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Culture War?

Culture War?

Last updated on: June 29, 2020 at 8:53 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Culture War? 2020-06-29T08:53:10-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Nobody likes the culture war, not even the culture warriors. Being “against” anything not associated with Hitler sounds preachy and we prefer decadent to preachy. Meanwhile, patriotism, family, and God are topics that lend themselves to affirmation and irony.

If Papa shouldn’t preach, he should try for irony if he must opine.

Unless John F. Kennedy’s America was theocracy, people could choose to pray in their local schools without destroying religious freedom. The Court stopped this historic custom and if you oppose this you are a culture warrior.

Abortion was regulated in most states, the Supreme Court stopped that, but if you do not like what the Court did you are the offensive culture warrior.

Marriage has always been one-man and one-woman in the United States, ask Utah, but if you oppose the redefinition of marriage you are a culture warrior.

In short, social liberalism wants to remake American culture (ask a social liberal how many genders exist if you doubt this) and culture warriors don’t go along. We do not want a war, we did not pick the issues, but we refuse to go quietly when faced with a hostile agenda.

If we oppose tearing down crosses built to honor war dead or banning a Christmas creche, we are accused of “majoring on minors.” But if these are minor issues, then why can’t we be left alone to do as we have always done?

We are told that we must go along with the new culture.

But why should we?

Sometimes we are told it is because “history” is headed that way and it is wrong to oppose history, but this is opining masquerading as argument. Polls don’t determine morality in most rational systems and the opinion of today’s youth are oft rejected by their children.

Often I hear that since the “religious right” was wrong on race we have lost all credibility on the issue. It is true that the Southern wing of the “religious right” got race wrong, but the Northern religious right elected Lincoln. Appalachian Southerners rejected slavery.

Southern Christians who opposed “interracial marriage” were wrong and they were wrong based on evil ideas. They were not just wrong, they were eccentric in the history of Christendom. The very idea of race was foreign to the world of the Bible. In that sense, racism was for some American Christians the original American sin and the push for white supremacy a false gospel.

Plainly, African-American social conservatives and Christians were not guilty of this error!

Against this serious failure of some white social conservatives on race is the overwhelming correct predictions of societal decay that would result from the sexual revolution. The poor have been harmed, marriage has decayed, and birth rates have plummeted.

To cite just one statistic: Teen suicide is much higher than in the 1950’s.

It is always hard to prove “causation” in a culture, issues are complicated, but the divorce rate and the destruction of poor family structure was predicted by social conservatives and it happened. The most absurd thing social conservatives are told is that one decade or two of a radical social experiment show that no harm will result. It is as if five years of a new system kills off all the older generation immediately or that residual strength disappears in a few years.

We are just now seeing the full fruit of social experiments done in the Roosevelt administration. Some of those are good, some not so good. Social conservatives are not opposed to progress, but they are opposed to change being too easily called progress. After all, change from Windows XP to Vista was radical, not for the better, but it must have looked good to a bunch of high priced programmers and consultants.

It just did not work in the real world.

Social conservatives look at Western Europe, a model for a socially liberal society, and we see unsustainable birth rates and cultural decay. At the very least, we have the right to prefer American traditional culture to it.

We look at the EU and we have seen the future and it does not work. Meanwhile, we live our lives, raise our families, pay our taxes, and try to be loyal citizens. We are Christians, before Americans, and dread any increase in tension between our loyalties.If secularists drive us out, then I wish them luck in sustaining their epiphenomenal culture without us. They may discover the substance of the state leaves with us.

Meanwhile, we are calm, carrying on, helping where we can. We are not going anywhere.

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