Small Acts of Cowardice Are Destroying Our Culture

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David French:

Early this morning I was reading Rod Dreher’s blog at the American Conservative and stumbled across yet another dispatch from the utterly absurd bathroom wars. One of his New York City readers wrote in to say that her 14-year-old daughter had just finished dressing in a city locker room when a grown man stepped from the showers wearing only a towel. Girls as young as seven were present, and they were staring at the man with “concerned expressions.” The reader ends her e-mail with, “It sucks to be a parent these days.”

And indeed it does suck, especially when you know that even your friends and alleged allies are simply too timid to act. Dreher describes speaking to parents who tried to organize resistance to new “trans” bathroom policies but found they “couldn’t get anybody interested.” I’ve had the same conversation with other frustrated parents. They look for help in the fight — even from people who they know oppose this idiocy — and no one will stand up.

This is how culture wars are lost: through the slow accumulation of individually defensible but collectively unjustifiable decisions not to resist. It’s the decision that objecting during diversity training simply isn’t worth the hassle. It’s the decision not to say anything when you see a colleague or fellow student facing persecution because of their beliefs. It’s a life habit of always taking the path of least resistance, keeping your head down, and doing your best to preserve your own family and career. The small fights don’t matter anyway, right?

I recently spoke to a mid-level executive at a major corporation who had been forced to sit through mandatory “inclusivity” training. The topic was transgender rights, and the trainer proceeded to spout far-left ideology as fact, going so far as to label all who disagreed with the notion that a man can become a woman “transphobic.” I asked if anyone objected to any part of the training, and the response was immediate. “Are you crazy? No one wants to deal with HR.”

On campus, liberal students find no shortage of progressive professors who are willing and eager to enable their advocacy, and even join in campus protests. Conservative students, by contrast, find that their few ideologically sympathetic professors tend to shun controversy. Even fellow conservative students largely stay out of campus battles, preferring to keep their heads down, graduate, and join the “real world” with their records intact.

The contrast with the Left is profound. For progressives, no issue is too small to address and there is no such thing as just letting an injustice pass. The result is an unrelenting, grinding, one-way campaign of social change, conducted with an air of moral superiority and cultural condescension. It remains daunting right up until enough people put aside their cowardice and reasonable resistance prevails.

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It’s fear of being singled out and targeted by profanely loudmouth and often violent, radicals and leftist media bullys. The MSM has turn against parents and families in favor of the LGBT-Q fascists who will levy lawsuits against anyone who stands in their way.

This is how the NAZI’s succeeded in taking over Germany.