Posted on 10/27/2020 7:06:52 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Only the left can turn down the heat in the culture war, because it is the left that has cultural power in America. Our cultural institutions, from higher education to legacy media to the entertainment industry to the tech industry, are run by people whose politics range from left-liberal to socialist. Even sports, business, and finance are increasingly left-wing, especially on cultural issues—Black Lives Matter is brought to you by Wall Street and Big Business waving a rainbow flag on ESPN.
Leftists are the culture war aggressors. This is part of their self-image, in which they are fighting for liberation from the oppressive strictures of traditional society. Thus, they are always discovering new limits to overturn. This is why in a few years we went from debating same-sex marriage to shutting down dissent over transgender children, and from legislatures rethinking the prominence of Confederate monuments to mobs tearing down statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and even Abraham Lincoln.
To be a conservative in the culture war is thus to fight the long defeat, punctuated by the occasional grueling effort at a counterattack. In contrast, the left can de-escalate the culture war whenever it wants. Either the radicals could chill out a bit, or the moderates could stand up to them.
What we see, however, is radicalism intensifying across institutions and the moderates caving. The same dynamic has played out politically. Joe Biden has moved left on everything from abortion to crime, and he won’t even renounce the court-packing schemes being pushed by the activist base of his party.
They don’t want tolerance, they want dominance. Once in power, they require the rest of us to affirm their orthodoxies (e.g., a woman can have a penis). The menace of the left holding unified cultural and political power is therefore a large part of why conservatives are willing to support President Trump, despite his sins.
The political party that won’t stop harassing the literal Little Sisters of the Poor should not wonder at religious conservatives refusing to hand the presidency to them. Democrats are eager to unleash government against Christian institutions, from charities to hospitals to schools, and they have delighted in using lockdowns to treat us as second-class citizens—such as by privileging slot machines over the sacraments.
It is not just conservative Christians the left threatens. New York politicians who praised and participated in enormous Black Lives Matter protests have targeted much smaller Jewish gatherings. Nor is it only the religious who are threatened by the left’s cultural aggression: when radical feminist lesbians are teaming up with the Heritage Foundation, the cultural revolution has gone very far indeed. No one is safe, because the left’s cultural radicalism is always discovering new forms of oppression to overthrow — today’s ally might be denounced tomorrow.
Thus, the list of offenses against woke ideology is ever-expanding. For example, a professor at Ohio State University was recently forced to abase himself for writing that college football might be good for the country right now. College football, he was informed, is racist, so he promptly groveled and repented of his sins.
This struggle session cannot be dismissed as another wacky tale of higher ed gone mad, because we know that what conquers the campus today will be coming for the world tomorrow. Even here, the apologizing academic was not some poor adjunct at a minor liberal arts college, but a chaired professor at a major Midwestern state school.
Dragging a professor for saying it might be good for the nation to be able to watch some college football is not a movement for social justice. It is a group of witch-hunters desperate to find a witch because the rituals of denunciation and punishment give them a sense of meaning in life.
If it is a truism that the current cultural radicalism is more akin to a religious revival than a political movement, that is because it is true. This ideology is not about policy, but it arises as an incoherent response to the givenness of existence and the sinfulness of the human race.
We are born into a world that is unjust and unfair, and that often does not give us what we want (if we even know what we want). Today’s cultural radicals have been deprived of the cultural and spiritual resources to cope with this and to order their lives well amidst this fallen world.
This is why each of the left’s culture war victories is followed by a new offensive. No matter what political or cultural triumphs they attain, there is always cause for more dissatisfaction.
The institutions they control, from education to entertainment to the Democratic Party, become vehicles for permanent cultural revolution, and no compromises or concessions will satisfy them. For example, left-wing activists are demanding court-packing only a few months after Justices John Roberts (twice) and Neil Gorsuch (once) joined with the court’s Democrat-appointed judges to give them huge culture war wins in the Bostock and June Medical cases.
This shows the foolishness of the proposal, suggested by self-flagellating conservatives such as David French, that Republicans pass up the chance to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. The idea that some grand self-sacrificial gesture will heal the culture-war breach is deluded. It is politics as the third act of a romantic comedy.
In reality, conservatives cannot de-escalate, let alone end, the culture war. Even abject surrender would not buy us mercy; we would not be left alone to live in peace. So, until the left is willing to back off, we have no choice but to continue to fight.
The ultimate "grand self-sacrificial gesture" in all of human history was accomplished by Our Lord, King, and God -- Jesus the Christ.
Pray? Of course ...
But, prayer is the FUEL for ACTION.
IN +CHRISTO REGE
When dealing with the Left, you are dealing with diseased minds. There is no compromise or accomadation. They can never compromise or be placated. They must always be confronted and harshly defeated.
Been my tagline for awhile.
Give no quarter to the Left. We must fight to the bitter end.
A compromise with evil results in evil!
This is why each of the left’s culture war victories is followed by a new offensive. No matter what political or cultural triumphs they attain, there is always cause for more dissatisfaction.
We see this happening in the whole area of “LGBT” peoples.
Years ago, a major battle was the battle over homosexual marriage.
Now that they won that battle, you might have thought that their lives were complete. But that’s not what happened.
In the years since the Supreme Court imposed homosexual marriage on America, these “LGBT” activists have moved on to alleged discrimination against “transgender” people, the “T” within “LGBT”.
We have seen major court actions and exposure of “transgender” people since the court decision on homosexual marriage. They moved the goal posts, so that having won the fight over marriage, they moved to other aspects of the “LGBT” agenda.
So I would agree with the general point, that these culture wars will never end. As we see in the area of people with gender identity issues, sexual problems, etc., winning one battle simply sets the stage for the next one.
Seeing how Trump has changed the game with the Palestinians, he seems to be the right person to change the game with the left. Pray that we give him a Republican Senate.
Exactly. Appeasement doesn’t work. If you surrender to the evil left, you will need to go all the way to supporting and celebrating them or you will die. That’s just the way it is.
Reminds me of a golden oldie: the Democrats want to destroy the country; the Republicans are willing to meet them halfway.
What passes as the “Right” is utterly ignorant about the nature of power and how to use it.
bookmark
Conservatism lost it’s meaning because of capitulation.
The GOP is hardly a party in these days because of it.
Trump has become the party because he fights, the wimpy GOP just goes along reluctantly for the most part.
My hope is a new party forms of the fighters and splits from the wimps while the democrat party withers away to non existence.
This will be the new two party system.
The Trump Constitutional conservative party verses the Romney globalist previously dem party.
Compromising with the left on any issue what-so-ever is no different than compromising with a gang of homicidal rapists over access to your family members.
That is why I have been saying for many years that the lesser of two evils voting strategy will always result in more evil. The current democratic party stance on issues should be adequate proof of that claim. Seems to have effected the elite GOP as well.
I'm old enough to remember how it started.
"We just want the government out of our bedrooms..."
Way back in the late 70's or early 80's.
And look at us now. Headed for normalizing pedophilia.
Keep yer powder dry.. d:^)
Agreed but the Republican party leadership thinks if they suck donkey dick with a little more vigor the Democrats will agree with them.
“The issue is not the issue. The issue is the revolution.”
“It was 1969. Kate invited me to join her for a gathering at the home of her friend, Lila Karp. They called the assemblage a “consciousness-raising-group,” a typical communist exercise, something practiced in Maoist China. We gathered at a large table as the chairperson opened the meeting with a back-and-forth recitation, like a Litany, a type of prayer done in Catholic Church. But now it was Marxism, the Church of the Left, mimicking religious practice:
“Why are we here today?” she asked.
“To make revolution,” they answered.
“What kind of revolution?” she replied.
“The Cultural Revolution,” they chanted.
“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” she demanded.
“By destroying the American family!” they answered.
“How do we destroy the family?” she came back.
“By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.
“And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied.
“By taking away his power!”
“How do we do that?”
“By destroying monogamy!” they shouted.
“How can we destroy monogamy?”
Their answer left me dumbstruck, breathless, disbelieving my ears. Was I on planet earth? Who were these people?
“By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality!” they resounded.
They proceeded with a long discussion on how to advance these goals by establishing The National Organization of Women. It was clear they desired nothing less than the utter deconstruction of Western society. The upshot was that the only way to do this was “to invade every American institution. Every one must be permeated with ‘The Revolution’”: The media, the educational system, universities, high schools, K-12, school boards, etc.; then, the judiciary, the legislatures, the executive branches and even the library system. It fell on my ears as a ludicrous scheme, as if they were a band of highly imaginative children planning a Brinks robbery; a lark trumped up on a snowy night amongst a group of spoiled brats over booze and hashish...”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.