Steve Deace Pussyfoots on Dave Rubin

In a spirit of transparency, I have casually interacted with Rogers on Blaze Chat and I praised him for this juicy take. Unfortunately, Steve Deace would sell on Rogers giving an explanation he acknowledged would upset numerous fans. Before digging into the meat, this is a classic example of Deace employing a “Jesus Juke” in which the name of Christ is invoked to avoid discussion on a difficult subject. It is adjacent to the “Gospel Juke” in which a person answers a question by saying “just preach the gospel.” Simply put, it is the equivalent of a “Sunday School Answer” except on a salient issue. Both obfuscate what Scripture really teaches in favor of the universal answer.

In doing so, Deace invoked Matthew 22:1-14, The Parable of the Marriage Feast:

Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come. Again he sent out other slaves saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited, “Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast.”’ But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them. But the king was enraged, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests.

“But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Deace references this parable in the context of the Culture War. In Deace’s explanation, church pastors were the guests who were invited to the wedding who he contends were largely absent in the fight. In his metaphor, the church forfeited its ground in the culture that it created. Rubin is the guest who was not initially invited but ended up attending. To Deace, Rubin has taken bolder stands in the culture war than those in his church and on TBN church networks.

The original context of this parable is the coming of Christ. The Jews would reject him despite being the “chosen people” while the gentiles embraced Christ. The destruction caused by the armies alludes to the future judgment upon Jerusalem and the temple Christ prophesized. Yet even if we apply Deace’s context to the parable, he is still inaccurate within his own framework. Rubin would actually be the guest who attended the wedding wearing improper attire. This guest insulted the King by attempting to receive the pleasures of the feast while violating the rules of decorum (improper attire). This slight goes deeper than the others because within the context of the parable, the guest would have clothed by the King’s benevolence. Because this guest rejected the King’s garments, he was removed from the party. That is Dave Rubin, whose homosexual lifestyle is antithetical to conservatism.

Deace proceeds to strawman that Peterson and Rubin are defending freedom more than the effeminate local church pastor. That Rubin and Peterson have large platforms does not mean they are active in the fight, it just means they have higher status than the laity. Speaking in front of a camera is not taking a stand. Working on a campaign, whether for a political office or ballot issue, participating in ministry and activism, attending school board meetings are all taking stands to some degree—not hosting a podcast.

That many churches have succumbed to effeminacy at the pulpit is evidenced that these are people and institutions in league with the Spirit of the Age. This goes back to the wedding guest who refuses the King’s proper attire being amongst the attendees only that they are numerous in this generation. In any era, it does not negate the work of the faithful remnant.

Dave Rubin vs Blair White

After his commercial break, a listener responded by claiming that Deace is being inconsistent by defending Rubin while outright rejecting Blair White, who is the online tranny of choice for the right. Clarifications often have a way of muddying the waters even worse than the initial statement, and Deace’s response proceeds to further obfuscate the issue brought forth by Rogers.

Deace compares Rubin to himself, only that there is a fictional video of him pleasuring himself to pornography while discussing right wing talking points. In this hypothetical scenario, Deace still makes good arguments about auditing the Fed and other conservative talking points while pulling a Toobin on screen. In this scenario, Deace argues that one cannot disconnect the sin at the forefront even if he were making superb arguments. This is the difference between Rubin and Blair White. Blair White is a dude who has breast implants so therefore his sin is prominent and at the forefront of his content while Rubin’s homosexual lifestyle is not.

Where Deace’s argument falls flat is that Rubin’s abnormal lifestyle choice is at the forefront of his content. He did a twenty-minute video announcing that he and his male partner were expecting two children who were conceived through surrogacy. Gay or straight, surrogacy is a sin and it must be condemned. It procures children as commodities through rented wombs. It results in the murder of discarded embryos and storage of embryos numbering in the millions. It is not pro-life. It is evil.

If a prominent conservative woman were to procure an abortion, would not that woman’s sin be at the forefront of her content even though she did not livestream her abortion while pontificating conservatism. Should not that woman be rejected for being an obvious grifter? Are not her actions antithetical to conservatism of which her income is derived?

Moreover, I would contend that Rubin is otherwise untalented and only has a platform on The Blaze because he checks a particular box relating to his sex life. It is basically Glenn Beck’s way of owning the libs by platforming a former Young Turks member who no longer had a home on the left, so he switched teams. He spouts years old conservative talking points as if they are breaking news, making him perhaps the most overrated figure in Conservative Inc.

Christ or Chaos

Despite encompassing their primary audience, Conservative Inc. has little interest in platforming Christian Conservatives. Fox News is largely derived of New York “conservatives” who are disconnected from their flyover country viewers. They pander Christianity, but they do not bear the fruit. The Daily Wire is better in that they have Matt Walsh and Megan Basham, but they largely function as gatekeepers to the right, platforming centrist liberals like Jordan Peterson and neoconservatives like Shapiro, while being silent on the poisonous jabs and stolen election—two issues which would lose their envious Facebook access. These platforms are merely interested in lucrative gains to be had in the political soap opera, not cultural transformation.

So when Alexander Rogers poignantly asks “What is a conservative?” through the Daily Wire’s promotion of Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin discussing gay parenting, it harkens back to the idea that we either have Christ of Chaos. If conservatism does not stand for Christian values, then what does it stand for? If a conservative network distributes a conversation between two liberals on gay parenting, what is actually being conserved? These are just previous iterations of the same liberalism which imploded our culture. 

Steve Deace routinely espouses that we either will have Christ or Chaos. Why have a soft spot for Dave Rubin?