what I read was a terribly April Fool’s jest but given the history that is an outcome I find highly improbable. I generally spend some of my mornings doing political reading, news and opinion pieces from left and right to get a sense what may but on the active discussions and minds of political actors. This morning I read a piece by Rod Dreher titled ‘The Little Steps In Between.’ Quoting from a non-fiction book ‘They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933 – 1945.’ a survey of ten German citizen that lived through the rise and fall of Nazi Germany and published in 1955. The long quote pulled recounts how the decent into a murderous hate filled ideology did not happen suddenly but in gradual steps, bit by bit the people were brought along until it was far too late.

If you are familiar with Dreher’s work you undoubtedly see the twist coming to the foundations of his argument. Dreher is not speaking about the corruption of the conservative movement, a movement that professes a devotion to morality, often an explicit Christiane morality, a movement that professes a commitment to the value of each individual, a movement that professes a commitment to the notion of Truth, and yet this same movement has in steps accepted and embraced bigotry, lies, and torture. This is not the gradual steps towards Nazi’s that concerns Dreher but rather the ‘intolerable’ condition that public institutions are no longer allowed to engage in bigotry under the cover of ‘personal religious convictions,’ a fiction used the justify bigotry in the nation throughout its history. No the United States is not being submerged into hatred ideology by the rise of the alt-right, by openly white supremacist representatives, or a bigoted president that praises a gather of neo-Nazis as containing ‘very fine people,’ but rather by the mild insistence that public institutions are not allowed to discriminate.

To be clear I think that there is a clear difference between individuals and institutions, particularly public institutions that exist and gain tangible benefits from legal structures that derive from our common governments. A company or a corporation exist because we created the legal framework for them and they confer protections to the individuals that band together to create them, such as shielding personal assets from corporate misdeeds. Companies and corporation are not their owners and should not have the same rights and privileges as persons. Oh course the Christian Right has been hypocritical on this point. I recall quite clearly when California’s Prop 8, seeking enshrine in state constitution a legal definition of marriage as one man one woman, was fought in the public sphere and the Christian Right objected to boycotts of businesses whose owners had donated to the campaign to pass the amendment. They argued that private political actions and personal beliefs had no connection to their businesses and such linkages were unjust. Now that they have lost both the political and cultural battle over marriage they argue the exact opposite, that a business such as a hobby shop or bakery are extensions of their owners’ personal beliefs and sacrosanct under their personal religious freedom.

No Dreher is of course terrified if equality, engaging in the perpetual Christian Right fantasy of modern martyrdom. Like Jordan Petersen and his delusion of the ‘Murderous Equity Doctrine’ there is no end to the right playing themselves as the victim which not only makes them look ridiculous, encourages violence from their unbalanced members, but also robs them of genuine sympathy when their rights are under assault.