The Patriot Post® · How Much Evil Is Sufferable?

Thomas Jefferson had a way of embedding universal truths in his writing. For that, I truly admire him.

Many claim Jefferson wasn’t really Christian, but even if you believe that, Christian tenets are undeniably embedded in his language.

I know we generally think the Declaration is just about the reasons for creating a new form of governance, and it is, but Jefferson filled it with so much more. I have come to realize it approaches a theological treatise because it speaks more broadly to the eternal challenges of liberty and the human condition.

Lately I have been thinking about how important this small snippet of the Declaration of Independence truly is:

...and accordingly, all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

When I broaden my perspective on this statement, it becomes clear to me that prosperity wrought by Western Civilization in general, and our American successes in specific, have made many evils (and evils of greater strength and persistence), those of both human origin (the things we do to each other) and demonic origin (the reasons we do them), easier to ignore — even as they intensify over time.

And as Jefferson points out, eventually these evils rise to a level where we must decide whether it is more acceptable to keep tolerating increasing levels of evil or to take up arms and change our way of life.

Sort of an early version of Herb Stein’s law — if something cannot go on forever, it will stop.

That brings me to the important question: “What is the level at which we decide to make that change?”

It is the important, relevant, and segregating question of our times — and of and for our future.

Defining that tipping point is where I see the most glaring separation between political and ideological Right and Left.

As a general rule, those on the Right see our principles as 1) transcendental and unchanging because they are true and 2) shared by people on the Right, which is why right-wing politics and policies marry well with Judeo-Christian religions and concepts of morality.

When we witness people who fail to live up to their principles, we assign the failure to the individual, not the principle, and encourage that person to work harder to live their principles because we do believe those principles are the bedrock and the foundations upon which our society, culture, institutions, and civilization are built.

From what I have observed of those on the Left, they see their principles as 1) situational and 2) malleable enough to accommodate behaviors that run counter to their current individual beliefs.

That is sort of how the “pronoun” thing works: the individual decides they are no longer a he or she but are a “they/them” (or some other invention), so it is fine to throw biological reality out the window because no principle is real; it’s just all a social construct. That term, “social construct,” does a lot of heavy lifting because they don’t really get the fallacy of denying reality because it is allegedly a “social construct,” then creating another social construct they prefer and demanding everyone else bow to it.

Since leftists’ principles are somewhat flexible, when a member of the Left fails the current version, rather than changing perspectives and behaviors, they simply change their principles to allow whatever the violation was. There you go, done and dusted — let’s just move on — because constantly changing the limits makes more and different “evils” easier to suffer.

The Left’s belief in situational principles of morality compounds the variability that creates an unstable environment, because members never know today’s rules will be the same tomorrow.

And that is no basis for a civilization or even a civil society.

That is why we find it so difficult to maintain either.