The Republican inability or lack of will to state the fundamental moral issue

Three specific examples from Michigan, with some thoughts

I am no great fan of the Republican Party in the United States. But at least inasmuch as we restrict our consideration to Democrats and Republicans, I would say that nearly always, Republicans are the saner side of that pairing. It is therefore to my dismay that the saner side usually makes terribly weak “arguments”, if they even deserve that word, for themselves and their positions. If I can create some sort of categories for you, what I routinely see goes something like this:

Democrats: “We are proudly in favor of this horrible, evil thing! All good people have a moral obligation to love this horrible evil thing as much as we do.”

And then, what the Republican response should be is something like:

Republicans: “Horrible evil thing is horrible and evil and here is why. All good people have a moral obligation to oppose this horrible evil thing. Here is what we stand for instead, and here is why it is good and right.”

But you almost never see that. What you very often see instead is one of the following, all of which seem rather afraid to actually name the evil thing as evil.

Republicans: “The process by which they are promoting that thing is bad. It’s not good to misuse the process like that.” Or,

Republicans: “Their promotion of that thing is a distraction from what really matters.” Or,

Republicans: “Their promotion of that thing is divisive. It isn’t good to be divisive.” Or,

Republicans: “Their promotion of that thing is causing some practical harms, or is bad from a utilitarian perspective.”

Now, all four of these objections might be true, often are true… but they are pitifully weak objections compared to what they should be saying, “what they are supporting is evil and we should oppose evil”. Why in the world can we not say that?

The Left makes all of its claims these days in strong moral language, and though the claims they are making may be false and horrifying, they are right to be making strong moral claims. That's what matters. "They're being divisive" or "that's a distraction" does not matter. Nobody cares about that.

Here are a few recent examples from Michigan with some commentary.

Whitmer’s abortion activism

Just as a common citizen observer, it seems to me that Michigan Democrats are positively thrilled that Roe v. Wade was overturned, because it is their big chance to make the coming November election an abortion election. And, to my dismay, it also seems to me that their big Republican opponent, Tudor Dixon (running for governor), is trying to largely ignore all that and trying to be the good-for-the-economy and tough-on-crime candidate for governor. And it seems to me a tremendous mistake to let your opponents characterize your position on abortion for the public, and work very hard to make that the most important issue of the election for voters, and for you to almost never bother to “hit back”.

I offer you a blip from the Michigan Right-to-Life email today, especially for the final paragraph.

I would characterize Dixon’s comments here as a “they keep talking about abortion to try to divide us” response. And my reaction would be… so what? Who cares? That’s not the rebuttal you need to be making. The problem with Whitmer’s abortion activism is not that it’s divisive. The problem is that she's advocating for the right to murder children. Do you believe that? Then say that. And defend your own beliefs. That’s the real moral issue at stake here. People might hate you for it, but you would at least be giving them a reason to actually care about what you are saying. Nobody cares that Whitmer is being divisive. Say what actually matters.

After all, you know what else is divisive? Abortion activism that is trying to end abortion. Division is bad when the division is over something stupid. If a church divides because half the church likes sports team A and the other half likes sports team B, that’s bad division. Now, while it’d be nice if America was so uniformly anti-abortion that the topic was not a source of division, at the moment that isn’t the country we live in. And this topic does matter, it matters tremendously. So there is nothing wrong with provoking some division here.

The Michigan GOP tries to defend parental rights

As you may have seen, Christopher Rufo, perhaps the most successful (good) activist in America, did stupendous work recently uncovering… well, in his own words:

The Michigan Department of Education has adopted a radical gender theory program that promotes gender “fluidity” beginning in elementary school and encourages teachers to facilitate the sexual transition of minors without parental consent.

With further details like:

Finally, the Department of Education teaches school employees how to facilitate the sexual transition of children under their care, while keeping the process a secret from parents. The trainers explicitly tell educators that they should keep a student’s new name, pronouns, and sexual identity confidential, including from family, unless otherwise directed by the child.

The Republican-controlled state Senate passed a resolution yesterday condemning the training program.

Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @realchrisrufo

BREAKING: The Michigan State Senate has passed a resolution condemning the state's radical gender theory training program, which teaches public school officials how to facilitate child sexual transitions and keep them a secret from parents, even if the child is suicidal.

Now, passing such a resolution is a good thing, but let me share some of the details of the language with you. They wrote:

Whereas, The fundamental right of parents over the upbringing of their children has been unequivocally established in the United States. Parents are in the best position to know their children’s needs and circumstances, and therefore should maintain authority over all information and decisions that could impact the health and well-being of their children, and…

…The offensive nature of these videos clearly represents the out of touch perspective of the Michigan Department of Education…

Now that’s certainly not bad, or wrong, but I would again file it under “pretty weak compared to what you could have, should have said”. First of all, “they are out of touch” I would parallel to “what they are saying is a distraction” - who cares? I want to know whether what they are saying is true or false. If it’s true, I don’t care if it’s “out of touch”, things that are good and true are often out of touch. If it’s false, I don’t much care if it’s out of touch either, the problem is that it’s false.

And then I also wanted to point out that this defense of parental rights is rather utilitarian in nature. Notice the location of the “therefore” above. “Parents are in the best position to know their children’s needs and circumstances, therefore”… is that really all we can say? Again, this statement is true, but is that the best thing we can say? Because utilitarian defenses like that leave open a huge hole that progressive activists would love to drive their truck through, that goes something like “you’d think that, but actually parents are in a worse position to understand these things than our highly trained teachers and experts. Therefore, by your own reasoning, the people who should really be making the decisions are…” I have no doubt that many progressive activists believe exactly that, so we have said nothing here to change their mind about anything.

It does make you sense that part of the problem here is the removal of God from our politics - and I mean, specifically, the removal of God from our discourse. There can be no “God has given this authority first to parents” defense, that is forbidden in the present discourse, you don’t want to sound like a theocrat or something. So instead we’re left with inferior utility language.

Tudor Dixon on the above-mentioned program

Finally, Tudor Dixon also did comment on the Department of Education training program. (That made me feel slightly accomplished actually, because after Rufo published his work I did whine on Twitter that, after Rufo did all the work for them, Michigan Republicans had better at least grab ahold of this and run with it.) And, as goes for this whole post, Dixon’s comments were not bad, they were just inferior to what should have been said. Let me give you a couple of them.

Tudor Dixon @TudorDixon

.@realchrisrufo uncovered sickening training videos from the Michigan Department of Education that instruct teachers on how to help children sexually transition. 🧵

Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @realchrisrufo

NEW: The Michigan Department of Education instructed public school teachers how to facilitate child sexual transitions and recommended that teachers keep a child's "chosen name and pronouns" a secret from parents, even if the child is suicidal. It's all on video. 🧵

Tudor Dixon @TudorDixon

Make no secret about it - this government department is being weaponized to actively recruit our kids and advance their radical gender theory with zero input from parents. They are hiding information about our children from parents, even if a child is suicidal.

Tudor Dixon @TudorDixon

My position is very clear: Our schools need to stop pushing radical sex and gender theory and instead get back to teaching kids how to read, write, and do math. My full response to the MDOE's egregious training videos:

tudordixon.comTudor Dixon Responds to Sickening Michigan Department of Education Radical Gender Teacher Training | Dixon for Michigan Governor - A family…

Now, feel free to tell me I’m whining too much here, but what I wanted to hear from her was, “gender identity theory is a harmful lie about what it means to be human”. That gets to the absolute heart of the matter. That’s the main reason this program is wicked. That is a moral claim about which, agree or disagree, everyone should care. Such a statement leaves no space at all for progressive activists to wiggle through a utilitarian gap in the wall or some such and keep doing what they want to do anyway.

What did we get instead? Well, it isn’t terrible, but we got a distraction comment - schools should get back to teaching reading, writing, and math. Should they? Yes, but “it distracts us from math” is a secondary problem with gender identity theory, not the main problem. And then we have a complaint that the DOE is doing this without input from parents, and is hiding it from parents. And to me, have to say, this is a sort of complaint about process, and almost nobody in America actually cares about process all that much anymore. Should the DOE get input from parents? Sure, but that isn’t the main problem. The main problem is that gender identity theory is a harmful lie about what it means to be human. Can we not first and most say that?

THE END

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