Actually it’s not new at all, since the left has played this game for a long time.

My 11 year old and I saw “Ender’s Game” this weekend and it wasn’t bad. I’d read the books and thought they did a reasonably good job turning it into a movie. But now I’m really glad I spent the $16.50 to support the movie because I’m learning that Orson Scott Card, author of the book the movie was based on and co-producer of the film has undergone a lot of crap for supporting marriage and standing against its re-definition. Only among our enlightened cultural elites would believing what marriage has been for oh, say 10,000 years be controversial.

Progressives reveal their true nature in such treatment of views they disagree with: they are the logical inheritors of McCarthyism. It is never enough for them to point out those they disagree with; they must discredit, disparage, demean and ultimately silence anyone who dares deviate from the accepted line, especially when it comes to re-defining marriage. But it is hardly just marriage where they display the totalitarian mindset. Visit most any college or university in America and see how open the left-liberals who dominate the campuses are to truly free speech. A short visit to the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education will give you a sense just how illiberal modern liberalism is. I wrote a piece earlier this year about how “academia will not tolerate intolerance.”

As annoying as the marriage issue can be for conservatives, we should be grateful for it in this sense: it shows us that there is a fundamental “clash of civilizations” at the heart of the modern ideological divide, and it is as radical as the difference between the French and American Revolutions. As Richard Weaver wrote 65 years ago, “Ideas Have Consequences,” and as we saw with the two revolutions, based on two radically different worldviews they had drastically different consequences. One resulted in the guillotine and blood, the other liberty and justice for all, however imperfectly it worked itself out over these last 237 years.

The French Revolution is the progenitor of modern progressivism, its cultural foundation the rejection of traditional morality and religion, and belief in the perfectibility of mankind through the power of the state. Those conservatives or libertarians who think the fight for re-defining marriage isn’t part of the left’s desire to “fundamentally transform” America are kidding themselves. Social issues, part and parcel with fiscal issues, are integrally tied with issues of liberty and the role of the state, things that everyone of every persuasion on the right has a stake in. Unlike the prevailing opinions of our cultural elites, I think that Orson Scott Card is on the “right side of history” because you can’t mess with the fundamental nature of reality and think you can remake it in any old way you want. Reality always wins; just ask Robespierre.