From Tolerable To Intolerable…

     …can be a very short journey indeed. Whether it’s possible depends on whether the State decides the protection and promotion of some human aberration would serve its interests. Buckle your seat belt and fold your tray-tables; this ride could get bumpy.

     I’ve ranted before about how the politicization of transgenderism has transformed it from something most people could safely ignore into a fearsome threat. I return to this as frequently as I do because it’s a near-perfect “demonstrator.” That is, as a category of human oddity it perfectly exemplifies the venomous power of the State. If I may quote myself:

     I’ll say it once more: There have been transgenders for several decades. (Does anyone else remember Renee Richards and Tula Cossey?) When transgenders were willing to live quietly, without trumpeting their condition and demanding that it be honored by others, they weren’t a social or political problem. But that ceased to be the case a few years ago.

     But transgenderism is not the first such oddity.

     Do the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch remember the old movie The Boys In The Band? It was a pretty good flick, with a good script and good performances, but I doubt it’s shown in the “art houses” today. It depicts a group of homosexual friends at their extremes: their best and their worst. It also includes language that implicitly describes homosexuality as a condition to be regretted and, if possible, escaped. That’s because it was made before homosexuality became a political movement.

     Now that homosexuality is an explicit political force – one that commands deference from heterosexuals regardless of their preferences – such a movie is unacceptable. The homosexuals themselves would see to it with mass protests and monkey-wrenching. The State would protect the disruptors from any consequences, as homosexuals and their movement have proved useful to the State.

     Before the politicization of homosexuality, heterosexuals – 97% of the population of the United States – largely tolerated homosexuals. Yes, there were exceptions, some of which were horrifying and deserved to be punished. But the prevailing attitude was of tolerance and the maintenance of a certain distance. In social and sexual matters, homosexuals constituted a separate society. If they weren’t perfectly comfortable with that status, nevertheless they found it bearable…as did the heterosexual majority.

     Things are not better now.

     If you can stand a sharp turn to a subject few persons are willing – or able – to discuss rationally, let’s talk for a moment about race.

     One might say, with a modicum of justice, that the legal status of slavery is at the base of all our troubles with race. Certainly, it was protected by State power in the “slave states.” After the Civil War / War Between The States / Late Unpleasantness and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, that was no longer the case. One could have hoped that the enslavement of Negroes – funny, people seldom address the populations of white slaves from that time, whose numbers were not insignificant – was a subject that had been sufficiently dealt with.

     For nearly a century, that was approximately the case. Yes, many whites were uneasy around blacks, and in some parts of the country blacks were treated unfairly. But those decades were far more tolerable than the conditions of today, especially for the 87% of us who are not black. The degeneration from an acceptable degree of social peace to near-constant disruptions and violence proceeded from what originally appeared an innocent thing: the drive for racial integration, which had the power of the State behind it.

     Are you beginning to see a pattern here, Gentle Reader?

     Homosexuality…integration…polygamy and polyandry…illegitimacy and “single-parent” households…“non-binary” sexuality…transgenderism… One by one these things groped for and seized political power and moved from the sphere of tolerable aberrations – ones whose existence we could acknowledge without being moved to pogroms – to forces that threaten not only social peace but the probable future of this country. The “frontier” today is bestiality and pedophilia. If there’s anything more looming behind the horizon, I’m not sure I want to know.

     Today there’s an envelope-movement wrapped around the above and a lot of other things: “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or DEI. This is an explicitly political movement that seeks to force Americans to surrender what remains of our freedom of association. It’s an important component of the movement to nullify, de facto, the guarantees of the First Amendment. I doubt I need tell you what will become of us if that goes into the trash bin.

     Time for a graphic, I think:

     Miss Robinson isn’t quite “on the right page.” What’s in the process of felling “America as it was” is the State’s application of political power to all those things. I’ll grant that normal Americans ought never to have “blessed” those things – the usual incantation is “not that there’s anything wrong with that” – but we were able to bear their existence, as long as we were permitted to choose our own associates without fear of some politician or bureaucrat intruding into those decisions. Some persons were excluded from others’ businesses, neighborhoods, and societies…but peace reigned. There were no riots and no violent disruptions. There were no desecrations of religious ceremonies. There were no crowds of “protestors” harassing those who dared to dissent from the “tolerance uber alles” gospel preached today.

     The difference is the ambition – already fulfilled by some; still hoped for by others – to enlist the power of the State on the side of the aberrant movement. The State is nearly always happy to cooperate. Power, after all, is a statist’s top priority at all times. And when power can be used to create conflicts among the State’s subjects that the State can use to increase and extend its power…need I say more?

     There is no Last Graf. The solution is the elimination of the State and its abjuration for all time to come…which, for the moment at least, is impossible. Yet it is the only solution with any endurance.

     The “progressive” assaults on individuals’ right to be left alone – the supreme right that underpins all other rights – have united under the DEI banner. If we are to retain any shred of our original freedom, it must be fought a outrance. For it is the State – the 88,000-plus governments that infest America – that presses it upon us. It is their best weapon, for now at least, for completing our subjugation.

     Anarcho-tyranny always moves toward ever greater tyranny. And April 1 notwithstanding, all of the above is meant seriously.

     Have a nice day.