Steve Bannon: What Kind of Values Voter?

Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon was a featured speaker at the 2017 Values Voters Summit in Washington DC. This is mostly a conservative Christian group. Following up on my earlier post, I find myself wondering what values Bannon advocated. I’ll base this post on Bannon’s comment, in his Values Voters Summit Speech, that, “Right now, it’s a season of war against a GOP establishment.” He called fellow Republican Sen. Bob Corker “a real piece of work” for criticizing President Trump. He threatened Mitch McConnell’s job. Since Bannon talked about his values very little, other than vaguely endorsing “Judeo-Christian” values, I have some pointed questions and comments. Let’s call this “values clarification,” just like in the 1960’s, because we can’t talk values until we know which Judeo-Christian values we are talking about. Can we? 

1.  Bannon repeatedly used foul language during the speech. This was really a speech to values voters? Why did values voters applaud and cheer a speech loaded with profane language? My church-going parents would have been horrified to hear such language on the street, let alone at a Values Voters Summit. Would it not be good for conservative Christians to talk like conservative Christians? For credibility's sake?

2.  Bannon repeatedly praised his audience as good people, carefully not saying what was good about them. That was slippery, but smart. As soon as he got specific, he might have lost some of them. Being vague about his values let his audience assume (probably wrongly) that he shared their values. 

3. Unlike, say, Richard Spencer, Bannon insisted in this speech that he favored “economic nationalism,” not ethnic nationalism. Part of the alt-right’s idea is to repackage offensive ideas under a technical-sounding name, thus making them sound less awful. Still, although Bannon insisted that the alt-right is not about racism, this lacks credibility. Bannon made his lack of credibility clear when he took time to attack the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “hate group.” Maybe he was upset that they had called the alt-right a hate group. Let us remember the Southern Baptist Convention’s 2017 resolution about the alt-right: 


WHEREAS, Racism and white supremacy are, sadly, not extinct but present all over the world in various white supremacist movements, sometimes known as 'white nationalism' or 'alt-right'; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention, meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, June 13–14, 2017, decry every form of racism, including alt-right white supremacy, as antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  


The convention passed their resolution, but is the evangelical flock listening?

4. Let me propose a hypothetical Christian values voters summit based on the Sermon on the Mount: blessed are the poor, love your neighbor as yourself, bless those who persecute you, and so forth. Instead of blessing those people who Bannon thought were persecuting him, he attacked people (like Corker and McConnell) who supported his views, but not strongly enough to please him. In his speech, Bannon seemed more interested in fighting people with whom he disagreed than in uniting the nation. He was even fighting with people who mostly agreed with him, Still, that kind of polarization is typical of radical speakers. I would encourage Mr. Bannon to make his values clear, and to show how he believes they are consistent with the Judeo-Christian values that he mentioned but neglected to explain.

Soon, I will deliver my promised post about polarization. 

White House photo

Follow-up: here is the promised post discussing polarization.