For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
—2 Timothy, 4:3-4
In a piece published over at The American Spectator today, George Neumayr makes a set of predictions that will one day get him labeled a prophet [emphasis mine]:
The end point of liberalism is a coercive secular state in which the religious have no meaningful rights. American church leaders are kidding themselves if they think the gay-marriage juggernaut is going to stop at civil marriage. It won’t. It will quickly travel past court houses to churches, demanding that all religions bless gay marriages.
…
In America, this pressure will take the form of “discriminatory” churches losing government grants, permits, and participation in programs. It will be the death of religious freedom by a thousand little cuts here and there: canceled speeches of religious figures at state universities, lost HHS grants, the refusal of city governments to recognize churches that don’t permit gay marriages, “hate crime” legislation that extends to opposition to gay marriage, and so on. All of this will have the effect of pressuring churches into blessing gay marriages. A law forcing priests and ministers to preside at gay marriages won’t need to be passed; the invisible law of indirect governmental pressure will do the trick.
Why shouldn’t this happen? After all, this is the Leftist approach that has worked so well in other areas, such as commerce. They are relentless, their thirsts unquenchable.
However, Mr. Neumayr commits an error when he claims that ‘the invisible law of indirect governmental pressure’ will be as far as the Left goes and he further predicts:
The goal of the gay-marriage juggernaut is to make Christians [BOB: I would have included Jews here, as well] pariahs, as irrelevant to public life as racists. It doesn’t have to pass a Denmark-style law to force churches to conduct gay marriages; it can achieve the same end through punitive political correctness.
The Left never excepts anything but total victory, so they will not be content to stop after the thousand cuts are delivered.
As we’ve seen, the Leftist Playbook divides their process of submission to their Will To Power into three stages:
1) Take control of the Narrative on an issue via such actions as convincing enough people that the definitions of certain words [such as 'marriage'] have ‘evolved’ from their real meaning. In other words [pun intended]: distort and confuse and sow doubt in the beliefs of the people. Create Chaos in the target area.
2) Begin exerting societal pressure to shame/guilt organizations and individuals into accepting the premises of the particular Narrative. At the same time governmental pressure must be applied around the edges by passing laws and issuing regulations that force institutions and groups to have to make a decision whether or not to engage in a myriad of small battles — overload their circuits, inflict, in Mr. Neumayr’s words, ‘death…by a thousand little cuts here and there’.
3) Go in for the kill, the final step of forcing submission: utilizing all branches of government at all levels, start legislating and regulating. A large number of people will quietly submit at this point because they have been mentally prepared — reconditioned — to accept the conclusion of this particular Narrative — in their heart-of-hearts they will believe in the goodness of their enslavement. A smaller number will submit because of the fear of shunning by Society at large — deep down they know better, but they are weak souls. An even smaller group will continue to resist, but they will not be powerful enough to prevent their Society as a whole from submitting to the Leftist Will, from dying just a little bit more.
This is what our future holds in so many areas.
If you have any doubt that the current leaders of the Left In America lack the Will to persevere in this task, Mr. Neumayr dispels said doubt in three paragraphs:
During last year’s campaign, Obama said that religions will remain free to determine their own “sacraments.” Shouldn’t that go without saying? The very fact that Obama made such a declaration should scare people. Whenever a pol says “I won’t do [fill in the
blank],” it usually means that very activity is on his mind. While he can’t determine the sacraments for religions, Obama will try and marginalize those religions that don’t determine the sacraments in a manner he considers “nondiscriminatory.”Obama’s “respect” for these religions is on par with his respect for the policies of the Boy Scouts. “I think that my attitude is that gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everybody else does in every institution and walk of life,” said Obama when calling on the Boy Scouts to accept gay scoutmasters. Notice Obama’s phrase: every institution and walk of life. Surely in time that will include churches.
But for now, Obama thinks the religious should feel grateful to him that he is not busting down church doors and forcibly injecting them with contraceptives or requiring them to preside at gay weddings. That in his mind is the sum total of religious freedom. And yet even that little space can be crowded in on through laws that allow government to reward secularized religions and shun traditional ones.
We often decry Obama as a Narcissist — and he one of the raging variety — but so are all Leftists. They all believe they have The Secret Knowledge, THE ANSWER, that will lead, in the future, to bringing about Heaven On Earth. Anyone who believes that they have such insight is, as Gerhart Niemeyer remarks:
…claiming a foreknowledge that can only be that of a Being above and beyond time, [and they] cast themselves in a role not befitting the human situation. —The Communist Mind
A Side Thought: In those words of his, Obama reminds one of Henry VIII right before he looted the churches of England [Valerie Jarrett = Thomas Cromwell?...should Lady Michbeth be more worried about her neck???].
A Final Thought: This issue — the subjugation of Christianity and Judaism and other religions [except the cult known as Islam] — means a lot to the Left because the destruction of the spiritual community, our shared understanding of transcendent truth, our belief in an agreed-upon set of Absolute Truths, will leave a spiritual hole that they intend to fill with their rose-colored vision of a future Heaven On Earth. To put it simply: the Left In America wants to murder God and replace him with a Politburo of Illuminated Ones. They do not believe that God is present in everyone, but, rather, that everyone present is a god.
