Posted on 04/10/2015 10:53:16 AM PDT by Kaslin
The Republican rout in the Battle of Indianapolis provides us with a snapshot of the correlation of forces in the culture wars.
Faced with a corporate-secularist firestorm, Gov. Mike Pence said Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act would not protect Christian bakers or florists who refuse their services to same-sex weddings. And the white flag went up again.
Politics follows culture. And the cultural revolution of the '60s is triumphant. Traditional Christianity, driven out of schools and the public square, is being whipped back into the churches and told to stay there.
America has gone over to the revolution.
Looking back, the sweep of the capitulation becomes stark.
First came the plea of atheists not to have their children forced to participate in prayers at school. Fair enough. Americans do not believe in compelling people to do as they disbelieve.
Then followed the demand that no child be exposed to prayers or religious books, including the Bible, nor have any day or week set aside as a holiday if connected to Christianity.
Out went Christmas and Easter. In came winter break and spring break. Coaches of high school teams were ordered to dispense with prayers before games. The coaches complied.
No matter what the majority wanted, the minority prevailed, thanks to a Supreme Court whose dictates were never challenged by democratically elected presidents or Congresses, nor ever defied by a Christian majority.
In the sexual revolution there came first the plea that abortion in extreme cases be decriminalized, then legalized, then subsidized, then declared a right. From crime to constitutional right in two decades!
Under Obamacare, Christian businesses must dispense abortion-inducing morning-after pills to employees.
On gay rights, first came the demand that a bar in Greenwich Village patronized by homosexuals be left alone by the cops.
Next came the demand that homosexuality be decriminalized and then that this, too, be declared a constitutional right. And so it went.
Soon, same-sex marriages will likely be declared a right hidden in the Constitution and entitled to all the privileges and benefits accorded traditional marriages. Next, those who refuse to provide services to same-sex weddings will become the criminals.
Thus does biblical truth become bigotry in Obama's America.
And the process has been steadily proceeding for generations.
First comes a call for tolerance for those who believe and behave differently. Then comes a plea for acceptance. Next comes a demand for codifying in law a right to engage in actions formerly regarded as debased or criminal. Finally comes a demand to punish any and all who persist in their public conduct or their private business in defying the new moral order.
And so it goes with revolutions. On the assumption of power, revolutionaries become more intolerant than those they dispossessed.
The French Revolution was many times more terrible than the Bourbon monarchy. The Russian Revolution made the Romanovs look benign. Fidel Castro's criminality exceeded anything dreamt of by Fulgencio Batista.
Looking back, one appreciates why we hear so often, "This isn't the country I grew up in." For it isn't.
But how did this moral-cultural revolution succeed so easily?
How was it that the Greatest Generation that won World War II let itself be intimidated by and dictated to by nine old men with lifetime tenure who had been elected by no one?
How did this happen in a republic where minority rights exist but the majority rules? Why did Middle America meekly comply and not resist?
By the mid-'50s and early '60s, black folks were engaged in civil disobedience, refusing to move to the back of the bus, sitting at segregated lunch counters, getting clubbed by cops, and marching for equal access to schools, hotels, motels and voting booths.
And across the South there was resistance to the civil rights revolution: Southern manifestos, governors standing in schoolhouse doors, federal marshals and federal troops called out.
Whatever side of the civil rights revolution one was on, folks on both sides fought for what they believed in.
Amazing. The old segregationists who, morally speaking, held a pair of deuces resisted. But a Christian majority that had the Faith that created Western civilization behind it rolled over and played dead.
Christians watched paralyzed as their country was taken from them.
What explains the rout in Indianapolis? The GOP simply cannot stand up to media denunciations as intolerant bigots, especially if the corporations upon which they depend threaten economic reprisals.
With the Democratic Party irretrievably lost, and the Republican Party moving to neutrality in the culture wars, traditionalists should probably take comfort in the counsel, "Put not your trust in princes."
When that father and daughter at Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Ind., said their religious beliefs forbade them from catering a same-sex wedding, they were subjected to a hailstorm of hate, but were also showered with $840,000 from folks who admired their moral courage.
Religious folks who do not believe in collaborating with what they think is wrong should go forth and do likewise.
Courage as well as cowardice is contagious.
Except that pockets of resistance are appearing. The response to the Chik-Fil-A boycott was the first. Then Gamergate, which is STILL going. The 800+K raised for Memories Pizza, and the petitions to Apple to stop doing business in Saudi, et all. And most recently, the Sad Puppies campaign in Science Fiction.
The tide is turning. Have faith. . .
I try not to plan things out of spite... it just paints me into a foolish looking corner.
My perspective is that old rule about insanity is doing the same thing again and expecting different results.
Whenever a person tries to fix a problem they analyze the different options and choose the option with the highest likelyhood of success while also considering the cost of exercising the option.
If it wasn’t for the fact that voting is absurdly easy, I wouldn’t do it. It’s virtually pointless today.
It wasn’t always this way, but times change.
What is American Corporatism?
Frontpagemag.com, 13 Sept 2002
socialism for the bourgeois [elites]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1036236/posts
” What is American Corporatism?”
See Democat Party
See Establishment Party(formerly Republican)
Most of what matters in politics isn’t even voting. It’s in grooming and fielding candidates.
Defiance of the ‘stapo’s is beginning to appear. It needs appropriate venues. Sooner or later a campaign planner is going to get this down to near a science.
Defiance of the ‘stapo’s is beginning to appear. It needs appropriate venues. Sooner or later a campaign planner is going to get this down to near a science.
... and if a certain group gets dissed, they ought to be reminded that most people still tended to be live-and-let-live and would have stayed that way; it was they of the group who played chicken. No reference to the famous CFA of course.
I agree. I washed my hands of the GOP years ago. I register (where it's available) as a "U" or "Undeclared."
I don’t know whether to say, “Bravo” or “Who am I to judge”?
Easy. In the immediate aftermath of WWII, say 30 years, the generation that fought it regarded that great convulsion as: The Worst That Could Happen, while anything else was a tempest in a teapot. How excited do you get about little nibbles at the culture when you've been to the biggest show in the history of the world and you've had about all you could stand of slaughter, butchery and sheer barbarism on an industrial scale?
WWII generation was never the “greatest.” They brought in the debauchery that the Boomers ran with. The greatest generation was always identified with that of the Founders. All other generations are a pale reflection, at best.
Yeah, I can buy that.
Frankly, I think that a small band of articulate & determined Conservatives, with enough financial support to get the word out, could take over what is otherwise clearly headed for the scrap heap of history. You do not need financial support comparable to what the so called "establishment" can muster; just enough to start & then manage a ground swell, that will respond to the factual betrayal of conscience that Pat details in this article.
Congress and most State Houses are largely ignorant of things that were clear as day to the Founders.
....Yet the WW 2 generation was called “the greatest generation” most likely for the reason in that they stood up and sucessfully defeated the facists.
Great success eventually makes countries self-indulgent, which is what happened to America over the last 60 years or so.
Explain to me, Gamergate? I see this on Breitbart, and don’t get what the deal is.
With enough Hispanics, they can start their own party. Do you know many who look forward to being ruled over by the likes of Sharpton? Do they really like Obama?
I'm hoping for a splintering of political parties, when the GOP can't deliver the voters they then sell out.
Think four parties--La Raza Progresiva, DemCommies, Tired Old Party and Conservative Republican. Do you think we'd have a chance then?
“We must fight back against evil no matter the seemingly desperate odds.”
That requires that so-called conservatives get off their fat butts and do things like get involved, including showing up at village and county board meetings, and, heaven forbid, donating a good bit of their holy Mammon stash to patriot causes.
Gamergate started when a guy found that his girlfriend, a game developer with mediocre games but great reviews, found out why she was getting great reviews: she was sleeping with reviewers and editors at the game magazines and sites.
Gamers demanded ethics in game journalism, but feminists saw this as attacking women, since “most gamers” are men. That’s actually not true, women DO tend to play different games, and in different ways, than men, but it was all the opening that the grievance feminists needed.
Actor Adam Baldwin, a gamer himself, dubbed this whole brouhaha “#gamergate”, and a hashtag was born. It then spun up fully into grievance mode, some “feminist” game devs (Anita Sarkeesian, notably) claiming there were threats of violence and even death against her.
Now, any time conservatives, males, or worse still, conservative males, criticize women in the arts, someone inevitably trots out “Gamergate”. It’s sort of an update to Godwin’s Law. . .
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.