Morality is the key

I quote the Z-man a lot, and I like much of what he says as well as how he says it. I do, however, disagree with him on many things too. Here's some of his analysis on the recent Supreme Court victories against the Lunatic Left. Truncated and edited for a handful of spelling errors.

In war, men will die for their cause. They will not die for a paycheck or the promise of war booty after the battle. They will die for a cause because they are motivated by a sense of righteousness in the cause. When an army believes it is fighting for what is right, it is willing to do whatever is necessary to win. An army fighting with a bayonet at its back or because it is paid to fight is risk averse. It will do only that which is advantageous to it because that is what reason dictates.

It is important to note that the only two issues the Right has had any success in America are guns and abortion. The gun people had the advantage of the second amendment but they never relied upon it. Only a few gun cases have made it to the courts and they have only nibbled around the issue. Instead, the gun people launched a crusade against the gun grabbers in every state and locality. Their task has always been to anathematize gun grabbing and the gun grabbers.

The lesson here for those engaging in politics is that like war, politics is about morality, not facts and reason. The soldier fights for his love of country, often expressed as love of his brothers in arms. He fights for a cause bigger than himself. In politics, the winners are those who frame the issue in moral terms, seizing the moral high ground and demanding opponents justify their actions in the face of morality. The losers are those who settle for facts and reason.

This is why the American Left has won every battle against the so-called conservatives over the last century. The Left makes moral claims while the co-called conservatives force opposition into rational claims. The exception has been the two issues where professional conservatism has had little role, abortion and guns. It is important to note that professional conservatism has opposed the NRA over the years and they opposed Trump, who promised to fill the court with pro-life judges.

It is why conservatives oppose the term “antiwhite.” They know that this is a morally charged term that offers no opportunity for them to negotiate away the interests of the people they claim to represent. It makes a clear moral distinction between us and them, which is the enemy of the sorts of people working in conservatism. The same is true of the word “groomer” which is not only factually accurate, but it also lays bare the moral implications of the sexual revolution.

In the end, the lesson of the abortion movement for dissidents is that the way to defeat the moral framework of the Left is with an alternative moral framework. You cannot defeat moral arguments with facts and reason. People will sacrifice for a just cause, but not for a logical explanation. It turns out that Ben Shapiro’s line about facts not caring about your feelings is just another trick to prevent a moral people from standing on their morals to oppose the moral framework of the Left.

Personally, I think that Ben Shapiro's line works just fine as long as you don't try to misuse it. Facts don't care about your feelings, and the insane trans sexual movement is a perfect example of facts standing in stark contrast to the fevered, hysterical imaginations and feelings of crazy people. But the Z-man likes to take swipes at Ben Shapiro gratuitously, even if he kind of oversteps sometimes. I can't really blame him.

Conservative Inc. is also struggling with this one. Their whole model is based on losing gracefully, so they are unprepared for an actual victory. Crisis counselors have been called to American Enterprise and Heritage to help the staff cope with something they were told could never happen. For professional conservatives, Dobbs is like seeing Bigfoot riding a unicorn. They are questioning their sanity.

What makes this even more difficult for Conservative Inc. is the fact that Dobbs was made possible by their archnemesis, Donald Trump. In his debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump made clear that abortion would be a litmus test issue for him when it came time to select judges for the court. His matter-of-fact explanation for how he would roll back Roe was mocked at the time, but it turned out to be correct.

Ben Shapiro attacked Trump and Trump supporters for thinking that it was possible to stack the court with judges who would follow through on their claims. Shapiro was sure that Trump was not only lying, but too stupid to understand how the court worked and how the nomination process worked. He also claimed that Trump lacked the stones to stand up to the left when it came to judges.

Unsurprisingly, Shapiro was wrong on all counts.

Of course, this should inform the ongoing debate about the future of conservatism that is happening in various quarters. Although they probably do not see it, the Dobbs decision cuts the legs out from under the New Right just as it does Conservative Inc. Both sides of this debate claim that how things are done is what matters. In reality, it is who, not how. Who decides is what matters in the law and in social policy. If a society has the right people in charge, people with a natural attachment to society, they will make decisions in the public interest.

This is why the most unhinged opposition to Trump came from the neocons. They have always been the brains of Conservative Inc., and they correctly saw what the Trump phenomenon represented to them. Trump was not running to promote a process but on the promise that he and he alone could make the required changes. His campaign was an explicit appeal to the who rather than the how.

The real impact of Dobbs is in reminding the white remnant that what matters is who decides, not how they decide. For generations they have been told by their betters that process is their greatest virtue. It took a billionaire bumpkin from beyond the pale to prove that process is a tool. In the hands of good men, it results in good ends. In the hands of alien rulers, the best process leads to bad ends.

As John Adams, of Founding Fathers fame, once said: "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other." That should be a powerful lesson to those on the Right who overly worship the Constitution. I do believe that the Constitution was raised up, inspired by, and supported by Divine Providence, as the Book of Mormon strongly suggests, but it is insufficient to work as a bulwark against the loss of morality of our society.  Which, I believe, is another way of saying the same thing.

There's an interesting article in the September 1977 Ensign or Liahona as it's now called, which discusses the chief judges of the Nephites. Let me quote a portion of that article. 

The Nephite republic lasted only 120 years. The history of its life and death is an inspired guide to judging the progress of our own civilization. Understanding why it lived and why it died is imperative if we today are to retain our own freedom. It lived because four dedicated missionaries were willing to sacrifice fourteen years of their lives and their right to royalty to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to their bitterest enemies. It died through temporal greed and the loss of brotherly love and concern. It lived because a wise monarch envisioned the sacred foundations of proper government and wrote an inspired charter of liberty for his nation. It died through the accumulated unrighteousness of internal secret combinations and monarchial conspiracies, drained by the wounds of its own political divisiveness. It lived because men such as Helaman and Lachoneus were so committed to principles of the law and the gospel that they served their fellowmen at great risk and personal danger. It died through those who, rather than face social ostracism and threatened violence, chose the false security of subservience by giving up the proper procedures and practices of this government.

It lived because men such as Nephihah and Pahoran were resolute in their defense of freedom under law, and remained humble in the possession of great governmental power. It died in official arrogance and political tyranny. It lived because of Alma and Nephi, “men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (1 Chr. 12:32), and who were actively in but “not of the world” (John 17:14). It died when good men did too little, when a confused and troubled nation failed to turn to the light of the gospel and chose instead to walk in the darkness of its own worldly learning and criminal conceit.

There is a critical time in the lives of men and nations when they must make an ultimate decision: to exercise their free agency righteously, or set in motion a spiraling sequence of spiritual suicide. For 120 years under the Nephite judges, national allegiance wavered between the bright hope of prophetic progress and the stagnation of compounded apostasy. In the end, the Nephites chose the “other gospel” (Gal. 1:8) and reaped the judgments Mosiah had prophesied.

And what of the judges? They went down with the ship of state, but they never stopped bailing. When the tides of national adversity were running the highest, they met them head on, “idealists without illusions” who counted the costs and were content with the contest. The lesson is clear. The choice is ours.

The lesson of both the Ensign article and the Z-man post is the same; it matters who is at the reigns of government. Donald Trump may not have been a Captain Moroni or even a Pahoran, but if we use Christ's own admonition that by their fruits we may know them, Trump was the greatest President the US has had since Calvin Coolidge, and the impact of his Presidency was starkly manifest in the last week with Supreme Court decisions on the Second Amendment and abortion. Righteous leaders and righteous, moral people are much more important than a process document such as the Constitution, which was good in the sense that it tried to limit the ability of the unrighteous to hijack the reigns of government. But, as we saw during the Nephite times, and as we've seen in our own age, when morality is lost or significantly diluted, when our leaders are corrupted and wicked, the Constitution is not sufficient to save us. 

“Wherefore, this land is consecrated unto him whom he shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them; wherefore, they shall never be brought down into captivity; if so, it shall be because of iniquity; for if iniquity shall abound cursed shall be the land for their sakes, but unto the righteous it shall be blessed forever.” (2 Nephi 1:7)

“And now, we can behold the decrees of God concerning this land, that it is a land of promise; and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall serve God, or they shall be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come upon them. And the fulness of his wrath cometh upon them when they are ripened in iniquity. for behold, this is a land which is choice above all other lands; wherefore he that doth possess it shall serve God or shall be swept off; for it is the everlasting decree of God. And it is not until the fulness of iniquity among the children of the land, that they are swept off. And this cometh unto you, O ye Gentiles, that ye may know the decrees of God—that ye may repent, and not continue in your iniquities until the fulness come, that ye may not bring down the fulness of the wrath of God upon you as the inhabitants of the land have hitherto done. Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, who hath been manifested by the things which we have written.” (Ether 2:9-12).