The Right Was WRONG About Virtue-Signaling ｜ 3⧸7⧸24
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
142.13574
Summary
A video of a family with four "trans" kids went viral across social media this week. Many conservatives were justifiably appalled and pointed out that the chances of randomly having four children with severe body dysmorphia in the same family are incredibly low. Commenters suggested the mother must be mentally ill and acting out Munchausen syndrome by proxy. But this demonstrates a serious failure of the right to understand human nature.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
When I found out my friend got a great deal on a designer dress from Winners,
00:00:03.740
I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners?
00:00:08.540
Like that woman over there with the Italian leather handbag.
00:00:30.380
A video of a family with four quote-unquote trans kids went viral across social media this week.
00:00:37.440
Many conservatives were justifiably appalled and pointed out that the chances of
00:00:41.840
randomly having four children with severe body dysmorphic disorder in the same family are incredibly low.
00:00:49.180
Commenters on the video suggested that the mother must be mentally ill and acting out
00:00:56.040
But this demonstrates a serious failure of the right to understand human nature.
00:01:00.680
The mother of those four children was not demonstrating mental illness, but her desire
00:01:05.460
to achieve social status by adopting the behaviors endorsed by the dominant moral system of the
00:01:11.940
She was using her children as a signal of conversion to the new state religion.
00:01:16.920
And this war of belief can't be won without understanding the spiritual nature of the conflict.
00:01:23.700
One of the dumbest ideas ever to be embraced by the opponents of wokeness was the demonization
00:01:31.480
The latest incarnation of the progressive social revolution began on college campuses where
00:01:36.680
social justice warriors would dye their hair, shout down conservative speakers, and engage in
00:01:41.660
other performative histrionics to signal their devotion to leftist causes.
00:01:46.980
While many professors and administrators participated in this revolutionary activity,
00:01:52.160
some liberal intellectuals correctly identified this more radical wave of progressive belief
00:01:57.380
as dangerous to the status quo that kept them in power.
00:02:01.640
These progressive castoffs entered an awkward alliance with the very same conservatives that
00:02:06.560
they had been mocking most of their lives, and so the intellectual dark web was born.
00:02:10.880
The basic strategy of this alliance was to treat wokeness as a new faith and deploy the same
00:02:16.660
tools that had proven so adept at dismantling Christianity as America's public religion in
00:02:23.700
Endless YouTube videos, comedy sketches, and internet posts were created to mock the new progressive
00:02:29.580
vanguard for their dedication to this more radical leftist morality.
00:02:34.920
Intellectuals held debates, wrote books, and recorded endless hours of podcasts that dissected and
00:02:43.940
The woke were derided as intolerant, moralistic, and close-minded clowns, but instead of shrinking
00:02:49.460
from the mockery and intellectual deconstruction, the progressive revolutionaries simply doubled
00:02:54.540
down their efforts, winning more converts and capturing more institutions.
00:02:59.240
The IDW and its conservative allies lost, and wokeness became the primary religion of America's
00:03:10.260
This is so deeply woven into our nature that all efforts to expel it have failed spectacularly.
00:03:16.380
Liberal modernity has trained us to see ourselves as free-thinking individuals who make rational
00:03:21.760
and objective decisions, but in truth, we're very conscious of our status.
00:03:26.900
People want, simultaneously, to fit into the group and to stand out as high-status individuals
00:03:32.980
within that group, so we tend to observe what other high-status people do and mimic their
00:03:39.860
Our decisions are more often guided by religious assumptions elevated by our peers than by our
00:03:49.300
Working out, dressing well, attending church, obtaining a master's degree, attending a Black
00:03:54.560
Lives Matter protest, or transitioning your kids are all attempts to signal status depending
00:04:00.200
on the values that dominate a society at any given time.
00:04:04.080
We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
00:04:14.960
Fast, free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
00:04:28.820
Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
00:04:36.860
It's a key aspect of human nature that will never go away.
00:04:40.560
The question is never, will we virtue signal, but whose virtues will be elevated?
00:04:47.020
The disillusioned leftists of the IDW were elites displaced by the woke revolution that
00:04:53.720
Their alliance with conservatives was forged in an attempt to return to a moral framework
00:04:59.540
that held 2000s-era liberalism as the natural default of American culture.
00:05:05.380
Now, Christian conservatives should have known better than to side with the very people who
00:05:09.340
had been deconstructing their own faith for decades, but the temptation to join with
00:05:13.780
previously high-status elites and deploy the same tactics that had been so successfully
00:05:22.060
Simply put, conservatives have internalized their status as beautiful losers.
00:05:27.360
Christians have abdicated their responsibility to lead and have bought into the myth of secular
00:05:32.360
liberalism as the moral default of the United States.
00:05:36.280
Conservatives are, after all, natural defenders of the status quo.
00:05:40.920
Once secular liberalism proved victorious, Republicans simply adopted the language and norms of that
00:05:50.320
Christians maintain some of the private aspects of their faith, but in the cultural and political
00:05:55.720
realm, they fully embrace the framework of secular liberalism as the default order of their society.
00:06:03.060
Couching core moral disagreements in the clinical language of mental illness only serves to
00:06:08.880
demonstrate how thoroughly conservatives have internalized secular liberal rhetoric.
00:06:14.260
It's not just that Christian conservatives have made themselves irrelevant, it's that they've
00:06:20.100
made themselves the enthusiastic slaves of the ideology that conquered them.
00:06:25.640
The right is easily defeated because it only understands the political as the opportunity to restore
00:06:32.600
neutrality, while the left understands the political as the opportunity to define neutrality.
00:06:38.900
There is no universal and objective standard that will mediate conflicting truth claims in society.
00:06:48.640
A metaphysical framework that defines value, meaning, and the common good will always exist.
00:06:56.860
You can dress this framework up in scientific jargon or intellectual pretensions, but it will still be
00:07:06.420
Secular liberalism was never truly secular, and wokeness is not a religious assault on secular neutrality.
00:07:15.640
Wokeness is simply a more overtly spiritual continuation of the progressive revolution that toppled the
00:07:23.200
Protestant-Christian consensus that ruled the United States for most of its history.
00:07:29.000
Secular liberalism won't defeat wokeness, and conservatives can't achieve victory by defending a neutral status quo
00:07:40.900
Christians didn't lose to secular liberalism because of rational argumentation or the power of scientific truth.
00:07:51.100
Wokeness may be a gutter religion, but if it's venerated by our ruling elites and rewarded by our institutions,
00:08:03.620
The only thing that will defeat wokeness is a more vital, beautiful, and true faith.
00:08:21.100
If you'd like to get these broadcasts as podcasts, make sure that you go ahead and subscribe to the Oren McIntyre podcast
00:08:29.540
on your favorite podcast platform, and when you do, give it a rating or review.
00:08:36.880
If you'd like to follow me on Twitter or Gab or Substack, if you'd like to catch these episodes on Rumble or Odyssey,
00:08:43.540
the links to do all of that are down below in the description.
00:08:48.680
And of course, you can catch all of my episodes and read all of my columns over at The Blades.
00:08:54.780
Thanks for watching, guys, and as always, I'll talk to you next time.