The long way back to sanity

The American people won a great victory in the 2016 election, repudiating the utopian statist vision of “fundamental transformation” of their country. We have won that battle, but we still have a long, hard war to win: the wackos who embrace that vision are not about to give up on it, nor are they restrained by anything we might recognize as morality.

When they finally got the Supreme Court to impose same-sex pseudomarriage on America, the Left gleefully announced the culture war was over, and they’d won. Well, not so fast, there.

There is still a culture war, and we must win it. Liberty and prosperity won’t survive in just any culture medium, and certainly not in the kind that Democrats have been brewing up for us. If we give up on the culture, we might as well give up on everything.

At the last minute of 2016, a federal judge in Texas ruled that Obamacare cannot force the public to pay for “gender reassignment” surgery. Obamacare includes a “gender fluidity mandate,” boldly proclaiming that one’s sex is not a biological fact, but only “a state of mind.” If not for that judge, we would have gone into 2017 burdened by yet another load of rank insanity.

It’s already a heavy burden. As it is, New York City now recognizes 31 different “genders” and has made it a law—well, not a real law that elected representatives voted to enact, but rather a regulation stuffed down our throats by bureaucrats—that persons trying to do business in the city had better recognize them, too, or else. Can you even remember 31 “genders”? There’s stuff on this list that a normal person never even heard of.

If your city, state, or county has anything like a “human rights commission,” your city, state, or county is over-budgeted and has more of your money than is good for you. This madness in New York is the work of the NYC Commission on Human Rights.

Back in May the commission invented a whole new crime—“misgendering”. Businesses are now required to use the “correct gender pronoun” preferred by whatever addled wacko comes strolling into the shop, and heaven help you if you don’t. Employees who “persist” in “misgendering” are to be fired. So you have to remember, somehow, all these crazy newfangled pronouns like “hir” or “ze,” or get nailed for “misgendering.”

In December, 2015, the commission first unveiled this plan, announcing a maximum $250,000 fine against business owners and employees guilty of “misgendering.” We have not yet heard whether anyone has actually been slammed with this, but the regulation lets the city yo-yos do it if they want to.

Go ahead, anybody, I dare you—explain how any of this makes the world a better place.

This is the madness that needs to be rolled back. It’ll take more than four years, more than eight years, to do it, but it must be done. And it’ll be hard, too: because the loonies who’ve been pushing it are firmly entrenched in our schools and universities, our government bureaucracies, our legal system, our publishing industry, and what we like to call our entertainment industry. They will not give up their liberal/progressive dream of controlling every aspect of everybody else’s life. They’ve been working on it since the 19th century and they’re not about to abandon it now.

If you think a free, stable, prosperous republic can be maintained in a culture of radical moral uncertainty, please think again.

The issue is ultimately a religious one. Marriage and the family, liberty of conscience, the rights of private property, equality before the law (rather than “protected categories” of citizens sticking it to the rest of us), truthfulness, compassion—these are Christian values: these are the blessings of God’s laws. Christianity is their context; the Bible is their voice. They could not be born, and certainly not maintained, in any but a Christian culture.

Our country’s founders knew that.

Do we?

I have discussed these topics, and others, on my blog, http://leeduigon.com, throughout the week. Please stop by and read! All it takes is just one click to get you there.