Distinction Matter - Subscribed Feeds

Editors’ Note: This is Part II of a two-part essay on Jonathan Rauch’s Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy.

Rauch presents his proposal of his “Gospel of Compromise,” we have noted, as a recovery of a “thick Christianity,” as opposed to the “sharp,” that is, conservatively accented version. He regards his favored version as “thick” because he thinks it offers a way of reconciling human and divine law, a way of seeing liberalism’s “permanent process of public negotiation” as a core value of Christianity. It is in this context that Rauch offers his surprising proposal, namely that the teachings of the LDS Church offer the most perfect specimen of the “thick theology” he is looking for.  

The “thick” theology that thrilled Rauch comes down essentially to placing “good-faith negotiation at the very center of the Constitution’s meaning.” This approach, Rauch argues, goes far beyond mere mechanical difference-splitting to foster a “creative, generative, pro-social endeavor,” one allows the parties to develop “peaceful habits of collaboration, and feelings of goodwill and fellowship.” At the same time, Rauch observes, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to make rigorous demands on the personal lives of its members, thus “combining high personal investment with high communal returns.” Thus, although Rauch recognizes that Latter-day Saints continue to affirm a teaching on homosexuality that is “repugnant and harmful,” as well as a view of gender roles that is “discriminatory and archaic,” he finds the church’s ideas about “pluralism” “compelling.”

Rauch’s proposal of an LDS–liberal alliance does not address only immediate and practical concerns. The author ventures briefly but suggestively into a properly theological engagement with LDS beliefs. This engagement centers on the idea of “agency,” which he rightly understands to be a central idea of LDS theology and anthropology. Rauch highlights the distinctive interpretation of Adam’s fall, certainly a very unorthodox or heretical doctrine from the standpoint of the mainstream Augustinian tradition of Western Christianity, namely, that Adam’s “transgression” was gloriously good news. Rauch cites LDS scholars Terryl and Fiona Givens: “Instead of deploring Eve’s and Adam’s transgression, one might find in it a cause for rejoicing.” 

This is not the place for a full or even adequate account of LDS doctrine, which is surely no more free of paradox and mystery (how can it be good to transgress God’s law?) than the traditional Augustinian view.  But Rauch is certainly right that there is something distinctive in the foundations of LDS belief that grounds the goodness of human choice and practical action in an understanding of ultimate reality and a “great plan of happiness” laid down before the foundation of the world. Rauch writes that, for the Latter-day Saints, “[l]ife is not a process of moral repair or atonement under the oppressive curse of original sin; it is a process of moral development under the tutelage of experience.”  

To be sure, Rauch is mistaken to sever “moral repair” from “moral development,” and his argument approaches self-refutation when he extends it to claim that, for the LDS, “we cannot develop morally unless we confront all kinds of choices.” From this he thinks there is “but a short step to Madisonian pluralism.” If what Rauch calls Madisonian pluralism is equivalent to the view that a political community can somehow be morally neutral and boundlessly pluralist, yet based on materialistic science, then this small step is in fact a gigantic leap across an unseen abyss. Let us grant, all the same, that Rauch has put his finger on a distinctive feature of LDS belief that is relevant to the question of Christianity and liberalism.

Rauch skillfully, though in the end preposterously, appeals to Latter-day Saints with the heady possibility that they might provide the model of a new interpretation of Christianity centered on those teachings or dispositions he elevates as truly Christian (as well as “Madisonian”): the disposition to forgive and to have no fear of secularism, and the readiness to “negotiate” all the way down to our very understanding of the human good. The effectual truth of this appeal to his truncated version of LDS belief is that the acceptance of political exile and complacency in negotiation on liberal terms will continue to rise to ascendancy over those substantive LDS beliefs that he regards as “discriminatory and archaic.” This is the hand of friendship that Jonathan Rauch has extended, no doubt in all sincerity, to American members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Certainly it does more credit to the obliging good will of his LDS audience than to their intellectual discretion that not a few seem inclined to accept the invitation, or, at least, to praise the gesture.

Rauch is not wrong to place “agency” at the heart of LDS belief.  But he distorts it beyond recognition by reducing this rich concept, deeply embedded in a moral and cosmological vision, to the idea that the best social framework for the development of our humanity is one with the least encumbrance of moral authority, that more “choice” is always better, and, finally that the act of choosing can be considered the essence of human meaning, without reference to the reality of good and evil that is thought to guide our choices. Rauch does not even pause to consider the question whether the ideal of limitless choice is in any way practicable, or even thinkable as an ethical principle. His understanding of “agency” is neither a remotely adequate phenomenology of human choice nor a serious rendering of LDS belief. In fact, LDS leaders have generally qualified the word “agency” with the word “moral,” precisely to avoid the nonsensical proposition that more freedom, a freedom divorced from moral accountability, is always better.  

LDS agency is very clearly a moral and lawful agency, an understanding of active human choice as central to man’s eternal vocation, but emphatically within a divine plan and a morally meaningful cosmos. Inconveniently for Rauch, this divine plan affirms the centrality of the procreative family. This is the great irony in Rauch’s attempt to cement a deep alliance with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in forging a liberal future unimpeded by any enduring moral contents that cannot be generated from within the purely scientific-constitutional framework that he proposes: Latter-day Saints are arguably the most fundamentally irreconcilable of all religious groupings to his post-Obergefell liberal settlement. Latter-day Saints believe, not only that the highest meaning of marriage is both natural (heterosexual) and sacramental, but also, and perhaps uniquely, that the marriage between man and woman is eternal and grounded in the eternal significance of sexual difference and complementarity. 

More generally, the LDS concept of agency is inseparable from a belief in eternal standards of righteousness and in a rigorously normative “plan of salvation.” That said, Rauch is not wrong to point to a distinct break in LDS teachings with the anthropology of creedal Christianity. The second of our thirteen “Articles of Faith” (formulated by Joseph Smith in response to a Chicago newspaper reporter) is as plain as can be about the rupture with all things Augustinian: “We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.” Thus, the LDS idea of “agency” is bound up with a Christian concept of “sin,” or the recognition of the orientation of human freedom by permanent principles of right and wrong, good and evil. 

To be clear, this is not to say that the LDS understanding of human freedom falls into the category of a Pelagian reliance on works as opposed to grace. The Third Article of Faith makes clear the dependence of human agency on divine redemption: “We believe that, through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.” Agency, for Latter-day Saints, is inseparable from the “infinite atonement” effected by the Savior’s ultimate sacrifice.

A Time for Compromise?

It is precisely in order to guard against the potential antinomian tendencies of the concept of “agency” when elevated to the status of a leading principle that LDS authorities routinely favor the expression “moral agency” to indicate the profound difference with a purely secular and liberal understanding of individual freedom. Rauch’s appropriation of the LDS term “agency” is thus tendentious at best. This is not to deny that Rauch’s spin on agency has found some resonance among Latter-day Saints eager to make peace with mainstream liberalism. This readiness to entertain Rauch’s liberal politics of negotiation must be understood against the background of recent LDS experience in the political realm. Some church leaders were apparently surprised by the negative publicity and violent acts of discrimination and anti-religious hatred that resulted from its institutional support in 2008 for California’s Proposition 8 against homosexual marriage. It might be argued as well that some LDS church members have been insufficiently appreciative of the positive cultural and evangelical effects of the church’s alliance in this cause with Roman Catholics and others committed to the defense of marriage. The Church’s outward-facing posture since the struggle in California and the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell has been to look for opportunities to make peace with advocates of homosexual rights and to participate in the fashioning of legislative compromises.  

The trade-offs of these compromises and their long-term effects are certainly debatable, but it is important to note that the church has made very clear in the case of every political compromise that no changes are intended to its fundamental moral and religious doctrines. The church’s position has clearly been that the religious meaning of “marriage” has not changed, even though we must learn the uses of political pragmatism, so it is argued, in order to secure the protection of our religious freedom. To be sure, the path of pragmatism can prove to be a slippery slope, and this slipperiness appears in the very rhetoric that seems necessary to justify compromise.  

Rather than simply acknowledging the necessity to accommodate political circumstances unfavorable to certain basic teachings of the church, defenders of compromise almost irresistibly slip into a vocabulary of “fairness” and “respect” that all but explicitly concedes moral equivalence to opinions fundamentally opposed to what are held to be sacred truths. In a democratic system, it is hard to address pragmatic political necessities without adopting language that goes well beyond the strictly pragmatic. The “respect” inherent in the process of coming to terms with a political rival is almost irresistibly defended, in the relativistic language of equal respect for all opinions (which of course does not follow from respect for persons as such). It is hard to make a democratic bargain on the basis of a rhetoric that says: “You are profoundly and disastrously wrong, but I see for now that your view must to some degree prevail.”  

Even more concerning is the apparently irresistible temptation to cover political necessity with the Christian language of love: I compromise with you because I have been commanded to love you. Here the bond between the first part of the Great Commandment, to love God absolutely, is at risk of being absorbed by the second part, the love of fellow human beings. The Christian commitment to “peacemaking” comes perilously close to endorsing not only the fundamental dignity of all God’s children, but even the ideological self-understanding of those with whom we find that we must compromise. Christian love thus risks losing its vertical orientation, its moral and religious substance, as it embraces the rhetoric inherent in democratic political compromise. It is one thing to submit obediently to a post-Obergefell political and legal regime; it is another step, a fateful one, to deny that at some fundamental level the new regime is based on a mistaken view of reality, not to say on a lie, and thus can only have disastrous consequences in the long term. If the metaphysical demand for human autonomy that underlies the radical redefinition of marriage is wrong, even evil, then it would be wrong to “respect” it, even when we must accommodate it legally and politically.

It is precisely the audacity of the secular liberal project, the imprudence of a liberalism that declares its independence from all traditional and religious morality, that is apparently inaudible to Jonathan Rauch and those who celebrate his proposed “Christian”–liberal alliance. The secular prophets of a pure and autonomous liberalism simply assume as true the false liberal proposition that opinions may be regarded as equally worthy of “respect,” and thus as equally subject to negotiation and compromise, regardless of their bearing on the realities of human nature and the human condition. When truth is defined in terms of democratic negotiation, then propositions of the public good that appeal to natural or divine truths not subject to human mastery are disqualified in principle. Democratic process is no longer the negotiation of serious, substantive truth-claims, but itself advanced as a substitute for truth. In Rauch’s view of liberalism, “love” no longer implies concern for the natural happiness or the eternal soul of one’s neighbor, but equal “respect” for all opinions, lifestyles, and identities.

But again, although some LDS advocates of “Fairness for All” have shown a weakness for rhetoric that tends to slip toward progressive relativism, the substance of LDS teaching is very clearly on the side of permanent moral and anthropological truths, especially where sexuality and procreation are concerned. Rauch and others who hopefully await the LDS church’s renegotiating of the religious understanding of marriage to include a same-sex version will be disappointed. The church’s authoritative (and not at all innovative) 1995 statement on the matter, its Proclamation to the World on the Family, clearly states: “We [the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles] warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.” This bold and clear proclamation, which church leaders have emphatically endorsed throughout the recent period of political pragmatism, is hardly compatible with the rhetoric of “equal respect” for all politically powerful viewpoints. 

Moral Agency and Sustainable Liberalism

More characteristic of LDS social teaching addressed to the faithful as religious teaching (as opposed to pragmatic accommodation) is an official General Conference address by Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on “Sustainable Societies” (2020). The question of sustainability necessarily points beyond the immediate necessities of negotiation and compromise to the deeper problem of the enduring parameters of human nature and thus to the ineluctable preconditions of a healthy society. Christofferson plainly states: “when people turn from a sense of accountability to God and begin to trust instead in the ‘arm of flesh,’ disaster lurks. Trusting in the arm of flesh is to ignore the divine Author of human rights and human dignity and to give highest priority to riches, power, and the praise of the world (while often mocking and persecuting those who follow a different standard).” 

He continues:

A society . . . in which individual consent is the only constraint on sexual activity is a society in decay . . . Follow-on consequences that work against sustainability of a healthy society include growing numbers of children raised in poverty and without the positive influence of fathers, sometimes through multiple generations; women bearing alone what should be shared responsibilities; and seriously deficient education as schools, like other institutions, are tasked to compensate for failure in the home.

These reflections and authoritative teachings are in a register wholly unlike the view of religion at work in Rauch’s search for a religion that might provide a moral backstop for his autonomous liberalism. The point is not so much that Christofferson gives answers to social and political problems that are different from Rauch’s. What we cannot fail to notice is that he asks questions that Rauch (and his temporarily enthralled LDS audience) have altogether forgotten to ask. Beginning from a pseudo-Madisonian perspective of individual rights as the most fundamental concept of political theory, Rauch is not even aware of the problem of sustainability, or, therefore, of the question of the human good or of the common good of the political body. 

We may choose, or not, like Rauch, to consider all rights as, at bottom, assertions of our autonomous humanity and thus ultimately matters of social and political compromise, but the natural conditions of happiness and sustainability, including the essential role of the natural reproductive family, will not be subject to our negotiation. Rauch would do well to consult, on the question of compromise and its limits, a classic address by Elder Dallin Oaks:

Our tolerance and respect for others and their beliefs does not cause us to abandon our commitment to the truths we understand and the covenants we have made. . . .  We are cast as combatants in the war between truth and error.  There is no middle ground.  We must stand up for truth, even while we practice tolerance and respect for beliefs and ideas different from our own and for the people who hold them.

If moral principle is not only an accident of religious belief but grounded in the truth of human nature and the human vocation, it follows that any peace based on Rauch’s violent stretching of the LDS theology of “agency” must be ill-founded and by nature unsustainable. Without undertaking a presentation of this theology, let me conclude with a suggestion of its real value and bearing on our present political circumstances, that is, on the present stage of the crisis of liberalism. If there is a contemporary political lesson to be drawn from the LDS idea of the eternal significance of moral agency, this insight would not at all be aligned with Rauch’s fundamentally secular and ostensibly neutral and pseudo-scientific liberalism.  

Instead, one might find in a certain “moral agency” the outlines of a view of humanity and eternity that would resonate with a kind of conservative liberalism, a practical yet deeply moral liberalism equipped to avoid the pitfalls of integralism, both left and right. The LDS understanding of moral agency is in the spirit of Tocqueville’s praise of “liberty under God and the laws”; it weaves together eternal law and personal choice in a practically meaningful way that resonates at the deepest, ontological level. The touchstone of this moral agency is neither the supposedly pre-modern attitude of “heteronomy,” nor the chimera of liberal “autonomy,” but the reality of productive, creative action under a personal God and Savior within an orderly and meaningful cosmos.  

Image by Seadog81 and licensed via Adobe Stock.

Pressure is growing on federal agencies to regulate the abortion drug mifepristone, following publication of a series of alarming reports. The latest report, published last week by the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), analyzed Medicare and Medicaid data and discovered that the vast majority (over 80%) of women who visited an emergency room with complications from the abortion drug had their abortions miscoded as miscarriages.

The study examined nearly 30,000 emergency room visits and found that between 2016 and 2021, a period of five years, miscodes of emergency room visits following surgical abortions increased in prevalence from a rate of 26.8% to 73.9%, while miscodes of ER visits following mifepristone abortions increased in prevalence from a rate of 45.5% to 83.5%. Additionally, acuity — that is, the measure of the severity and complexity of a patient’s condition — was significantly higher (at a rate of 50%) among miscoded cases than correctly-coded cases.

“When abortion-related emergencies are disguised as miscarriages, it impairs a doctor’s ability to make informed, evidence-based decisions. That isn’t just a documentation error — it’s a public health crisis,” said Dr. James Studnicki, vice president and director of data analytics at CLI and one of the authors of the study, in a statement obtained by The Washington Stand. He added, “The abortion industry’s push for concealment is unethical and dangerous. Women deserve honest guidance and proper medical care, not advice that jeopardizes their health.”

Click here to sign up for pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com

Another of the study’s authors, CLI Vice President and Director of Medical Affairs Dr. Ingrid Skop, told TWS, “As a board-certified OB-GYN practicing in Texas, I’ve seen firsthand the devastating effects abortion drugs have on women, as I have been called to care for them in the ER regularly.” She explained, “This study exposes the abortion industry’s reckless advice for women to hide their abortion drug use from doctors, delaying proper care and risking their health.”

Skop continued, “Doctors are disadvantaged when they are unaware of a patient’s abortion history. They may need to intervene more quickly to remove retained pregnancy tissue and/or the dead baby to prevent serious infection when abortion drugs fail.” The veteran medical practitioner added, “No other area of medicine tolerates such dangerous misinformation — it’s a direct threat to women’s safety.”

Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, told TWS, “The miscoding of a mifepristone abortion as a miscarriage can lead to a delay in care for a mom whose life may be in danger as the result of the use of the abortion drug mifepristone.” She clarified, “Miscarriage and abortion are not the same thing — and they do not have the same impact on a woman’s body. Planned Parenthood even records miscarriage and abortion as separate occurrences; but, at the same time, Planned Parenthood advises women it’s ‘up to them’ whether they tell their doctor about their use of mifepristone.”

Szoch concluded, “Unfortunately, they leave out that a decision not to tell their doctor they took mifepristone might result in severe bodily harm. Mifepristone is an incredibly dangerous drug. It kills unborn children and maims moms physically and emotionally as it does so.”

Another recent study, this one from the Ethics and Public Policy Center, found that serious complications related to the use of mifepristone are 22 times more common than claimed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), prompting widespread calls for the health agency to reexamine mifepristone and restore stringent regulations surrounding its prescription and use.

A subsequent CLI report debunked the “baseless claim that ‘abortion drugs are safer than Tylenol’ because it lacks scientific credibility and evidence.” The report found that the claim must be based on “a controlled, scientifically appropriate study comparing abortion drugs to Tylenol,” which does not exist and “would be impossible to do [conduct] because these drugs are used for entirely different purposes.”

When the FDA first approved mifepristone for use in 2000, three in-person physician visits were required before the drug could be prescribed, the drug could only be prescribed by a physician, it had to be dispensed and consumed in the physician’s office, and a follow-up visit was required, as was reporting of any complications.

In 2016, then-President Barack Obama eliminated many of those provisions, including the requirement that the abortion drug be prescribed by a physician and consumed in-office, as well as the mandatory follow-up visit and reporting of complications. The Obama FDA also lowered the number of required in-person physician visits prior to prescription from three to only one and increased the “maximum gestational age” for prescribing the drug from seven weeks to 10.

In 2023, the Biden administration further weakened the remaining safeguards, requiring no in-person physician visits, no physician to prescribe the drug, no dispensing or consuming the drug in-office, no follow-up visit, and no reporting of complications.

Earlier this week, newly-minted FDA Commissioner Marty Makary pledged to conduct “a review of mifepristone and work … with the professional career scientists at the Agency who review this data.” As TWS documented, his new promise to reassess the abortion drug is a shift from his previous positions on the subject, refusing to commit to reviewing mifepristone.

LifeNews Note: S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

The post Abortion Pill Coverup: Injuries to Women are Falsely Classified as Miscarriages appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The Trump administration sharply criticized the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) during a recent Executive Board meeting, accusing the agency of complicity in China’s coercive population control policies.

The critic comes after recently announcing the complete withdrawal of U.S. funding, totaling $335 million, under the Kemp-Kasten Amendment.

In remarks delivered on June 3 at the UNFPA segment of the 2025 Annual Session of the UNDP/UNOPS/UNFPA Executive Board, Acting U.S. Representative to ECOSOC Jonathan Shrier condemned UNFPA’s long-standing partnership with Chinese government agencies responsible for implementing forced abortions and involuntary sterilizations.

“Millions of families suffered under China’s abhorrent population control,” Shrier said, highlighting the “barbaric” legacy of these policies and questioning UNFPA’s silence on the ongoing suffering of affected women.

Click Like if you are pro-life to like the LifeNews Facebook page!

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.10"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));

“Where is their justice?” he asked.

The administration’s decision to defund UNFPA, first reported by LifeNews on May 9, 2025, marks a continuation of President Donald Trump’s pro-life policies from his previous term. In 2017, Trump similarly cut funding to UNFPA, citing its role in supporting China’s population control regime, which has been linked to human rights abuses, including forced abortions and sterilizations.

The recent move terminates over 40 existing projects, redirecting $335 million in taxpayer funds away from the pro-abortion UN agency.

Critics of UNFPA, including pro-life advocates, argue that the agency’s collaboration with China’s government undermines its stated mission to promote reproductive health and rights.

The Trump administration’s stance aligns with the reinstatement and expansion of the Mexico City Policy, renamed the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy, which prohibits U.S. funding to foreign organizations that perform or promote abortions. The policy, initially introduced by President Ronald Reagan, has been a cornerstone of pro-life foreign policy under Republican administrations.

UNFPA expressed regret over the funding cut, stating on May 8, 2025, that it “notes with deep regret” the U.S. decision to invoke the Kemp-Kasten Amendment. The agency denied claims of supporting coercive practices, asserting that its work promotes voluntary family planning and human rights. “Over the past four years alone, with the U.S. Government’s life-saving investments, we prevented more than 17,000 maternal deaths,” UNFPA said, urging the U.S. to reconsider its position.

Shrier’s remarks also called on the UNFPA Executive Board to scrutinize the agency’s financial ties to China, questioning why UNFPA continues to subsidize technical assistance for a country with the world’s second-largest economy.

“UNFPA should not be complicit in China’s population control,” he said, reinforcing the administration’s commitment to prioritizing human rights in U.S. foreign aid.

The post Trump Admin Slams UNFPA for Supporting Population Control in China appeared first on LifeNews.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oADHdNwrpc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRsHuvqBJAc

The following is a rough transcript of a video by Academic Agent (AKA, Neema Parvini) with a few minor editorial additions and editing for clarity.

Recently, James Lindsay made a video on elite theory. As the author of the bestselling book The Populist Illusion, which is a primer on elite theory, and since I am a modern purveyor of elite theory, when somebody critiques it like James Lindsay, I take that seriously.

Lindsay’s 20-minute video on the topic was, unfortunately, quite disappointing. It was obvious to me that Lindsay had not engaged with any of the material. He had not read The Populist Delusion.  It was obvious to me that he had not really read Mosca or Pareto or Robert Michels. This is understandable in the case of Pareto. The Mind and Society is a big thick book. It is quite complicated. However, The Ruling Class by Mosca is not particularly long. And neither is Political Parties by Michels. The Populist Delusion is an even shorter book, so it is not really that difficult, I think, to get some of the core propositions of elite theory correct.

One of the things that you are meant to do as an intellectual is to show your interlocutors some intellectual charity. Ideally, what you should be able to do is to summarize their positions as strongly if not stronger than they are able to do and unfortunately Lindsay just did not do that. He did not give an accurate summary of what elite theory is, so in this video I’m going to give a couple of quick pointers as to what elite theory is, and what it isn’t, and why Lindsay’s entire video fell flat as a result of getting these things wrong.

The first thing to mention is that elite theory simply says that the disorganized mass is always ruled over by an organized minority. It says that in politics the organized minority tends to win over the disorganized mass.

The organized minority is called the ruling class; the rulers, and the disorganized majority is the ruled.

In his video, James Lindsay did not really come up with this formulation. He said something like “In every society, elites rule.” And then he said that that is a tautology; that it is true by definition. Or, it is just saying in every society there is an elite class.

At some level, that is right, but elite theory makes a much stronger claim. It says that regardless of what you call the system; whether you call it monarchy, or whether you call it a communist state, whether you call it social democratic or liberal democratic, a merchant republic, whatever you want to call your system of government, an aristocracy, feudalism, you name it, they all basically have the same structure and the same principles apply to power no matter what you call the system; namely that the organized minority rule over the disorganized mass.

The truth of this is hard to dispute and most people when confronted with it will concur. To get anywhere in this world you need to get together with some friends and plan and work together, in order to bring about some outcome. The problem is that the people who are in power right now, have an absolute advantage over everybody else who is trying to organize. They have a knowledge advantage. They have a communications advantage. They have technical expertise and skills managerialism that coalesce to make their rule quite difficult to overcome.

Overthrowing a government is something that only a handful of people have managed in history and the set of conditions that keep the ruling class in place and make them extremely difficult to dislodge is known as “the iron law of oligarchy,” and that is what Michel’s Political Parties is about. So, what James Lindsay did in his video is that he said, well there is a difference between elite theory as a descriptive set of tools and a prescriptive elite theory.

First of all, none of the elite theorists have any prescriptions. Elite theory is a value-free. It pretends to be a scientific way of trying to approach power and politics. Elite theory resembles economics. Economics is what they call a wertfrei science. It is value free. It does not try to smuggle in any other value. It just describes what is and elite theory is the same. Pareto, who was one of the elite theorists, was of course more famous as an economist, so it is using some of those tools that you would use in economics and applying a similar framework to politics and power.  If you want a political science, that is what it was trying to do. That is what all of them said that they were doing, in the tradition of somebody like Nicolo Machiavelli who was also trying to give an ABCs of power; a set of laws of power that are true pretty much regardless of who is in the system. It is not really concerned with this system or that system; democracy or monarchy or whatever, it is concerned with the actual mechanics of power, regardless of what you call it.  

Now one of the things that Lindsay did is he said, well the thing is that the descriptive part is fine but the danger comes when it becomes proscriptive; when people take elite theory and they say this the way things ought to be. He says it goes over the is/ought gap that David Hume talked about. This is an issue because, as far as I know, none of the elite theorists did that. That is not the point of their work. In my book the Populist Delusion which is a work of elite theory, I also do not advocate for any particular system of government.

James Lindsay went on to make a more moral, normative argument where he says that the problem occurs once you start saying that rule by an organized minority is the way things should be. Lindsay takes Curtis Yarvin’s advocation of monarchy as though that were an example of prescriptive elite theory, with monarchy being a particularly clear example of elite rule. However, when Curtis Yarvin advocates for monarchy, that is monarchism, not elite theory. That is, he is just making pro-monarchy arguments. That has nothing to do with elite theory. That is just him favoring that system over the other available systems. Elite theory does not do that. If anything, the elite theorists, to the extent that they advocate for anything at all, talk about an aristocracy of the talents. In other words, a meritocracy; a system which allows the most talented people into the ruling class. They argue that that system would be superior to systems that artificially lock out people of talent from the ruling class. And in fact, if you read Mosca, he says that if you look at the old Chinese system, they had a way of accepting talented people into the ruling class, even though there was an emperor. Elite theorists also argue that it is a weakness in hereditary systems that they do not do this. In a hereditary system, you can have an idiot king and things like that, and this is a problem.

So to the extent that elite theorists advocate for anything, they just say that if you look historically, these systems tend to have a problem of having a too restricted ruling class. So, the ruling class needs to be adaptive enough to absorb talent from the pool of the ruled.

[The Ottoman Empire, which ruled Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Macedonia from 1459 until the early 19th century would take promising young Christian men from all conquered regions back to Constantinople to serve in the administration or the Ottoman military. This practice was called the Devshirme. It involved forced conversion to Islam.

Daniel, from Daniel and the Lion’s Den fame, was a talented Jew recruited by the Achaemenid Persian regime under King Darius. Jealousy about this foreigner and non-coreligionist being given an important role in the administration was the reason King Darius was tricked into having to put Daniel in the lion’s den overnight. When Daniel survived this ordeal by divine intervention, Darius then took his revenge on those who had wanted to get rid of Daniel by throwing them and their families to the lions who immediately ate them.]

Lindsay, having falsely attributed a prescriptive element to elite theory, then goes on to claim that those who talk about elite theory are really trying to promote themselves as the new elite:

that the whole purpose of elite theory is to say that we need to be the new elite. That is just not the case at all. Elite theory is a descriptive, quasi-scientific empirical method of looking at the mechanics of power; the logic of power, and then using that as a way of looking at politics and power today. Elite theory can also be used to look at politics and power historically as well, and it does provide all sorts of illuminating insights, but it is a descriptive and analytical tool. It is not prescriptive or proscriptive (what should be done and what should not be done).

Machiavelli’s number one maxim was, “I write as things are, not as they ought to be.” Then we get to the crux of where Lindsay’s video falls flat for me which was when he was talking about America and the American Constitution and the founding fathers and saying, “Well elite theory is anti-American.” To talk about elite theory; that the organized minority rule over the disorganized mass, goes against the ideology of the American experiment as he calls it. Now this gets to the crux of the matter, because if you understand elite theory properly they are making a much stronger claim. They say essentially that democracy is impossible. Those who claim to rule in the name of the people are lying. This a delusion. That is the populist delusion. The idea that the people are actually ruling rather than the ruling class is a lie, and what Mosca, Pareto and Michels do in their books is they show you all of the ways in which the iron law of oligarchy tends to prevail. They show you the ways in which dissident energies are contained by the system. They show you the ways in which capital P power generally is able to outmaneuver the rival castles as I call them, as do the later works, like James Burnham’s Managerial Revolution and Machiavelli’s The Prince and Bertrand de Jouvenel is another person I talk about. Burnham and Jouvenel are not typically thought of as the classical elite theorists, but they built on those ideas later on. There is Sam Francis as well. What they are showing is that any system that claims that it is ruling in the name of the people tends to be lying about that fact.

At the start of The Populist Delusion, I cite a statistic from a Chicago quantitative study across 1779 different laws passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, which showed zero correlation whatsoever with the wishes of the people. Voters seldom, if ever, get truly what they voted for. What Mosca says is that it is not really accurate to say that the people voted a certain person into power. It is more accurate to say that that person has themselves put into power by their friends and when it comes to big mass democracies, power is concentrated in the media, in newspapers, in the people who are able to fund campaigns, in moneymen, in lobby groups and so on.

So, when people talk about the ruling class in America, we need to look at things like banking groups. Lindsay refers to the Clintons and the Bushes, and people like Klaus Schwab and Davos. But, there is a whole cluster of people constituting a ruling class. There are these individuals in Davos, but there are those also in investment banks and elsewhere; the funders of the Democratic party and the Republican party. They are not “the people.” They are the organized minority. They are the ruling class, and they are the ones who have a habit of getting their own way; groups like the defense contractors and the military-industrial complex. The American people did not want any of these things and yet they got them.

A lot of the things that have happened in American history were not voted for. They were either passed by judicial activism by various different judges, or Supreme Court rulings, or Congress passing these massive pork stuffed bills; a lot of other things, like Woke. All of these things come from organized minorities. It is not always the same organized minority. There can be different ones at different times and places who are getting their way over the disorganized mass. So, what the elite theorists are saying is that the fundamental dream of the American Constitution is just a line. Saying “the will of the people” is no different from a medieval king saying, “I rule in the name of divine right.” It is just what Mosca calls a political formula. “BS BS BS therefore I rule.” This is fundamentally what all those lines are and what democracy is. Democracy is particularly good at hiding this fact. It is particularly good at allowing enough quote unquote “normal” people into the ruling class to renew the ruling class and to give a semblance of upwards mobility.

You could say this is an advantage of democracy. Another advantage of democracy is the fact that so many people believe that when they cast a vote there is a genuine link between that vote and an actual outcome. But, we have seen so many times politicians just openly lie in this country [the UK]. The people voted for Boris Johnson. They voted to take back control of the borders with Brexit. However, Boris Johnson promptly flooded the country with more immigrants than in the entire history of England from 1066 to now. Boris Johnson let in more than six million people in five years, or something ridiculous. [The UK has 68 million people]. Nobody voted for that and yet this is what the ruling class did.

So, Lindsay’s point misses the mark because he has not grasped what elite theory is saying. Elite theory is not saying it is bad to have the desire of the interests of the ruled registered by the ruling class. It is not saying that the dream of democracy is bad per se. Just that it is impossible, due to the mechanics of power, for true mass rule to prevail. Even if people rise up as an inchoate mob, sooner or later a leader must emerge for any progress to be made. Consider the analogy of an army: a rabble of a thousand people against one hundred well-trained men led by a captain. Who wins? The hundred trained men win ten times out of ten. Elite theorists argue that, with the best will in the world, power always consolidates around an organized minority. Robert Michels, who was part of the German Social Democrats—a democratic party opposed to World War I—witnessed this firsthand. As soon as his party gained power, they betrayed their base and supported the war, demonstrating the “iron law of oligarchy” once again.

James Lindsay gave a superficial summary of elite theory and ended with a warning: anyone discussing elite theory should be treated with caution. In his video, he spent most of his time talking about Marxism, Lenin, and Vanguardism. While Marxists recognized the need for an organized minority to rule over the disorganized mass, it is inaccurate to equate Marxist vanguardism with elite theory. In fact, Marxists explicitly rejected elite theory for several reasons.

First, classic Marxism is centered on class struggle, identifying the capitalists as the ruling class because they own the means of production. Marxists critiqued elite theory for being too universal; elite theorists sought a single theory for all systems, while Marxists offered a specific critique of capitalism and the capitalist class. They argued that elite theorists failed to focus on ownership of the means of production, which is central to Marxism. Elite theorists, on the other hand, argued that all systems gravitate towards rule by an organized minority, regardless of ownership.

James Burnham’s “Managerial Revolution” introduced the idea that power could be severed from ownership. In modern capitalism, asset managers or the expert class like BlackRock control vast resources without owning them. Larry Fink does not personally own BlackRock’s trillions in assets; he manages them. The same elite theory principles apply: passive shareholders are ruled by the organized minority of asset managers. Decisions about those assets—such as funding ESG initiatives and the Woke agenda—are made on behalf of shareholders, just as politicians make decisions on behalf of voters. Thus, democracy in practice functions like any other system: a top-down triangle with elites at the top.

Previously, tycoons like Henry Ford or J.P. Morgan held concentrated power as sole owners. Now, when companies go public and many people own shares, power shifts to the managers—the CEO and the managerial class. This is applied elite theory, updated for the twentieth century. James Lindsay overlooks this crucial point.

The second Marxist objection to elite theory is that it draws attention to the power of Marxists themselves when they are in charge. Marxists claim that capitalist rule is bad, but their own rule is good. Elite theory, however, highlights that Marxist regimes are also governed by an organized minority. Communist states often styled themselves as “people’s republics” or “democracies,” claiming to rule in the name of the people. In reality, decisions were made by a small group, just as in any other system. Elite theorists argue that this is not unique to the USSR; it is equally true of liberal democracies like the USA, Britain, or France. They are as totalitarian, top-down, and undemocratic as the USSR. James Lindsay might not be happy with this claim, given his support for liberal democracy, but he knows that much of what we have witnessed concerning wokery and global governance is against the quote unquote “will” of the people from his own work. So, I do not know why he would be against the idea.

Despite ideals set by the US Constitution, it is difficult to argue that the American experiment delivered true democracy for the people, given how often unpopular decisions are made by organized minorities. We have seen this in our own lifetimes. So many things that were retconned after the fact and things that were unpopular at the time, were brought about by an organized minority. Things that were later written up as if they have the support of everybody. (I believe AA has in mind things like school busing and the forced desegregation of schools).

The third Marxist critique, articulated by Antonio Gramsci in his “Prison Notebooks,” is that elite theory does not sufficiently account for ideology. Gramsci and later theorists like Paul Gottfried, Sam Francis, Louis Althusser, and Noam Chomsky explored how consent is manufactured in mass democracies through media manipulation and propaganda. (See Edward Bernay’s book “Propaganda.”) While Mosca, Pareto, and Michels mentioned newspapers, they wrote before the rise of mass media, television, and radio. Updating elite theory for the twentieth century requires considering the role of ideology and consent manufacturing.

In summary, it is inaccurate to claim that Marxists accepted elite theory. They explicitly rejected it for the reasons outlined above and never recognized Mosca, Pareto, or Michels as their own. After World War II, the liberal establishment also sought to reject elite theory in the name of liberal democracy, though many critiques failed to address its core arguments. Interestingly, some elements of the “deep state,” such as the Rand Corporation, Hoover Institute, and neoconservatives, adopted aspects of elite theory, as well as Carl Schmidt, as did some leftists at various times. So, it is not as though there was a blanket rejection of elite theory after World War II. People were writing on elite theory in the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, and even into the ‘90s and basically accepting its basic tenants. This is because elite theory is almost impossible to deny; its principles are as fundamental as the law of supply and demand in economics. The theory is morally neutral and descriptive, not prescriptive. Most elite theorists have not advocated for specific systems based on elite theory. James Lindsay conflates different ideas, such as Curtis Yarvin’s pro-monarchy arguments, which are not rooted in classic elite theory. And neither is Hans-Hermann Hoppe – the German-American economist associated with the Austrian school of economics, anarcho-capitalism, right-wing libertarianism and opposition to democracy.

When people discuss elite theory, they are not necessarily advocating for themselves to become the new elite. While some, like Vivek Ramaswamy, have claimed to represent a new elite, following James Burnham’s concept of new elites being cycled in, almost nobody has come to power as a self-identified elite theorist. Tony Blair is one example of a member of the elite who understood elite theory. Possibly Mussolini did. He read the elite theorists. But, this is somewhat incidental because whether they knew elite theory or did not know elite theory, they are still going to be engaging in those ABCs of power. Understanding elite theory is not required to participate in power dynamics, just as one does not need to understand economics to buy a sandwich. Elite theorists simply describe the mechanics of power, which often go unrecognized by those involved.

The concept of the organized minority is not controversial; it is simply how politics works. Mancur Olson, an excellent American economist and political scientist, wrote “The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups,” (1965) detailing how organized minorities can prevail in democracies because they are focused on a single issue, while the masses are dispersed and less organized. Throughout history, single-issue groups have often succeeded because the general public is too fragmented to oppose them effectively. This explains why organized minorities tend to get their way in democracies.

In this country, you could say there is currently a Pakistani organized minority who have managed to get their way on all sorts of issues because they are focused on that one thing and everybody else has got hundred different things that they care about. And none of them are organized enough to do anything about it. Another example would be Nigel Farage who really cared about leaving the EU and actually managed to get his way in the long run. And he did it by being part of an organized minority who cared about that one thing. The public is seldom, if ever, all united on one thing, so that is why the organized minority tends to get its own way, especially in a democracy.

For more on this topic, the author recommends his book, “The Populist Delusion.”

——————————————————————————————————–

From another video, Parvini states that Socrates represents the end of the Athenian hegemony. Asking questions that challenge the most fundamental Athenian beliefs; demanding justifications for basic ideas, spells the end of the regime. Homer marks the beginning and Socrates and Plato represent what Vico calls the Barbarism of Reflection.

Religion starts out as tribal. For instance, Jews, and no one else, are the Chosen People and God has a special interest in them alone. Barbarian tribes have “asabiya” – a strong group identity and self-belief – a fanaticism and a local religion. The Muslims defeated the Byzantine empire and the Persians through frightening conviction. They were violent and determined. But, once the barbarians have won, if they are too successful, they now have an empire to run. They need an administration. Lions who rule by force and fear are supplanted by foxes who use cunning. Since the empire covers multiple cultures and religions, a new universalist religion arises with a moralizing god who is watching you at all times. Universal religion does not generate the conquering culture. The conquering culture gives rise to the universalist religion. All civilizations become a victim of their successes. They become soft and used to luxury. They become liberal and humanitarian. Towards the end, you get the reign of quantity in the shape of egalitarianism, democracy (maybe), and utilitarianism. Each stage of the cycle generates its own types of people. If you are born in the Winter of civilization, then you cannot have the characteristics of the Spring. Nobody goes from playing their Xbox to becoming Genghis Khan.

Conservatives always lose because either an empire is expanding, or it and its associated civilization is in the process of collapse. The existence of “conservatives” at all, indicate that the end is nigh. Genghis Khan’s barbarians have no intellectuals and they have no conservatives. Neither do they have liberals. Conservatism arises in response to liberalism and liberalism is the inevitable product of soft living, money and luxury. We can be sentimental and soft-hearted. Women and children are especially protected, but we also lose our taste for violence.

Conservatives want to preserve the universalist religion and think this will save us, but they are mistaken. The universalist religion is not what got the civilization started in the first place. It was a necessary feature of a certain stage of civilization and it marks the beginning of the end. The civilization has become so large and complex that it needs fox-like bureaucrats running the show. At a certain point, intellectuals start questioning everything and we slide into decadence with the best people lacking all conviction. We lose our self-belief. Women stop having children as a result of their “emancipation” and access to jobs and education and in an acceleration of decline, softness, femininity, looking out for the lost lamb supplants manly virtues of strength, courage, and ambition.

A medical emergency was reported on April 4, 2025, at the Cherry Hill Women’s Center, located at 500 North Kings Highway in New Jersey. The incident involved a 37-year-old woman undergoing an abortion procedure.

The Emergency

According to public records, a staffer from the abortion facility placed a 911 call around 11:00 A.M. While the official 911 audio was heavily redacted, it features an unusual and notable moment where the abortionist suddenly asks the caller for the phone in order to speak directly with the dispatcher. Abortionists rarely take care of 911 calls themselves. This may be an indicator that the situation was very serious. The abortionist also requested that emergency medical personnel enter the facility through the back entrance.

Though details of the emergency were redacted in the 911 audio, Operation Rescue obtained radio dispatch recordings that confirm hemorrhaging was at least one complication that required emergency transport. Hemorrhaging is a very common and dangerous abortion complication that can quickly become life-threatening. The patient’s current condition is unknown.

Click Like if you are pro-life to like the LifeNews Facebook page!

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.10"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));

The Abortionist

During the 911 call, the abortionist identifies herself as Lisa Perriera, a late-term abortionist who apparently has already killed one patient: 22-year-old Lakisha Wilson in 2014. At that time, Perriera was an abortionist at the notorious Cleveland abortion mill, Preterm.. Lakisha Wilson also developed a hemorrhage during an abortion. In 2015, after obtaining Wilson’s autopsy, Operation Rescue reported:

According to official documents, including abortion records, EMT notes, hospital charts, an autopsy report, and 911 records all in Operation Rescue’s possession, Wilson began to hemorrhage during her abortion on March 21 and her blood pressure began to drop. Instead of stopping the abortion and tending to her patient, Perierra continued the abortion until Wilson went into hemorrhagic shock, suffered cardiac arrest, and stopped breathing. . . . CPR was started and she was shocked once, but those efforts were not successful at restarting her heart or respiration. Nine minutes later, a 911 call for help was placed.

Though no criminal charges were filed against Perriera, Operation Rescue and other pro-life groups called for a criminal investigation and disciplinary action, providing solid evidence.

Instead of justice, a year later the abortion cartel presented Perreira with the honorary “George Tiller” award which “recognizes a physician early in their career who provides abortions while demonstrating leadership and courage, even in the face of adversity.”

“It’s not courageous to let your patient’s heart stop and then wait nine more minutes before calling 911,” says Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. “And it’s not leadership to still be sending women with uncontrollable bleeding to the emergency room ten years later. All Perriera should have ever been awarded was a revocation of her medical license.”

The Aftermath

There is no way of knowing just how many women Perreira has sent to the emergency room or, even worse, the morgue. Operation Rescue has launched a full investigation into this new case and will be following up with the appropriate authorities.

“We are deeply concerned about what happened at Cherry Hill Women’s Center,” adds Sarah Neely, Chief Operating Officer of Operation Rescue. “When a patient is rushed to the hospital due to a hemorrhage, it raises serious questions about the facility’s emergency preparedness and overall safety protocols. Women deserve better than secrecy and redacted recordings. Women deserve full transparency and accountability — especially when the abortionist in question has already killed one patient through complete incompetence and carelessness. How many other injuries or deaths have gone unreported? How many women remain silent out of fear?”

At this time, local emergency services and Cherry Hill Women’s Center have not commented on the specifics of the April 4th incident. Additional details may emerge pending further review and possible state oversight.

LifeNews Note: This article was originally published by Operation Rescue, a leading pro-life, Christian activist organization dedicated to exposing abortion abuses, demanding enforcement, saving innocent lives, and building an abortion-free America. The author, Ricardo Pinedo, writes for Operation Rescue.

The post Abortionist Who Killed Woman in Botched Abortion Sends Another Woman to ER appeared first on LifeNews.com.