Template of Doom

[Snowden]

Template of Doom
By Arnold Ahlert

The bankruptcy of “progressive” philosophy becomes easy to understand when one realizes there is a “template” underlying it.

It goes something like this: some people are doing X, and even though X is illegal/immoral we can’t prevent it from happening–so we may as well accommodate it. And while we’re at it, let’s “de-stigmatize” it as well. Not all at once, mind you, but incrementally, so people will gradually accept it.

Two stories in the news last week illustrate such thinking.

Story number one takes us to King Middle School in Portland, Maine where the school board voted 7-2 to allow girls as young as 11-years-old to get birth control pills–without their parents’ knowledge. Plug in the template: some 11-year-old girls are having sex and we can’t stop them, so let’s accommodate them with birth control pills. And just in case their parents might point out that such behavior is immoral, let’s keep the parents out of the loop in order to prevent the girls from feeling stigmatized.

Incrementalism? There was a time in this country when sex before marriage was considered immoral. But little by little, the nation has been “nudged” to a place where adults in positions of power now deem it necessary or “practical” to surrender control of an 11-year-old’s behavior–to the 11-year-old herself. Will they come after your “precocious” 8-year old? It’s no longer an irrational question. In a better world, the seven members of the King Middle School board who voted in favor of this adult capitulation to adolescent carnal desire would [be] ashamed of themselves–if it weren’t for the fact that “progressive” thinking has virtually obliterated–incrementally–shame from the American landscape.

Story number two takes us to San Francisco, where city health officials are attempting to open the nation’s first “legal safe injection room” where addicts would be allowed to shoot up heroin, cocaine and other illegal narcotics while being supervised by nurses. Plug in the template: some people are junkies, and even though shooting heroin, etc., is illegal, we can’t stop it from happening, so let’s accommodate it with a city-sanctioned “shooting gallery.” De-stigmatization? Junkies shouldn’t have to get high in city parks, alleys, abandoned buildings, etc. They shouldn’t have to suffer the disapproving looks of their fellow citizens while they’re stumbling around or nodding out. They need a place where they can feel “welcome.”

Incrementally speaking, injection rooms are the next “logical” step following years of “free needle exchange” programs around the country. Those no longer generate much controversy. Here too, progressives are counting on the same slow, but inexorable ebb of resistance. Soon, they hope, every city will have “heroin hostels.”

The big picture? Progressives will continue to “define deviancy down.” They will continue using their template of accommodation, de-stigmatization and incrementalism to browbeat Americans into believing that any resistance to their worldview equals intolerance, bigotry or meanness.

Don’t believe it. Not for a nano-second. Not unless you believe 11-year olds should be in charge of their own sex lives or a drug-addicted lifestyle should become easier to maintain.

That’s not progressive. That’s pathetic.

atahlert@comcast.net

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