The devolution of the Never Trump publication National Review took another move to the left with the publication of a column calling for conservatives to surrender on the issue of transgenderism.
Columnist J.J. McCullough is not only calling for conservatives to cave to a ruinous lie, he is smearing conservatives as nasty bigots.
“[I]t feels we’re still in the immature, demagogic phase. In some quarters, it remains fashionable to act theatrically repulsed by transgender people emphasize their weirdness, and make populist appeals to the preposterousness of women asking to be called ‘him’ or surgeons amputating penises and so forth,” he writes.
Not done with us bigots, from on high he writes that, “Part one of the compromise will be borne by cultural conservatives and traditionalists. It asks for broad tolerance for the reality that transgender men and women exist, and are entitled to basic human dignity, just like everyone else.”
McCullough’s Orwellian demand is, if so requested, we blithely agree to identify biological men as woman and vice versa.
“This does not mean having to morally endorse behavior many may believe runs contrary to God’s plan for a just and healthy society,” McCullough writes, “but it does imply that acts like ostentatiously calling people by pronouns they don’t want, or belittling their personal struggle, are boorish and petty.”
Then he adds this kicker, “It means acknowledging that arbitrary discrimination against transgender people is a cruel bigotry like any other.”
Where to begin?
McCullough fabricating the premise that conservatives are “boorish” and “belittling” towards those suffering from gender dysphoria, that we deny “human dignity,” is not only smug twaddle, but reeks of yet another plea from this sorry crowd to enjoy the warm embrace of a mainstream media that heavily rewards such backstabbers. Can I be on Morning Joe for my bravery now!
He also provides no examples to back up his sanctimonious smears.
Basically, though, what National Review has published is a call for conservatives to lie. For the sake of peace and compromise, despite all scientific and biological evidence to the contrary, we should all agree to live under what Russian novelist Boris Pasternak called the “inhuman reign of the lie” when it comes to identifying gender.
While McCullough addresses the pronoun battles, this is the least of the fallout that comes with such a surrender. Biological men with penises using female restrooms, men competing in women’s sports, men moving into women’s prisons, school girls forced to share a hotel room with boys on overnight field trips… We are not even at the end of the beginning of this fight.
And heaven only knows how the left intends to exploit this as a means to persecute the Christian Church (never Muslims, though; never-ever Muslims). Within minutes of the Supreme Court forcing same sex marriage on a country that time and again voted against it, the push was on to destroy the Church, a push that would have accelerated had Donald Trump not temporarily disrupted (no thanks to National Review) this crusade.
Part two of McCullough’s compromise is — to be charitable — aggressively naïve, for it “requires sacrifice on the part of progressives” and calls for them to “halt in the use of state authority to impose accommodation of transgenderism in a fashion far more totalitarian than is rationally justified.”
On what planet does anyone believe the “progressive left” will agree to, much less respect such a compromise? Is he talking about the same “progressive left” that uses the power of the state to bully the Little Sisters of the Poor into violating their religious conscience, to force cake and flower artists to participate in a same sex weddings?
By all means, let’s negotiate with the same mob that calls for economic boycotts, un-personing through de-platforming, and to make unemployable those who hold the same opinion on gay marriage Barack Obama held in 2011.
Maybe we can all meet at a Chik-fil-A.
Here, though, is my biggest problem with McCullough’s so-called “compassionate compromise.”
What about the people suffering from this gender dysphoria?
What about what is best for them?
There is simply no question that transgenders are in desperate need of intense and compassionate psychiatric help, and that any coward who surrenders to the left’s push to turn a very serious mental health problem into a wedge issue, is doing a great disservice to those suffering from this mental health issue. Playing along with gender dysphoria is not compassion, it is a destructive act of cowardice.
Good heavens, who can watch what this cause du jour is doing to young children and call for a compromise that would legitimize such a thing?
Smearing conservatives as bigots?
Demanding we stop telling a truth?
Suggesting the partial-birth-abortion-left is open to compromise?
Calling for America to patronize and condescend to those in need of psychiatric help, to feed their tragic delusion?
It is one thing to debate ideas within certain a perspective. This piece, however, is not just Vox-style crap, it is an act of anti-intellectual preening that endorses a monstrous act of lying.
I’m old enough to remember when National Review tried to hustle us into believing it was aggressively working to defeat Donald Trump (yay Hillary!) based on “muh conservative principles.”
What a collapse.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.