Well, now the Dixie Chicks have renamed themselves just “The Chicks.”
Now that’s a relief. I think everybody assumed they supported slavery with that earlier name!
And when they eventually get told that the word “chicks” trivializes women’s lives, well, we can look forward to new releases from “The.”
(And of course they have to be careful, lest they run into intellectual property disputes with the old band The The.)
This is a trivial example, to be sure, but with the statues coming down and product names being changed and works of propaganda being added to school reading lists, well, it’s all of a piece.
People have been making comparisons to the French Revolution.
That period, too, sought to remake society from the bottom up. As if to underscore that history was beginning anew, the Gregorian calendar was replaced by a new calendar dating from the execution of the French monarch.
Statues of saints were guillotined. Names of streets were changed. Religious holidays were banned. Tens of thousands of priests had to flee into exile. And there were gruesome murders of regime opponents, as in the Drownings at Nantes and the executions of the martyrs of Compiègne.
This, unfortunately, is the nature of the primary foe we face.
They do not look at the world as consisting of diverse peoples with varying points of view that ought to be entertained respectfully.
It consists instead of enemies who deserve to be silenced and humiliated.
Those enemies’ old ways of living must be destroyed and rendered odious, and their lingering attachment to them made an object of ridicule and laughter.
Even if you’re just moderately different — like the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries in Lenin’s Russia — you, too, will eventually get what’s coming to you.
Meanwhile, they’ll gaslight you by presuming to give you lessons in tolerance and coexistence.
The “conservative movement” used to criticize its opponents as “moral relativists.”
That’s not true today, if it ever was. We are talking about people who absolutely do believe in a moral standard, and they are it.
And you’d better watch what you say.
I don’t know how this all ends. Maybe there will be a backlash. Maybe there won’t. Maybe there will be more violence. Maybe there won’t.
What I do know: it’s nice to have people to discuss the craziness with who are smart, courteous, and won’t assume you’re a terrible person and try to ruin your life.