When progressives attack American traditions, they are attacking Western culture. The conflict between progressives and patriots is often framed as liberals versus conservatives. To clarify, American traditions include practices and values that range from liberal to conservative. Moreover, Christianity is central to Western traditions, and Jesus’ preachings are shared among liberals and conservatives. The United States is a product of Christian civilization. Christian ethics are foundational to our culture and law. The conflict is between those who defend the West and those who stand against it.
Acknowledging Christianity’s role in American history is crucial. Some assume Christian doctrine and ethics are conservative, but Christianity is fundamental to liberalism and its values of individualism and moral autonomy from the state. The Founders of the American Republic were classical liberals who put the rights of man beyond government. The Declaration of Independence makes clear that government doesn’t give rights to man; our rights derive from natural law. Furthermore, the Enlightenment largely grew out of the Protestant Reformation, which shattered the hegemony of singular religious authority and opened the door to secularism. Thus, liberalism is core to the American tradition. The founders of the American Republic enshrined the Enlightenment values of freedom of conscience, speech, and writing in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
By contrast, progressives oppose Christian ethics and liberal secular culture. Progressives have repurposed religious liberty as a Trojan horse to expel Christianity from the public square. In restricting speech and writing, progressives don’t even try to disguise their authoritarianism. Indeed, progressivism is an Orwellian euphemism for regressivism, which is why the term regressive left is an apt one, especially when one acknowledges that liberalism is politically left.
The regressive left is moreover reactionary. Progressives, especially young progressives, are far more likely than conservatives and liberals to agree that violence is the appropriate response to speech with which they disagree. We also see regression in the belief that racial discrimination is an appropriate tool to address unequal outcomes in the various laws and policies imposing diversity, inclusion, and a redefined equity, especially around race relations.
Wokism is a more regressive form that progressivism takes over time. It was inevitable that progressive praxis would devolve into tribal identitarianism. In the general abandonment of principle, the utilitarian path winds towards totalitarianism. Indeed, progressivism was deliberately conflated with liberalism to disguise the truth that progressivism is intrinsically illiberal.
Progressivism is anti-Christian as well, despite the surface appeal to ecumenism (the appeal is strategic). However, it is not anti-theist. The progressive embrace of Islam and the quasi-religion of gender identity doctrine, two ideologies antithetical to Christianity (and liberalism), is proof of its theistic character.
Consider that, at the same time that progressives attack Western culture, they decry criticism of foreign and indigenous traditions. When a liberal or conservative criticizes backwards and primitive cultures, such as Islam, for its misogyny and homophobia, or pre-modern indigenous practices (caste, collective and intergenerational punishment, witchcraft, and other primitivisms), he is accused of bigotry. Why aren’t progressives bigots for criticizing and restricting Christianity?
The double standard on the progressive side is obnoxious. When it comes to Islam, progressives appeal to religious liberty to defend the establishment of Muslim enclaves and the movement toward alternative legal systems, such as Shari’a (Islamic custom and law). Indigenous and primitive cultural practices are treated as sacred and, therefore, limiting them under the rule of law and the principle of individual liberty is treated by progressives as oppressive and imperialist.
To clear up any confusion, those who worry about the spread of Islam are not operating from a double standard. Allowing indigenous and primitive cultures to have a say in modern societies—that is, to shape our way of life— is objectively corrosive to liberal values and Christian traditions and thus destructive to modernity. Opposition to Islam or to practices granting autonomy from the rule of law is not a betrayal of religious liberty but a defense of it. Islam rejects religious liberty. Indigenous traditions reject the rule of law as a liberal innovation that stands contrary to their customs.
That’s why progressives defend Islam—because it is destructive to Western civilization. The progressive appeal to principle is strategic; it is deceptive because his progressive ideology rejects principle. We know this because the progressive rejects the universalism of other values enshrined in the First Amendment; so how could his appeal to religious liberty be principled? He claims personal and civil liberties for himself and his allies, yet denies them to others. He does so while promoting ideologies and practices destructive to free speech and civil liberties. Put simply, the progressive appeals to liberty and principle to cancel liberty and negate principle.
The destruction of Western civilization is the ulterior motive behind the values the public is urged to embrace and that the Culture Industry and the education system embed in the minds of our children—cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and the transnational project. By marginalizing and negating traditional Western culture and liberal principles, progressives advance the march towards a post-liberal social order. Islam, queer, and all the rest of it are weapons used against freedom and democratic republicanism. They are not genuine expressions of tolerance.
We see this in the outrage over Christians expressing their beliefs in the public square by those who embrace the Islamization of Western society. Christians are accused of imposing their faith on the populace with public displays of religious devotion. Yet mosques are allowed to blast the call to prayer throughout the day, starting in the early morning hours. When there is resistance to the imposition of Islam on the public, the resistance is smeared as an expression of “Islamophobia.”
We see this in the outrage over Christians expressing their beliefs in the public square by those who embrace the Islamization of Western society. Christians are accused of imposing their faith on the populace with public displays of religious devotion. Yet mosques are allowed to blast the call to prayer throughout the day, starting in the early morning hours. When there is resistance to the imposition of Islam on the public, the resistance is smeared as an expression of
We see this among proponents of gender-identity doctrine, as well. When Americans attempt to remove queer propaganda from public schools, they are accused of “transphobia.” The charge of hypocrisy goes up. “But what about Christian texts?” This propaganda tactic assumes and socializes a double standard that does not exist. Christian texts are foundational to Western civilization. The Old and New Testaments are native to modernity. It’s not as if the flag of Christian Nationalism hangs in the halls of public schools. Queer theory is neither foundational nor native to the West, yet many classrooms are festooned with Pride Progress flags. Queer beliefs are alien to Western culture, and they are an attack upon it.
The claim that a man can become a woman is not about individual autonomy but about undermining common sense and natural historical understandings of gender (which aligns with science). The queer demand that we misgender others is a demand that we violate our conscience. The queer movement is not really about allowing individuals to choose to identify however they wish. If that were true, then those defending individual expression would agree with liberals that a man can wear a dress and makeup and leave it at that. But queer activists don’t leave it there. They attempt to compel all of society to jettison the traditional and scientific understanding of gender. That’s not demanding tolerance but seeking revolution. Queer is intolerant of traditional culture surrounding gender. This intolerance has a purpose: disrupting the ordinary gender relations that make a healthy society and reproduce the species over time.
Progressivism gives rise to postmodernism. Postmodernism, in turn, informs progressivism. If you understand postmodernism, then you can see what progressives are up to. At the core of postmodernism is the deconstruction of truth and the disruption of Western culture and social norms. Queer theory, post-colonialism, critical race theory—these are different manifestations of the postmodernist project. They are, at their core, not merely forms of science denialism, but weapons used to delegitimize the traditional cultural values that make up Western civilization—Christianity, liberalism, and modern conservatism—and thus undermine their authority.
Postmodernism’s goal is explicit in the name. Postmodernists envision a society after modernity. All the values and practices that comprise Western civilization are scheduled for the dustbin of history. Postmodernism intentionally situates itself as the antithesis of modernism. But it does so not as a dialectic seeking a synthesis. In postmodernist logic, the antithesis negates the thesis. All the good things about modernity—equality, liberty, and so forth—are scheduled for cancellation.
By colonizing the West’s sense-making institutions with these ideas, progressives use the state and the law against themselves—and thus against all of us.
freedom and reason 