The price of having allowed them to make their old “the personal is political” slogan a reality.
Politics used to be about things like tax cuts. When politics was about tax cuts and subsidies and spending on projects and putting a stop sign at the end of the street, Americans could bear to get a little more or a little less from election to election. An election result could be disappointing. But it was not catastrophic. Quality of life is very important to Americans. But quality of life is not all-important. Americans will argue with each other over quality-of-life issues. But they will not kill each other over them. Settling things like tax cuts through elections worked out just fine.
But politics is not about things like tax cuts anymore. Now politics is all about causes. Causes like Black Lives Matter. Causes like LGBTQ+. Causes like Climate Change. Causes like Defunding the Police. Causes like Systemic Racism, and Open Borders, and Reproductive Rights, and Trans Rights, and Dismantling the Cis-Normative Patriarchy. And on. And on.
You cannot settle causes like these by vote. For one thing, they are indivisibles. They will not bear compromise. To suggest compromise may be considered a form of “violence.” Nor may you watch, in silence, as the issues unfold — for silence, too, may be considered a form of “violence.” Besides, many of the issues are simply unsolvable. Politics has no answer to them.
Which leads to the larger reason causes like these cannot be settled by vote: Causes like these bear too great a resemblance to religion — the nature of man, his original sin, his fallenness, and his salvation from it. Politics cannot settle disputes over dogma. They are neither soluble nor dissoluble.
Another thing that can’t be settled by elections is the fundamental conflict between tyranny and liberty. In fact, that’s the main issue in this election, as it will be in every other one going forward (if any), until the Left is utterly and permanently annihilated.
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