Never Trumpers' Latest Idea: Surrender the Culture War

While many in the #NeverTrump movement seem all to eager to engage in perpetual war with Middle Eastern countries as well as Russia, they seem to have finally stumbled upon a war they have no interest in fighting: the culture war.

Evangelical writer Ben Howe said just that in an interview with The Atlantic. He told interviewer Emma Green, all too happy to roll out the red carpet for a #Never-Trumper, that “the idea of a culture war has to die.” Howe’s interview with Green focused on his new book, The Immoral Majority, where Howe makes it perfectly clear that he “is angry at evangelicals” because they voted for President Trump “in record numbers.” 

Evangelicals who trash other evangelicals receive a hero’s welcome from cable news and the establishment media both online and in print. However, African-Americans, Latinos, and other racial minorities who stray from the flock by not voting Democratic do not receive the same treatment from the media; with many on the left dismissing them as Uncle Toms and race traitors. But that’s besides the point. During a recent appearance on MSNBC, author Peter Wehner trashed evangelicals for their “robotic mindset, where everything they grew up reading in the gospels does not apply to their life since a guy named Donald Trump got into politics.” Wehner had previously accused evangelicals who voted for President Trump of “selling their soul for judges.”

White evangelical protestants make up a large amount of the President’s base. According to exit polling, white evangelicals made up slightly more than a quarter of the electorate in 2016 and 80 percent of them voted for President Trump. The idea that any person of faith, or any person in general would vote for President Trump makes people like Wehner and Howe throw up.

As I have mentioned before, Protestants and Catholics who take their faith seriously have become the allied powers in the Culture War. A majority of Catholics actually voted for President Trump in 2016 after voting for President Obama in 2012. While religion serves as an indicator as to how people vote, frequency of religious service attendance does an even better job of explaining voting patterns.

Exit polling shows that President Trump received 56 percent of the vote among those who attend religious services weekly or more and a plurality of the vote among Americans who attend religious services at least once a month.  The Democrats won a plurality of the vote with Americans who attend religious services a few times a year while dominating among Americans who never attend religious services.  Frequency of religious attendance also explains voting patterns at the state level. Most of the states with the highest rates of religious attendance vote overwhelmingly Republican while all but one of the ten states with the lowest rates of religious attendance voted for Hillary Clinton.

Apparently, Wehner and Howe believe that evangelicals cannot support any candidate who does not live the lifestyle of a choir boy; which would basically disqualify everybody in the United States from running for President; since we are all sinners. Every Christian in the world fails to live a perfectly biblical lifestyle. Nonetheless, liberals take a special delight when figures in the conservative movement fail to live up to the standards of bourgeois culture and/or the Bible, seeing the shortcomings of these fallible human beings as an excuse to disregard the teachings of bourgeois culture altogether in favor of secular humanism, which ultimately only leads to misery.

While liberals claim to care about the separation of church and state, conservatives actually practice what they preach. Conservatives do not need a President to double as their religious leader; they already have priests and pastors to do that. Conservatives have no problem with a President who does not share every single one of their religious beliefs. Liberals, on the other hand, rely on the government and the axis powers in the Culture War to enforce the dictates of their religion: liberalism. The expanding list of axis powers in the Culture War include the mainstream media, Hollywood, Academia, and as I explained in a blog at this time last year, pedophile priests.

Over the past 50 years or so, secular humanism has penetrated every aspect of American culture and that has included many in the clergy.  While the media pay particular attention to molestation of children by priests in the Catholic Church, a Presbyterian minister has gotten himself in trouble recently after many people came forward and claimed that he performed a series of bizarre rituals on people seeking counseling, including forcing people to get naked, sucking on women’s navels, and performing “oral sex exorcisms.”  While Presbyterianism might differ slightly from Catholicism, I don’t see how any religion based on the teachings of Jesus Christ would endorse these tactics.

While the rhetoric I have mentioned so far amounts to nothing more than insults, #NeverTrumpers have developed a bad habit of dehumanizing their political opponents; another obvious result of America’s drifting away from its Judeo-Christian heritage. During a recent appearance on “Real Time With Bill Maher,” #NeverTrumper Rick Wilson expressed his hope that voters will “replace a god**** oil lobbyist who runs the f***ing EPA right now…with a human being” by voting for the Democratic candidate in the 2020 Presidential Election. He obviously implied there that oil lobbyists do not fit into the “human” category. Wilson had previously expressed his disdain for Trump supporters by mocking them for wearing their “formal flip flops” to a Trump rally in Florida earlier this year. While no one expects conservatives and liberals to stop criticizing each others’ policies anytime soon, they should at least refrain from implying that their opponents belong to a different species and/or fantasizing about the death of their political opponents.

Liberals have fantasized about the death of President Trump dating back to the first full day of the Trump administration; when Madonna fantasized about “blowing up the White House” at the first ever Women’s March. Kathy Griffin lost her gig as co-host of CNN’s New Year’s Eve coverage after posting a picture of herself holding a replica of President Trump’s decapitated head. If liberals channeled all of their anger towards President Trump into voting, they might actually have a chance at beating him in 2020.

The fantasization about the death of President Trump proves that the culture war goes far beyond a battle between the religious and non-religious. It has also become a battle between the civilized and the uncivilized. Just this past weekend, Antifa protesters accosted police officers in Portland; telling them “You all know your job is ethically and morally bankrupt. You know you’re a parasite, so shoot yourselves…Suicide is the only way out.” The men and women in blue have not received a warm welcome in New York City either, where left-wing anarchists have doused them with water.

In addition to the #NeverTrumpers, some outspoken Trump supporters seem to agree that conservatives need to surrender the culture war. Tomi Lahren of Fox News caused a lot of heads to roll when she described herself as “pro-choice” on “The View” and has said multiple times since then that Republicans will lose elections if they continue to focus on the social issues like abortion.

The idea of giving up the culture war might make sense if liberals demonstrated any interest in “coexisting” with the folks on the other side of the aisle. However, they have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they have no desire to agree to disagree. Liberals have decided to use their perch in the public education system to shove their radical ideology down the throats of public school students; especially when it comes to gender and sexuality.  Many schools rely on the “Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education,” which provides teachers with a framework for K-12 sex education.  As I have explained before, “this framework advocates teaching children as young as five about masturbation, sexual intercourse and homosexuality.” 

I have also touched upon California’s Healthy Youth Act, which they might want to rename the “Horny Youth Act.”  After all, this “comprehensive sex education” framework teaches students about “lubricants, anal sex, and sex toys.”  The textbook encourages students to use cucumbers, carrots, and bananas as dildos.

As education reform advocate Rebecca Friedrichs, a resident of the Golden State, explained, “thanks to state and national teachers’ unions and their powerful allies at the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and a host of others, California law has turned our schools into sexual battlegrounds and is in direct opposition to the desires of most loving parents and teachers.” According to Friedrichs, “parental permission or knowledge is never required. Parents and teachers who push back are silenced by unions, the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, and a very powerful lobby.” Friederichs also claimed American public schools have become “sexual war zones.” Keep in mind that taxpayer dollars fund these “sexual war zones.” Many of the same liberals who have no problem subjecting children to this liberal propaganda grimace at the idea of school choice and voucher programs because they do not want taxpayer dollars going to fund religious schools.

For years, a consensus existed acknowledging that even after the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide, a substantial number of Americans remained opposed to the procedure. The Hyde Amendment attempted to make sure that no taxpayer funding would go towards abortion. Many of the Democratic presidential candidates have called for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment. Oregon passed a law requiring taxpayers to fund abortions so that way those who wish to kill their children can do so for “free.”

In one of his many efforts to suck up to the Trump-hating mainstream media in his interview with The Atlantic, Howe claimed that “between Trump and Obama, there is just no question that Obama exhibited more Christian behavior.” Howe apparently sees the word “Christian” as a synonym for “mild-mannered.” Between President Obama and President Trump, President Trump has definitely advanced more pro-Christian policies.

Funding for abortion giant Planned Parenthood serves as another flash point in the culture war. The organization receives half a billion dollars in taxpayer funding annually, which it promises does not go towards abortion; one of the most un-Christian practices in the world, let alone the country. President Trump, who once bragged about the size of his copulatory organ on a debate stage, has done more for the pro-life movement than any President in recent memory; especially President Obama. President Trump actually delivered a televised address to the March for Life, making him the first President to do so. His administration also implemented a rule that bars participants in the Title X federal family planning program from referring patients to abortion providers. This rule caused Planned Parenthood to forefeit millions of dollars in federal grants.

Republicans’ abdication in fighting the culture war for the past half century has led to an increasingly violent, bitter, nihilistic, and hypersexualized culture. Howe, Wehner, and everyone else advocating for surrender in the culture war should realize that these problems will get worse, not better, if conservatives decide to stop fighting back against the liberal insanity that has infiltrated every aspect of American society. To paraphrase Three Dog Night, “the show must go on” when it comes to fighting the culture war.