Have you heard the story about the engine and the caboose? The caboose doesn’t want to go where the engine is taking it, but the latter has all the energy and provides the movement. So the caboose sometimes is lighter and pulled more swiftly and sometimes is heavier and provides more resistance, but reaching the destination is a foregone conclusion — all that will vary is the arrival time.
This is a metaphor for the conservative-liberal struggle, and bringing it to mind is a recent article at Mission: America titled “Children Endangered as GOP Applauds Sexual Anarchy.” Complaining about how even Republicans are “slouching toward Gomorrah,” author Linda Harvey writes:
More and more Republicans embrace and even promote “LGBTQ” demands, oblivious to the corresponding deviant, harmful behaviors. So America’s children are exposed and vulnerable, because what is routine for adults today will seem normal to 11-year-olds within a decade.
The stats already tell us the promotion of sexual alternatives to kids is unfortunately working, as well over 15% of the nation’s youth now call themselves “queer,” a percentage that has risen sharply in recent years, but it’s not due to inborn proclivities. Research has failed to turn up any dependable biological key. The expansion of this sub-population is instead the rotten fruit of depraved, incessant promotion and social engineering.
Which few politicians have any interest in challenging.
H.R. 5, the so-called “Equality Act,” is a far-left, radical, anti-child, anti-Christian measure. But so is the alternative, GOP-supported “Fairness for All Act” in the U.S. House, which tosses a few religious exemption bones to the faith community but still legitimizes depraved, immoral conduct.
Children have also, do note, been so indoctrinated with MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status, or “transgender”) propaganda that there’s been an explosion in youths “identifying” as the opposite sex or one of scores of imaginary “genders.”
Harvey then goes on to outline the Who’s Who of GOP Sexual-devolutionary Enablers, citing names such as Marco Rubio, Charlie Kirk, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Kristi Noem, Mike Pence, John Kasich, Mike DeWine, and J.D. Vance. Why, even President Trump has been weak, to say the least, in this area.
But the real reason our politicians don’t speak up against the Sexual Devolution — and, more significantly, why those who would aren’t in office — should be noted: culture.
“Politics is the art of the possible,” observed famed German leader Otto Von Bismarck. Lose sight of what’s politically possible, and “possible” here means “palatable,” and you’ll lose public office.
This is not an excuse, just an explanation. “Politics is downstream from culture” because it’s the culture that determines what’s politically possible (in turn, of course, politics can influence culture). We can’t lose that realm completely — and the Gramscian march through the institutions has transformed the culture-shapers, the media, academia, entertainment, Big Tech, and corporate America, into left-wing bastions — and over the long term get ideologically sound politicians in office. For principled people who know and speak the Truth on the sexual-devolutionary agenda won’t be elected, and you’ll be left with those who subscribe to that agenda or who know better but pander to it.
None of this explains, however, why GOP politicians generally shrink from tackling the MUSS agenda in particular; after all, with its aims of telling kids they can sex-switch like a sci-fi alien and putting boys in girls’ restrooms and men in women’s sports, it doesn’t play well in Peoria.
Of course, in part, these conservative politicians are intimidated by the mainstream media and don’t wish to be shunned on the cocktail-party circuit. But another factor concerns the nature of “conservatism” itself. Philosopher G.K. Chesterton addressed this well in 1924, writing:
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins.… Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob.
As I noted many years ago when explaining why I no longer called myself a “conservative,” the only consistent definitions of “liberal” and “conservative” are, respectively, a desire to change the status quo and desire to preserve it. This is why liberals and conservatives embrace different positions in different times and places (e.g., Western European conservatives are well to the “left” of ours).
The bottom line is that since the liberals ever propose change (are the “engine”) and conservatives ever compromise, the former shape what becomes the new status quo — which conservatives then, quite vainly, try to conserve.
Ponder here, however, that the Founding Fathers didn’t call themselves “conservatives,” and today they’re known as classical liberals. The conservative position in 1776 would have been to remain British subjects.
Returning to Harvey’s piece, she also writes that “our first generation spoonfed social media lunacy, online porn, and ‘LGBTQ’ advocacy has spawned young adults drawn to revolution — e.g., Antifa and Black Lives Matter (no, it’s not a peaceful, helpful organization).”
In reality, America’s “demoralization” goes back much further than just one generation. Harvey is correct about the effects of moral degradation, however.
Consider: Why do groups deviating greatly from “traditional” morality — the “LGBTQ” crew, drug users, etc. — generally embrace “leftism”? Why does it appear, in fact, that there is here a direct relationship: The greater the degree of moral degradation, the stronger the support for Democrats?
Put simply, it’s that the “eye altering alters all,” as poet William Blake put it; or, as the Bible instructs, there are “eyes blinded by sin.”
Given this, if you were wholly amoral and bent on achieving absolute power and you could influence society, how would you mold the next generation? You’d indoctrinate them with leftist thought, sure. But if you were truly clever, you’d first make them fertile ground for it.
As to this, Greek philosopher Plato instructed that if children were instilled with an “erotic” (as in emotional, not sexual) attachment to virtue during formative years, upon reaching the age of reason they’d be more likely to accept the dictates of reason.
But it works the other way, too — and it’s easier to effect.
Instill children with an emotional attachment to vice, and when older they’ll be more likely to resist reason. Now do you know why leftists are impossible to reason with?
Conservatives have been losing the kids and hence the culture for a long, long time. This is partially because it’s insufficient to stand “athwart history, yelling Stop,” as late social commentator William F. Buckley wrote describing a conservative’s role. Rather, we must stand athwart history yelling “Go back!” — to virtue.
The only way to win politically over the long term is to capture the culture, and cabooses need not apply. We must become the engine, one that pulls civilization back not to the good old days, but to the good and old and in fact eternal: Truth.
