This is an excellent review of Dreher's, Live Not by Lies and I broadly agree with the sentiments of the author:
Scrutonism, of which as you can see Dreher has a bad case, is a call to be a beautiful loser. But you can’t inspire anyone with a program that offers being a loser. People cowering under fire want a plan; they want a leader to point not only to what Christ would do, but how that will help them, and more importantly their children, come out the other side, cleansed and victorious. What Dreher offers instead is a call to martyrdom. This is theologically sound, but not politically.With regard to "theological soundness", I'm not so sure. While it may be that in certain circumstances martyrdom may be the only option for the Christian, in others it may be the totally wrong choice.
One of the things that I'm interested is in the relationship between Caritas and Evil (Malum). Particularly, does Caritas have the right to push back and not merely suffer it? It's an interesting question as I feel that the Buddhist drift in Christianity over the last few hundred years has all but deligitimised it. It would be extremely difficult to visualise the current Pope, or even JPII for that matter, if capable of time travel, blessing the soldiers prior to the battles of Vienna or Lepanto. Yet their contemporaries of the time would have had no problem in doing so. Although this is no proof, there does seem to be strong correlation between the decline of the Christian religion and Buddhist drift.
Just saying.
Note: I'd just add some reservations about alliances with "sinners" of various types. Materialists of any kind--even conservative ones--are generally bad news to Right politics.
