Arise, O Lord,
Confront him, cast him down;
Deliver my life from the wicked with Your sword,
With Your hand from men, O Lord,
From men of the world who have their portion in this life..
I’m sensing a fair amount of battle fatigue out there.
Yes, the American people displayed a great deal of sanity — and defied political corruption on a scale we’ve never seen — by electing Donald Trump. Yes, the economy is booming. Yes, American companies are being warned to get out of China. Yes, the abortion debate will likely find its way to the Supreme Court, where the justices will re-examine the Constitution and conclude it contains no right to kill innocent children.
All good news, but there’s a big fat layer of pure stupid out there, and deep pockets of corruption you couldn’t mine with a hundred Komatsu super-excavators. A friend reminds me that Fusion GPS, perjured FISA warrants, FBI collusion in spying on the Trump campaign, and Uranium-One all make Watergate look like an expired license plate tag, but the political will to pursue the culprits, and bring them to justice, doesn’t exist. The elites have dirty files on each other. They threaten, they posture, but they never indict. Key witnesses “commit suicide” under federal watch – and that leaves average, tax-paying citizens wondering: “is anyone minding the store?”
Culturally, an alarming number of young people seem to think gender fluidity, woke-shaming, socialism, restricted free speech, the green new deal, and free medicare for all constitute world-bettering pursuits. The obsession with socialism and command economies alone — given the record of Communist genocide stretching from 1917 Russia to 2019 Venezuela — is enough to make you conclude we’ve raised a generation of certified morons. While the Obamas and the Gores buy beach front property, they actually have these kids believing rising sea levels will consume entire cities. You can’t make up this kind of stupid. It wouldn’t be believed in a novel or a television series. You have to watch it on the news, or spend an afternoon in Portland, picking cement milkshake out of your coffee.
I write this from a lonely house at 5 in the morning. My home school kids have moved on. I’m proud of them, and I know they largely agree with me, but I know this old grind of mine, this warning, is beginning to feel dangerous, and anti-social — the sort of thing that gets you booted from social media and rendered an untouchable by the ever-growing and ever-cruel safe space crowd. No one does “hate” quite like the people who claim to hate it.
I’ve talked to other old men who are similarly discouraged. However much we try to create a reformed culture, however much we charter school, however much we sacrifice creating mom-and-pop shops — the edicts of the Brave New World have a way of demanding obedience. A “reputation score” internet company includes these notes in my profile: “Tax Issues, Pro Life Supporter, Opposes Marriage Equality, Tea Party Donator, Opposes Healthcare Reform.” What price have I paid for my beliefs? What price will I be paying in the future?
I have reason to believe that my perspective represents the American majority, but you know the drill: you learn one thing in church and your marketing consultant, (who happens to be a conservative as well), advises you to keep that a secret in your business. You teach your children one set of values, and the HR department in the big company that has hired them lets them know — in no uncertain terms — their job depends on hiding those values. Leftist, godless progressives don’t share our sense of fair play, nor our respect for a dialogue: A few years ago, when I saw white college students being asked to shame themselves merely for their skin color,* I sensed that America’s great victories against racism presented a problem for those in the race-grievance industry. How could social justice warriors justify their mission if the mission had been accomplished? As I began to stridently point out the one kind of racism that had escaped their attention, (Louis Farrakhan and LeBron James racism and antisemitism, Obama’s courting of Farrakhan), I was labeled counter-revolutionary by the Bolsheviks in a few school districts.
The smart thing to do — the compromising course that most conservatives are advised to follow, and the course that is now discouraging them — is to shut up and let the idiots be idiots. Let the race and grievance pimps be pimps. Go about your business and things will get better.
But they don’t. As Jefferson understood in the early days of the republic, there simply is no agreement you can make with pillaging Islamic pirates. You have to confront them, and contain or defeat them.
So answering my question today: What do we do?
We fight. We laugh. We make sales. We get really loud and ugly. If Facebook considers you dangerous, you are probably telling the truth. I write this today, knowing that maybe thirty people will read this blog — as opposed to the somewhat larger audience of friends I had on Facebook. No matter. Build your own audience where you can.
In any age, God works with very small minorities, in order to show His power. Someday the pagans will pick on the wrong pastor, the wrong lawyer, the wrong businessman — and the courage of the opposition will be galvanizing. The daughters of Israel will have seen in little David, the glory of God.
Don’t be discouraged. Keep fighting. We win, because He does.
