Posted on 02/04/2021 11:14:39 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
Exploring why conservatives have lost almost every political argument since 1945, Ed West looks at this endless litany of failure from the perspective of one of the losers, in a semi-autobiographical, self-deprecating way.
Since the 1950s the western world has gone through a huge cultural shift, comparable to the rise of Christianity during the late Roman period and the 16th century religious revolution unleashed by Martin Luther. Both of these led to profound changes in public ideas about morality and sexuality, and eventually to 'culture wars' between two deeply opposed groups. Today what we're witnessing is a sort of second Reformation, and that's why it's going to be long, painful and boring, and both sides are going to get more idiotic and hysterical, just as religious divisions once drove Catholics and Protestants into prolonged insanity.
Conservatives, like the pagans and Catholics before them, are very much on the losing side. The future appears progressive and their defeat is inevitable, part of an 'arc of history' that leads irrevocably to a progressive utopia in which they're left in the dustbin. As Barack Obama said of al-Qaeda, another group of guys not entirely comfortable with the modern world, conservatives are 'Small Men on the Wrong Side of History'.
Too many polemics and articles on the Right are tediously shouty, and too few of them explore where their arguments have fallen flat and why people find conservatives so repulsive. Small Men on the Wrong Side of History is aimed at being the rare conservative book that someone on the Left will enjoy.
West will look at some of the idiocies of the modern Right and the strange characteristics shared by conservatives, including himself, but he will also offer explanations as to why people are conservative, and explain some of the benefits conservatism offers. In particular he argues it's now necessary as a break on 'runaway liberalism', the competitive desire to appear Woker Than Thou which is driving progressive politics to extremes, and which has provoked a reaction with figures like the psychologist Jordan Peterson and his legion of fans
Our problem is simple. Unlike Leftists, we leave our enemies alive...
Conservatism lost its power when it embraced immorality because it is popular. Trying to resue the movement by compromising principles is a lot like the church who thinks they can save The Creator by love and compromise. The left does not believe in compromise, so why should we. The republican that represent look ver much the same as dems.
Taking up arms will not fix this. It will leave our families and our country in ruin. We are not the winners in that battle.
This is not going to be won with bulkets, but by refusing to compromise. The dems will hang themselves, but we must endure it. We must be the party of freedom and truth and every good thing.
Thanks to alternative media, Conservatism has been defining its own members instead of having the Propaganda Press define Conservatives.
Conservatism won a battle but they failed to win the war when they controlled all 3 branches. The Progressives don’t look like they are going to make the same mistake.
If we’re failing and on the wrong side of history how come the enlightened ones had to cheat to win this time around?
They were expected to cheat. Everybody knew it and they got away with it because our side let them. Again, they are taking the steps we were too timid to take in order to ensure they don’t have the same thing happen to them. And once again the same people, people that Conservatives elected to represent them and who just repaid their support by voting to retain Lizard Cheney, will let them get away with it.
Being on the right, I’ve come to realize my anger is based on my disappointment in the GOP more then the idiocy of the left, which makes me feel sorry for them as the idiocy of the left is down right scary and illogical. While I disagree with the left, I don’t condone violence against the left. perhaps sedation of their most violent,..joking...
Flipside: If I were on the left I would be a raging lunatic, out to violently destroy opposing views because opposing views would disrupt my world view and need to be not only morally superior, but to be in dominance of opinion. Which is why, if I were in the left, I would feel and rationalize without thinking clearly, that opposing opinions would be deserving of my hatred. I
So glad I’m not on the left as the constant need to rage and conspire for moral superiority and moral dominance sounds exhausting.
I object to the language “right side of history”. This phrase implies that in addition that the progressive policies have been beneficial, when in act all that cash legitimately be argued is that progressives have convinced a majority that their policies should be implemented. Having a majority favor something does not imply that the policy will be beneficial.
If being on the right side of history is taken to only mean “won the political battle”, then sure, for the most part, it’s true that we’ve lost the political battles. How could it be otherwise? Not only has the left taken control of education and media, their policies are inherently attractive to those who aren’t savvy enough to understand the consequences. We tell people “You have to work hard and provide for yourself”. They say “Don’t worry, we’ll give you free stuff”. Which one is the average, unaware voter going to pick?
The breakdown of the family, especially in the black community, provides a good example of this. We all know the effects: black people today as compared to blacks in 1950 are much more likely to be born to single mothers, are more likely to suffer poverty and are more likely to vlbecome criminals. Why is that? The profs will inevitably blame systemic racism, but systemic racism certainly existed in 1950, and to a much grater degree than today. There were still Jim Crow laws, voter initimidation and suppression (No, progs, asking someone to prove their identity is NOT voter suppression; I’m referring to poll taxes, literacy tests and outright physical intimidation), lynchings, and state-sanctioned segregation in 1950. Sure, in the narrow sense of “We won the political battle”, the left was “on the right side of history” regarding the Great Society program in the 1960’s. In the larger sense off doing what is most beneficial for society, though, the whole “right side of history” narrative falls apart.
From whom did they get said rights?
Proverbs 8:36
But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death
Proverbs 16:9
A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.
So much is falling into place that sets up the scenario for the Great Tribulation to happen, that I don’t see how any can deny it.
They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off. (Hosea 8:4)
I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing. (Hosea 8:12)
Conservatism and Biblical evangelical faith must go together, and the assent of the Left is not due to superior intellectual arguments, but is because the sinless flesh of man flows South, and which prosperity - a daughter of true religion - paradoxically makes easier.
Just take your foreign country back to where it came. Your your reasoning is absurd and your imagined society is repulsive. You cannot separate ideology and socialism etc. and a fiscally responsible solvent government from moral belief, and you cannot separate the latter and the America of the Founders from Christian faith, and thus while you argue against socialism, you yourself are promoting a foreign culture.
You can fantasize of a fiscally responsible solvent government without a foundational moral ideology that flows from Judaeo-Christian faith, yet rejection of the latter is what has resulted in socialism and massive debt with its welfare state and spending of social engineering. And who should want a society in which men can walk in the ladies room with your daughter, while using your tax dollars to fund HIV treatment or prevention at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, besides the over 700,000 Americans dead because of it. Plus about 2,000 infants murdered in "quarantine," and millions seduced by the victim-entitlement mentality from Hell?
Even the temporary success of secular socialist-type goverments as that of Sweden is related to the culture the flowed from Christian faith and as in the South of the US, has generational effects. Conversely, the increase in regulations and government and debt incurred thereby is directly and indirectly related to Americas spiritual decline. The fact is that we would not even need to have big government of men were ruled more by God and conscience, nor a military if other nations were also ruled thereby.
Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, (Galatians 3:19) For the transgression of a land many are the princes thereof: but by a man of understanding and knowledge the state thereof shall be prolonged. (Proverbs 28:2)
In testimony:
Robert Winthrop (May 12, 1809 – November 16, 1894), and Speaker of the House from 1838 to 1840, and later president of the Massachusetts Bible Society, explained that, “Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or the bayonet."
During the colonial period the Bible was “the single most important cultural influence in the lives of Anglo-Americans." (Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1789. (New York: Evanston and London: Harper and Row, 1970), p. 40) Schooling in early America, and for most of its history in primary education, combined education in general Christian morality with standard academic subjects. The Bible was the first book in the classroom, and was central to a child’s education, both for its content and for building skills. Students learned how to read using the Bible, passages were copied to learn penmanship, and a good part of the school day was devoted to memorizing and reciting passages from it. (PBS, ''The Story of American education: The Evolving Classroom') In addition to the Bible, other good books such as Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan and Isaac Watt’s Divine Songs were used. (Elizabeth McEachern Wells, Divine Songs by Isaac Watts (Fairfax, Va.: Thoburn Press, 1975), p. 11)
Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, Volumes 1-2, reports that in the first report of a public school in Washington which they had on record, in 1813 a Mr. Henry Ould states, “55 have learned to read in the Old and New Testaments, and are all able to spell words of three, four, and five syllables; 26 are now learning to read Dr. Watts' Hymns and spell words of two syllables; 10 are learning words of four and five letters. Of 509 out of the whole number admitted that did not know a single letter, 20 can now read the Bible and spell words of three, four, and five syllables, 29 read Dr. Watts' Hymns and spell words of two syllables, and 10 words of four and five letters.” (Columbia Historical Society (Washington, D.C.), “Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, Volumes 1-2”, “Progress in reading and Spelling, p. 9)
The overtly Christian “New England Primer” was used in primary education in New England, which is estimated to have sold upwards to 3,000,000 copies from 1700 to 1850. Introduced in 1690, this reader was used in what now would be the 1st grade, and taught multitudes of children how to read for 200 years, until 1900. The Alphabet was taught with Bible verses that began with each letter of the alphabet. Lessons had questions about the Bible and the Ten Commandments. An example of the Primer is, A = In Adam's fall, we sinned all. B = Heaven to find, the Bible mind." (The Honorable Judge Robert Ulrich Chief Justice, Missouri Court Of Appeals, Western District; http://www.shalomjerusalem.com/heritage/heritage19.html)
In addition, approximately half of all American children (beginning in 1836 to approx 1930) learned from the “McGuffey Reader,” of which 122 million copies were published (during a time when the population was much less than today, and books were passed on more). This was an advanced teaching system for it's time, written by a man who later became a Presbyterian minister, a work which earned him the title, “the Great Schoolmaster of the Nation.” He exalted the Lord Jesus Christ, and used the Bible more than any other source. It became a unifying force in American culture, instilling basic Christian-based morality, giving America a common value-laden body of literary reference and allusion, (Cranney, A. Garr, “Noah Webster and William Holmes McGuffey: The Men and Their Contributions to Reading”) and “a sense of common experience and of common possession”. (Historian Henry Steele Commager) McGuffey Readers were used widely in America until just after World War I.
Even the Unitarian (a religion that effectively denies Christ and the Divine authority of the Bible, but, unlike its immoral form today, at that time it at least overall upheld general Biblical morality) “Father of the Common School,” Horace Mann (May 4, 1796 — August 02, 1859), who became Massachusetts Secretary of Education in 1837, not only understood the impossibility of separating education from religious moral beliefs, but held that it was lawful to teach the truths of the general Christian faith, asserting that the “laws of Massachusetts required the teaching of the basic moral doctrines of Christianity.” Mann, who supported prohibition of alcohol and intemperance, slavery and lotteries, (http://www.famousamericans.net/horacemann) dreaded “intellectual eminence when separated from virtue”, that education, if taught without moral responsibilities, would produce more evil than it inherited. (William Jeynes, “American educational history: school, society, and the common good,” p. 149, 150)
Mann evidenced that he rightly understood that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment did not prohibit officially favoring the general, common Christian faith and its morality, but that it forbade official sanction of one particular sect by distinctively favoring its doctrinal distinctions, stating that “it may not be easy theoretically, to draw the line between those views of religious truth and of Christian faith which is common to all, and may, therefore, with propriety be inculcated in schools, and those which, being peculiar to individual sects, are therefore by law excluded; still it is believed that no practical difficulty occurs in the conduct of our schools in this regard.” (Stephen V. Monsma, J. Christopher Soper, “The Challenge of Pluralism: Church and State in Five Democracies”, The Unites States, cp. 2, p. 21) To critics who were alarmed at the concept of secular schools, he assured that his system "inculcates all Christian morals; it founds its morals on the basis of religion; it welcomes the religion of the Bible...," but he did exhort that Bible reading be without comment to discourage sectarian bickering. (Mann, Twelfth Annual Report for 1848 of the Secretary of the Board of Education of Massachusetts. Reprinted in Blau 183-84.
Considered second to Mann in his schooling endeavor was Henry Barnard, who was raised in a deeply religious family, and who saw his involvement in education “as part of the providence of God”. Like the majority of Americans, he believed that democracy and education went together in “the cause of truth—the cause of justice — the cause of liberty— the cause of patriotism — the cause of religion.” (Jeynes, p. 154)
By 1890, schools nationwide saw 95 percent of children between the ages of five and thirteen enrolled for at least a few months out of the year, though less than 5 percent of adolescents went to high school, and even fewer entered college. In addition, while there existed thousands of local schools, nearly one thousand colleges and universities (or varying quality), and scores of normal schools which trained teachers, a nationwide educational “system” had yet to be realized by the end of the 1800's. Education was largely locally managed, as the federal bureau of education, while collecting information about the condition of education, possessed no control over local schools. Education agencies on the state level were small, and its few employees had little or no power over local school districts. School systems in large cities could also function with little oversight, such as in Baltimore, where the public schools in 1890 employed only two superintendents for the entire district of 1,200 teachers. Despite this, public schools across America were notably similar, with children learning both the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the basics of good behavior – the latter being enforced when necessary by corporal punishment. Schools were important community institutions, and reflected the values of of parents and churches, such as honesty, industry, patriot-ism, responsibility, respect for adults, and courtesy. Memorization, recitation, chants and rhymes were often used in teaching subjects, while solving mathematical problems in one's head was promoted. This inculcation of basic education and self-discipline was purposed to promote good moral citizenry, people who would be honestly employed, and make wise and informed choices, and overall progress in an individualistic, competitive and democratic society, and who would contribute to the vitality of their community and country. (Diane Ravitch, “Left Back A Century of Failed School Reforms” Simon & Schuster)
Read more, Cause and Effect, by the grace of God.
The GOP are professional losers, whose job is to make it look like they are fighters.
The GOP wants fighters, not winners.
Trump was a winner, ergo, he must be expelled.
It really could not be any simpler than that.
Profound summation of what ought to be readily perceived, but usually is not, at least as clearly as you evidence and express so well, which is worthy to be a thread by itself. The tactics corresponds to the strategy from Hell which has been practiced for decades is as is basically set forth in the book, After the Ball, which is widely regarded as the handbook for the gay agenda, in which two homosexual Harvard-trained graduates, [55] Marshall Kirk (1957–2005), a researcher in neuropsychiatry, and Hunter Madsen (pen name Erastes Pill), who was schooled in social marketing, advocated avoiding portraying gays as aggressive challengers, but as victims instead, while making all those who opposed them to be evil persecutors. As a means of the latter, they used jamming, in which Christians, traditionalists, or anyone else who opposes the gay agenda are publicly smeared. Their strategy was based on the premise that, "In any campaign to win over the public, Gays must be portrayed as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to adopt the role of protector. The purpose of victim imagery is to make straight people feel very uncomfortable."[56][57]
"Jamming" homo-hatred (disagreement with homosexual behaviors) was to be done by linking it to Nazi horror, advised Kirk and Madsen. Associate all who oppose homosexuality with images of Klansmen demanding that gays be slaughtered, hysterical backwoods preachers, menacing punks, and a tour of Nazi concentration camps where homosexuals were tortured and gassed. Thus, "propagandistic advertisement can depict homophobic and homohating bigots as crude loudmouths..."[58] " It can show them being criticized, hated, shunned. It can depict gays experiencing horrific suffering as the direct result of homohatred-suffering of which even most bigots would be ashamed to be the cause. It can, in short, link homohating bigotry with all sorts of attributes the bigot would be ashamed to possess, and with social consequences he would find unpleasant and scary... our effect is achieved without reference to facts, logic, or proof."[59]https://www.conservapedia.com/Homosexual_Agenda#Strategies_and_psychological_tactics
“Over it is not until it is”. -Yoda Berra
“So much is falling into place that sets up the scenario for the Great Tribulation to happen, that I don’t see how any can deny it.”
I am right there with you and that very fact to me shows just how serious spiritual blindness truly can be and apparently currently is.
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