My wife is a lovely Puritan, and a great advocate of lifting God’s Word back to Him as we continue to deal with the goose-stepping forces for tolerance and storm troopers of enforced diversity. She was reading in Isaiah yesterday, and noted a few phrases that delighted us. About idolaters, Isaiah said, “They are their own witnesses, they see not; nor know; that they may be ashamed” (44:9). They feed on ashes, and are unable to say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?” (v. 20). But our God made the heavens, and He “frustrateth the tokens of the liars” (v. 25).
One of the fundamental lies of the Intoleristas is found in the incongruity they find in being identified with a label like Intolerista. Their intolerance is in their right hand, all the time, and they cannot see it. They have been telling themselves (for a long time now) that backwater conservative hicks have a narrow and truncated vision of the world while they, listeners of NPR, are urbane, hip, sophisticated, and all the rest of it. They are latitudinarian, they draw circles to include, they dialogue with others, they do not run with scissors. It soothes the soul for them to think of themselves this way. They subscribe to Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, and The Nation, and they drink coffee the beans of which were picked in a way that didn’t involve any corporations (and hopefully no profit for anyone). They embrace, with enthusiasm, a sort of scratch and sniff diversity. They are the poseurs of diversity. They want just a whiff. Their idea of multi-culturalism is sampling spicy foods at an international potluck, nodding sagely whenever someone refers to the best Thai restaurant they ever heard of. They have living rooms just like the rest of us, but have a little plug-in aroma dispenser that smells as though somebody somewhere, on the other side of the world, might believe and live differently, and “isn’t it wonderful?” Yeah, wonderful there. They have a CD player that has the murmuring forest noises of indigenous peoples around the globe living and believing differently far, far away. They have a ten thousand dollar slate shower that makes them feel like they are in touch with the rhythms of the earth, and this authentic shower provides them with a deep bond of solidarity with the peasants of Central America. Whereas an actual Central American is more than likely to be a Pentecostal Trinitarian who washes his face from a tap at the back of the house.
Everything goes great in this world of monochrome diversity until someone actually disagrees with them in their town. Then they are suddenly the prosecutor at the Salem witch trials. Hyperbole erupts, and spit and polish jackboots appear. So do the brown shirts, only now we have to call them earth tone shirts. They cannot handle disagreement and debate, and so to the extent that they have to talk at all they resort immediately to shrill invective. But they would rather not talk at all, and so they resort quite quickly to the instruments of harassment and coercion. The last time I saw actual goose-stepping troops was in footage of the North Korean army (one of the few remaining “progressive” nations of the world), and those strutting companies reminded me of the kind of diversity that we would certainly see if the Intoleristas ever have their way. I don’t think what I am saying is a polemical exaggeration. This is what has happened in every place in the world where they have had their way. The local “peace rally” here has had the old Soviet flag appear at it. Old “Diversity Joe” Stalin.
These people we are up against are as intolerant as it gets. While I grant they are not as dangerous as they used to be, they are certainly as noisy as they used to be. And the name Intolerista has stuck to them because it is so entirely apropos, as anyone who does not have a dog in the fight can readily see. But they cannot see it. The lie is in their right hand, and they still cannot see it.