As a Truman-style Democrat left politically homeless, I am often asked about the future of the Republican Party. Some Republicans want to push racial buttons on issues like immigration, or try to stop their political slide on gay marriage, which will steepen as younger people replace older people in the voting booth. Others think pure market-oriented principles will, somehow, win the day. Ron Paul did best among younger Republican voters in the primaries.
Yes, ideas do matter, but a simple defense of free markets is not likely to have broad-enough appeal. What Republicans need is a transformative issue that can attract a mass base – and that issue is class.
Of course, the whole idea of appealing to class may be repellant to most libertarian-conservative or country-club remnants of the Republican Party. Yet, it's the issue of the day, as President Obama recognized when he went after patrician Mitt Romney. It also may be the issue Obama now most wants to avoid, which explains his current focus on secondary issues like gun control and gay marriage.
For their part, Republicans need to make Obama own the class issue since his record is fairly indefensible. The fortunes of the middle quintiles of Americans have been eroding pretty much since Obama took office in 2009.
There's nothing fundamentally unRepublican about class warfare. After all, the party – led by what was then called Radical Republicans – waged a very successful war against the old slave-holding aristocracy; there's nothing to be ashamed of in that conquest. Republicans under Abraham Lincoln also pushed for greater landownership through such things as the Homestead Act, which supplied 160 acres of federal land to aspiring settlers.
No one expects the Republicans to turn socialist, but they can reap benefits from anger over the crony capitalism that has become emblematic of the Obama era. Wall Street and its more popular West Coast counterparts, the venture capital "community," consistently game the political system and, usually, succeed. They win, but everyone else pretty much has to content themselves with keeping up with the IRS.
This is where the opportunity lies. Republican opposition to Wall Street is already evident in the rise of Texas Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling to the chairmanship of the House Banking Committee. He and Iowa GOP Sen. Charles Grassley's attack on "too big to fail" banks are a stark contrast to the likes of New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, the Capitol consigliere of the Wall Street oligarchs, or the prince of gentry liberals and defender of billionaires everywhere, New York City Mayor Michael "luxury city" Bloomberg.
Who's angry and ready to raise their raise their pitchforks? Try the self-employed, who are now, according to Gallup, the large constituency most alienated from the present regime. Even the hapless Romney picked up their support against Obama.
The new core constituency of the GOP can best be identified as the enterprise base. They include small property owners, mainly in the suburbs, those who are married or aspiring to be so. They are more suburban than urban, and likely to work for someone else or themselves as opposed to working for the state. Combine the top half of private employees, over 50 million people, add some 10 million self-employed and you get to a serious economic, and political, base.
This group also includes many immigrants, particularly Asians, a constituency that should be tilting GOP but still isn't. They, too, increasingly live in the suburbs, own homes as well as business. And rarely do they benefit from the prevailing crony capitalism.
The enterprise base is by nature not ideologically rigid. Most, if you talk to them, would generally support sensible infrastructure improvement as well as repairs; they also tilt towards restrained taxation and a lighter regulatory hold. It's a movement for "Let's get this fixed and get on with our lives."
This new orientation would define the Republicans where they are strongest and the administration weakest – on the economy. The new wedge issues must be for a "level playing field" for entrepreneurs and the middle class and definitely not social issues, like opposition to gay rights, or support for old and new unwise wars.
An enterprise approach, and a focus on restarting real growth, could put the Democrats on their heels and worrying about their own base. Minorities, for example, have done far worse under this administration than virtually any in recent history, including that of George W. Bush. For many, this has been what the Fiscal Times has called "a food stamp recovery."
Among Obama's loyalist core, African Americans, unemployment now stands at the highest level in decades; blacks, while 12 percent of the nation's population, account for 21 percent of the nation's jobless. The picture is particularly dire in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, where black unemployment is nearly 20 percent, and Detroit, where's it's over 25 percent.
Of course, Republicans have their work cut out for them among African-Americans. But remember that Barack Obama will not be on any future ballots. A return to what Ishmael Reed has called "neo-classical" Republicanism – the same spirit that freed the slaves and fought for equal rights – could make some inroads.
Latinos, the other major part of the party's "downstairs" coalition, also have fared badly under Obama and could be even more amenable to a smarter GOP message. They have seen their incomes drop 4 percent over the past three years, and suffer unemployment two full points above the national average. Overall, the gap in net worth of minority households compared with whites is greater today than in 2005. White households lost 16 percent in recent years, but African-Americans dropped 53 percent and Latinos a staggering 66 percent of their precrash wealth.
But the most critical potential constituency may prove the millennial generation, who hitherto have been a strong constituency for both the president and his party. They continue to suffer the most of any age cohort in this persistently weak economy. Already, the first wave of millennials are hitting their thirties and may be getting restless about being permanent members of "Generation Rent."
Let's say, in two or four years, they are still finding opportunity lagging? Cliff Zukin at Rutgers John J. Heidrich Center for Workforce Development, predicts that many will "be permanently depressed and will be on a lower path of income for probably all their [lives]." One has to wonder if even the college-educated may want to see an economy where their educations count for more than a job at Starbucks. Remember: Baby boomers, too, once tilted to the left, but moved to the center-right starting with Ronald Reagan and have remained that way.
Yet, despite these threats, Democrats may still be rescued by perennially misfiring Republicans. There's no Stu Spencer, Michael Deaver or Peter Hannaford on the blue team to plot strategy. Missteps remain endemic: A group of North Carolina Republicans recently proposed a measure to establish Christianity as the state religion, only to blocked by the state's leadership.
Others think opposing gay marriage is the ticket to revival, even though public opinion, particularly among the young, is swinging in the other direction. Some 70 percent of millennials – people in their early thirties and younger – support gay marriage, twice the rate of those over 50. Social conservatives are also gearing up on the abortion issue even though three in five Americans, according to the latest Pew survey, oppose overturning Roe v. Wade. North Dakota could be showing that America can work, literally and figuratively, but instead the state passes abortion laws that are among the strictest in the country.
Yet, there's still hope that some Republicans will recognize this opportunity. I would like to see this, in part, because I have seen one-party politics in action here in California, and it doesn't work. Even more so, I'd like to see Republicans wage class warfare on behalf of the "enterprise" constituency because Democrats then would have to offer something in response, which could only have good consequences for the rest of us.
Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study, The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.
This piece originally appeared in the Orange County Register.
Lincoln Memorial photo by Bigstock.
Email this Story
crony capitalism
RE: "crony capitalism that has become emblematic of the Obama era."
Are you delusional? Crony Capitalism has been horrible for decades!! Yes; Obama is guilty beyond defense, but you're mistaken to think it began - or even accelerated- under him. Sorry, try again.
Agree re crony capitalism
I agree very much, Joel, the the Republicans need to brand themselves strongly as the anti-crony-capitalism party.
The Democrats are extremely vulnerable on this, but the Republicans have not helped themselves. It is the Democrats who have succeeded in capturing the largest share of political gains from crony capitalism (donations, etc) without incurring any of the electoral blow-back.
It is a mystery to me why urban planning and housing affordability is not a major political decider. The Republicans should make the connection between cronyism, rent-seeking, exclusionary policies, housing unaffordability, social immobility, proscriptive planning, and local economic stagnation.
We Should Not Bend On Gay Marriage
Joel,
The Gay marriage issue is largely lost for the conservative end of things. Decades of settling for mediocre-at-best arguments, but more often then not, down-right disgusting homophobia, the Conservatives are not in a position to blame anyone but themselves for the fall in public support for banning Gay Marriage. But it didn't only take the conservative failure in this message war, to create the 70% preference amongst millennial's, in support of Gay Marriage.
The War From The Other Side:
Many of our elite universities, under the height of WASP hegemony, were largely finishing schools for the wealthy, and those who come from rich and notable pedigree. In the 1950's, however, they began to move towards a meritocracy that elevated brains above anything else, allowing for the revolution in business and culture that has reshaped every facet of American life. Which is great, and has created our elevated culture of merit. It has also, however, become a left-wing seminary, indoctrinating students in the trinity of the Left, of Race, Gender, and Class, and one of the institutions it most despises is that of Marriage. Marriage, and gender roles, they argue, have constructed sexism(Yes, Constructed.), and heterosexism. The move for marriage 'equality' is not to liberalize what society deems as acceptable living arrangements, to include Gays. No, marriage, as the way it is being used by the Left, is only there to serve as a tool in advancing one of its most heralded values, of Equality, and to destroy traditional gender roles, that upholds, in their view, our current sexist "system," and our heterosexist biases, which for the last 2000 years, have been sourced from the bible.
The World The Bible Was Reacting To:
The bible's position is built upon the reality of its day. It's prohibition on every living arrangement, including polygamy, that could compete with its male-female preference, was a reaction to the fluidity of sexuality in the ancient world. If human history is of any importance to us, an accurate reading of it would acknowledge the obvious fact that gender is not fixed. Homosexuality was present in almost every major military campaign of the pre-Christian world, and would be seen lived out in society, and even religion, throughout Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Corinth, Carthage, Sicily, Egypt, Libya, West Africa, China, SE Asia, the Americas, throughout the tribes of mainland Europe, and ancient India. Priestly prostitution was commonplace and men and women were easily interchangeable, especially in Hindu temples in India, where the preference was women and boys.
All of the ancient Gods lived out aspects of human nature, often posing as models for human behavior, and from Zeus to Ishtar, and Krishna to Poseidon and Osiris, the Gods of the ancient world were bisexual, reflecting both the acceptable zeitgeist of the time, as well as a truer portrait of the human creature. Homosexual behavior was okay in their day, so long as men and women conformed to societally appointed gender roles. So, in ancient Greece, it was okay for a man to have a boy as sexual entertainment, so long as he was married and produced children. The biblical text recognized this fluidity of gender, and reacted against it, to destroy any challenge or impediment, to creating a morally elevated society. None of which is possible, without this rigid male-female bias, and the family unit that the pairing of the two constructs.
The War On Gender
But today, throughout most of Sweden, on many college campuses in the US, Boston, Portland, San Francisco, Boulder, NYC, etc, and almost all parts of secular Europe, there is this attempt to deconstruct gender biases. They live out these values by promoting unisex clothing, mannerisms, etiquette, they want to ban words like he/she/him/her/boy/girl/man/woman/male/female, and want to replace it with non-identifying terms such as they, them, friend, etc. They want to raise their boys with dolls and their girls with trucks, to allow the choose which gender they want to conform to. And now in Massachusettes, they're even allowing children to choose their gender at school, with no parental consent required.
Gender Is Not Fixed:
It is built upon this myth that gender is fixed. The thinking goes:
If Gender is fixed, and men will always only make love to women, then we have nothing to worry about, since a child raised by a homosexual couple will affirm whatever fixed gender they were born with, and only boys with a "fixed" gay sexuality will be attracted to other boys/men, and only girls born with a "fixed" lesbian sexuality will be attracted to, and couple with, other girls. And children of straight couples, who are exposed to alternatives other then the male-female ideal, will not be affected by the homosexual behavior of others.
This myth is perpetuated by Christians, who have forgotten the way the world was before they took this Judaic-sourced preference to the world. They also assume that gender is fixed, but forget that the world they've lived in, for the last 1500 years, has been constructed by them, including our gender bias that promotes a man settling down with a woman, instead of another man, a group of people irrespective of their genders, a non-human animal, or inanimate object. They just assume that those who are Gay "chose" to be "wicked," or that the devil has a large part to play in it. Those homosexuals who grow up under a Christian context are encouraged to fight their "affliction," and that it can be cured by prayer. If you've seen any of these Christian camps that exist to "cure" a homosexual of their ailment, a dominant view is that it is a battle not necessarily with their nature or their sexuality, but with Satan. It's pathetic, and the arguments that Christians then offer for man-woman marriage only get's worse, without even an attempt to masquerade what is out-right homophobia of the highest order.
We Should Worry:
Joel, we should be concerned about a world where marrying someone of the opposite sex is no longer a value, especially in places like Asia where economic stability is trumpeted as a much higher value then settling down, and having a family. We should worry about this war on gender, as it seems that almost all couples who conform to this orthodoxy tend to have below-replacement birthrates. And the lives they lead and raise what few children they do have, is antithetical to valuing marriage and procreation as an end aim.
We see most on the left, who are a byproduct of the University's political indoctrination, do not support the traditional family unit, of a mother and a father. In the rare case that they do choose to have a family of their own, most of the time, they have children at below-replacement birthrates. It is, after all, White (non-catholic) Christians, and Hispanic catholics, who will be supplying the native-born work-force of tomorrow, and the child-per-family number that people produce can literally be connected to church attendance and involvement in their religious tradition.
Leftwing Christians have more children then secular couples, but are still far below that of conservative, religiously observant Christians. And leftwing Christians who go to church frequently, tend to have more children then moderate or conservative Christians, who believe in Christ, but forgo religious involvement. This is just as true for any person from a traditional religious tradition, be it Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, etc.
To a secularist in Europe, why reproduce if this life is all there is, and dragging around a child limits your ability to enjoy adult playgrounds such as London, or New York. We should take every challenge to this global depopulation seriously. It will be better for the world at the onset, but many countries are on a trajectory that seems seemingly impossible to reverse, and we should then consider every threat to this seriously. Especially since our welfare state in America and in Europe depend on a replenished workforce to replace outgoing retirees, we don't want to fall to the level of Europe, wherein we have to ship in migrants in the millions, just to make sure that future pensions will be funded. Coupled with the war on gender, and the forgoing of procreation that often accompany's secularism(yes, France & Israel are an exception), we have a lot to be cautious about as Russia and Eastern Europe worsen both in their replacement rate and their mortality rate, and as the continent of Europe and Asia race each other to the bottom.
It's All A Web Of Relationships:
The assault on our population collapses that we see throughout the world has many facets and angles, causes and precipitators, and we need to worry about every single one. I think many people want to excuse traditional marriage as something that is not important to our culture, our economy, our population stability, our standard of living, and a whole host of things, but everything is inter-related to how we arrive at the current present, and you cannot view things such as social issues, as being independent from our economy, our consumer choice preferences, who will generate the workforce of tomorrow, etc.
There is a web of relationships between all of these things, and we cannot, as many Republicans today argue, just be about cutting and taxes and reducing regulations, simply because we have nothing but crappy Christian arguments to settle for. We need to revisit marriage as in institution, the history of the male-female bias, and the gender-fluid context it was born from, and objectively argue for or against it, on a purely empirical and rational basis. Joel, there is a strong case for the biblical male-female preference, and much of it resides in both history, and the current reality of our day.
And this case is not anti-Gay, if anything, it'll call out Christians to cut the crap, cut the phony arguments, and cut the hate. The Gay is every bit as much in God's image, as a straight person, and we should love the homosexuals in our families, our churches, our school's, and our community's, in every way that we would love anyone else, minus their ability to use the term "marriage." Which is fine, because most of them would never have fought for "marriage-equality" if we had valued, cherished, and accepted them, as equals. But "Love," and "Equality," is not a justifiable excuse to uproot this institution that has helped in constructing the western world we live in. I'm not buying it.
Conclusion:
I'll end this posting with a quote from David Brooks. There is this naivete that assumes that supporting gay marriage will not change anything, except, that Gays will now be allowed to marry another member of their sex. One can have such a romantic view if one divorces it from everything else in life, as an isolated variable, that won't affect society in any other way. I think we should adopt David Brooks note on "Emergent Thinking."
Which you can view in full here: http://bigthink.com/videos/what-is-emergent-thinking
"Carl Popper, the great philosopher said, “All problems are either clouds or clocks.” A clock is a… to understand a clock, you can take it apart, it’s individual pieces and you study the pieces and then you can understand how a clock works. A cloud, you can’t take apart a cloud. A cloud is a dynamic system. A cloud you can only study as a whole."
"….one of the problems that we have as a culture is we take clouds and we pretend they’re clocks. We take problems that are emergent and we pretend we can solve them through deductive reasoning, but just picking them apart. And we always want to find the one thing that will lead to that, so we always want to find “X” leads to “Z”. The problem with an emergent system, you don’t have those kinds of straight causal relationships. Everything, it’s all about the interplay. It’s all about the dance." - David Brooks
re: The Party of Lincoln
The Republican Party was founded, among other things, to end slavery, which was championed by the democrat party of its day. There was a time, when a majority of Americans thought slavery to be OK.
That didn't make slavery OK.
Your comment that 3/5ths of Americans don't want Roe v. Wade overturned, ergo, Republicans should drop the anti-abortion platform, does not make abortion OK.
It took Republican abolitionists to end the human rights atrocity that was slavery, even though a critical mass of Americans, if not an outright majority, thought slavery to be OK. That did not make slavery OK.
African Americans of the time embraced Republicans, because they were then, as they are now (ideally, at least) the party of the sacredness of the individual, individual liberty, self-determination, and human liberation.
It took Republicans to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, even as democrats were steeped in ongoing segregation and a majority of them thought that controlling protests against Jim Crow and other segregation practices with water cannons and dogs, and terrorizing black families with burning crosses were a good thing (wasn't one of your esteemed leaders, Senator Robert Byrd, a Grand Kleagle?). That didn't make Jim Crow laws just. It wasn't just happenstance that Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. It isn't just happenstance that his niece happens to be a pro-life Republican.
It will take the new breed of Republican abolitionists to end the new human rights atrocity that is abortion.
If the current Republican leadership goes squishy on what is the most important human rights issue of our day, that of a State-condoned veritable holocaust of 50-55 MILLION lives, them they will be replaced by a new party that won't be so squishy.
A biblically-based, Compromise.
I personally think there's room for compromise.
The radicalism of RoeVWade is that it is framed the issue in a pro-abortion language that puts many abortion-legal countries in Europe to shame. RoeVWade destroyed the relationship between a society and the fetus, and the father and the fetus, down to just a woman, and a fetus, which is the only way one can frame it to make it only a woman's issue. If it becomes only a woman's issue, then it becomes a political tool, with no limiting principle. The Europeans, though they allow the mother full power over the final decision, at least discourage it, while promoting other alternatives, such as adoption, & do not divorce the mother's actions from the society she lives within, or from the child in her womb. And they also put limits, up to 18 weeks in some cases, on the timeframe that they allow a woman to get an abortion.
I support the allowing of abortion, so long as it is not framed as only a choice between a woman, and her body. And this should be allowed until 12-14 weeks of pregnancy, and from there on, it should be determined whether or not it is absolutely a threat to her physical health.
We need to allow abortions, and not frame it as taking the life of another human being, because it is not a full life, and killing something that is not a full life is not murder, as is illustrated in Exodus 21:22.
The moral issue with abortion is: what does it do to us, as a culture and nation, to kill millions of would-be children, simply because it interferes with our lifestyle, career or travel plans, or, because we forgot to use protection... The message society should be sending is that it is not okay to have an abortion, just for those reasons. We are social creatures, we respond and tend to conform to what society wants from us, and if we promoted that message while still allowing for abortion, I can guarantee you that abortion rates will fall.
Let's get this straight
There are 3 classes of Republicans in their tiny little tent.
1. The über rich who want to able to make and keep as much money as possible and who view this as a zero sum game. So, their attitude is screw you.
2. The professional politicians who have a desire to govern from the right and blah, blah...
3. The primary voters who hate:
a. homosexuals
b. immigrants (almost all, but especially non-Anglo ones)
c. any gun ownership restrictions
d. government interference (unless it is their Medicare or Social Security)
e. dark-skinned people
f. the loss of special rights for white men
g. the Jews, the Gnomes of Zurich, the Illuminati
h. anyone who is not an evangelical "Christian"
i. the UN
While you can make a deal with groups 1 and 2, you cannot with group 3.
The GOP is the party of hate and needs to die just as the Whigs did.
Dave Barnes
Priestly prostitution was
Priestly prostitution was commonplace and men and women were easily interchangeable, especially usa.szmurlo.pl in Hindu temples in India, where the preference was women and boys.
The Republicans Have A Tent. The Democrats do not.
At least the Republican party has a tent. The Democrats don't have this issue, because their diversity is only skin deep -- the overwhelming majority of them do not break with the Left's Race, Gender, Class, and Environment doctrines. Most of them don't vote democrat because they happen to buddhist, muslim, or vegan, but rather, because they adhere to two or more of the following ways to frame the world: Race, Class, Gender, or the Environment. Or... they associate themselves with left wing values: Tolerance, Equality, Multiculturalism, Secularism, Collectivism, and Compassion. There is no difference between a Gay Democrat, a Woman Democrat, an Asian Democrat, and a Teenager who is a Democrat. They're all on the Left, they all affirm the save values, and believe the same things.
The GOP has the diversity that counts: Ideological diversity.
There is a struggle to balance the Neoconservative, Paleoconservative, Libertarian, and Religious-Right wings of the party. Since Lincoln, there has always been a struggle on whether to be isolationists, or interventionists, between progressive visionary paternalists, political anarchists, and everything in between. We debate free-trade versus protectionism, liberal land-use vs. centralized planning, these battles still happen within the GOP, with the party often destroying itself because of the hardships that "TRUE" diversity brings to a movement. It's hard to please everyone...
Each of these groups have unique platforms that source their positions from different "values", and are not merely a gradation between moderate conservative and far-right. Yes, there are many places we agree or compromise on. But Social conservatives don't always value Liberty, many Libertarians fear us sourcing our ethics from God or having it manifest itself in the social policies that the state enacts/protects, such as marriage, Paleocons are economic protectionist and are the main driving force in trying to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, and Neocons favor interventionism and free markets.
Where in the DNC do you see such huge fundamental differences between various groups in the party? Everyone on the Left all affirm sexual inequality, racial inequality, and class inequality as very real issues to fight, it's just more of a gradation depending on how strong one's faith is in the religious cause of Leftism.
Leftwing liberalism's broad church and its "accomodations"
Leftwing liberalism is a broad tent too; only they are amazing at reconciling the irreconcilable simply because of the common cause that connects them all ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend"). Ironically, it is the mantras of political correctness that are riddled with hypocrisies, and antagonism to Judeo-Christian values is the only possible way to rationalize these.
For example, "other" cultures are now expected to remain untouched by progress, and indigenous cultures to be reinstated in their pre-modern form with State assistance, as in the case of Australian Aborigine or NZ Maori culture. Only our own Christian culture is expected to be cast off in favour of allegedly "progressive" secular nullities; this in the face of the respective track records of each culture when honestly examined, and the voluntary adherence to Judeo-Christian culture by the great majority of members of minorities who are apparently now to be "represented" in toto by State-endorsed neo-pagan spokesmen. Christians are expected to progress "forwards" to secular humanism if they are Europeans; "others" are expected to go back to pre-Christian paganism. Apparently there is no "racism" or apartheid inherent in this.
What about the rights of indigenous people, when they are the majority, and the nation concerned has been Christian for centuries? Take the UK or Sweden, for example. No - in these cases, it's all about the rights of "other", immigrant cultures.
What becomes, too, of the contradiction between "universal rights", and the "rights" of primitive cultures to live separately and practise their traditional culture? Do the "universal rights" of, say, the child, not apply to children born into such societies? How, then, are those rights "universal"? But Christians are allowed to bring up their own children as they will, only on the sufferance of the secular State (and the desire of the most radical of the secularisers to create every possible occasion to remove these children from the care of their parents, is plain).
Consider our history's colonisers and missionaries, who wished to "civilise" the inhabitants of undeveloped countries (out of love for mankind, incidentally), who are condemned for cultural imperialism and seeking to impose "our" values on other cultures. Yet by what set of values are we to judge of "global inequality", and our responsibility to better the lot of "disadvantaged people"? Are these people still disadvantaged when judged by the historical standards of their own culture?
Western feminists lack of solidarity with women suffering direly in other cultures is another glaring hypocrisy. So, too, is their division over whether pornography and prostitution are "demeaning of women", or valuable tools by which to destroy the family and "patriarchy". So, too, is their refusal to recognise that far more man-on-woman violence and child abuse occurs in "casual" relationships than in marriage. Theodore Dalrymple makes the following observation in "The New Faith, Hope and Charity":
".....the anti-paedophile hysteria in Britain......is itself the product of a justifiably guilty conscience about the way many children are brought up......"
The children who suffer so direly from moral breakdown, are mere collateral damage in the anti-Christian war against the "patriarchical" family. The anti-Christians do not really care at all about children. Conservative values relating to sexual relations with minors are actually endorsed by them solely at their own convenience. The fact that secular progressives are at the forefront of reform movements to lower the legal age of "consent" does not occasion the slightest shame, nor the faintest censure for hypocrisy, when the proclivities they wish to see legalised are made the subject of their loudest condemnations when discovered in, say, Catholic priests.
I have read claims that the teaching profession is far worse affected by abuse of minors, but teachers and their unions are part of the broad alliance of secular progressives, and will benefit from generous forgiving attitudes and codes of silence on the part of the media. As if this does not exceed the "church" establishment in hypocrisy.
Note, too, that age-old institutions main motivation for covering up corruption, was to maintain public respect for things that tended to sustain societal strength. But the politically correct establishment participates en mass in suppression of truth so as to enable continued BREAKDOWN of society, economically as well as socially. Note the insistence, in the area of crime sentencing, that "an unfortunate upbringing" is a mitigating circumstance; yet in the area of social policy, there is total denial of the need to investigate and analyse the outcomes of "upbringings" according to an obvious range of variable factors and to devise social policy responses accordingly.
What about the broader question of whether humans are "responsible", or "the product of their social environment"? If the latter, then how is any recovery possible once a moral rot has been allowed to start in a society? You would think it would be regarded as crucial to get that social environment RIGHT, if the social environment is the determinant of whether people are going to steal, cheat, lie, assault, rape, and murder? But no - the "product of the social environment" argument is as deliberate a social poison as using arsenic to kill an individual.
Note that the extension of social welfare beyond the basis of Christian charity and into the sphere of rights and entitlements, ends up undermining the traditional patriarchical family, and society itself. But notice that atheist communist regimes did not include ANY provision at all for anybody, no matter how unfortunate, to NOT work, and still be provided for. This, too, is conveniently ignored by our secular leftists, however much they may condemn the "harshness" of Christian charity that presupposes gratitude on the part of the recipient. Secular atheist totalitarian regimes and "other" cultures can practise the most brutal forms of criminal justice and the most oppressive treatments of their “labour” forces without a murmur of censure from secular leftists in the “harsh capitalist” world.
Note, too, the insistence on the "science" of Darwinism, and yet a blanket denial of the basic physiological differences between races of human beings who have long inhabited regions totally different in climates and geography. And the denial of Darwinist principles as they apply to entire cultures. Surely a culture (culture, not "race", note) "naturally selected against" should be allowed to die gracefully?
What about the contradiction inherent in "our" responsibility to provide materialistically to "disadvantaged" minorities; and yet ensure the preservation of their culture at our expense - even when that culture is inimical to the very progress that has enabled our material advantage?
Note, too, the environmentalists total lack of concern with the responsibility for ecological destruction, of primitive "other" cultures or of atheist Marxist regimes. The record of the former USSR and Communist China on the environment is well recorded. But it is not so well understood that primitive hunter-gatherer societies in an underpopulated earth frequently destroyed huge areas of forest to drive prey into the open.
Environmentalism itself is directly opposed to man's God-given dominion over nature. Note that leftwing liberalism, with its apparent emphasis on providing ever more funding for health, education, pensions, and wealth transfers, has allied itself politically with environmentalism, whose requirements for the curtailment of resource use is inimical to such objectives. It is also convenient that the fashionable tenets of urban planning, guided by environmentalism, include collateral damage to traditional ideas of home ownership, marriage and child raising in decent, healthy, affordable homes. Yet the fact that the viability of the solo mother as an economic unit must have thereby been eroded to an even worse extent, remains a matter of no concern to the politically correct establishment in spite of their insistence on her validity as the basis for a household. The explanation for all such contradictions will be found only in the "anti-Christian" denominator.
Jennifer Roback Morse, in "Marriage In the City", points out that high property prices make it harder to live up to the demands of Christian morality. Marriage and childbearing are being delayed by the increased financial burden represented by the "first home" - often past the time when fertility and motherhood is at its most robust.
In "The Dirt Gap", Steve Sailer points out an extraordinary correlation regarding the 2004 Presidential election in the USA. Listing the States in order of house price inflation from 1980 to 2004, and in order of fertility rates among white women; in the 2004 elections, sitting President George W. Bush, the more overtly Christian candidate, won all of the first 26 States with the lowest inflation in house prices and the all of the first 19 States with the highest fertility rates. The statistical significance of this is considerable.
Even if not explicitly stated as a weapon against Christianity, urban planning that forces the cost of land up is yet another such thing. It is highly likely that the most "green" planners and conservationists, if pressed, would actually opine that this is a good thing. Of course religious fundamentalists who tend to have big families should be prevented from doing so, in the interests of "the planet". But the fact that a 2-person household represents a more "sustainable" use of urban space than two single-person "households", will remain unmentionable. Or that children remaining with their parents until they themselves marry, is also a contribution to "sustainability". No Christian tradition that in fact supported sustainability or any other popular modern political objective (equality, or social mobility, for example) will be re-considered even in that light.
And surely it has been noticed that the exploitation and consumption of "endangered species" are frequently the subject of special "exceptions" regarding "indigenous peoples traditions". Why? Is the utilisation of nature only a "tradition" when practised by non-Christian cultures; or do only non-Christian cultures have a right to maintain such "traditions"?
What about the media's celebration of illegal and terrorist activity on the part of environmental activists, such as Greenpeace and the "Sea Shepherd" organisation? Of course protesters at abortion clinics will not be extended any similar respect for the depth of THEIR beliefs. Note too, that the ongoing worldwide persecution (including martyrdom) OF Christians, is easily the worst discrimination and persecution of its kind, but is universally ignored by the mainstream media. But should any of these Christians defend themselves, as in Nigeria recently for example, the headlines will blare "Christians perpetrate violence......". Meanwhile the non-statement of the religious element in violent actions all over the place, by the media, when Christianity is NOT involved, has reached the status of farce. It is always "unemployed youths" who are rioting and burning cars in the South of France, or murdering Christians in Nigeria. It is "oppressed and hopeless Palestinian nationalists" who explode themselves in Israel.
We are constantly told by politically correct intellectuals and the media, how much “oppression” the west and its traditions are guilty of, and how we must atone by allowing immigration and multiculturalism, including modifying our laws to accommodate other cultures practices; but we do not expect any reciprocity in the nations from which the immigrants come, in which Christians (and indeed all faiths other than the local one) are routinely murdered, brutalised, forcibly converted, and discriminated against.
Historical revisionism and deconstructionism is always aimed at implicating Christendom and its offshoots in all evil and exonerating all other "noble" cultures from blame. Notice that it is only the nations of Christendom that it is regularly suggested should pay race-based "reparations", to the descendants of slaves - this, when Christianity was the first culture to end the practice and the only culture deserving the credit for its eradication worldwide.
Consider, too, certain most unpalatable aspects of the history of certain "noble savage" cultures, such as cannibalism and infanticide. These are not accorded the respect that, for the moral relativist to be consistent, should be accorded to all "values". The ideas of nature spirits and "taboo" and so on are accorded the deepest respect. So what does the politically correct establishment do with insuperable difficulties that unfortunately, it is only in the light of their own culture they know to be unspeakably evil? Simple. Bring the full weight of censure upon anyone who dares to refer to the difficulty. Ask Professor Paul Moon how his recent book on cannibalism went down with the P. C. establishment.
Moral relativism's underlying principle, that all beliefs are equally acceptable, is an extraordinary thing to accept as an argument from today's secular progressive, as many media figures do. How can you be in favour of ANY progress at all, and claim equal validity of all beliefs? Surely there are beliefs that you are opposing in wishing for "progress"; are these beliefs not valid after all? Why not just accept the "equal" validity of Victorian morality? Surely any change requires superior validity on the part of a modern day belief over against the belief that justified the status quo? The explanation is, of course, that moral relativism is just another inconsistent but convenient cudgel with which to beat Judeo-Christian values.
"No Enemies On The Left" in context.
Philbeast, you identify something very important about the Left. Pas d'ennemis à gauche, or something to that extant, was a very common phrase uttered throughout the French Revolution, and it means: No Enemies On The Left. (So long as they are not on the Right.)
The Barometer of determining Allies:
The reason you can have folks of all variety fighting alongside the Left, even though they have values that are antithetical to each other, is because the "Right" to the Left is literally anything that resembles the old Christian vanguard, and Judeo-Christian Americans, and they and their value system, and system of ethics, is the bigger enemy of the world.
This applies to the Maori's, to Africans, to polynesians like myself, to Palestinians and the Muslim world at large, we are all given the bigotry of low expectations, because the assumption is that we don't know any better, and are therefore "innocent," irrespective of the fact that many of us may disagree with the central tenants of Leftism.
Everything else in the world is trivial and pales in comparison to the Christians, and their Judeo-Christian counterpart in America, since it was this old vanguard that colonized most of the world, brought in our unequal gender constructs, constructed institutions meant to divide races and enslave or wage genocide against inferior races, constructed orthodoxies that centralized power under the well-off at the expense of the have-not's, etc, etc, etc. They are the enemy, and that is the message that the Left proselytizes to immigrant communities. They peddle this message the Right hates all of them, and that they are there to protect them from the racism, sexism, and classism of the Right.
How The Left Views Non-Leftist Immigrants:
But that doesn't mean that all of those fighting the "Right" are leftist. The Left affirm Race, Gender, and Class, as constructs of the Right, that they must fight, in order to rectify justice. If you don't conform to those basic requirements, you are just someone the Left is using for support, to advance their cause, and not actually a leftist.
The Left tends to view those "primitive" cultures as innocent, even if they are sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. The assumption, from the Left, is that these are all just ills that can be cured with "education," leftwing values, and by economic equality. The assumption from the Left, especially to those migrants who come over from the middle east or Africa, is that they will see the beauty of our ways, they will be educated by our school system, they will see their standard of living elevated by the state, and over time, they will see the light, and loose their honor killings, their lynching of homosexuals, or their bigoted behavior towards Jewish communities in Europe.
In other words… they don't take these people their trying to "help" very seriously. They think bigotry and inequality are purely human constructs, by the evil forces of the Right, so "ignorance" is what their at war with, and can be undone by safety nets, subsidized rent and healthcare and education. Like evangelical Christians, innocent non-leftist immigrants only have their humanity recognized, so long as they can be a potential convert, and they are a potential convert, so long as they don't adopt the ideas of the devil, like those on the Right.
I Still Hold : No Intellectual Diversity On The Left
That is what I say there is no intellectual diversity on the Left. And I mean the true Left, not those groups who the left piggy-back on for support in their war against the Right. Sure there are hundreds of different strains just under Feminism alone, but that is diversity in how to rectify justice, not an ideological divergence in whether they view gender as an issue. They all virtually identify sexism as a social construct, whose architects, all male, did so just to have control over women. I don't doubt that there is some truth to this, but my annoyance is their dismissal of human nature's role in all of this.
And this is just feminism. You head over to the department of Race, and it's virtually the same thing. There is sparring over how to best elevate other races to the level of the white man, but none of them are in disagreement that race is an issue. The same is true with the Leftwing tenant of class. And everyone who is on the Left can have their moderateness or extremism measured and assessed by how strongly involved and intellectually steeped they are, in advancing the religion of Leftism. You can have idiot mouthpieces in Hollywood, who identify with all three central tenants of Leftism, but never be involved in politics or know the intellectual arguments of the Left. And then you have those in Academia, the Leftist priestly class of interpreters, of what it means to be on the Left. You see all levels of religiosity on display when you attend church(University).