From the insanities of the American left pushing transing on kids, men into women’s locker rooms, religious-level fervor of climate change and open borders, to spineless sort-of-conservatives, unending compromise by the church whether evangelical, mainline or Roman Catholic and spend, baby, spend politicians, we are absolutely transcendent at blaming the other guy.
The problem is that the real culprit, not the victim, is staring at us in the mirror every morning. And this is the conversation no one wants to have.
There may not be a better display of this than the trolling Satanic statue in the Iowa state capitol building that caused so much angst and was ultimately destroyed by a vandal, or righteous warrior, depending. We argued about the relative value of the statue (purely negative) against the value of religious freedom (nearly infinite.)
But the real problem is that we were actually having such a debate in 2023 America. This would have been jaw-droppingly anathema to the Founding Fathers, to the Civil War generation, to the Lost Generation, Greatest Generation and for much of the infamous Boomer Generation, of which I am a reluctant, rebellious member. The question is whether such a display of pure evil is part of religious freedom, or just evil? If anything can qualify as religious freedom regardless of the depths of its depravity, then what if (not to give anyone ideas) a group claiming to be worshipers of the Canaanite god Moloch wanted to put up a statue to Moloch calling for child sacrifice?
The reality is that we would have to have that debate, too, because how can Moloch be any worse than Satan? And in reality, we’ve been having that debate for a couple of generations over on-demand abortion. The difference between a woman aborting a baby because it interferes with her career, promotion or pay raise (part of on demand) is about a hair’s breadth different from a paren t sacrificing a baby to Moloch for good crops this year. We’ve come so far!
The Satan statue is a more obvious point for most, but really no less obvious than child ‘transitioning’ surgeries. The debate over banning such surgeries, who gets to ban, can parents approve minor mutilation and so on, is the secondary point. The antecedent point is we are having such a debate over obvious evil, that we as a society are just not clear on this slap-you-in-the-face moral point.
I keep coming back to “we” because it is we. We as a country would not have had these debates 100 years ago, or 20 years ago on transgenderism. We eliminated the social shame system because we could no longer agree on what constituted shameful behavior. Because we are racing away from both our Christian heritage and the moral absolutes that were embedded in it.
Barna Research conducted two national surveys, one among adults and one among teenagers, asking each group if they believe that there are unchanging moral absolutes or that moral truth is relative to the person and circumstances. By an overwhelming 3-to-1 margin (64% vs. 22%) adults said truth is always relative to the person and their situation. The perspective was even more lopsided among teenagers, 83% of whom said moral truth depends on the circumstances, and only 6% of whom said moral truth is absolute.
These disturbing results were published in 2002. Yes, more than 20 years ago. Seems safe to say those numbers are worse today. We the people are the problem.
I pretty regularly hear among conservative talkers that Republicans are the problem, “they” are weak, “they” will betray us, “they” (insert your frustration here.) Senate President Mitch McConnell is pretty much accepted as the worst, with Sen. Lindsay Graham right behind him. Lots of finger pointing. But the people of red-state Kentucky and red-state South Carolina keep choosing them. Republicans keep choosing them.
Maybe it’s just those states? Alas, no. The rate of reelecting incumbents is in the mid to high 90s every election cycle. In 2022, 94.5 percent of Congressional incumbents were reelected, according to Open Secrets. In 2020, it was 94.7 percent. It’s been as high as 98 percent. This is true in both parties. Republicans may gripe and moan about Republicans and RINOs, but they return the exact same Republicans every election. It’s a people problem.
This is a representative democracy and we are a representative country. A few Christmases ago, there was a ginned-up backlash to the old Christmas/romantic classic “Baby, it’s cold outside.” But at the exact same time, the number one pop song in the nation was WAP. I refuse to spell out the acronym or mention the lyrics, but you can go here to see how sexually degenerate it is. Fortify yourself.
WAP was being sung by teenagers across the nation, and probably a lot of their parents. The immediacy of a catchy beat and rhythm trumped any concern over the depraved message, if they even recognized the depravity. That we were having a debate over whether this song was a moral concern or not is just more proof that we have a people problem.
From Satan statues to on-demand abortion to child ‘transition’ to pop culture writ large, the problem is in the mirror.
The silver lining is that the solution is also in the mirror.
