
‘We Don’t Want to Be Known For What We are Against’
How intellectual stupidity and moral cowardice allowed the culture to be trashed.
I’ve heard this expression used numerous times as a reason for people to stay silent in the face of evil.
I’ve heard preachers say it from pulpits, and receive applause as if they have just said something profound.
I’ve heard friends say it over coffee, and then pause as if it was a drop-the-mic moment.
Good people will privately express dismay at what is being done to the culture, but they will never speak publicly against it for fear of being thought ‘negative’.
“We don’t want to be known for what we are against,” is their defence for remaining mute as the culture is trashed all around them. “We want to be known for what we are for.”
It sounds virtuous. It is not.
It is worse than disingenuous — it is an inversion of the truth.
Alternate Reality
The left don’t promote a ‘positive vision’ of the future. Far from it. The entire progressive project is rooted in rebellion against what the left sees as the oppression of the natural order.
Their love of everything from open borders, sexual license and gender fluidity to collectivism is not an optimistic vision for the future — it is a violent insurrection against order.
The left’s aspiration is for the destruction of all norms. I don’t think that’s a positive. In fact, it is historically proven to result in a negative, because of its hatred for the individual.
It is impossible to match the left’s supposed utopian vision, because that utopian vision is operating outside of the bounds of what is possible.
You cannot have a gender-fluid world, because God created us as male or female. No other world exists.
You cannot have a world in which drag queens are held up as role models for children, at least not unless you intend to completely destroy the innocence of childhood and with it the family.
Quixotic
The truth is that the messaging of the left is unmatchable. The left promise an infinite money supply and freedom from all norms and boundaries, while pointing at everyone else as ‘the party of no’.
The left promise unreality, and paint anyone who dares to point this out as being ‘negative’.
To agree to be painted into such a corner is not noble. It is intellectual stupidity and moral cowardice.
It’s like saying Churchill had no positive vision beyond stopping Hitler, and warning Churchill in 1939 that he runs the risk of being seen as negative unless he starts talking about something other than the Nazis.
For Love of Truth
Opposing the left’s assault on the culture may be viewed as a negative, but it is in defence of a deeper positive — protection for families, communities, human rights and faith in the face of political and cultural chaos.
Go ahead and berate those who oppose the left for being reactionaries. Do you chide the guy who tries to put out the arsonist’s fire for being ‘reactionary’?
Those opposing the licentiousness of our times are not the initiators of the cultural revolution. They are simply responding. And when they do, the left censure them for not bending over and taking it.
The biggest lie the left are selling today is not relativism; it is the lie that the insane are visionaries, while anyone sane enough to point out their foolishness is just ‘against everything’.
When leaders proclaim that they don’t want to be known for what they are against, they are not saying anything profound or virtuous. They are just parroting a lie that allows those who hate reality to continue trashing it.
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Originally published at The James Macpherson Report.
Subscribe to his Substack here for daily witty commentary.
Photo by Anna Pławecka.
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James, thank you! I would love to see Christian leaders proclaim ‘the truth’ about the days we re living in instead of ‘smiling their way into the future’ as if all was well.
As one in early recovery from living the left indoctrination, I appreciate this article James.
May God continue to bless you and your family.