Patriarchal theocratic white nationalism is risen
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This story (gift link) is about the mainstreaming of on the American right wing of the idea that giving women the vote was a bad idea, and that voting rights should be limited to male heads of household, and ideally Christian male heads of households.
Just how fringe is this idea? I think a fair answer is, a lot less fringe than it was ten or even five years ago. The Secretary of Defense belongs to a church that advocates it. Several of the most prominent and influential people in the right wing political ecosphere, such as Nick Fuentes, do as well.
To hear the couples at King’s Way that February Sunday tell it, patriarchal wives are freer than others, sheltered from the burdens of decision-making and political participation.
“I trust my husband. I know that he’s a good man, I know he’s a godly man,” said Tara Caldwell, 42. She, her husband and five sons were visiting from Las Vegas. They plan to move later this year to join King’s Way.
Patriarchy and theocracy are classic manifestations of authoritarian psychology, although of course authoritarianism can exist without them. But in America in 2026, both are essential components of MAGA ideology. For the people who make up its ideological core, Make America Great Again means Make America a White Christian Patriarchy, and denying this is, well, denial.
“A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants,” Mr. Wilson [Pete Hegseth’s spiritual guide] has written. “A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.”
Adherents to biblical patriarchy scorn complementarianism as a sop to feminism. The result — weak, watered-down patriarchy — leads to marital chaos, they say.
The Clarkes’ first year of marriage, before adopting patriarchy, was “the most tumultuous year of our life together,” Mr. Clarke said, describing fights over budgeting, job changes, when to start having children and whether to baptize them. “It was, ‘Who’s in charge?’” he added. “‘Where does the buck stop?’”
Embracing wifely submission, he said, established harmony.
Ms. Clarke’s role as homemaker, mother and “good helpmate” to her husband, she said, makes for “a very simple, beautiful life.”
King’s Way couples portray their way of life as a return to a better time of white picket fences and whole families. They cite the 1950s as inspiration, or the 1880s, or even Puritan America — before the upheavals of feminism, birth control, no-fault divorce, legalized abortion and other policies that granted women rights and independence. Patriarchy supporters would like to see them rolled back.
A big mistake what could be called unconscious liberalism makes is to assume that the government can and therefore should take a “neutral” attitude toward religious belief. This view is ultimately incoherent, because there can’t be anything “neutral” about the position that people should be free to practice their religion, as long as that religion doesn’t interfere with the ability of other people to practice their religion, or no religion. Theocratic ethno-nationalists like those portrayed in this article want to practice a religion that makes other religions, or no religion, unacceptable belief systems, at the very least in the public spherel, and perhaps in the private one as well. Telling them sorry, you can’t have that kind of government and society, and we’re going to stop you, violently if necessary, from having that kind of government and society, is not a “neutral” attitude toward their religious beliefs, because a neutral attitude toward religious belief is an oxymoron, even though it’s among other things Official Constitutional Law Doctrine.
Secular liberalism and theocratic nationalism are fundamentally incompatible, just as patriarchy and feminism are fundamentally incompatible, and white supremacy and ethnic pluralism are fundamentally incompatible. “Tolerance” of theocratic nationalism and patriarchy and white supremacy means: we will tolerate these things precisely to the extent they exercise no actual political power. Which is another way of saying that they can’t actually be tolerated in a liberal democracy.