The struggle that has gone on for two centuries between righteous men seeking to safeguard true liberty and attached to family, community, tradition and God, and forces arrayed against them that would reduce everyone and everything to the lowest possible common denominator by imposing equality in the name of false freedom seems to have reached an acute stage lately. This could be seen in the simultaneous universal lockdown on one hand, and on the other the unimpeded marauding bands of new barbarians of whom I recently wrote. The struggle, usually referred to as a culture war, is really a struggle for the soul of the nation.
The struggle will continue regardless of the outcome of the election on November 3, although doubtless it will become more difficult for the righteous should the pro-abortion party of death and its septuagenarian phony Catholic nominal leader prevail.
Because it is for the nation’s soul, the struggle is fundamentally spiritual and therefore is, and will be, conducted primarily by spiritual means. However, it must also be waged on the practical level. It was at that level that President Trump acted in an important way on September 22 when he signed an executive order prohibiting federal agencies and taxpayer-funded contractors, subcontractors and grantees from instructing employees to abide by the tenets of critical race and critical gender theories.
The theories are a substitute for the Marxist doctrine of class warfare, which doesn’t compute in the U.S. since most of the population is middle-class, and instead propound a notion of “struggle” between different races and the sexes, labeling some as “oppressors” and others as “oppressed” with history and the shape of society seen as flowing from it.
Critical race and gender theories have given rise to an industry of consultants and speakers who are hired by government agencies and corporations to conduct seminars, workshops and training sessions to train employees to be alert to “implicit bias,” “white privilege,” “patriarchy,” and other supposed workplace evils.
Such training is supposed to promote “diversity and inclusion.” It also seeks to immunize itself from criticism by teaching that anyone who rejects critical theory or is slow to embrace it is guilty of “racism,” “white fragility,” homophobia, misogyny, etc. As President Trump’s executive order states, the theories “use subtle pressures to ensure conformity of viewpoint.”
He goes on: Diversity and sensitivity training really promote “divisive concepts” that lead to “race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating” and therefore “have no place in programs and activities supported by Federal taxpayer dollars.” He is absolutely correct, but we can be sure that the permanent government bureaucracy and its tentacles, otherwise known as the Deep State, will seek ways to obstruct or circumvent implementation of his September 22 executive order. Further, should the party of death prevail on November 3, an executive order signed by the new President can simply nullify it. This will be done in the name of “ensuring equality.”
Of course the influence of race and gender critical theory extends beyond the precincts of government. Academe and the human resources departments of corporations are full of it. Its prevalence in academe is especially important because professors who have drunk the hemlock pass on the cup to their students who then spread the poison throughout society. What is the effect? I think of a video I’ve seen of a white shop-owner impotently hollering at a Black Lives Matter mob smashing his windows, “I’m on your side!” Then there was that thirty-something bar-owner in Omaha who shot a BLM “protestor” vandalizing his property and felt so guilty afterward for doing it that he killed himself — the sad end of an “oppressor” (in his own mind) unable to bear the weight of all his “privilege”.
At the beginning of these remarks, I spoke of the culture war as really being a struggle for the soul of the nation and therefore one that must be conducted primarily by spiritual means. As members of a Church hierarchically ordered by Providence, we ought to be able to look to the bishops to provide our lead, but in this matter, as so much else, we know that would be futile. All we’d get from them would be the Democrat Party platform gussied up in seamless-garment rhetoric.
Just think of what a difference it would make if they were capable of enunciating instead the simple Catholic truth: The only equality that exists is the equality of all souls in the eyes of God. Alas, they won’t declare that any sooner than they could bring themselves to reminding the faithful this election season that it is a grave sin to vote for pro-abortion candidates.
