As a lifelong conservative, it’s tough to get out of the mentality that the arc of history seems to always flow against us. We all know the saying that what happens in California now will be happening everywhere else five years from now. It’s depressing, demoralizing even, but it’s also true, or it’s seemed that way for as long as I’ve been alive.
Even good causes originally espoused by the ‘left’ side of politics of a given age - like civil rights and early feminism - have morphed into monsters devouring every semblance of logic and common sense. Despite the fact that we’ve gone far beyond what the originators of those movements dreamed, there’s always “more work to do,” because grifters need to keep the attention on them and, most of all, keep those fat paychecks coming. Consequently, we’ve gone from creating a society based on equality under the law to one which elevates certain ‘preferred’ groups above others and even seeks the absolute destruction of the one building block that has held civilization together for thousands of years - the nuclear family.
How long can this last? Until humanity destroys itself from within and the earth is swallowed by the sun? If you subscribe to a certain type of futurist Christian eschatology (in fairness, most do), you probably think this is all part of the plan and that Jesus will come soon enough to put an end to all this insanity. If that makes you sleep better at night, more power to you. But I’ve got news for you: Christians have been thinking the exact same thing for more than 2,000 years, so odds are you’ll die thinking that way, as will your children and grandchildren and countless succeeding generations.
As for me, I prefer to think the culture war shouldn’t just be fought out of duty, although we should certainly do what is right. I also think it should be fought because it can actually be won. Here. In this life. Right now. If we fight effectively, we really can make the world a better place for our descendants. And if your theology is telling you to give up because we can’t win, you should consider ditching that theology because it is toxic and self-defeating. (But that’s a column for another day, isn’t it?)
“But but but,” you say, “what about that first paragraph, all that stuff about the arch of history? Don’t the failures of the past prove our point, that all is indeed lost?” Maybe, but it also ignores the ebbs and flows taking place over hundreds of years that we can’t witness personally because our lifespans are too short. Might it have been harder for Christians in early Roman times, for example, when they were more worried about getting crucified than being forced to bake a cake that goes against their convictions? More recently, consider how many millions of lives were snuffed out during the various communist regimes of the 20th century. Would you rather live there then or here now? Today, Russia and much of eastern Europe is much more of what we would define as ‘conservative,’ particularly socially, than Europe or the United States (which is one reason the leftist establishment here hates them so much). They’ve been there, done that, and they aren’t particularly interested in a repeat.
Hopefully, we won’t have to go through what the people under 20th-century communist oppression went through for decades in order to turn the tide. Sure, it could happen, but another thing that could happen is enough hearts and minds are changed on a particular culture war topic and our side finally gains some ground. Then, like dominoes, another could fall, then another, and so on.
The best recent example of this potential is the ongoing pushback against gender ideology. Instead of bending and giving in to their insanity, conservatives and many old-school liberals and even ardent feminists like author J.K. Rowling are doubling down and refusing to budge, particularly on the most pernicious aspects like women’s sports, biological males in female prisons, and child mutilations. It’s inspiring, really. Despite leftists’ best efforts at portraying the transgender movement as the civil rights issue of our time, a majority of the population - nearly all of which are sympathetic to the ACTUAL civil rights movement - aren’t buying it. Even as they continue to push the envelope, polls consistently show they are outkicking their coverage.
The pushback on social media, particularly Twitter, is even starker. From Libs of TikTok to Matt Walsh to Rowling and countless others, people are just not afraid to openly say the emperor indeed has no clothes. And it hasn’t gone unnoticed:
“People are really done with this nonsense,” Walsh wrote in a Twitter post about a man who thinks he’s a woman named “Kaelie” who posted a video complaining about wanting to use a women’s bathroom without pushback. “I’m seeing a lot more intolerance of the trans agenda recently and it’s a great sign. A decade too late but still, finally, people are fed up. I figured we’d be able to defeat the child mutilators but I thought it would take many more years to bring down the trans agenda as a whole. Maybe I should be more optimistic. The public seems to be reaching a breaking point on this issue.”
In a world where there’s so much to be negative about of late, a little justified optimism may be the best tonic around. Don’t lose hope. It’s a battle we can win, but the only way that’ll happen is if we all keep fighting.
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