The election season is upon us. It’s a precious, almost sacred, American right. “Government of the People, by the People, for the People.”  Responsible citizens are pouring over election mailings and searching voter guides. Those that lean left will likely default to voting Democratic Party candidates and issues, about 28% of the electorate according to Gallup. Those on the right, another 28%, will vote Republican. Which means, depending on turnout, the Independent 42%, according to Gallup, will rule the day.

But what is it that’s being decided? The answer is which view of the world will govern our affairs.

For the last half-century the contest has mainly been between the Judeo-Christian and Secular-Progressive. But now we see a third worldview quickly taking root: Paganism. Pagans believe that the divine is part of nature (pantheism), where a myriad of deities (polytheism) maneuver for attention. While some Pagans aspire to an afterlife, the real focus is the here and now, on “life and fertility.”

Where do we see Paganism today? In Sex & Gender Theory curriculums that sexualize young children (fertility) and encourage them take on protean identities freed from the rigid constraints of nature. The Gender Unicorn, for example, teaches children to rebel against the secular constraints of natural selection and assert their own sexual and gender identities.

Gender Unicorn

Pagan elements are also found in Critical Race Theory curriculums. Before it’s challenge in court, California’s now mandated CRT (“Ethnic Studies”) curriculum encouraged teachers to lead their minor charges in chants and prayers to Aztec and Mayan (Pagan) gods. The same gods the Aztecs worshipped by ripping beating hearts out of human sacrifices.

What happened to Secularism? From the Department of Education to the local elementary school, its under assault. This ought not surprise us. Secularism has only itself to blame for paving the way for Paganism’s rise and its accompanying abandonment of reason. As G.K. Chesterson warned:

“When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe anything.”

As evidence, consider these harbingers:

  • Our newest Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, when asked to define what a woman is, claimed she couldn’t because she’s not a biologist.
  • Tampon and menstrual pad dispensers are now being installed in the boy’s restrooms in California’s public schools, including elementary schools. They’re already in the Santa Ana Unified School District. This is in compliance with the Menstrual Equity for All Act of 2021. A similar bill is pending in the United States Congress.
  • The State Department announced that beginning April 11, all U.S. citizens can falsify their gender designation on their passports and other travel documents by marking it with an “X” for non-binary.
  • A teacher training session on inclusion that included Department of Education officials told teachers to instruct their students that “not all egg producers are women.”
  • Teachers in the Philadelphia School District attended a conference on “kink,” “BDSM,” “trans-sex,” and “banging beyond binaries.” The organizer of the event, the Mazzoni Center, received more the $5M in government contracts funded by U.S. taxpayers.
  • In middle America, Wisconsin, three eighth grade boys have been “charged” with “sexual harassment” by the Kiel School District and are under a “Title IX investigation” for what is now called, “mispronouning.”

Where’s all this going?

When moral reasoning is abandoned on a wide enough scale, chaos must inevitably ensue. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. As I write these words another mass shooting has occurred, this time in Texas at an elementary school. Whether school shooters or laws like California’s AB2223, evil preys first upon the weak and vulnerable.

David Mamet is a Jewish, Pulitzer Prize winning, playwright and reformed leftist. He is also a keen observer on the American condition. (See, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture) Reflecting on where the nation is heading in his most recent book, Recessional, he writes:

“Wickedness… once begun, … must escalate, like fire searching for air… Now we are engaged in a prodromal civil war, and American constitutional democracy is the contest’s prize…The Left challenges (those) enraged, astonished, or grieving to “give it a name”— its name is incipient dictatorship… Savagery appeased can only grow.”

Few Americans seem to grasp the spiritual crisis America is in the midst of. Not since the Civil War has our future as a free people been more uncertain. If ever there was a time to be on our knees, that time is now.  Yet along with prayer, we are also called to act! Salt cannot preserve unless it’s applied. Light cannot illuminate if it’s covered over. (Mt. 5:13-15) Bearing witness means speaking out, while we still can.