I have an inconvenient habit. Or call it an instinct, which lives down deep in my gut. When I see a crowd rushing all together in one direction, I need to run the other way. Something in me screams, “Look, the Gadarene Swine are headed for the cliff!” So I push against them hard, using elbows and shoulders and kicks.

Being this way hasn’t made my life so cushy. But it saved my self-respect. I pointed out back in 1994 how the gay lobby was using AIDS to make heroic martyrs out of people who caught a venereal disease via mass promiscuity. I was one of the tiny, despised group of conservatives to oppose the Iraq war from the beginning. When Neoconservatism was swallowing National Review and the GOP, I warned (back in early 2003) how it was a toxic ideology, a funhouse mirror image of Marxism.

I was literally the first person on social media to defend Nicholas Sandmann. (I’d link to the Tweets, but I’ve been suspended permanently so they’re gone.) I was among the first half-dozen to stand up for Kyle Rittenhouse. Remember the mass moral panic over January 6, 2021? I called it out as nonsense on January … 7.

I was an early opponent of the Dead Baby Vaccine (on moral grounds, before we knew it was dangerous), and I pegged the rush to war over Ukraine as a corrupt Biden, Inc., cover-up months before most other commentators. Indeed, most on the Right still haven’t realized it, and won’t till years after several American cities end up getting nuked.

If a Nut Like Me Won’t Dare, Who Will?

And on each one of these occasions, beginning with the Iraq War, I was scared. I thought:

Well, this is probably going to be the end of my career. I’m going on out on this limb, because if a nut like me won’t dare to stand up, who will? This is the face I’m going to have to look at in the mirror for the rest of my natural life. I want to be able look it in the eye, and not see a chicken [expletive].

It’s in this spirit that I feel I must address the witch-burning zealots who are persecuting cartoonist Scott Adams. Because of some blunt, insensitive, ill-advised talk he engaged in on the subject of racial division, he’s seeing his comic strip, Dilbert, get pulled from dozens of newspapers. He’s been dumped by his non-Dilbert book publisher. Even his book agent gave him the boot. Adams is being “cancelled” more aggressively than anyone I can think of since Mel Gibson. And that makes me suspicious. I can hear the roar of the lynch mob, and see the noose getting strung.

Let Us Mock the Priests of Baal

The Woke Cult is the new gospel of the Antichrist. In order to lure believers to abandon the Church for its own blood-stained altars, it gets done up in drag purloined (like Sam Brinton’s luggage) from genuine Christianity. Notice Jim Jones called himself “Reverend.” That’s the whole point of camouflage: it has to look right on the surface, or nobody’s fooled.

Christians must indeed, with good grace, accept and love people equally of every ethnic background, as fellow sons of Adam and (we hope) brothers in Christ. As fellow citizens whom we hope will prosper and thrive. We ought to seek equal rights and equal treatment for all. The Civil Rights movement was the last great Christian moment in American public life. We ought to look out for the vulnerable, and look to our own real privileges with an eye toward aiding the luckless.

All this is true. But the Woke cult wants you to believe that it’s the only part of the Gospel that is true. The rest is all myths and fairy tales, or shiny Christmas paper that’s destined for the fire.

The Biblical View of Man: Take It or Leave It

And that is a lie from the pit of Hell. If the whole of the Biblical view of man, from Creation through Redemption all the way to the Apocalypse, isn’t true then none of it is. If fornication and adultery aren’t sins, then neither is racism nor misogyny.

Nothing in the Darwinist materialism that Woke leftists insist we drill into children supports their hysterical moralism on race and gender. If racial segregation and Muslim-style subjugation of women support the Survival of the Fittest — as Hitler argued they did — then when you reject the Bible you have no argument against them. Except sentimental nonsense, hysterical moralism founded on hand-waving in thin air.

Or crassly cynical politics, which calculates you can amass more power by cherry-picking these doctrines for your convenience. It might help you recruit a mob to loot some cities and terrorize your enemies. You can confess other people’s sins and scapegoat whomever you like.

Put That Morality Back — You Haven’t Paid for It!

The Left shoplifts timeless values like justice, equality, and compassion from Christianity, while spitting on Christ’s divinity and laughing at the Cross. (Hey, put that morality back — you haven’t paid for it!) So maybe when leftists launch an Inquisition and start burning heretics, you shouldn’t go along with them. Maybe you should appoint yourself the tribune of the accused.

Because you can count on this: our turn is coming, when they sic their mobs on us. Pro-lifers are already getting raided by the FBI for invented crimes, and hundreds of peaceful protestors still rot in D.C. jails after January 6 … while the hordes who pillaged our cities sauntered home scot-free. What they do to a “racist” like Scott Adams today is scheduled for “transphobes” like us tomorrow. You may not be interested in Anarcho-Tyranny, but it is interested in you.

As Martin Niemöller wrote:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.

In Part II, I will examine what Scott Adams actually said, and weigh whether we ought to judge it as racist, hateful, or simply the tactless speech of a guy with some form of Asperger’s. There is a good deal to criticize in Adams’ remarks. But we should examine them with rationality, discernment, and a sense of fair play … three things you’re not supposed to bother with nowadays. Not if you want to stay on the Gadarenes’ good side.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”