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Nothing Is Ever Going Back to Normal
National Review — after previously offering that Drag Queen Story Hour was a “blessing of liberty” and railing against Florida Governor Ron de Santis for modest efforts at pushing back against the left — finds itself shocked… shocked … at the metastasizing phenomenon of leftists foisting drag shows (featuring men strutting pretending to be women as if women were clown-prostitutes) on children. “Oh, my heck!” they proclaim. “Who could have foreseen that if we indulged the left in their depravity they would push it even further?“
It’s understandable why (Bush) Republicans and (Atlantic) Conservatives would prefer not to fight the culture wars. It’s just not gentlemanly/ladylike to make a big fuss about leftists sexualizing children. It’s icky and Trumpy to confront the left about their cultural ambitions and their use of every lever of Government to promote them. And because they don’t want to fight, it’s very easy to succumb to denialism. “Yes, sure, there are a few crazies on the fringe of the left, but most of them don’t want to get gay with kids. And if we just calmed down and found some common ground we could get back to normal. Hey, why are those people over there making those kids shove cash in that transvestite’s thong?”
“In Defense of Political Escalation,” Abigail Shrier makes the eminently logical point that the left has no intention of ending the culture wars, or even a ceasefire.
Those waiting on the mythical pendulum to “swing back,” should stop holding their breath. The gender activists are True Believers, akin to jihadists: no amount of reasoning diminishes their resolve, no appeal to data brings them pause, no urge to consider the sanctity of American liberties will convince them to cool it.
While conservatives have been waiting for things to calm down and get back to normal, and fretting that “we oughtn’t do things that are at odds with our precious principles,” the left have seized not just Government power, but also academic power, media power, and even corporate power which they eagerly wield against anyone who dissents from Woke ideology.
If the woke continue to gain ground, where will we skeptics go to educate our children, transact commerce, find fair adjudication of our custody disputes? Where will we publish when not only the New York Times has a “gender director”—when every publication does?
That is the worry that likely motivates DeSantis, the first politician to “weaponize” the Florida tax code. He brought its hammer down on Disney to punish that one company for using its immense corporate coffers to lobby against parents’ rights in Florida. In principle, it’s a move I’m leery of. (And in the case of sending CPS after moms and dads who take their kids to drag shows, it’s a move I would oppose.)
But the gist of this stratagem—escalation—may be necessary. Indeed, it already seems to be working. Playing offense, even raising the stakes, may be the only means of achieving a much-needed truce. I’m out of better ideas. How about you?
Yeah, if there is another way to bring the culture back to plumb, I would be interested to hear it. But pundits writing hand-wringing articles in magazines that are only read by other pundits doesn’t seem like an effective solution to me.
And it’s not just the gender bending. The left will never give up on CRT. They will never give up on Climate Totalitarianism. They will never, despite John Cornyn’s delusions, give up on zero-tolerance gun control.
They don’t want to make a deal; they want our complete submission.
Published in Culture
Nothing is really new under the sun. There is a reason things are called sodomy after Sodom and Gomorrah. This stuff has been tried before and failed. Over and over. Eventually God will show up and smite us or the “gods or the copybook headings” will show up to explain it all to us again. It is all just a matter of time before we learn that the gods of the market place tumble.
Oh don’t fret. I’ve been told by plenty of loyal Republicans that the midterm elections of more surrender monkeys will save us all.
Traitors.
We have to accept that “normal” is fighting against evil which is always present and always trying new and better ways to take us over. You are correct that we get to the dangerous point we’re sitting in by not confronting that evil straight up. GOP establishment types have long been afraid to join in culture war because of offending that mythical middle. The culture war is a life or death struggle which the patrician class as just another point of give and take.
So the “normal” for all of us (if we are to survive and pass the struggle on to others) is to confront, confront and dont give the ______s an inch
Isn’t the purpose of government to protect our rights? How is Florida in the wrong for punishing a huge conglomerate attacking parent rights?
As has been said by others and elsewhere, pundits are in it for the write, not the fight.
Their argument was that it was retaliation in a matter unrelated to their position on our government schools encouraging our children to question their genders and introducing sex-ed at an early age. Oh, so nuanced!
You see Disney with a market cap of 173 billion, just a close second to the largest media conglomerate in the world, Comcast (175 billion), is going to lose its tax-free status for their theme park in Orlando granted to them when they were babies. Back then Orlando was a backwater and was happy to have a wholesome all-American company move in.
(Nevermind they were quite nefarious in buying up all the cheap land through dummy companies, that’s just how it works.)
Now Disney is a worldwide force with trying to court China by editing their films and shelving projects China’s Communist Party doesn’t like, but still getting tax breaks from the State of Florida. This is the same company that fired dozens of American software engineers and made them train their Indian replacements if they wanted their severance packages.
But this is ‘free enterprise’ and capitalism at its best. Right Frenchie?
For Al those that hate the war metaphor:
This IS spiritual warfare.
You might be onto something. Once money was flashed that wasn’t going into their grubby thong, they got jealous and decided to write about it.
My son and I were just talking about this—that there may be pauses in the struggle, and those pauses may persuade us that we’ve reached the end of the battle…but the pause is just a pause, and battle will never be done.
National review circa 1959: standing a thwart history saying stop
National review circa 2020: please give us a like and a share
National Review circa 1968, “Call me a crypto-nazi again, you queer, and I’ll punch you in the face” Wm F. Buckley to Gore Vidal
And more like circa 2020, Hey guys! Slow down will ya? And please like us even though we disagree on a few things…
Please Clap.
You are all forgetting an important fact: There wouldn’t be any Drag Queen Story Hour if there weren’t parents who brought their kids to those events. No one has forced this on anyone. Ditto for the grotesqueries at Pride parades – the parents are bringing kids to these events.
National Review circa 2030: “GOP Needs to Expand Its Outreach to Minor-Attracted Persons.”
What B.S. Thanks for providing the link to the David French article. I read it and agreed with what he had to say. Instead of sneering, could you actually address specific points that French makes, and argue against those? Or is that too taxing? Not as much fun as just sneering, right?
And I’ll repeat what I wrote above: No one is forcing parents to go to Drag Queen Story Hours or Pride parades. Drag Queen Story Hours wouldn’t exist if parents didn’t bring their kids. These parents are exposing their kids to this kind of garbage because they want to expose their kids to this. So – what do you propose to do about that?
None
So more Catholic Priests?
Call in child protective services. Shut down the public library until the people running that library are forcibly removed from their positions.
Pretty much, yeah. He can’t really complain, given all the sneering at Trump supporters that he and his compatriots have done for years.
I also don’t see anything in that article that I disagree with. This is the first article of his I’ve read since the infamous one in which he declared that any Christian who votes for Trump is a bad Christian. Respect, once lost, is hard to regain.
I completely agree. The left will never give up on the culture wars. Actually the left never gives up. They still want communism. They may reprioritize but they scheme for their “religious values” all the time.
Aren’t some of these events held in schools where children are in effect a captive audience?
And are these story hours openly described as “drag queen story hour” or is it just “story hour” or something else?
Do ads/announcements for these events include photos of how the… participants… actually appear? Or maybe they’re fancied-up somehow that ends up being deceptive?
I need more information before deciding that parents are taking children to these voluntarily and with informed consent.
It’s a symbiotic relationship. Yes there are people who will bring their children to gay grooming events but gay grooming events projected to the public normalizes gay grooming. How the heck do you think something as absurd as gay marriage got normalized? One step at a time until it appeared to be normal. Most people don’t use reason. They go with the cultural flow, even if it’s cultural rot.
Here’s Frenchie’s basic argument: “We should tolerate the celebration of drag culture because religious groups after long and costly legal battles have grudgingly been granted the right to meet in public buildings.”
Here are the flaws in his reasoning:
And who do you think staffs these child protective service departments? Conservatives? No, social workers do, most of whom are likely favorably inclined to Drag events and are more inclined to take children away from parents who deny “gender-affirming” medical intervention. Dittos for librarians.
Drag Queen Story Hours have the backing of the American Library Association. They’re not hiding the drag queens, they’re promoting them. And no, parents are not being tricked into going to Pride parades.
Can you imagine?
”And when did you first suspect that you were not, in fact, at the Million Mom March?”
I completely disagree: it is NOT “implicit” in his formulation that Drag Shows and Bible Clubs have “equivalent social value”. Nowhere does he state that, and to say that it’s implicit in his formulation is a misreading of his position. Support for the First Amendment does not mean one’s support for the sometimes very distasteful speech that is protected by it.
You use quotes here as if you were quoting French, but you’re not – those aren’t his words. You’re making up your version of his position, and after reading the article I don’t think that’s an accurate summation of his position at all. You’ve manufactured a straw-man position, which is easy to attack.