The outstanding feature of the Democrat Party is how well it mirrors the descent of the culture.  Check that -- Democrats don’t just mirror our rotting culture, they’re leading the race off the cliff.  That’s what progressivism -- the Democrats’ defining worldview -- does: it daily leads a once godly and moral nation toward a Grand Canyon-sized hole.  Sometimes in tiny steps, other times in sprints.  Lately, it’s a sprint. 

Progressivism is a catchall for modern decadence -- rationalized, deemed fashionable, and pimped by elites.  Democrats have become updated versions of debauched Roman emperor Caligula and his court. 

The list of debaucheries Democrats’ champion is long.  They offer a dark, vulgar, inverted world: Criminals are victims, and victims are disregarded.  Democrat-run cities teem with hoodlums and worse.  Cities are becoming illicit drug sanctuaries.  The homeless (mentally and emotionally disturbed, drug and/or alcohol addicted) roam streets like extras from the Walking Dead.  Abortion is no longer about being “legal, safe, and rare.”  It’s naked infanticide.  Institutional corruption appears endemic (the FBI, DoJ, and much of corporate America, for example).  Decades-old sexual permissiveness was the gateway to today’s spreading sexual perversion.             

Take the openly lesbian Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel.  No one would give a fig about her sexual preference but for a comment she made. 

Fox News, June 15:

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel reportedly said Wednesday that "drag queens make everything better" and that there should be "a drag queen for every school" during an event in Lansing.

Later, Nessel backtracked, claiming “she was only joking.”  But it’s an odd joke, given the very public storm raised recently about efforts to sexually indoctrinate (“groom”) kids, starting in preschool and kindergarten.  Hence, we’ll say that Nessel is just trying to weasel out of her offhand endorsement of staging degenerate spectacles for children.           

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has a decidedly different take than Nessel’s.

Blaze Media, June 10: 

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he was considering sending Child Protective Services against people exposing children to drag shows.

As well DeSantis should -- along with every other governor and legislature who prioritize children’s welfare.  Educators who expose students, and parents who permit their kids to be exposed, to this trash should be charged with reckless endangerment.  School administrators and teachers promoting any form of sexual indoctrination of children should be fired and pensions and benefits stripped.  Parents who consent to their children’s participation in any debauchment should face having their kids removed from their custody.       

Despite modern conceits, human nature hasn’t changed since Caligula -- far longer, actually.  Yes, we moderns possess more knowledge about the world, given the accretion of knowledge over time, and should learn from history, thereby avoiding the pitfalls of our ancestors.  But the lure of base instinct among influential cohorts in modern America is proving stronger than knowledge and reason.  Moral probity is a choice.     

Alas, there’s no vaccine against the Seven Deadly Sins, though Klaus Schwab -- and a mini-me like Anthony Fauci -- surely harbors the conceit that one can be produced -- or a merger of machines and humans can eliminate all sin.  Then again, in today’s twisted culture, the Seven Deadly Sins are celebrated in popular culture.  Hedonism is regent. 

The fall of America -- if it ever occurs -- won’t come first from terrible government.  Biden is a decrepit man -- a liar and notoriously incompetent from his earliest days in politics.  Aside from Biden’s serial lies, he’s also corrupted, perhaps criminally so.  He’s fronting a cabal whose leftist policies and governance are badly injuring citizens. 

Elephants can’t fly; progressivism doesn’t work.  That reality is decades in the making.  It’s intriguing how perceptions lag despite a mountain of accumulated proof.  Delusion and self-interest are powerful drivers as to why progressivism hasn’t yet been staked through the heart.       

Democrats and elites are pursuing folly with dogged determination.  An aspect of folly is persisting in a failed worldview despite plain evidence to the contrary.  Barbara Tuchman’s historical survey The March of Folly is a smart primer on how humans capably mess up governance.  This can be extended to culture, which, despite thousands of years of trial and error and evolved “best practices,” is still prey to human weaknesses and vice.  

As to Biden, his string-pullers, and congressional Democrats, they can be swept away through honest elections -- if they happen -- this year and in 2024.  The practical damage -- attacks on conventional energy, rising inflation, profligate spending, an open border, and rampant crime -- can be repaired.        

But the cultural damage that Democrats and their allies are inflicting isn’t easily fixed.  That damage is multifaceted and saturates the culture.  Democrats aren’t the cause of our societal cancer -- that predates their malevolence -- but they’re now its leading purveyors.  They’re a means to a squalid end. 

The U.S. Supreme Court is about to overturn Roe v. Wade.  The expected decision doesn’t end abortion; it simply devolves it back to the states.  Yet abortion zealots threaten a “Summer of Rage” should SCOTUS rule against Roe.  Already, over 40 churches and pregnancy centers have been attacked by pro-abortion thugs. 

Court conservatives’ neighborhoods are being picketed, with Nancy Pelosi’s and Chuck Schumer’s blessings.  Justice Brett Kavanaugh -- who Schumer once threatened -- was targeted by a leftist assassin.  Nonetheless, Pelosi dragged her feet pushing through legislation affording justices and their families greater physical protection.  Twenty-seven House Democrats voted no.   

Rage, destruction, and killing -- starting with killing too-many-to-count babies in the womb -- sums up the modern pro-abortion movement.  Near-term abortion is unambiguous infanticide.  When these haters can’t prevail, they unleash wrath, vandalize houses of worship, and attack centers dedicated to protecting and nurturing innocent life.  Their acts are brazen expressions of their perversity.  Democrats’ silence is assent.            

Marxists have always been about destroying traditional society.  Marxist doctrines and sensibilities suffuse the Democrat Party. 

Marx made destruction -- and by inference, cultural debasement -- a tenet of his manifesto; it’s a precondition to achieving utopia, per Marx, who was a hate-filled, dissolute man.  Of course, humans can’t achieve perfection in an imperfect world.  That’s the stuff of magic mushrooms and mental illness.    

Marxism, including its offshoots (fascism is one such), wherever tried, has led to ruin.  Traditional Russia was destroyed by communists.  Lenin and Stalin killed millions, smashed faith and family, relentlessly terrorized populaces, and bequeathed to generations of Russians a gutted society.  Recovery will be long coming, if ever.  If utopia is hellish and vacant, Lenin and Stalin succeeded beyond Marx’s wildest dreams.         

Taking back the culture will require sustained, broad engagement by Americans, starting at the grassroots and working up.  Most Americans are, in the main, a faithful and moral people.  But most Americans don’t define and lead the culture.  That was ceded decades ago to a generation, the Boomers -- the culture definers among them -- who have gradually given way to successive generations of definers as eager -- if not more so -- to advance moral squalor under the guises of modernism and liberation.  

For too long, sensible Americans have been cowed or hoodwinked by secularists (atheists) into retreating from the public square.  Too many folks bought, in the names of civility and rights, that Judeo-Christian beliefs must be prohibited from defining society.  That claim would stun our Founders, who were adamant about the chief role of faith, and the moral standards that issue from faith, as basic to the republic.

Patriots must cease being reluctant to openly declare for faith and traditional values as the underpinnings for a healthy, moral, and more just society.  Moreover, as parents have begun to do with school boards, decent folks need to step forward and take charge.  Mighty movements have humble beginnings.  America will be revitalized through a web of communities dedicated to right living.

J. Robert Smith can be found regularly at Gab @JRobertSmith.  He also blogs at Flyover.             

Image: Thomas Couture