Expending further effort to convince readers that we’re in a pickle seems like beating a dead horse, as most everyone sees that now. But among the many remaining puzzles that confront our minds, two are very salient: (1) Exactly how did we get ourselves into this mess, and especially pressing today, and (2) Can we vote ourselves out of this mess?

The second question is especially urgent. There remain only thirteen months to November 2024, when we cast our votes in the most critical election of our lives. Those intending to vote for Trump face many nagging questions. Will Trump really be on the ballot? Will he be in jail? Will courts declare him ineligible to run? Will he be alive? Will there be open civil warfare? These are intense questions with multiple possible answers.

Although the second question is unanswerable with certainty, it seems as if we should be able to make progress on the first question. After all, the second question is about the future, as to which few of us have a clear vision, but the first question is about the recent past, through which many of us have lived. Therefore, shouldn’t we be able to see just how we got into this mess?

What did we do to deserve this mess? Hmm? Maybe it’s not what we did, but what we didn’t do. Maybe our fault is one of omission rather than commission.

Actually, thinking about it, the woke look sort of familiar, don’t they? Haven’t we seen them before, somewhere else? Online videos of the queers, trannies, BLM, Antifa, climate crazies, etc., etc. doing their thing in a riotous frenzy… It seems that we have seen this before in a familiar venue.

Picture of a sulky child in church made using a picture by master1305.

Oh yes! I remember now where I saw this! It was in the candy aisle at the supermarket! There was that little curly-haired four-year-old rolling on the floor, kicking and flailing his arms and screaming, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” while his hapless and distraught mother stood over him trying to talk to him until, at last, she was herself reduced to screaming.

You’ve seen this scenario, right? I’m sure you remember wanting to walk up to the screaming mother and whisper in her ear, “This kid’s going to ruin your life if you don’t get control of him now!” But she couldn’t spank him. Why not? Because she wanted to be his friend; she wanted him to like her; she feared causing him any pain or distress; and she feared the disapproving glances of “society.”

Aren’t these wokies in the street just like spoiled children throwing tantrums in the grocery store?

A neighbor who has reared three very well-behaved children to adulthood, speaking to me one day over the back fence, told me her secret. “Never spank a child when you are angry,” she said, adding, “Only spank when you know that’s what has to be done.” Then, looking around so that no one overheard, she whispered, “And never let them see you cry after spanking them.”

Realizing I was witness to a treasure trove, I pressed for more and received this gem: One day, after spanking her five-year-old son, he fled crying aloud to his bedroom, and she fled in tears to the bathroom. Then, a few minutes later, he came into the bathroom to find her still weeping. “Mom, why are you crying?” he asked, again bursting into tears as she pressed him to her and cried, “Billy, I am so sorry I had to spank you!” and he bawled, “Mommy! I’ll never make you spank me again!”

We all long to be friends with our children, but we can’t. We must be their parent. When they are grown and are rearing our grandchildren, most of the time, we can happily approximate friendship, but there still occasionally arise moments when the “mom” flag pops open, and we have to revert to our true role in life.

So, what’s the takeaway from this? The takeaway is that we got ourselves into today’s American mess by toleration, by trying to be nice. We didn’t want the idiots to hate us, so we chose tolerance over discipline. We failed to realize that the idiots would not be satisfied with tolerance; that they would next demand acceptance, then celebration. We stepped onto the slippery slope and now find we have slid to the bottom.

Contemporary American Christianity got itself into its current big de-churching mess the same way: by trying to be nice. On the road to niceness, the church made the enormous theological blunder of teaching that “salvation is by faith alone.”

The term “faith” has three meanings: loyalty, confidence, and belief. Protestants interpret the “faith” in that formula to mean mere belief, and the Catholics adopted that from the Protestants. And “mere belief alone” excludes any discipline of conduct. Any sin is fine as long as you believe. Never mind that the scripture expressly demands holiness for salvation (Psalm 15, Isaiah 35:8) and expressly rejects mere belief (James 2:17). Says the fool, “I believe; I am saved; what does a Sunday morning service add to that?”

Not that long ago, things were different. Every state criminalized homosexual conduct. Christian morality was recognized as part of the common law, and abortion was a crime at common law. Today’s wokies and trannies would be laughed out of town. The church understood that it—like Jesus—must draw lines as well as circles.

That was then; this is now; now we’re nice. Tolerance has replaced discipline; celebration has replaced tolerance; sin has replaced holiness.

So, what is the ultimate takeaway from all this? It is that when the opportunity next arrives—hopefully in January 2025—for us to rebuild a rational and sustainable civilization in North America, let us steel ourselves to demand a traditional Biblical moral discipline of ourselves and our fellows.