Shifting Tides…
Shifting Tides…
By Jack Kinsella
The last couple of decades has seen a slow, but undeniable shift in attitudes as the children and grandchildren of the Baby Boomer generation started to come of age.
The 1960’s radicals who swore to never trust anybody over thirty were faced with the choice between new slogans and accepting the bad news that passing thirty is an irreversible condition.
At eighteen, everybody is a radical. It is part of being eighteen. At eighteen, one knows all about living but nothing about life. (Veterans excepted)
As such, giving the vote to eighteen-year olds is like letting giving your kids a say in how to spend your surplus income. (“All in favor of putting this in my 401(k) instead of giving it to you say ‘aye’!”)
The eighteen-year olds got the vote largely in response to the Vietnam War in answer to the seemingly reasonable argument about being old enough to fight for one’s country but not old enough to vote for it’s leaders.
The result was that everybody who was old enough to be drafted voted against the war. By the time they were old enough to appreciate the consequences, they were also facing the irreversibility of turning thirty and having to take responsibility for the mess they made at 18.
Some took responsibility. Most invented new slogans. The result was thirty years of liberal domination of the American social infrastructure. Leftists took over the education system, pounding leftist propaganda into impressionable young minds.
In the 1970’s, Ivy-League universities like Yale and Harvard were turning out young Marxists faster than the Soviets were. They dominated the political scene until their children came of age.
Those who had children, that is. Those who invented new slogans like ‘pro-choice’ and ‘women’s rights’ pursued careers instead of families, dominating education, the arts, Hollywood and politics.
But a lot of those university-trained Marxists eventually, got married, had children, and suddenly, leftist values like abortion and feminism lost their appeal. They began to see aborted fetuses as dead children instead of tissue. They saw the great society secured for them by the Greatest Generation slipping away. So did their children.
The Baby Boomers children came of age in the 1990s. Thanks to the advance of progressive liberalism, there were fewer of them than there should have been.
The 1970’s feminist movement meant fewer families and fewer children. Unrestricted abortion meant fewer still. Those who survived were faced with having to pay off their parent’s libertarian excesses in the form of inflation and budget deficits.
As the Boomer children got into their twenties, many of them embraced the conservative values of their grandparents. Having personally experienced the benefits of progressive liberal public education, they started home-schooling their own kids.
By the time they recognized the irreversibility of turning thirty, they had handed both Houses of Congress and the White House to the Republicans.
Assessment
The point here is not political. It is philosophical. Let’s settle the political first. In America, those with a conservative worldview have but two viable political choices. Either they can vote for Republican candidates, or Democratic candidates.
Since it is impossible for a conservative to support Democratic values like abortion, the abolition of the traditional family, the abolition of religion, the abrogation of personal responsibility, and political indoctrination passing for education, there is only one remaining choice.
That doesn’t mean that it is a good choice. Just the only one left.
Now, to the philosophical. Younger people are shifting toward conservative ideals because they have to live with the results of liberalism, rather than the ideals that spawned it.
Liberalism as an ideal is attractive. It stems from the idea of creating a utopia on earth, where everybody has enough, and nobody goes hungry. In its most pure form, it is called ‘communism’.
Communism, as an ideal, is the most perfect form of government ever devised. It is almost a carbon copy of the kind of government envisioned during the Millennial Kingdom. In a perfect world, everybody would share equally. Nobody would covet his neighbor’s goods because he had everything he needed. That is the pure essence of communism.
It doesn’t work because people aren’t pure. Neither does its offspring, American progressive liberalism. Which is why the philosophical tide is shifting to the right.
When Jesus toured the Judean countryside, Matthew notes; “He was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.”
“Then saith He unto His disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth labourers into His harvest.” (Matthew 9:38)
In these last days, the shift away from the humanist worldview of the liberal left has opened the door for revival unlike any time since the Reformation. The fields are truly white with the last days’ harvest. But they are like sheep without a Shepherd.
The Bible depicts two harvests in the last days. The first is at the Rapture;
“For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” (2nd Thessalonians 4:16-18)
Those who are taken in that harvest will spend eternity with the Lord.
“And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in Thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for Thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.” (Revelation 14:15-16)
Those who are taken in THAT harvest will stand before the Righteous Judge with no Advocate and will be convicted according to their works.
It is our job to tell them they have a choice. Both harvests are fast approaching.
This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on March 1, 2006