Article by Gil Gutknecht in Townhall
What Divides Us Most This Thanksgiving
Today’s Liberals have no interest in debates where facts can be challenged. They are driven by their emotions. We live in a world of facts. They live in a world of feelings. Stoking their emotional endorphins is all they really care about. If it sounds good and makes them feel good, they’re for it. Results and facts be damned.
Some have attempted to explain the divide with the left brain-right brain theory. Liberals are driven by their emotion. Conservatives are defined by logic and facts.
Notice how often our friend on the Left talk of fairness. It’s as if they have never accepted the unassailable fact that life isn’t fair. In their unending attempts make things fair they inevitably make things worse, especially for those they say they want to help.
The garden variety of liberals are mostly harmless. They seem motivated by a peculiar view of charity. Believing that Christian charity calls them to utilize the force of Big Government to take from those who have earned to distribute to those who haven’t. We now have a Pope who seems to share this view. At least they believe their motives are pure. But of late, a more aggressive and malignant strain of liberal is emerging. They are not only disinterested in any religious motivations, they are openly hostile to them. Recall the disdain for those who “cling to their guns and religion.”
We often wonder why this new Left is so angry and mean spirited. They pretend to see themselves as morally and intellectually superior. Whenever their ideas are confronted with fact-based arguments, they quickly revert to dismissive and often hostile name calling. The woke culture is anything but democratic. It is authoritarian. They are products of an educational system that displaced de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America in favor of Rules for Radicals.
They believe that the American experiment was fundamentally flawed from the beginning. Our founders were selfish capitalists who utilized their power to protect their fortunes. Central to their business model was the defense of the institution of slavery. That racist stain remains. Accordingly, our history must be somehow rewritten and our economic system replaced. They’ve learned that working within the system doesn’t work. Middle America simply won’t swallow their nonsense. So they now pursue their objectives by other means. Intimidation, threats and riots have become accepted tactics.
They want to be called Progressives. They aren’t clear about what or where they want to progress to. Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive. Today’s militant Leftists look much more like the anarchists of Teddy’s day. Our modern media refuses to report this.
Like the Geico ad, “We see it. We all see it.”
If we scrape away the veneer, what divides us today is much more fundamental than facts, feelings or fairness. It has been said that at the root there are only two philosophies or world views. One believes in a God-centered universe. The other believes in a Man-centered universe. That starting point explains a lot.
This new angry Left doesn’t believe in God. They believe in a man-centered universe. There are no eternal truths. No commandments. No seven deadly sins. They think that if everyone would buy into their view, there would be no need for police or our backward view of morality. They have convinced themselves that through the force of centralized government (run by them) they can bring about the utopia that has eluded mankind for millennia. This explains their belief that humans can even control the climate. Never mind the effects of those pesky sun spots and volcanoes.
Those who refuse to accept any of their ideas will be shamed and silenced.
This is also why they feel they can lie and cheat without compulsion. Burning and looting to advance the greater cause are acceptable. So are threats to officials who disagree. No eternal punishment awaits them.
Thankfully there are still more of us than there are of them. We instinctively know that there is an order to the universe and all that we see around us is not simply one unbelievable coincidence. That there is a loving God who watches over us. A God who shed his grace on us. Who has led us through many dark valleys and gives us genuine hope for the future. It is for this reason that we became the first nation to set aside a day to give thanks to the author of our freedom. May we always remain One Nation Under God.
Let us truly give thanks on this Thanksgiving for the blessing that is liberty.
