It’s a journey, not a moment — and we’re asking for your help.
I have often wondered what was going through the mind of the little boy in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in the moments before he blurted out in front of everyone in the kingdom that, far from being desirably à la mode, the sovereign actually looked like a naked twerp. There the kid was, staring at a thoroughly denuded Prince of the Realm, while everyone around him insisted that His Majesty had been tailored to the nines. And still he had the gall to holler, “Oi, Rex, you’re starkers.”
In the story, all ends well: The little chap speaks up, the crowd drops its veneer, the spell is broken, and, after a hastily arranged royal visit to Bergdorf Goodman and an irritated call to the Sartorial Affairs division of Pinkerton, they presumably all Live Happily Ever After. But the thing is, when he dissented from the crowd, the little boy didn’t actually know that it would work out, did he? We knew, because we’d absorbed the moral of the story with our mother’s milk. But he didn’t. He was taking a risk. Given an ill wind, crowds can quickly become mobs, and mobs have a nasty habit of separating apostates’ heads from their bodies. In the grand sweep of history, “actually you’re right” is a pretty rare response in the face of a brazen scoffer. Usually, the reply is “shut up!” or “off to jail with you” or, perhaps, “careful, we know where your parents live.” As encouragement to the rational and the skeptical, Andersen’s parable works nicely. As a description of the means by which mass delusions are overcome, it is profoundly inadequate. In reality, the demolition of well-observed deceits happens in stages. It starts with furtive whispers, it is moved along by a handful of martyrs, and, eventually — at the end, not at the start — the truth breaks through. It’s a journey, not a moment.
Embarking on that journey takes care, time and, yes, money. As I write, National Review is engaged in a patient fight against the latest preposterous idea that our would-be arbiters of taste have dreamed up and foisted upon the public: namely, that biological sex is an arbitrary social construct, and that it can be treated as malleable under the law. Resisting this lie in the way that we have here and here and here is a slow and involved process. It requires writers, editors, laptops, cameras, web-hosting services, and more. As ever, we cannot do it without your ongoing help. To that end, we hope that you will contribute to our webathon.
This is no “culture war” abstraction. Within many of our most crucial institutions, suppositions that would have been considered the height of lunacy even a few years ago have become regnant overnight. In our universities, in our medical associations, in our newspapers and journals, and in many of our corporations, it has become de rigueur to insist that men can get pregnant, that the inclusion of male athletes in women’s sports does nothing to affect competition, that double mastectomies for 14-year-olds is quotidian health care, and that anyone who dissents is a dinosaur. Millennia of human experience are dismissed. The copious evidence of the natural world is ignored. The good-faith objections of good-faith people are transmuted into “bigotry” or “hatred” and used as an excuse for cancellation, exile, or worse.
And it works. To stand against the tide of trans absurdity is to invite the sky down on one’s head, so, understandably, most people stay quiet when pushed. Past goes the parade, with the unclad czar atop the float, and, though the vast majority can see the ruse, few say a word. Which, give or take, is why National Review exists in the first place. As our founding statement happily confirms, we are here to “stand athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so”; we are, by design, “out of place”; and, as a result, we are obliged “to encourage a responsible dissent” when we encounter any of the “modish fads and fallacies” that others have seen fit to demand the majority accept without complaint. Threaten us, try to cancel us, hurl whatever epithets you like at us — we don’t care one whit. For as long as we endure — and with your generous support — we will stand up and shout at the king.
