That Evangelical God Botherer Madison Cawthorn was caught out with pictures of him engaging in behavior that would have dominated Fox News for a fortnight if a Democrat had done it is one of the least surprising stories of the year so far. Mr. Cocaine Orgies was always going to have a weird party side - the story of his ex-wife is fishy as hell - because hypocrisy is only surpassed by cruelty as the creed of the contemporary GOP.
Scott Lemieux is right. Cawthorn is perfectly free to engage in cross-dress play and get drunk (as long as he isn't endangering others). He is free to do so because of an emerging, let's call it, social liberalism that says, "You have the freedom to be you, as long as it doesn't cause safety problems for others." You can navigate ideas of gender fluidity, but you maybe shouldn't have weapons of war in your arsenal is kind of where modern progressivism is.
So much of modern "conservatism" is a combination of Evangelical and Patrimonial Authoritarianism. Obviously, Evangelism is interested in preserving or returning to a patriarchal society, but Patrimonialism is primarily a form of elite corruption that corrupts the state into a means to preference a few oligarchic leaders. That's why evangelical Christians (White ones anyway) lined up behind the comically immoral Donald Trump - a textbook Patrimonial strongman wannabe.
Cawthorn is an exemplar of dipshit "Christians" for whom the faith is really a cudgel to beat down people they don't like, all the while sinning in their own hypocritical ways.
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