The 68th post from the Journal of American Greatness originally published in April, 2016.

Cato the Younger responds:

I don’t say to roll over when confronted by the red guards. What I say is don’t egg them on. In the city of Houston, the fight was forced on the people and the people acted to overrule the mayor, the city council and the business interests. The Texas legislature didn’t grandstand. That’s the way it should have worked in NC. Let the people of Charlotte act to overturn the policy now, or else let them discover over time the harm that will come from the policy (as the University of Toronto, I believe it was, recently did) and rescind the policy in the future.

Having looked into it a little, I agree that North Carolina legislature acted imprudently.  There was no crisis except the one they provoked.  Had the people of Charlotte decided they didn’t want this and been stymied by their city government, I could see a role for the state legislature.

That said, a crisis was coming—is coming.  The red guards don’t need to be egged on.  They seek crises that they can use, at every turn. They are going to force this until they have their way everywhere and then it’s on to the next cause.  What will that be?  Polygamy? Nah, too patriarchal.  “Polyamory” is more like it.  What then?

Jonathan Last is anti-Trump and we are not, yet I can’t find much to argue with in this piece.  Trump did not leave his comments at “This is a made-up crisis, now let’s get back to the real issues.”  He embraced leftist rhetoric on the subjectivity of biological sex (you are what you feel you are) and on “discrimination.”  I reiterate what I said before about his comments being the knee-jerk reaction of a Manhattan celebrity billionaire.  A Manhattan celebrity billionaire is not the ideal vehicle to push The Greatness Agenda.  Though, for now, he’s what we got, which is why we at JAG are pro-Trump, but with reservations.

We reiterate, as well, that neither the American people as whole nor—we venture to guess—Trump’s supporters want this.  Being anti-PC has worked well for Trump so far.  Why couldn’t he have maintained that theme over this issue?  What did he have to lose?  While he doesn’t appear to have lost much over the stance he did take (basically, all the TradCons who were already against him  reiterated their opposition), what did he gain, if anything?

—Decius