The Cavalier joie-de-vivre needs the occasional reining in by Puritan stoicism, while the Puritan work ethic needs the Cavalier reminder to enjoy God’s creation. The detente they enacted in North America (with some regional exceptions) and nullified by the post-war powers that be was a strong force for good in this world until nullified by the “post-war consensus”. (The tribe who won WW2 is not a fan of being named, and I quite like running this blog, thank you very much.)
As the one time Republic struggles to shake off the corrosion imposed by the post-war consensus, many American Roundheads have chosen to target the Cavaliers rather than than Team Jihad, Team AK-47 Republic, or even Team Meninthewomensbathroom.
Ted Cruz came out swinging, and received as backup a long missive from an anon going by the name Insurrection Barbie, a big fan of sola scriptura (except for 1 Timothy 2-12, which makes sense as it turns out she is a Holocaust survivor and doesn’t that make you scratch your head).
That’s a heckuva defense to make seventy years into a long surrender. The only thing the conservative movement has managed to conserve is their own bottom line. Laying claim to the conservative record over the last seven decades is a lot like putting “Head Coach of the Washington Generals” on your resume.
To admit here, in these brief and fragile years of finally rolling back the slightest few advances made by the enemies of civilization, that evangelical control of the GOP has slipped? She’s giving the game away.
This is not to argue that total subjugation of the US Government by the Pontiff would fix America’s ills. One need only look at how much contempt the Vatican has for the conservatives within her own organization for a glimpse of how that would play out. The Church is suffering the same defensive spasms and attacks on a spiritual level that the US is suffering – the Stygian stables of modern life are full and the work to clean them involves efforts within a lot of houses – and the desire of many Catholics to use Ceasar’s power of the purse to shrug off their own duty to the poor is well known.
I only make the observation that the American bus is headed for a cliff. If the Cavaliers have managed to pull the wheel to one side, then the Roundheads should stop grappling with them and enjoy the view from the passenger seat for a time. We’ve seen what seventy years of their leadership has wrought, and that tree has born ill fruit indeed. New leadership will bring new ideas, and new ideas at least have a chance to succeed where old one gave proven they can’t.