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Tag: Progressive Politics

Daniel Greenfield Says Conservatives Should “Hurt” Liberals by Distorting Their Positions

Bruce Gerencser 11 Comments
owning the libs

Recently, Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, wrote an article titled The Decline and Fall of Woke for Front Page Magazine — a right-wing online rag published by David Horowitz.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Walking into the children’s section of a public library, I spotted a copy of ‘Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice’’. Published in 2020, it’s almost a cultural artifact because ‘woke’ has gone from a hip term for leftism to a battered conservative punching bag in the culture war.

….

By 2023, wokeness has come to mean leftist extremism. It’s most often used by Republicans and hardly ever by Democrats who act baffled at the idea that there was ever such a thing as wokeness. Much like ‘Defund the Police’, a set of sounds that once defined lefty culture, has been flushed down the memory hole and everyone is pretending they never heard of it.

….

What happened to ‘Woke’ is the same thing that once happened to ‘Liberal’. Conservatives seized on it and used it to sum up everything wrong with leftist extremism. Before long, no one wanted to identify as a liberal because it meant being seen as a lunatic fighting for sex ed for kids, free needles for addicts, political correctness in the office and surrendering to enemies.

….

Senator Bernie Sanders has spent most of his otherwise useless career trying to redeem the term ‘socialist’ in the United States. And recent polls show a growing approval for socialism among younger people. But, as the example of ‘Woke’ shows, that appreciation may not last long once conservatives turn whatever term the Left uses now into a political scarlet letter.

The destruction of wokeness within a matter of years shows why conservatives should not underestimate their cultural power. Barred by the media, censored by tech companies and shut out by the entertainment industry, conservatives were nevertheless able to take the hip new term that leftists had rebranded as and make it as toxic as yesterday’s radioactive waste.

….

When people think of wokeness, they no longer envision the BLM activists who used to appear on TV shows and on children’s books, they think of Gov. Ron DeSantis or an episode of FOX News. Republicans went to war on wokeness and in doing so, they appropriated it, they took the word and made it their own. Destroying the brand value of wokeness is not the same thing as defeating woke policies, but marketing is fundamental to leftist recruitment and expansion.

….

Conservatives, who operate in a counterculture, should remember that they have the power to hurt the Left. The decline and fall of wokeness is a demonstration of the fragility of leftist cultural power which commands budgets in the tens of billions of dollars, controls private and public institutions, yet is deeply resented and vulnerable to some pointed mockery.

Greenfield admits that “conservatives . . .. have the power to hurt the Left.” How can conservatives “hurt” the left? By honestly and openly debating their policies? By meeting them in the public square, armed with evidence and facts? Oh no, that’s not how it’s done, according to Greenfield. Instead, conservatives should hurt liberals/progressives/socialists — woke folk — by misstating and lying about their policies. The goal is not an honest exchange of ideas or an armed battle in the public square. Greenfield encourages disinformation, turning words such as liberal, progressive, socialism, woke, Black Lives Matter, and other terms into disparaging epithets.

Today, Ohioans voted on Issue 1 — an attempt by Republican legislators to send a November vote on legalizing abortion down to defeat. Currently, citizens can successfully pass initiatives or amend the Ohio Constitution by a fifty percent plus one vote. If Issue 1 passes, this percentage will rise to sixty percent. The goal, of course, is to stop the “baby murder” amendment in November.

Greenfield’s fellow conservatives have turned to outright lies to push “Vote Yes on Issue 1.” I’m not talking about little white lies. Big-ass lies meant to not only distort the facts about Issue 1 but also besmirch the character of those who oppose the issue. “Why, all their funding came from outside sources,” conservatives opined. Almost true, but what they don’t want voters to know is this:

Roughly $35 million has flowed to political groups aiming to influence Ohio’s August special election. That includes money for campaigns for or against the ballot measure raising the threshold for constitutional amendments, as well as several closely aligned organizations.

On both sides — those opposing Issue 1, those supporting it, and those technically fighting November’s reproductive rights amendment — the vast majority of funding came from out of state.

The campaigns

Issue 1’s proponents have consistently argued a higher threshold for passing state constitutional amendments will act as a deterrent.

“This is about empowering the people of Ohio to protect their constitution from out of state special interests that want to try to buy their way into our state’s founding document,” Secretary of State Frank LaRose insisted in a televised statewide debate last week. “I’m here to say the Ohio constitution is not for sale.”

Opponents have repeatedly argued back that nothing in the proposal actually limits out-of-state influence.

The yes campaign committee, Protect Our Constitution, raised a little more than $4.85 million according to its filing. Nearly all of it came from a single individual who lives out of state.

Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein donated a total of $4 million to the committee. The right-wing megadonor owns the Uline shipping and office supply company, and his grandfather and great-grandfather ran Schlitz brewing.

The largest contributions aside from Uihlein were $100,000 each from a PAC solely funded by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, and another connected with Ohio nursing homes. Other substantial contributions came in from Washington, D.C., Georgia and Tennessee. But less than $700,000, or just 14% of the total, came from Ohio donors.

Issue 1’s opponents are fundraising through a committee called One Person One Vote. The campaign raised a total of $14.8 million, about 16% of it coming from Ohio donors.

The filing doesn’t show anyone giving quite as much as Uihlein did in terms of dollar amount or percentage of the total. Still, the campaign did attract some pretty big fish. Karla Jurvetson, a Silicon Valley psychiatrist and philanthropist, cut checks totaling about $1.1 million.

One Person One Vote also got contributions of $1 million or more from liberal groups including the Sixteen Thirty Fund, among the largest left-leaning dark money groups, the Tides Foundation, Ohio Education Association and the National Education Association.

Alongside its filing, One Person One vote put out a statement describing their pride for “the enormous bipartisan coalition that has come together to defeat Issue 1.”

The (not quite the campaign) campaigns

Although One Person One Vote outraised Protect Our Constitution more than three-to-one, the ‘yes’ campaign was never just one committee. In all, there are four “Protect” organizations including Protect Women Ohio, Protect Women Ohio Action and Protect Our Kids Ohio.

Taken together, they give the yes side of the campaign a financial advantage.

These organizations are chiefly concerned with defeating the reproductive rights amendment that will be on the ballot this November. But because Issue 1 will raise the threshold for that November vote, they’re also deeply invested in its approval.

The first televised ads in favor of Issue 1? Those were paid for by Protect Women Ohio — not Protect our Constitution. Around the state, anti-abortion activists are making explicit appeals for Issue 1 based on undermining the reproductive rights amendment. Seth Drayer, the Vice President for Created Equal, recently warned the Delaware City Republican Club about about a 2022 abortion amendment that passed in Michigan with 56% of the vote.

“If we move to 60% they’re not going to win in Ohio,” he said. “If we win August, we win November. It’s really about that simple.”

And like Protect Our Constitution, these allied groups are getting the vast majority of their funding from out of state.

Protect Women Ohio Action is actually a 501(c)(4) based in Virginia. Five million of its $5.2 million bankroll comes from The Concord Fund, a Washington D.C. based 501(c)(4) known publicly as the Judicial Crisis Network that spends heavily in favor of conservative judges. The other $200,000 comes from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. The organization’s president is Protect Women Ohio Action’s sole board member.

Among Protect Women Ohio’s contributions is a $2 million check from Protect Women Ohio Action reported the same day The Concord Fund made a $2 million donation to the latter.

Of the groups pushing for Issue 1, Protect Women Ohio has by far the biggest piggy bank. But more than $6 million of that $9.7 million total comes from Susan B. Anthony. The only other substantial donations came from the Catholic Church. The Columbus and Cleveland Dioceses gave $200,000 each and the Cincinnati Archdiocese gave $500,000. In all, Protect Women Ohio raised about 16.3% of contributions in-state. The three donations from the Catholic Church make up more than half of that.

The Ohio Capital Journal by Nick Evans

Good luck finding this information on the Front Page Journal website, or any other conservative site, for that matter. You see, their goal is to muddy the water, to own the libs. Facts to them are just tools used to advance their pernicious political, social, religious, and economic agenda. According to Greenfield, the end justifies the means. Anything that hurts the “left” is okay.

I am sure at least one reader is going to remind me that the “left” does it too. Fair enough, but does anyone think the left equally lies and distorts facts? Be honest. MSNBC can be partisan, but do you really think there is no difference between them and Fox News, ONN, and the Daily Wire? I refuse to play the “whataboutism” or “they all do it” game. Understanding the times requires discernment — the ability to differentiate between facts and lies. Stop listening to the Greenfields of the world who only want you to see a strawman and not the truth. In Greenfield’s right-wing MAGA world, “owning the libs” is all that matters.

(Note: According to the New York Times, Issue 1 went down to defeat by a 60-40 percent margin. Evidently, lying doesn’t pay.)

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

New Evangelical Term Used in the War Against Culture: A Canary in the Coal Mine

Bruce Gerencser 7 Comments
canary in a coal mine

I celebrated my sixty-sixth birthday on Monday. I spent fifty years attending and pastoring Evangelical churches. While I began life as a hardcore Independent Fundamentalist Baptist — a sect that positions itself on the extreme right of the Evangelical tent — over the years I drifted slowly leftward, always Evangelical, but more and more liberal socially and politically. I am a perfect example of Evangelical evolution.

One constant during my time in the Evangelical bubble was the war against American culture. While some Evangelicals are counter-cultural, most are anti-cultural. Their goal is to burn the house to the ground and build a brand-spanking new one from scratch. The goal is nothing short of Christian theocracy — the establishment of Jesus as ruler and king and the Bible (as interpreted by Evangelicals) as the law of the land.

Evangelicals have spent the past five decades building what they perceive to be God’s kingdom on earth. Initially, they abandoned secular/cultural institutions and built Christian versions of these things, walling themselves off from the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines at the gate. Over time, Evangelicals became restless within the walls of their metaphorical celestial city. Tired of cheap Christian replacements for everything, Evangelicals flung open the gate, left their walled city, and, en masse, stormed the public square. Realizing waiting on the second coming of Jesus was a wasted effort, Evangelicals decided to use political power and sheer force to build Christ’s kingdom on earth. Abandoning piety, Evangelicals sold their souls to the Republican Party and a plethora of churches, pastors, and parachurch organizations that are determined to reclaim the United States for their peculiar version of God — by force, if necessary.

Today, Evangelical culture warriors are fighting battles on numerous fronts, everything from banning books, boycotting woke corporations, criminalizing abortion, violently pushing LGBTQ people back into the closet, to rolling back one hundred years of social progress. We are now seeing an alarming uptick in Evangelicals taking over school boards and other government institutions. And once they do, they make their agenda clear: establishing a theocracy.

Evangelicals played a big part in the January 6, 2021 attempt to overthrow the U.S. government. They continue to support Donald Trump, and many QAnon and militia members are Evangelical theologically. While Evangelical churches are in numeric decline, as a political and social force they are more powerful today than they ever have been. Most of the most extreme right-wing members of the U.S. House and Senate are Evangelical Christians (or conservative Catholics). The same can be said at the state level too. While progressives and liberals were busy fiddling while Rome burned, Evangelicals have orchestrated a takeover of government at every level. I think I can safely say that if Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, or Mike Pence is elected president in 2024, we could see the collapse of our liberal democracy.

I follow and read scores of Evangelical blogs and websites. I also listen to Evangelical podcasts and sermons. Here’s what I have noticed: an uptick in violent, extremist talk. Sermons and articles about the coming collapse of Western Civilization are common. Church members are encouraged and challenged to do everything they can to rip American culture away from the wicked hands of liberals, progressives, atheists, abortionists, evolutionists, and any other demographic deemed an affront to the thrice holy God of Evangelical Christianity.

One phrase I’ve seen increasingly used in Evangelical blog posts, “news” articles, and sermons is this: a canary in the coal mine.

Wiktionary describes the term this way:

An allusion to caged canaries (birds) that miners would carry down into the mine tunnels with them. If dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide collected in the mine, the gases would kill the canary before killing the miners, thus providing a warning to exit the tunnels immediately.

Something whose sensitivity to adverse conditions makes it a useful early indicator of such conditions; something which warns of the coming of greater danger or trouble by a deterioration in its health or welfare.

Evangelicals see American culture, government institutions, corporations, and Christian sects as coal mines, each with a canary monitoring the health of these underground mines. Everywhere Evangelicals look they see canaries struggling to breathe as the air of secularism, communism, socialism, humanism, and atheism choke the canaries to death. Never asked by Evangelicals is whether it is Evangelicalism, Trumpism, political extremism, or open warfare against public institutions that is the culprit. Lacking awareness, Evangelicals look for socialists, communists, secularists, and ho-mo-sex-u-als under every bed, sure that once these evil Satanic forces are eliminated, the kingdom of God will be established on earth. (Ironically, these beliefs diametrically oppose their eschatological beliefs around the rapture, the great tribulation, the millennial reign of Christ, and the eternal Kingdom of God.)

What are the canaries Evangelicals see in the proverbial coal mine?

  • Egalitarianism
  • Socialist government programs
  • Open southern border
  • Abortion (especially morning after drugs)
  • Certain forms of birth control
  • Euthanasia (physician-assisted suicide)
  • Marijuana legalization
  • LGBTQ-friendly books in libraries
  • Corporate friendliness toward LGBTQ people
  • The very existence of LBGTQ people
  • Hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery
  • Pride month
  • Pride parades
  • Drag queens
  • Drag shows
  • Atheism
  • Humanism
  • Gun control laws
  • Separation of church and state
  • Women serving as pastors

I have heard Evangelical preachers and talking heads mention every one of these canaries in recent months, using their sermons, blog posts, and podcasts as effective tools to whip up mass hysteria. And it’s working. Evangelicals think the United States is on a slippery slope, and if they don’t stop the slide, Christianity will be outlawed and its adherents hunted down and imprisoned. Evangelicals believe they are currently being persecuted for their beliefs. None of this, of course, is true. The slippery slope is actually a horizontal road called progress. What Evangelicals want to do is turn our culture around and push it back to the 1950s — a time when women were barefoot and pregnant and keepers of the home; a time when Blacks knew their place and LGBTQ people were buried deep in the closet; a time when abortion and birth control were illegal and homosexuality was a criminal offense; a time when Mexicans picked our tomatoes and then went home and drag was only seen on Disney cartoons; a time when people went to church and school children prayed and read the Bible in public school classrooms.

Evangelicals are a large minority, but they do not have the numbers necessary to advance their pernicious agenda IF people with progressive values register and vote. The “nones” are now a similar-sized demographic to Evangelicals. Sadly, many “nones” don’t vote. If and when millennials, gen-x, and gen-z realize the power they hold in their hands, the Evangelical reign of terror will end. Like it or not, the only way to affect change in the United States is to vote. Posting social media memes and writing blog posts have their place, but the only way to push back is by voting. The canary in the coal mine of American democracy is voter registration and turnout. Republican politicians, who are largely conservative Christians, know this, and that’s why they are doing their damnedest to keep people — especially people of color — from voting. The only way to turn back these anti-democratic attempts is for people of every political persuasion to vote.

Do we need better candidates? Absolutely. I am sick of voting for the lesser of two evils. I am no longer a Democrat. I vote Democrat, but I no longer support many of the policies of the party. I didn’t vote for Hilliary Clinton or Joe Biden in the Democratic primaries. But when it came time to vote in the general election — knowing the threat many Republican candidates are to American democracy — I held my nose and voted for Clinton and Biden. I am a pragmatist. I must never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

The canary in the coal mine of our republic is wheezing and gasping for breath. Another Trump (or DeSantis) presidency will draw the last bit of oxygen out of the air and kill off our grand democratic experiment.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

What’s Happening to the Social Contract?

Bruce Gerencser 2 Comments
new social contract

Remember all outrage over Evangelical cake decorators and photographers being “forced” to decorate cakes for same-sex couples or take photographs for their weddings? I am of two minds on these issues. I generally think businesses should be free to serve or not serve whomever they want. If I were an atheist photographer, I should be able to discriminate, choosing not to photograph Evangelical weddings. Same goes if I was a gay cake decorator — I should be able to choose whom I want to serve. I shouldn’t be forced to decorate cakes for heterosexual Evangelical couples. My inner libertarian says I should have the right to choose with whom I want to do business.

My inner socialist and progressive, says that if a person opens a business, he or she agrees to play by the applicable rules and laws: Civil Rights Act; Equal Opportunity Employment Act; Americans with Disabilities Act; building codes; health codes; employment laws; tax laws; and specifics codes and laws that govern particular types of businesses. Don’t like these laws, rules, and codes? Tough shit. These things are the price of admission. Want to operate a business? You must play by the rules. Thus my inner libertarian must submit to the needs and demands of an ordered society governed by the rule of law.

The same goes for Evangelical doctors and pharmacists who refuse to treat certain people, prescribe certain drugs, perform certain procedures, or fill certain prescriptions because doing so is contrary to their religious beliefs. Again, tough shit. If you agree to accept employment, you are expected to play by the rules.

Thanks to unprecedented accommodations to people of faith, Christians (and Muslims and Mormons) now think their jobs, schools, and communities, in general, should cater to them; that their religious beliefs take precedence over the rights of others or their participation in what is commonly called the social contract.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with businesses accommodating the sincere beliefs of their employees. I say “sincere.” We know that Evangelicals routinely lie about their “sincere” beliefs when they don’t want to do something. During the pandemic, anti-vax Evangelicals lied about their religious beliefs so they could get religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccinations. (For the record, I am opposed to ALL exemptions for vaccinations.) Evangelical preachers often lie about their religious objection to social security so they can be exempted from paying social security taxes. That’s exactly what I did in the 1980s, and I know other preachers who did the same.

Evangelicals are generally anti-government. They love sticking it to the man. That’s why so many of the 1/6/2021 insurrectionists were Evangelicals. What better way to stick it to Biden, the Democrats, and the state than trying to overthrow the government? Why are most private religious schools Evangelical? Why are most home-schooling families Evangelicals (or conservative Catholics)? By withdrawing their children from public schools (and society, in general), Evangelicals are using their libertarian ideology to tell government that they “will not have this man rule over us.”

Here’s the funny thing . . . Evangelicals only want these alleged freedoms and rights for themselves. As you well know, Christian Nationalism is on the rise in the United States, and around the world. Millions and millions of Evangelicals believe that the United States is a Christian nation, founded according to the teachings and principles of the Bible — even though history teaches no such thing. Many Evangelicals want to see Christianity codified into law. They want the Bible to be the law of the land. In their minds, either the separation of church and state is a myth or it was only meant to protect Christians from government encroachment. Recently, I have noticed an uptick in Evangelical writers and speakers saying that the separation of church and state does not guarantee separation FROM religion; that the United States is, by default, a Christian nation, and atheists, agnostics, and other unbelievers should not expect to have freedom from religion.

Recently, Jorge Gomez, senior writer for First Liberty Institute, took to the Christian Post to whine about “woke” Chase Bank canceling the bank account of the National Committee for Religious Freedom. I have no idea why Chase canceled NCRF’s account. What strikes me as funny is Gomez’s outrage over Chase making a decision to not do business with NCRF, yet he thinks Evangelical cake decorators, photographers, and other business owners should have the absolute right to discriminate against LGBTQ people. I suspect Gomez would be fine with Chase not doing business with adult entertainment businesses, escort services, and marijuana retailers. You see, Gomez wants preferential treatment for Evangelicals. He wants different rules for his tribe.

A society only works if we all play by the same rules. Sadly, many Evangelicals (and others too) don’t want to play by mutually agreed-upon laws and rules. When we disagree with a law or a rule, we can either use the political process to change it, refuse to obey it, risking punishment, appeal to the courts for redress, or turn to violence to get our way. What I fear we are seeing today is that when a group of people believe (or know) the political process no longer works or the courts are unwilling to give them what they want, they turn to rebellion and violence. I fear this is where we now are: a dangerous day and hour when it is considered justifiable to beat an old man with a ball-peen hammer, threaten to murder the vice president of the United States and the Speaker of the House, scream at school boards, invade the U.S. Capitol — causing death, physical harm, and property damage — and violently threaten people with physical harm. I have no doubt that we are headed toward violence in the streets; not a civil war, necessarily, but local pockets of tribal violence. We are armed to the teeth, and if the Insurrection taught us anything it is this: given the right circumstances and provocations, people can and will do anything, including murdering their neighbors. One need only look at Germany in World War II, the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994, or countless acts of violence and murder perpetrated during war, including the United States’ wars to see how this plays out.

People of good will must use non-violence to turn back our tribal tendencies. Social media makes it easy for all of us to congregate according to tribal designation. Certainly, it is natural for us to do so. However, when the only people we see, hear, and interact with are just like us, we can be easily led astray; we can easily engage in behaviors we might not normally engage in. Sometimes, we can turn to violence, and when that happens, our society collapses. When tribe is all that matters, it is easier to cause harm to “others.” I live on Main St. in Ney, Ohio. The other day, I looked at the voter registration records for voters who live on Main St. My wife and I are the only registered Democrats. Worse, it is well-known in town that we are atheists. Our front yard has three progressive, pro-choice signs. Last Thursday, the village had its annual trick-or-treat. I can only imagine how irritated some parents were as they walked by our house with their children. How dare we expose their kiddies to God-hating evil? Locals know I am the guy who writes letters to the editor of the newspaper “attacking” (their word) their religion or politics. Is it a stretch of the imagination to think that given the right circumstances, some of God’s chosen ones might try to destroy our signs (they have been stolen before), cause property damage, or even physical harm? When tribal passions are engaged, who knows what might happen.

Evangelicals are so drunk with political power, having abandoned the gospel as a means of societal transformation, that they will not rest until they have taken Christian Nationalism to its logical conclusion: the obeisance of non-Christians to Jesus and the Bible — actually, to their peculiar interpretation of the Bible. Those who refuse to bow to the Evangelical God will be punished and ostracized — much like Japanese-Americans and communists/socialists were in World War II. As Hitler’s Germany and the Tutsi genocide taught us, neighbors can and will turn on their neighbors if they deem them a threat, or even if they merely belong to the “wrong” tribe.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Quote of the Day: I’m Woke, Liberal, and Progressive

Bruce Gerencser 3 Comments
leonard pitts jr

Understanding how That Word [liberal] was taken out of service is invaluable in understanding what is transpiring now with That Other Word. And here, yes, we are talking about “woke.”

Because we’ve seen this movie before. Once again, the right mocks a word with undisguised glee — it is slapped on a Florida education censorship bill; it is blamed by the L.A. County Sheriff for making the city unlivable; U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz claims it will “destroy” the military. And once again, the left responds with a crouch. Or has no one else noticed how the word has magically disappeared from the mouths of all but its detractors? A list that, not incidentally, includes Democratic strategist James Carville, who made news last year by declaring, in a Vox interview, that “Wokeness is a problem.”

6But is it, really? Or is the problem not that the left keeps allowing the right to frame the debate? Is the problem not the failure to finally realize that there is no word the left can use to define itself that will stop those mean conservatives from picking on them? Because it’s not the words the right opposes. Rather, it’s the beliefs those words express.

Like the belief that people should not have to breathe carcinogens in their air, drink poisons in their water or eat maggots in their meat. And that the workweek should not be 80 hours long. And that children should not be in factories, nor hardworking families in slums. And that women should control their reproductive destinies, LGBTQ people should be treated like human beings, Black people should be free to vote. And that government has a responsibility to enforce it all.

Those are noble causes to fight for. That those who have historically done so find it necessary to crouch in defense speaks to how upside down and inside out is this era — and to the success of the right in defining those who are too often timid and inept in defining themselves.

“Woke” means awake and aware. “Liberal” means “generous and broad-minded.” “Progressive” — just to complete the triumvirate — means “characterized by progress.” Each is preferable to its alternative.

That’s not to advocate for any particular word. Rather, it’s to say that every moment spent debating words is a moment spent not advocating for the beliefs those words express.

— Leonard Pitts, Jr., Seattle Times, Liberal, woke, whatever — just fight for your beliefs, May 10, 2022

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Socialism is Dying

Bruce Gerencser 4 Comments

socialism

If you’ve ever read anything written by any progressive over the age of forty, chances are pretty good that you’ve been exposed to a certain weary, self-indulgent, spiritually-agonized tone. It is very recognizable, like the smell of decay that’s characteristic of a swamp. By comparison, leftists under the age of forty are likely to have more-or-less the same tone that they were born with — the high-pitched tone of an infant that is not getting its way. Older leftists have usually run out of this youthful vigor, just like the rest of us. They do not participate in Antifa riots on the streets. They think about such youthful protests with a sense of nostalgia, remembering their wild, radical college days — whether they actually experienced them or not. Lost in a kind of communal introspection, they gather to have a coffee and a chat about how infinitely, heartbreakingly hard it is to endure the misery of the world. It would be vulgar to point out that a nice income and a nice house in a nice neighborhood can do a lot to ease this unbearable sense of soul-wrenching angst. Moral anguish can actually be quite comfortable if you can manage to do it safely at a distance.

….

The disease of progressivism is now widespread, though probably not the majority position some imagine it to be. It has infected all classes, from cynical elites who wish to placate the last shriveled remnants of their consciences to the cynical poor who wish to be made unpoor by a government willing to pick pockets on their behalf. The cultural decay is deep, giving people a false sense of goodness based of uttering magic words rather than on the difficult and costly work of genuinely moral behavior. The real obscenity of leftist virtue-signaling isn’t merely that it’s unproductive and self-serving, but that leftists are so blinded that their own hypocrisy is lost on them. What does virtue-signaling accomplished that could not be done more honestly with a secret gesture or a secret handshake? What does the middle-class progressive really want other than identification with “the enlightened,” the intelligentsia, and with those who wield power?

I will hardly be the first to observe that the left long ago lost the battle over facts. Ghettoes, crime, and overdose deaths are facts. The chaos in Western Europe is a fact. The degeneration of Detroit into semi-rural scrub forest is a fact. The “arc of history,” pretty as it sounds, is nothing but a literary dream. A castle of mere words. Socialism has always been, at heart, a literary façade for the same old centralization of power — a petty tyranny at the hands of self-appointed and self-righteous planners and intellectuals. It’s a lie. In its death throes it has even lost the charm of being a beautiful lie.

E.M. Cadwaladr, The American Thinker, The Sad, Sad Culture of Progressivism, October 29, 2018