Lubricating the Slippery Slope: The Intellectual Astroglide of the Elite

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Few are willing to admit the truth, namely that our cultural elite have abandoned the truth — but that is putting it too mildly.

Our cultural elite, of which the editors of the Washington Post and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg are members, have not only abandoned the truth, but have declared war on truth, and have dedicated themselves to the advancement of falsehood.

People saw this coming and sounded a warning. Judith Reisman was one of them, and Robert Knight was another. In 2000, Knight published The Age of Consent: The Rise of Relativism and the Corruption of Popular Culture, addressing the philosophical roots of our current mess. You should also read Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law and Education by Philip E. Johnson.

Whether or not you follow my reading recommendations, the bottom line is this: Good luck with this “secular conservatism” thing.

It ain’t gonna work, and if the history of the past 10 years or so haven’t convinced you that embracing secularism is doom for conservatism — and, ultimately, for the American republic — I’m sure the next 10 years will, but by then there will be nothing left worth conserving. And we’re probably doomed already.

Paul Weyrich — he totally saw it. A nation that would let President Clinton lie his way through the Lewinsky scandal, and accept all those flimsy rationalizations in his defense . . . Doomed.

There was a sort of post-9/11 bubble of Republican popularity that lasted four or five years, but by 2006, that was completely gone. Then in 2008 somehow, that backstabbing crapweasel John McCain got the Republican nomination and . . . Doomed.

Well, the Tea Party uprising of 2009-2010 was encouraging, but then 2012 came along and, once again . . . Doomed.

How are you feeling about 2014, Republicans? What about 2016?

Exactly: Doomed.

Basically, the enemy got inside the perimeter. The bombardment of liberal propaganda convinced both the Republican Party elite and leading figures of the conservative intelligentsia that all those hillbilly Bible-thumpers were, on balance, a detriment to the GOP’s political prospects, so shut up, Sarah Palin, shut up Michele Bachmann, shut up Rick Santorum and anyone else who doesn’t applaud gay marriage as  enthusiastically as Rachel Maddow and Andrew Sullivan.

Way to go, Republican elite! You saved your reputation as sophisticated, tolerant, enlightened intellectuals and you are . . . Doomed.

The revolutionary turning point is now in your rear-view mirror, and you’re all Vichy Republicans, negotiating with the radical Left the terms of your collaboration with their progressive agenda. In November 2008, I explained where we were heading:

The Lawrence ruling was the culmination of what Justice Antonin Scalia called “a 17-year crusade” to overturn the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision (which had upheld Georgia’s sodomy statute) and, as Scalia noted in his dissent, the Court’s “emerging awareness” argument was a disingenuous way to avoid actually declaring a “fundamental right” to sodomy. The legal effect was the same, however, and Lawrence was repeatedly cited in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s decision five months later mandating the legalization of gay marriage in that state. . . .
Gay activists do not construe their “rights” in terms of liberty, but in terms of radical and absolute equality. They insist that same-sex relationships are identical to — entirely analogous to and fungible with — traditional marriage.
Common sense resists this assertion, perceiving something fundamentally false in the gay marriage argument. Yet it seems common-sense resistance can only be justified by resort to religious faith, through the understanding that men are “endowed by their Creator” with rights. Eliminate the Creator from discussion, and it becomes impossible to refute the activists’ indignant demand for equality. . . .

You could read the whole thing — if you’re an ignorant hillbilly Bible-thumper like Justice Antonin Scalia. Perhaps you could also confront the reality that we have weighed anchor, sailed off into uncharted waters without a compass, and are now badly adrift in those regions of the ancient maps marked “Here Be Dragons.”

 

The Lawrence decision stopped just short of declaring a “fundamental right” to sodomy, but they might as well have gone all the way (if you’ll pardon the phrase) because we see how Justice Kennedy struck down the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act as though no law prior to the “emerging awareness” had any validity at all. In 2003, the Supreme Court decreed that Texas had no authority to prohibit sodomy. Ten years later, the Supreme Court decreed that Congress itself could not deny recognition to same-sex marriage, and anyone shocked by the hasty destruction of what Chief Justice Warren Burger called “millennia of moral teaching” — well, shut up, haters.

Family Terrorized as Michigan Teachers
Support Colleague Who Molested Boy

 

Girl Commits Suicide; Rapist
Teacher Gets Just 30 Days in Jail

Only one of these stories was important enough to gain national attention outside of the right-wing media. Why? Because in the Michigan case, the teacher molested a boy. It was a gay thing, and only Bible-thumping hillbillies are against male teachers having gay sex with 14-year-old boys. By contrast, the other case involved a man having sex with a 14-year-old girl, so feminists were upset.

Heard any feminist upset about Kaitlyn Hunt dildoing a 14-year-old? Of course not: Feminists are all about supporting teenage lesbians, and to hell with those hateful puritanical age-of-consent laws.

“It was a quiet ceremony. Elizabeth Miklosovic had an outdoor wedding in June 2004 in Michigan’s Manistee National Forest, where the couple lit candles and exchanged vows. Miklosovic’s marriage lasted only a few months, however. Later that year, the mother of the bride found out that her daughter had, at age 13, become the lesbian ‘wife’ of Miklosovic, who had been the girl’s language arts teacher at Baseline Middle School in South Haven, Michigan. For some reason, state law did not recognize the legitimacy of Miklosovic’s pagan lesbian marriage, and she was convicted of felony sex offenses and sentenced to prison.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Sexual Anarchy: Progress, Perversion and the ‘Emerging Awareness’ Doctrine,” The American Spectator, June 26

Who knows whither the “emerging awareness” shall henceforth emerge? Certainly I can make no predictions, and it’s hard to imagine the series of court rulings or legislative action by which lesbian child brides could become a legal “right.” On the other hand, a lot of things that once were hard to imagine are happening every day of the week now. The Washington Post column defending student-teacher sex for instance, seemed like a tasteless joke:

All my current friends are 14-year-old girls. We have pool parties and sometimes we massage each other. . . .
Me and my 14-year-old jailbait posse are sick of society looking askance at our Forbidden Love.

No, that’s not from a Washington Post column, that’s Ace of Spades brutally mocking the column, which is funny as hell — the mockery, I mean, not the column itself, which is scary as hell, because editors had to approve that column, edit it, add a headline and put it on the page. And at no point during this process did any employee of the Washington Post look at that column and say, “Hey, wait a minute. This is not just badly written and badly argued, but it’s also grossly offensive and even arguably perverted.” Quoting myself again:

The world is full of idiots with bad ideas and the editors of the Washington Post are obligated to publish only the very worst of them. One cannot reform such institutions as the Washington Post and the New York Times, but can only pray for their well-deserved destruction, because their wicked depravity is not accidental.
The publishers are amoral monsters, their editors are active agents of evil, and their deliberate policy is to employ no honest or decent person. Nor could any honest or decent person ever wish to be associated with publications whose daily business is the destruction of Western civilization. A Christian would no more desire to be published by the Washington Post than to work in an abortion clinic or a bordello. It is a disgraceful stain on the conscience of our nation.

Of course, the editors of the Washington Post are totally pro-abortion — and probably also pro-prostitution, if the truth were known — so exactly why should they be offended by an argument in defense of teachers having sex with their 14-year-old students?

Sure, let’s make fun of the Washington Post, but their editors seriously believe that a woman’s most important “right” is killing her own babies, and if people can believe that, what immoral monstrosity won’t they endorse? At some point, Republicans must either summon the courage to speak the truth — sorry, we’re not going to call you “Chelsea Manning,” you despicable traitor — or else stop pretending that they have any actual disagreements with Democrats.

Do Reince Priebus or John Boehner or Mitch McConnell have any plan at all to halt this headlong descent into lawless perversion?

“Children are not inherently unable to consent” to sex with adults. Pedophiles are “unfairly stigmatized and demonized” by society. Sex with kids is tainted by a “cultural baggage of wrongfulness.”

People need to wake the hell up.

This Weimar decadence is very bad. What comes after the decadence is likely to be worse, and if you listen closely you can almost hear the sound of hobnailed boots marching over broken glass.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Weird to get a ‘lanche four years after I published this, but today I searched for when I first used the sentence, “People need to wake the hell up,” and here were are, eh? The election of Donald Trump, the recent street violence involving white supremacists and left-wing “antifa” radicals — yes, it seems my prophetic warnings from 2013 are being fulfilled.

A nation that has abandoned religion and morality (e.g., “Thou shalt not kill”) must sooner or later pay the price for its decadence, although it’s difficult to predict what form the consequences might take. For example, why should sexual deviance give rise to racial hostility? This connection doesn’t seem obvious, but nevertheless the perversity that flourished in Weimar Germany was followed by the ascent of a Nazi regime that murdered not only Jews, but also Poles, gypsies and other “untermenschen.” While it seems unlikely that any such thing could happen in America, who can predict the future? Just a few years ago, did anyone expect we’d be confronted in 2017 with transgenderism as a “mainstream” issue? When you’re off the map and deep into the “Here Be Dragons” territory, it’s hard to know what to expect next.



 

447 comments

  1. I don’t want people governed by my beliefs.

    I agree with that. And I certainly agree that is what progressives want.

    I don’t agree with your definition of natural law, but you knew that.

    You did raise another question that I’ve been hoping to talk about.

    Is it morality if it is imposed? Or is it morality if it is freely chosen?

  2. Another interesting bit or two.

    Yes, everyone is governed by somebody’s beliefs, but should that belief belong to somebody else?

    I happen to believe that society doesn’t have a religious viewpoint, individual people do. I’m certain that you and I do not share the same faith, does that make you less moral than me? Certainly you don’t think so and I do not think my faith makes me less moral than you. Where does that put us?

    I think it is us and our choices that make society, not the other way around.

  3. I think we have to get the right people in office to help us fight. There are a few good people in Washington, but that’s the trouble; there are just a few.

  4. We protect school age children in order that they will have a chance to receive a good education. That’s not morality. That would be responsible governance. Turning our schools into playgrounds for horny adults looking for young flesh, would be irresponsible. There can be no civilization without civility.

  5. No, they want anarchy, no moral code, no laws except those that bulwark their control. The true elitists (the shot-callers) are actually Neo-Feudalists and are using the “elites” to control and manage the destruction of our society and nation so as to more easily keep us peasants in line.

  6. RE: our cultural elite have abandoned the truth

    Not so: they have denied that there IS any truth. Truth is that what they think can temporarily overcome anything blocking their current agenda. The Truth is that which allows them to say with utter conviction: We Have Always Been At War With Eurasia!

    This notion of Truth goes back to the Progressive Saint of Education, John Dewy, whose theories have taken over the philosophy of education for over a century. The effects were slow at first but we seem to have reached the tipping point.

    http://www.wilderdom.com/experiential/JohnDeweyPhilosophyEducation.html

    Dewey’s philosophy was called instrumentalism (related to pragmatism).
    Instrumentalism believes that truth is an instrument used by human beings to solve their problems.
    Since problems change, then so must truth.
    Since problems change, truth changes, and therefore there can be no eternal reality.

  7. Because forcing Mennonites to host gay weddings isn’t “demand[ing] everyone follow your morality?” Yeah. Right.

  8. I sound like a broken record when I comment on these posts, but so be it. This is yet the next front in the progressives’ war to destroy the family, which is the only institution that stands between them and total control of the populace. That is the desire is to destroy familial loyalty in order to replace it with loyalty to the collective. It has been going on for one hundred years and for one hundred years, good people were oblivious to the end game. For that reason, people like Sarah Palin or Rick Santorum must be destroyed. For that reason, the reaction to their words and ideas elicits a response orders of magnitude greater than what their words deserve. So-called conservatives who wish to avoid these topics are simply useful idiots, no matter how often they rail against the national debt or wrap themselves in the Constitution. They allow themselves to be seduced by social liberalism and then complain of uninteded consequences a decade later, when they should have realized that the consequences were obvious and indeed intended. We have lost. When people like the commenter above ask questions about the origins of morality, implying that it is a man-made construct, or suggest that it is somehow suspect when society chooses to order itself in a certain restrictive way because “Freedom!,’ we are doomed. We are doomed because we didn’t forcefully fight against things like no-fault divorce or government care of our elderly or AFDC/WIC or the other myriad programs designed to eliminate responsibility, honor and loyalty to our families. I wish I could have some hope, but I have none. Those of us who feel this way are few and separated. We are marginalized and viewed as kooks or impediments to power. So be it. As it was in the days of Noah . . .

  9. You can’t have a country, not even a small society without establishing group rules and rights.
    There always needs to be a set of rules for everyone. It’s the only way to have “society” or “civilization”

  10. I sound like a broken record when I comment on these posts, but so be it.

    =========
    I know the feeling. But throwing in the towel is the very worst thing you can do. The. Very. Worst.
    Inspire yourself and act.

  13. The trope about imposed morality is silly on its face. I can show you 300 pages of my state’s criminal code parsing the injunction, “Thou shalt not steal.” Every time there is an election, by definition 51% of the populace imposes its world view and morality on the whole. As for your last paragraph, the question always is, “From where comes ‘morality.'” Either it is transcendent or it is a human construct. If the former, the individual’s practice of it or not is irrelevant. It exists, the practice of same notwithstanding. If it is the latter, then it is imposed by force or the threat of same and may be altered when convenient. I think it’s safe to say, most commenters here believe morality to be transcendent and not subject to the selfish whims of men.

  14. Two points for a disingenuous pretense of misunderstanding! Progressives not only want, they absolutely demand, that unwilling others be governed by their beliefs.

  15. True, and once upon a time people were free to form communities that reflected their values. There also are, or used to be, interlocking levels of civil society – the most basic which was the family. But the left has been busily demolishing civil society in favor of a model which leave atomized individuals standing naked & alone before the federal behemoth.

  16. Rules, yes, but where do those rules come from?

    You’ve made it clear you don’t like the liberal rules. Why should they like yours any better?

    Wouldn’t it be better to agree on the rules?

  17. I have wondered about the issue before. Aren’t small communities where people have more homogeneous beliefs a better way to structure society? It would be really nice to do a much greater experiment. However, the minute that you want to have a country with millions of people, the problem is unavoidable.
    Either you break up the country, or you fight for your vision of society.

  18. Which still leaves the question.

    If someone doesn’t share your beliefs, why should they be governed by those beliefs?

    To take an extreme example, should I be required to observe Kosher law when I am not Orthodox Jewish?

    I can agree with the laws against theft and harming another. I can’t agree with laws against homosexuality. Not because I am gay, but because I don’t believe sex is something that should be regulated. At the same time, I am not forcing you to have gay sex or any sex if that is your choice.

  19. Okay you’re getting into some really funky definitions here. I don’t think anarchy is what you mean.

    First, most anarchists will tell you that their beliefs are a moral choice. Second, you’ll find that they do have a moral code even if it is one that you may not agree with.

  20. Except I am not talking about forcing.

    I’m talking about the opposite.

    I think people should make their own choice and accept responsibility for that choice.

  21. Are you talking about civil laws or morality because those are two different things? There will be civil laws in any society. If you cannot abide by them, then find another society. How society reaches those laws is a different question, one that is dependent on society’s moral view, whether society views morality as transcendent or man-made. As stated, if you choose to live in a specific society, you agree to live by the laws imposed, whether you accept the basis for those laws or not.

  22. If I may, there is an alternative.

    We need our beliefs and convictions tested by people who don’t agree with us.

    It’s how we learn if our ideas can stand on their own. It’s how our ideas can be made better even if we didn’t see all the angles.

  24. Well, I started talking about morality but apparently rmnixondeceased thinks that morality has to be imposed by law.

    As far as the moral basis for law, well, that changes with time.

  25. It’s not a question of “throwing in the towel.” It is a question of observing the battlefield and realizing that the war is all but lost. Too many good people have surrendered too much ground over the years. People cry out in protest regarding gay marriage, but would say nothing about no-fault divorce, failing to realize that each is designed to destroy the institution, which is the foundation for the family. We’d rather protect our senior parents’ assets for our inheritance than bring them into our homes and care for them during their latter days, relying on the government to do our jobs. As I said above, good people in their ignorance have surrendered so much ground over the last century, there is nothing left to defend.

  26. Your last sentence is an assertion, made without supporting evidence. If morality “changes with time,” then in truth it doesn’t exist. It is whatever the most powerful says it is.

  27. Pardon, so do many conservatives.

    I’d rather know the good guys from the bad without keeping track of the silly hats or the uniform colors.

  28. One obvious example is Prohibition, done for “moral” reasons and repealed for other “moral” reasons.

    There are plenty of other examples, you don’t even have to look hard.

  31. You fail to distinguish between those things which are malum prohibitum versus those which are malum in se. The former are those prohibited because we said so, i.e. speed limits or alcoholic beverages. This is nothing inherently evil about 90 mph or a glass of wine. Contrast those things which are evil because they are by transcendent definition: murder, theft, perjury, adultary and sexual immorality.

  32. Christian morality and Common Law have already been tested. Societies built upon them survive and prosper. This test you advocate has already be made. Christianity, i.e. Western Civilization won decisively. Most new ideas are just old mistakes.

  33. You’re not making any sense when you say there is an alternative. An alternative to what?

    You need to have me dictate all the laws in the country so that you can test your beliefs?

    Done deal! 🙂

  36. Read it and appreciated it. I could not comment, as I’ve sworn off blogging and your comment form requires a WordPress registration. Nonetheless, I agree with what you wrote.

  41. By definition, morality is “imposed” regardless of whether it is man-made or transcendent. Society cannot concern itself with your thoughts, only with your actions. if your actions conform to society’s moral view, it is irrelevent whether you’d behave differently were the moral view different.

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