An editor for an online conservative magazine has called for banning all abortions and imprisoning parents who take their children to events where drag queens are present.
John Daniel Davidson, senior editor of The Federalist, asserted in an October column that “Western Civilization” is on the verge of collapse. He called on conservatives to think of themselves as “radicals, restorationists, and counterrevolutionaries.”
Wrote Davidson, “Conservatives had better be ready for it, and Republican politicians, if they want to stay in office, had better have an answer ready when they are asked what reasonable limits to abortion restrictions they would support. The answer is: none, for the same reason they would not support reasonable limits to restrictions on premeditated murder.”
Davidson went on to write, “Conservatives need to get comfortable saying … that Drag Queen Story Hour should be outlawed; that parents who take their kids to drag shows should be arrested and charged with child abuse; that doctors who perform so-called ‘gender-affirming’ interventions should be thrown in prison and have their medical licenses revoked; and that teachers who expose their students to sexually explicit material should not just be fired but be criminally prosecuted.
Should this be illegal? A drag queen story hour in California (Jonathan Moore via Creative Commons)
“If all that sounds radical, fine,” wrote Davidson. “It need not, at this late hour, dissuade conservatives in the least. Radicalism is precisely the approach needed now because the necessary task is nothing less than radical and revolutionary.”
Davidson also recommended that those on the right “conjure up the image of the Pilgrims – those iron-willed and audacious Christians who refused to accept the terms set by the mainstream of their time and set out to build something entirely new, to hew it out of the wilderness of the New World, even at great personal cost.”
Writing on the site Buzzflash, journalist William Berkowitz put Davidson’s comments in a historical context, observing, “The embrace of Christofascism is nothing new in our history. Some of its loudest proponents: Father Charles Coughlin and Henry Ford, and such movements as the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Legion, Crusaders for America, and the Knights of the White Camelia, and the William Dudley Pelley Silver Shirts, flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. With Donald Trump, Josh Hawley, the Proud Boys, and Oath Keepers, echoes of those past leaders and movements resonated on January 6 and beyond.”
