Gloria Steinem: 'If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament'
Holy sh-t, I guess it is a sacrament!
Some Crazy Ideas Are Deadly Serious
Saying men can get pregnant is ridiculous. Pumping kids full of hormones is wicked.
By J. Budziszewski, WSJ
March 27, 2023 6:21 pm ET
When I tell nonacademic friends some of the things about race and sex that are commonly taught in universities today, many respond with either disbelief or giggles. You can’t be serious. Nobody can possibly believe that men can get pregnant or that Lincoln was in favor of slavery!
Since I agree these are crackpot ideas, perhaps I shouldn’t carp. But when people in politics, scholarship, punditry and everyday life treat “culture wars” as unserious—or at least as less serious than other issues, like economics and foreign policy—I wonder how serious they are.
It’s true that no one who has seriously studied American history believes the lies of critical race theory. Deep down, every one of us knows that biological sex is real. And yes, some who don’t believe in these insanities pretend that they do.
Nonetheless, many of those who press these manias are dead serious. That doesn’t mean they aren’t putting over a con. They capitalize on mania to gain status, wealth, and power—but it’s their mania, too. They work desperately to remain in a state of denial, not to think about the obvious. The exhausting labor of self-deception pushes them into more extreme behavior. Just as lies beget lies, self-deceptions metastasize into new self-deceptions.
Moreover, they have on their side the president, universities, school boards, regulatory agencies, professional and athletic associations, many courts and churches, one of the major political parties and most of the media. Their constituencies are made up largely of people to whom nothing else matters, and who spend their time—and often earn a comfortable living—trying to wear the rest of us down. Since the rest of us have other things to do, that isn’t difficult.
Unfortunately, derangement has real-world consequences. The identity ideologies pose an existential threat for the culture, which increasingly affects the everyday lives of individuals, families and children.
Explain why it’s not serious that we surgically disfigure children and pump them full of hormones to prevent the onset of puberty, or that we call this “care.”
Explain why it’s not serious for medical journals to publish articles discussing whether surgical amputation is the best treatment for people with sound limbs who “identify as paraplegics.”
Explain why it’s not serious that “drag queen story hours” have become an accepted event in many public schools and libraries.
Finally, explain why we needn’t grieve that so many of us pretend these things aren’t happening, are afraid to speak up, or think having a burning concern about them is a distraction from more important things.
The normalization of disorder and empowerment of lunacy are not to be taken lightly. There’s a serious idea.
Mr. Budziszewski is a professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas and author of “How and How Not to Be Happy.”
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