When the Enemy of Your Enemy is the Devil
Culture and Politics - Sex and Culture
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, February 14, 2011
Conservative Christian activist, what is missing from GOProd? U are! ("GOProud" is a homosexual group purporting to be conservative activists, ed.) And there is a reason for that.
Recent months have seen a significant shift on the right, as the conservative organization CPAC invited the right wing homosexual group GOProd to participate in its annual parade of candidates and the near future's erstwhile candidates. We shouldn't be too disheartened, because they also invited Donald Trump's hair to come, and an interesting speech that was.
Of course, some social conservatives pulled out, and good on them, while some other interesting things happened as well. Sarah Palin didn't go, but she never does, and at the same time she said that she didn't have a problem with GOProd's participation. Ron Paul attended, and won the straw poll there for the second year running, well ahead of Mitt Romney. Neither did he have a problem with GOProd's involvement. Andrew Breitbart, the very effective agitator of the right, threw a big party for the GOProdders, and it was the social event of the weekend. So, what shall we make of all this? A couple things.
The first is we have to distinguish two very different mistakes that are being made. The paths diverge significantly, and so they are quite a distance apart when they both go over the lip of the chasm. The first is the mistake that Palin and Paul are making -- the libertarian mistake. The assumption is that any kind of personal freedom is good. This libertarian involvement is likely to say something like: "I don't care what those guys do when they are alone. I find it distasteful, but I believe in as few restrictions on the individual as possible." The fact that Ron Paul won the straw poll at CPAC indicates heavy libertarian involvement, and this helps to account for some of what happened.
The other mistake is that being made by those who would celebrate the sodomy itself. The Democratic party is already there -- sodomy is a basic human right, and may soon be a secular sacrament -- and if they don't figure this out, the Republican party soon will be in the same place. This would be the difference between Palin and Paul, both Christians, who would necessarily say that homosexual behavior is sinful, and Breitbart, an atheist, who could not say any such thing. It makes perfect sense why Breitbart would throw that party, and why Ron Paul would go to CPAC but not to the party.
But over time, in any political coalition, the former stance has a tendency to turn into the latter. This is because people don't understand the difference between allies and cobelligerents. Allies are united by a common commander, and cobelligerents are united by a common enemy. In the Second World War, we were allied with Great Britain and we were cobelligerents with the Soviet Union. We were fighting alongside Great Britain for basically the same reasons, and our forces were united under the command of Eisenhower. Off on the eastern front, Stalin and Hitler were fighting one another for completely different reasons.
This distinction is obvious, but in the heat of battle, to point out the obvious is often treated as sedition. People want to assume that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The real principle ought to be the enemy of my enemy is sometimes useful. But when political results become the only thing that matter, then pressure is immediately applied to start telling lies. If Roosevelt had referred to Stalin as "that useful thug giving Hitler fits," no honest man could object. But American propaganda immediately turned Stalin, a man every bit as evil as the lunatic we were fighting, into "Uncle Joe." Churchill once famously said, "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." Churchill's wit notwithstanding, there is a deep moral trouble there.
The problem is not that Ahab and Jehoshaphat might have found themselves fighting a common enemy at the same time. Funny things happen in this world. The problem was with what Jehoshaphat was required to put up with as the cost of coordinating it. If a homosexual rep in Congress votes against Obama's latest very expensive whatever, I for one will rejoice and thank the Lord for it. Double yay. But if the cost of getting that vote is that I have to stand on a platform somewhere at a Homos and Christians United for Fiscal Sanity rally, deal me out.
When God destroyed Sodom, how were their books in the previous five fiscal years? Was their budget balanced? Who knows? Who cares?
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