By Patrick J. Buchanan —
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, Governor 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 1960s 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 homosexual 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 and women 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-1950s and early 1960s, 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 resisted. And 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 homosexual 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.
Patrick J. Buchanan is a writer, political commentator and presidential candidate and the author of the new book THE GREATEST COMEBACK: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.
Wow!
And I thought WE were the bigots. Thanks for setting the record straight.
So you want to hold me personally responsible for all the religion-inspired atrocities committed from the beginning of time until now, and then expect me to take you seriously?
There is no way to talk an irrational person into being rational. So I’ll just leave you and any future readers with this point: all that vitriol just goes to show you’re no better than the people you love to hate so much.
You’re not worth any more of my keystrokes. Flame away all you want.
Religion is the evil monster in this room. Who said Christians are good people, to find out, Christians have to go and ask those Christianity has happily persecuted in the name of god over the centuries to discover the really you are.
You know those people of the so-called Middle East who for over a thousand years have been invaded by Christians, murdered by Christians, stolen from by Christians, tortured by Christians and finally enslaved by Christians and brainwashed by Christians. So any time you are ready to drop on down to the Middle East, just ask around and I’m sure you’ll find out, really, really quickly.
All these thousands of years later and all of the claims made, you still have not come up with the first letter of the first word of usable evidence to remotely pretend that you have anything much at all.
All religion has done is steal human decency, bastardized human decency and charged a price for human decency, you know the stuff we were born with.
Your nonexistent god has nothing under control at all, the sociopathy that is the religious monster in the room.
The trouble is you do not even believe in a god, you just pretend to believe. You know you go to church, apologize to a thing that does not exist who could not have harmed you, and purposefully not apologizing to the person you have wronged. And back out of church and nothing has changed.
If the church is all you claim, why is the church so happily in bed with the dictators (some call them Kings and Queens?), in a two stage dictatorship (one of the body and the other of the mind) happily smiling at each other while they committed atrocity after atrocity. But because you are Christians and Christians are the really, really good people, it was clearly good for them, they just don’t realize yet. The crimes of the past come back to haunt Christians.
So what are you going to do, Christian? Surely you’re not advocating more war, in this ultra right-wing Christian war against ultra right-wing Muslims? You know how you’re trying to get this Armageddon thing you believe in so passionately trying to start. I hope you are very unsuccessful in helping to have that one start.
And the lousy 1,000 year peace thing that it if you behave someone else gets 1,000 lousy years of peace, well I suppose it’s better than nothing. Ya see, the thing is, when are Christians going to behave? With the current system you so heartily offer, NEVER!
Any time you are ready to grow up and deal with the, “for all the historical acts of intolerance supposedly done in the name of Jesus (like the Spanish Inquisition).” I take it you can not accept the reality of your religion’s, you know, “supposedly” atrocious nation/church building schemes. You should be proud tell the truth?
“I have asked this same question myself for a number of years. A study of history shows that civilizations rise up, often under tremendous persecution, by a large group of people who share strong religious views. Such a civilization rises to economic prosperity and becomes a “city on a hill.” If that civilization does not succumb to external military opposition, then the “enemies of freedom” work to misinform, demoralize, and impoverish the population, until the civilization collapses from within.”
The tactics you purport to be the work of others, are the very tactics of the the Christians dictators and their dictator friends your heroes. This really is the pot calling the kettle blacker than blackest black.
This is, of course, the standard grubby Christian tactic of the ‘grubby greedy right-wing religious/political sociopath,’ “accuse the other side of precisely what you are doing to them at the time you are doing it to them.” I see the tactic used every day in grubby right-wing politics in America and Australia, very grubby Christian stuff indeed.
You know how it goes: “We don’t believe in the theory evolution, but we are going to visit some of evolutionary’s survival of the fittest on you,”, but please keep smiling while we do it at your expense, for we are peace loving Christians here to harm you for profit and a fair modicum of brainwashing soon to come. It’s a bit rich, but I suppose there is a type certain icy cold comfort, “a Christian bullet will take you straight heaven.”
Do u see yet why u have so blown-away any respect a honest person could have for u’r kind.
So what is u’r solution for the troubles u have wrought upon us again with the very, very best, of religious intentions.
Yours JJW
Luv to hear from u?
So what is happening in our country today? To quote Edmund Berke, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” In my observation, Christians seem to have changed their interpretation of the Book of Revelation within the last century. In the past, Christians were optimistic that the Church would expand its influence until all the nations on Earth had adopted the precepts of Christ, ushering in the 1,000-year reign of peace. Suddenly, that viewpoint changed to where people were waiting for an Antichrist to rise to worldwide power, so that everybody whose names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life would be conveniently Raptured out of all the chaos happening on Earth. So now, with the “increase of wickedness” that Jesus had predicted, Christians aren’t fighting back against persecution, but instead are burying their heads in the sand, saying “Come quickly, Lord Jesus.”
For all the attacks against the Church over time, for all the hostile remarks aimed at Christians today, for all the historical acts of intolerance supposedly done in the name of Jesus (like the Spanish Inquisition), and for all the persecutions against Christians happening to this day in certain parts of the world—nothing has been more effective in neutering the Church than in convincing Christians wholesale that “God has everything under control” and encouraging people not to take responsibility for what is happening even in their own neighborhoods.
The question that remains is, now that there have been so many generations of Christians doing nothing and allowing evil to triumph, how do we reverse the tide? Even if waiting for the Rapture is the only “right thing to do,” I have made a choice to at least go down fighting in the meantime. I see nothing in the Bible that condones a do-nothing attitude, nor do I serve a God that has created Man in His image and endowed Man with tremendous potential, just to not use but a sliver of a fraction of that potential.