On November 19, House Speaker Mike Johnson was met by an eager press to get a statement on a resolution by Rep. Nancy Mace that would require gender-specific Capitol and House facilities to be used only by those of the corresponding biological sex.

Mace brought this resolution forward in response to the election of a representative from Delaware named Tim McBride, who now goes by the name of Sarah while pretending to be a woman.

A reporter asked Johnson a simple question as to whether freshman-elect Sarah McBride is a man or a woman.

“Look, I’m not going to get into this,” he said, smirking as if the question was of no importance at all.  New members will be welcomed, he assured the reporters, and everyone would be “treated with dignity and respect.”

“I’m not going to get into silly debates about this,” he continued.

For the last five to ten years, a Republican could easily have gotten away with a non-answer like that while insulting the bulk of his constituents who happen to think this particular debate is important.  After all, given that there has been a social crusade against the broad majority of Americans who recognize the simple truth that a man cannot become a woman because he puts on a dress and pretends to be one, most Republicans today aren’t willing to accept that kind of dithering to such a simple and fundamental question.

Within a few hours, after being excoriated on social media for his cowardice, Johnson conveniently found a microphone to proclaim loudly to the press that his perceived waffling was due to his having “rejected the premise” of the question, given that “the answer is so obvious.”

“Let me be unequivocally clear,” he said, “a man is a man, and a woman is a woman.  And a man cannot become a woman.”

Johnson finally got the memo from the American public, and he did the right thing.  He openly and clearly advocated for the truth, even though it would have violated every politically correct instinct that he would have had in the past decade to say what he finally said.

Mike Johnson was forced into this position by Nancy Mace, who has newly fashioned herself as a firebrand in the transgender debate.  But she wasn’t always so committed to the truth in regard to this issue.

A little more than a year ago, she fashioned herself as a “pro-transgender rights” politician.  You might be wondering what that means, considering that “transgender” people are clearly afforded all the same rights as other Americans under the Constitution and American law.  What she meant at the time, according to her, was that:

If [children] wanna take on a different pronoun or a different gender identity or grow their hair out, or wear a dress or wear pants, or do those things as a minor – those are all things that most people would support…

They may decide as an adult, ‘Hey, instead of Johnny, I want to be Jill,’ – that’s OK, but let them figure that out and make that decision when they can consent.

Well, Tim McBride has decided to become Sarah McBride, and Nancy Mace suddenly isn’t comfortable with that arrangement of trans people just “figuring it out,” even well beyond the age of consent, when it comes to which bathroom he should be welcome to use.

What happened with these two politicians?  Did they suddenly grow a spine and determine that speaking truth and doing the right thing was more important than toeing that line between placating the woke mob and angering normal, everyday Americans who can plainly see the truth, and don’t appreciate being gaslighted on this subject?

I don’t think so.  Rather, I think that Milton Friedman presaged the phenomenon we are witnessing back in 1975:

I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.

In other words, Mike Johnson and Nancy Mace are the wrong people who are doing the right thing, because we have created a culture in which it is politically expedient for them to do the right thing, and costly for them to do the wrong thing.

They want to be seen as courageous and important heroes, as all politicians do.  But we should know better.  The courageous heroes on this matter are those who advocated the truth, even when it was unpopular to do so.

The heroes are men like Matt Walsh, whose documentary “What is a Woman?” earned him countless death threats by trans activists against him and his family, but with that risk came the most important documentary yet-produced to expose the ridiculous farce that is trans ideology.

The heroes are women like Riley Gaines, the elite collegiate swimmer whom the trans mob wanted to silence as she was asked to share accolades with a man named Will Thomas as he pretended to be a woman, and who spoke on behalf of many other women who were having opportunities and accolades stolen from them by other men pretending to be women.  She was relentlessly vilified by the woke mob to the point that she feared for her life, but her courage emboldened the millions of Americans who recognized that she advocated the truth.

These are just two examples, and there are countless more examples of Americans who courageously took a stand against this insane social experiment where the public is simply meant to accept that men can actually become women by pretending to be women, or vice versa.

Perhaps the most recent example of such heroes are those teams boycotting the San Jose State volleyball team for its decision to allow a man, who pretends to be a woman, to compete against female athletes.

Those women, along with their coaches and staff, and the institutions that they represent are all heroes who continue to shape the culture by standing up for the truth.

Mike Johnson and Nancy Mace, on the other hand, are not heroes.  They’re just doing what they’ve always done, which is what’s good for them as politicians.  And while I’m happy that a cultural movement has developed in which what is good for them and what is true and good for the American people happen to coincide, we should be realistic about what is driving them.

And what seems to be driving many politicians now, all advocates of the truth should be happy to hear, is us.

Image: DonkeyHotey, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr, unaltered.