The Last Crusade 07 (Guest): Losing by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules
Be not deceived. The so-called Culture War has been a disaster for us, a series of failures with only the briefest moments of temporary victory, won at terrible cost.
This is because the war is deeper than any matter of culture. It is an arm of an infinite struggle between angels and fallen angels, fought in every heart, in every nation, every generation.
This generation is hard pressed.
We live in the era of martyrs. More have been murdered for their love of Christ in this century than in all the previous combined, including all the famous persecutions by Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, Henry, Mohammed, Diocletian, Marcus Aurelius. Christians in Muslim nations are oppressed, humiliated, harassed, slaughtered, killed, and the churches in America do nothing. The churches in Europe welcome the debasement and destruction at the invader’s hands, in the name of diversity, which, to those churches, is greater than the name of Christ.
And yet his generation encounters a slender ray of sunlight.
By the singular grace of God, against all odds, and in the face of all worldly predictions, the British have voted freedom from the European Union, and the Americans have voted for a sincerely American rather than a Globalist president.
In prayer give thanks for these things, for, had they not been, night without dawn would have followed, and Western civilization been slowly extinguished.
This is a momentary lull in the storm, a momentary sortie which has thrown the besiegers into convulsion and confusion. They will soon rally. We must rally sooner, and strike again, harder and deeper.
Our swordhands must be hard and heavy and neither flinch nor grow weary in the slaying.
And our eye must be keen and unsparingly honest. We have erred. To ignore the errors leading to defeat compounds them.
The point bears repeating that previous efforts of conservatives, libertarians, classical liberals and prodemocracy factions have failed, and failed spectacularly, for the same reason that the massive defenses of the Maginot Line failed spectacularly to defend France against blitzkrieg tactics.
The foe ignored our defense and went merrily around them.
Our arguments and philosophy and political efforts, like giants covered from head to knee in heavy armor, blinked stupidly while serpents and scorpions undermined the ground on which these knights stood, and cut the tendons of their feet, so that no argument and no effort could stand.
The defenses of the conservatives and libertarians were political and legal. The attacks of the enemy were cultural and spiritual, which are the first principles on which political and legal conclusions stand.
Say what you will about the workings of the mind and soul, the simple fact is that thoughts have consequences. There are iron rules to the human heart and mind that operate whether you acknowledge them or not.
The first iron rule says that if you accept the first principles of the enemy’s argument, the foundational myth of his worldview, and accept the prophets of his idols as true, then you will have no solid ground on which to oppose the enemy’s conclusion, no practical vision to oppose his dream, and no faith in providence.
The soldier of Christ who accepts the enemy’s vocabulary, trusts the enemy’s authority, and speaks in the Orwellian Newspeak of the enemy will be unable to lift sword or shield in thought, word, or deed, despite that Omnipotence is fighting on his side.
If the faithful can banish unclean spirits by calling on the name of Christ, then, obviously, if they fail to call upon that name, the unclean spirits prevail. The faithful are helpless once convinced that it is crass, impolite or unacceptable to call upon that name.
If the enemy controls your first principles, then he controls your conclusions.
The second iron rule is that the conscience can be suppressed and driven back, but, like the floods of the sea, it will seek another path, don a disguise, and appear in another place, no matter how diligently it is driven away.
The third iron rule is that, try as he might, no man lives without service to a higher purpose. He can study, know, and understand what he serves; or he can elude, evade, and addict himself to distractions to avoid knowledge and understanding. But try as he might, he still serves. Those who are not on the side of the angels are on the side of the fallen angels. There is no neutral ground, no compromise, and no way to balance on the fence. Those who are not against us, are with us.
A single example will have to suffice to show these three rules in action, and to identify the cause of failure in all battles of the conservative cause. When the conservatives oppose glorifying sodomy with the mantle of sacred matrimony, they accepted the enemy’s first principle. The enemy’s first principle was an abstract philosophical axiom that all morality is manmade, hence culturally determined and personally relative: your rules for you, mine for me. Under this principle, sodomy becomes, not a sin (there is no category “sin” in enemy vocabulary) but instead it is an inborn characteristic. By this logic, the public deterrence or display of that characteristic is to be judged by assessment of it negative externalities only: it is only bad if it hurts another. But if the characteristic is inborn, not a free choice, then to deter its expression becomes a violation of a civil right.
When the issue of desecrating marriage is framed as a civil rights issue, the unwary Conservative falsely concludes it is a political issue. And so, foolishly but quite logically, he seeks a political solution to the conundrum. The unwary conservative now regards the issue of sodomy desecrating marriage as a clash between leftwing demands for equal rights under the law and rightwing demands for a civic institution to remain intact.
The civic features of marriage include such things as alternate tax burdens, visitation rights in hospitals, the assumption of power of attorney over incapacitated spouses, and laws related to survivorship, trusts and estates, and so on. The spiritual, moral, reproductive and civilizational features are marriage are beyond the scope of these civic features. According to conservative philosophy, any matter which is beyond the political sphere is a matter of private opinion, and not subject to debate in any public forum.
So when the conservatives offered the enemy the compromise of Civil Unions between sodomites, which would provide the selfsame legal benefits as marriage between a decent man and woman in all but name only, had indeed the question been a political one, that compromise would have been eagerly accepted.
But the civic rights were nothing. The enemy had no concern with them whatsoever.
Starting with the Massachusetts State Supreme Court, the offer was rejected with scorn. Emboldened, the enemy used activist judges to usurp laws beyond what even Congress or a Constitutional Convention has the power to enact, and, without a vote, merely decreed marriage to be abolished. Marriage was now a meaningless word whose meaning each man was free to decide for himself.
The conservatives did nothing. According to conservative philosophy, there was nothing to do, because another rule of our philosophy is that if the political matters resolved by legal means, even if unfairly, the losing side must yield gracefully to the winner, as only this spirit of compromise can preserve the respect for law order on which the fragile continuation of civil society depends.
But this was never a political issue. Political issue are never concerned with matters of imponderable spirit. Only philosophical and religious matters, or matters of honor, can be a matter of imponderable spirit. Such things are a matter of faith.
Leftism is a religion. It is a disorganized and intellectually incoherent religion, and, ironically, a religion that hates God. But it is a religion nonetheless, because it demands total loyalty in all arenas of life from its followers, it provides a transcendental meaning to life.
Conservatism, on the other hand, is a political compromise springing out of the miseries of the Reformation and Counterreformation, based on the idea that all men are created equal, and therefore no Christian sovereign has the right to dictate by secular law the forms of worship nor doctrines of faith of any other Christian. The old categories of orthodoxy and heresy are abandoned, and the truth in her naked beauty is deemed sufficient to defend herself, without resort to the rod of the magistrate. Hence the core of Conservativism is an unspoken agreement not to allow matters of faith into court of law or the townhall.
But sodomy is a sin. That is its nature. Those who surrender to this unwholesome impulse feel a shame and guilt which they can hide, but ultimately cannot escape. Hence, they cannot live and let live, even if their aberrant behavior is tolerated at law. Toleration is not enough.
The reason why toleration is not enough is because of the iron law of the human heart. They cannot escape the still, small voice of conscience. Being tolerated does not remove the shame. We tolerate a bad smell or a loud noise when we cannot otherwise escape it. The sin must not simply be tolerated, because this is the same as to call it odious or cacophonous. It must be accepted, nay, it must be praised. Those who wish politely not to express approval for the sin, such as Christian photographers, bakers, florists, or marriage certificate clerks must be publically and ritually punished, shamed, denounced, and hounded.
Perhaps you are shaking your head, dear reader, and saying in disbelief, “You cannot say what goes on in every human heart. Only God knows these things. My homosexual friends are relaxed and comfortable with their sexual orientation, which is not a perversion, not an abomination, not a genetic defect, and not a maladaption unsuited to the preservation of the species. It is merely a choice each man makes for himself, and therefore is sacrosanct and beyond criticism; or else it is an inborn trait no choice can alter, whichever is convenient for me to believe to fend off criticism at the moment.”
Indeed? Then answer me this, dear reader. I mean the question sincerely. When Amendment XXI ended Prohibition, and restored the civil rights of Alcoholic-Americans to drink themselves sick, and the oppression and bigotry of Teetotalers was overthrown, the matter was exactly parallel, was it not? Each man makes a decision for himself how drunk to get, but some have an inborn genetic weakness to alcohol.
So therapy to cure homosexual longings is illegal in Leftwing jurisdictions, but Alcoholics Anonymous is not. No drunk in the history of the nation ever sued a Teetotaler and forced him to offer a drink.
So why do Leftists pass by nine thousand pizza parlors in a nation, and find the sole one and only willing to say they would not cater a sodomite mockery of a wedding celebration, and savage that one? If homosexuality were merely a free choice, or merely an inborn genetic trait, whence comes this drive, this need, this obsession with finding and ritually punishing those who merely silently wish to stand aside and not offer help, aid, and comfort to those committing an abominable sin?
The answer is obvious. It is neither a mere choice nor a mere trait. It is a sin, an offense against nature and nature’s author. A mother murdering her helpless child in the womb is likewise, not a mere medical procedure, and not a mere private choice, no more than murdering a rich uncle for the inheritance is merely a private choice, or murdering a senile grandmother on life support to economize on hospital bills.
Alcoholics can tolerate being in the same civilization as teetotalers because strong drink, in moderation, is not a sin the alcoholic tries to cover up. He is not trying to escape the inescapable. But perverts cannot live in the same civilization with decent folk because decency offends them. Even the name ‘pervert’ and ‘decent’ offends them. But few are the drunks who object to being called drunk.
Now, perhaps this example offends or exasperates. If so, disregard it, and look at the countless others.
Look at why the Left in times past so vociferously hated Senator McCarthy with such an all consuming hatred that they have made his name a by-word for irrational and despotic with-hunts, even though, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we know that those he accused of being Soviet spies were, in fact, Soviet spies. For the same reason the Left cannot admit the harsh truth about homosexuality, they can never admit the historical truth about communism, communist infiltration, and their role in aiding the enemy. Never.
This is because hating one’s own nation, like dishonoring one’s father and mother, is a sin, not a political stance. They did not help the Reds because they wanted to live under socialism. Those who so wished were free to go to Cuba or Russia. There were none. The Left in times past, and, continuing to this by via Orwellian Ministry-of-Truth historical revision, aided the enemies of the nation because they wish to wound and humiliate her.
The ongoing defense of Mohammedan jihadists bent on obliterating everything the Left holds dear and throwing from rooftops every minority the Left claims to protect, is another example. This is not a political issue. No one aids his own murderous destroyers because of a reasoned difference of opinion over matters of law and policy. Men commit suicide because of guilt, because they hate their lives.
Another flock of non-political matters of dogmatic faith spring out of environmentalism. Why oppose one pipeline out of hundreds crisscrossing the nation? Why oppose offshore drilling or drilling in barren Artic wasteland? If the opposition were prompted by concern for oil spills, the statistics regarding the magnitude and likelihood of oil spills due to train or truck transportation, or oil tanker shipping, versus pipeline breaks would settle the issue without histrionics or hysterics.
Likewise for feminism, and for panicky witchhunts seeking nonexistent neo-Nazis. There are more people who believe in UFO’s or the Flat Earth theory than are rooting for the rise of the Fourth Reich.
And on and on. Pick any example you wish.
Wherever the Left is motivated by a psychological need to hide from himself, nothing, nothing, nothing will deter him. Every compromise offered him he will take with both hands and demand more. He will yield not an inch. A compromise about abortion is impossible, because the Leftist demands all applaud prenatal infanticide. Merely allowing it is not enough. Even the Little Sister of the Poor must take their pennies and fund it.
In any street gang, or pirate crew, the honest member who has as yet participated in no gang rape, no plunder, no murder, is not trusted by the others. Once the new member partakes, or is forced to partake, in the crime, he lacks the moral authority to stand in judgment over the guilty, or he is equally guilty. This is the reason why Christian photographers, bakers, florists, clerks, and the Little Sisters of the Poor are being forced to trample the cross.
No political issues are involved in any of these matters. The enemy wants us to get blood on our hands as well, so that we can point no finger at him.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
