The yay-hoos have drowned us out

We missed a chance for society to heed our articulation of the conservative vision

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Those of us who inhabit the Narrow Sliver of Terrain may have let a window of opportunity close regarding the most foundational thing we stand for.

Let me expand the scope a little: There has been much discussion on the non-Trumpist right about fissures that could be its undoing. I’ve written about it here. I’m none too comfortable with the big-tent emphasis of Principles First (which, these days, when pressed to discuss those principles, sticks with noncontroversial ones such as the free market, rule of law rooted in the Constitution, and strengthening alliances with West-leaning nations), The Bulwark, which doesn’t even bother characterizing itself as conservative anymore, and David French, whose position is that, because we’re now an irreversibly pluralistic society, we can’t insist on a return to basic societal assumptions about what human beings are and what God is.

No, Im more of a Carl Trueman, Andrew T. Walker kind of guy. The whole process of secularization of the West, which, to reiterate a point Precipice makes often, can be traced back to Rousseau.

But the point at which we should have been more forceful about making our point seems to have passed.

And so we have situations like that in Colorado, where that state’s Republican Party has gone in for the most boneheaded possible way of countering grotesque late-stage secularization:

The Colorado Republican Party marked the start of Pride Month with a mass email attacking “godless groomers” and a social media post calling for the burning of all Pride flags.

The state GOP’s move to the far right after a series of electoral blowout losses continued with some of its harshest anti-gay rhetoric in recent years.

The Colorado GOP’s mass email titled “God Hates Pride,” read, in part, “The month of June has arrived and, once again, the godless groomers in our society want to attack what is decent, holy, and righteous so they can ultimately harm our children.” 

The message to Colorado Republicans was headlined with an image reading “God Hates Flags,” a nod to the anti-gay slur on the picket signs of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church.

The party’s message was signed by chairman Dave Williams. A post from the Colorado Republican Party on X, formerly Twitter, read simply, “Burn all the #pride flags this June.”

Valdamar Archuleta, president of the Colorado Log Cabin Republicans and a candidate for the heavily Democratic 1st Congressional District in Denver, renounced the GOP’s endorsement as a result.

“The morons running our state party made it extremely hard for some of us to accomplish our goals for Liberty,” Archuleta posted on X.

In a follow-up statement released Tuesday, Archuleta said he could not accept the endorsement of the Colorado Republican Party, calling the party’s email “just hateful” and “disgusting and offensive.” 

We’ve ceded what ought to be a noble and urgent undertaking - resistance to the flouting of the basic design of the universe - to the stomp-’em-into-the-dust crowd. The immediate gratification to be experienced from getting on board with that is too irresistible to everyday folks who have busy lives and are not availing themselves of the background that the likes of Trueman can provide regarding how secularization and its attendant toxicities happened. They just know they’re frightened of the brave new realities and want a strong force of some kind to resolutely bring back stability.

And so the culturally dominant forces, which are fine with puberty blockers and mastectomies for 13-year-olds and redefining marriage, can, rightly so, depict the force most prominent in resisting their agenda as hateful troglodytes. Once again.

What was the moment at which we could have prevented resistance from being undertaken in an ugly manner?

I really hesitate to bring up the year of the Tectonic Shift, 1968, once again, given the frequency with which I do so.

But recently I find myself being sought out by younger inhabitants of the Narrow Sliver of Terrain for my Boomer perspective, and in such exchanges I emphasize that, as a 13-year-old that fabled year, I had a front-row seat to the obliteration of centuries-old norms. It started in homes. Parents no longer insisted on asserting standards of dress, hair and basic conduct. Schools and churches rushed to “relate to the kids” and institutional resistance turned into institutional encouragement of “being oneself.”

That’s one possibility. Readers may feel inclined to offer others.

All I know is that there’s some kind of timidity that we fell prey to somewhere along the. line that turned the stage over to the yay-hoos.

And thus does it get more difficult by the minute to champion what the entire human race used to consider normal without being ostracized by everyone not on our narrow sliver.