OPINION:
In the 1970s, Ronald Reagan warned that “If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism.” In the coming days, as Democrats once again spend an entire month celebrating their pride, recognize that what Reagan predicted has come to pass for about 50% of our country’s electorate.
Ideological fascism now rules the political left, and during the month of June, they will prove it once again by their incessant navel-gazing and adolescent demands. “Celebrate our politics,” they will shout, “or we will cancel you.” “Affirm our endless list of hyphenated identities or be crushed.” “You must agree with us. You must comply with our fasces — our acceptable bundle of ideas — or we will silence you.”
Over and over again, they will prove the prescience of C.S. Lewis when he said more than 70 years ago, “The essential vice, the utmost evil, is pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness and all that are mere flea bites in comparison. It was through pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice. It is the complete anti-God state of mind.”
Mark Galli said it well in the cover story of the April 2017 issue of Christianity Today. “The problem with [the pride of identity politics],” he wrote, “goes even deeper than disunity. It encourages me to notice what is passing away while failing to notice the reality of what will last.”
Mr. Galli continued: “[A preoccupation with] identity … seems to inevitably degenerate into judgmentalism and division. … [Our] fixation on diversity … has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups. … Identity liberalism has failed. … National politics in healthy periods is not about ‘differences’; it is about commonality.”
Over the nearly 20 years that my wife and I served as university president and first lady in Oklahoma, we invited almost a dozen college students to live with our family. These students became part of our household while they attended college. Most of these young men and women were from different cultures, and some were from other countries. Yet in our house, unity, not diversity, was the concern. We were a family, pure and simple. We saw character, not color, age, nationality or social status. We celebrated what we had in common and didn’t worry about how we differed. We focused on our Savior, not ourselves. We held one another accountable to righteousness and didn’t defend our rights.
Our family’s identity was in Christ, not individual grievances, inclinations or desires. We defined ourselves by our Lord, not our libido. Everyone under our roof was a human being, nothing more and nothing less. There were no subdivisions. Our home was a “uni-versity,” not a “di-versity.” It was a place where everyone was expected to act like an adult and not behave like a child. It was not a day care.
I was recently accused of trying to “force unity” on our culture’s more broadly diverse subcategories by espousing the above-mentioned views. The implication was that I was thereby ignoring the disenfranchised and those who stand on the fringes and in the shadows of American society.
However, isn’t it possible that what my challenger described would be more accurately defined as compliance than unity? The irony was that he, as a liberal, was the one demanding submission to his standards, rules and legalism, while I, as a conservative, was arguing for the liberty found in a united versus a divided state.
Forced unity is an oxymoron. If it’s forced, it’s not unity; it’s compliance. There is a huge difference between the conservatives’ fight for unity and the liberals’ prideful attempt to force everyone else to comply.
Perhaps the best question is this: Could it be that the most effective way to support the marginalized is to embrace a worldview that brings us all together rather than drives us apart? Wouldn’t it be better to welcome everyone into the body politic of American life rather than create endless subcategories by pridefully hyphenating everyone’s identity?
One worldview is freedom, and the other is fascism. One celebrates the whole, and one condemns those not part of the group. One confronts, and the other coddles. One thrives by the rule of love, and the other exists by the tyranny of the gang. One raises up mature adults, the other produces self-absorbed fascists who, every June, march in streets across America waving their rainbow banners of “identity” and “pride.”
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com.
