[The Final Christian Generation Confronts What It Means To Lose A Culture War
Rod DreherAug 30
"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" Johnny Rotten.
So said the singer of the Sex Pistols at the end of what proved to be their final concert (follow the link to look at the clip). Pro-life supporters of Donald Trump have the right to say the same thing now.
You remember Florida, the state governed by Ron DeSantis, the sensible, competent, anti-woke, pro-life governor rejected by GOP presidential primary voters? That state, that guy?
The one who signed into law a bill banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy? Well, Florida has on its fall ballot a measure that would restores the
Roe status quo, overturning Florida's current law.
Here's Trump saying he'll probably vote for it. Screenshot above is from that interview. Richard Hanania is right:
Why should he stop? In each of the seven states in which an abortion referendum has been on the ballot since Dobbs,
the pro-life side lost even in three red states.
Woke up this morning in Budapest to this astute slap-in-the-face analysis from a pro-life conservative friend back in the US:
Quote:
1. The pro-life movement wasn't anything approaching a majority and hasn't been for nearly a decade plus if not further, going back to 2015 and the left's decisive victory in the culture war. You can bemoan that, condemn it, and refuse to accept it, but you need to deal with actual electoral politics where they actually are as opposed to where you would prefer them to be from the 1980s to the Bush administration if you are running a political movement.
2. The entirety of pro-life politics after Dobbs was a master class in how not to run a movement. Rather than recognize the electoral realities and adapt to them, there was instead a clear attempt to implement laws, standards, and mores that were never going to prevail under current demographics, particularly in a hostile media and cultural environment. This is going to be true for any serious attempt to achieve cultural reversals, so the idea that this is limited to abortion politics is laughable. Exactly which conservative cultural cause can be championed without this kind of resistance?
3. The idea that this dooms the right in electoral terms is cope. Trump already has his personality cult, a solid 40% of the GOP, that will support more or less anything he wants. The pro-life movement is unable to muster the ability to achieve its preferred results in electoral terms in even the reddest of red states. At this point, abortion referendums are for the right what gay marriage referendums were for the left throughout the 2000s and unless the right is prepared to shift the culture they are going to continue to suffer defeat after defeat on this score.
4. The argument after Trump's 2016 win was that the cultural conservative "real America" can prevail against all the machinations of the left was always a self-serving cope. The left won the culture war and the Great Awokening occurred more or less on Trump's watch, with zero pushback or reversal. None of this has changed and cultural conservatives are in a worse position today than they were in 2016 by far, one that has not been helped by turning Trump into a cult icon.
5. Trump was never on the social conservatives' side. He courted them and sought their approval as a function of his desire for status, power, and his own aggrandizement. If they had achieved political results that could benefit him, he would still be seeking their support, but now he sees them as an obstacle and an embarrassment. If you are seeking to manipulate, influence, or transact business with Trump by all means flatter him, but always understand that he was never your friend and will always turn on you the moment you pose an obstacle to his ambitions.
....
I think
it's over for the pro-life movement as a meaningful political force in national politics. We are seeing now that Dobbs was a Pyrrhic victory. It was a Pyrrhic victory because deep down, America is a functionally pro-choice, post-Christian nation.
The Sexual Revolution has triumphed. It might not seem clear to you that there is anything connecting LGBT rights to abortion rights, but the truth is, both sets of laws come out of the majority view in America: that advancing sexual autonomy is the
summum bonum of our public life.
The Sexual Revolution was a cosmological one.Did we pro-lifers really think we were going to be able to preserve the right to unborn life in a country that has abandoned the idea of legislating to restrict sexual morality? Justice Scalia warned that the
Lawrence decision meant the end of morals legislation, and we are seeing that he was right. Did we really think that a country where quite a few people can't tell the difference between a man and a woman is going to be able to hold the line against killing unborn children to protect sexual autonomy? True, there is an organization called PLAGAL, the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, and God bless them for their work. But in the end, post-Christian America wants sexual freedom, in all its forms save for pedophilia (for now)....]
