Author and media consultant Peter Leyden and political commentator Ruy Teixeira have declared all-out war against conservatives. These regressives (they think they are “progressives” but they are not - they are dragging us backward toward the Dark Ages) argue, quite correctly in my view, that America is currently divided into two camps, and one camp or the other must prevail.
In their view, co-existence or bipartisanship is impossible. “At this juncture in our history, there’s no way that a bipartisan path provides the way forward.” In other words, you can forget all that nonsense about crossing the aisle and finding common ground, because there isn’t any common ground.
They write (emphasis mine throughout):
Two different political cultures already at odds through different political ideologies, philosophies, and worldviews can get trapped in a polarizing process that increasingly undermines compromise. They see the world through different lenses, consume different media, and literally live in different places...At some point, one side or the other must win — and win big. The side resisting change, usually the one most rooted in the past systems and incumbent interests, must be thoroughly defeated.
Although I am in the camp that Leyden and Teixeira think needs to be squashed like a little tiny bug, I believe his cultural analysis is spot on. We are in fact locked in a cultural civil war between two worldviews that have nothing in common, and one of those worldviews must prevail in the end while the other is thoroughly defeated and relegated to insignificance.
This is the challenge to conservatives, especially Christian conservatives: the other side, our cultural adversaries, know that we are in a death struggle between two competing views of the world. It is a war - fought not with bullets but ideas - in which total conquest is the only objective. So, here is the question: They know we are in a civil war - do we?
We believe in God and the importance of publicly acknowledging him in all our institutions. They do not. This is a binary choice: either God will be acknowledged, or he will not. There is no third way.
We believe unapologetically in the superiority of Christianity and in religious freedom, they do not. Either Christian bakers will have the freedom to live out their faith in the marketplace, or they won’t. Either Christianity is better than Islam, and every other belief system or it’s not. There is no middle ground.
We believe in the sanctity of every human life, from conception until natural death. They believe in the dismembering of babies in the womb right up to the point of birth. There is no neutral ground.
We believe exclusively in marriage as God has defined it and designed it, the union of one man and one woman. They do not. They believe two men or two women can form a “marriage.” This again is a binary option. One either believes in natural marriage or he doesn’t.
We believe that there are just two genders, or sexes, male and female, as the Bible teaches on its first page, an assertion confirmed by genetic science. They don’t. They believe gender is fluid, so fluid that people can change their self-identification from one day to the next.
We believe in smaller government, they believe in bigger government. We believe in lower taxes and less regulation, they believe in higher and more. We believe in self-reliance, they believe in reliance on government programs. We believe in freedom, they believe in government control. We believe in secure borders, they believe in open borders.
Their conclusion:
America can’t afford more political paralysis. One side or the other must win. This is a civil war that can be won without firing a shot. But it is a fundamental conflict between two worldviews that must be resolved in short order.
The CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, has enlisted in the regressive army. He calls this article, which calls for all of America to become what California is today, a “great read.” No wonder he is shadowbanning conservatives like Ted Cruz to keep their message from getting out.
Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook are providing ammunition and materiel to our adversaries, even banning Diamond and Silk because their rhetoric is “unsafe to the community.”
Progressives like Dorsey and Zuckerberg are ratcheting up their rhetoric and using every tool at their disposal to clamp down on conservative speech, perhaps out of fear that under the current administration we are about to retake the cultural initiative.
It’s time for Christians to armor up. It’s time for us all to recognize how serious the other side is to silence our message, to confine us, to restrict us, and eventually to exterminate us. We must push back hard against the darkness rather than meekly surrender. It’s past time for us to “take up the whole armor of God, that (we) may be able to stand firm in the evil day” (Ephesians 6:13). There no longer is any place in the body of Christ for the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot. It is an evil day, and we are fighting for everything that matters.
