Please proceed

Here we go. Another clickbait story which is supposed to get liberals like us apoplectic and fearful and resigned to our fascist future where we will either have to keep our heads down or be chased into the gulags.

*Yawn*

I have no doubt that "Left Eye" Ken Paxton wants to ban gay sex in Texas. I have no doubt that many of his confreres in other red states want to do the same. They've said so out loud, proud, and publicly. This is nothing new.

But that's neither here nor there.

When the radicals on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, numerous corporations came out saying that they would pay for employees to travel to other states to secure reproductive services, if they were unavailable in their home states. Corporations are all onboard with mitigating climate change, regardless of what those who want to bring back incandescent light bulbs might want. The GOP is a racist party, but businesses large and small have no truck with racism.

There is the legend of King Canute. (I stay away from the more authentic transliteration of "Cnut", for obvious reasons.) He brought his courtiers to the shore, and, to prove his power, commanded the tide to not come in. The tide, of course, came in. For centuries, my fellow rationalists have pointed at this as a signal lesson in the perils of megalomania. But, of course, this wasn't the entire legend. When the tide, as it always has and always will, did come in, the king turned to his assembled notables. He said: Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws. Far from a derisory example of the foolishness of power, the episode is actually a cogent parable on power's limitations.

People like Ken Paxton think they can command the tide to not wet their pants. But they have not the wisdom of this medieval king, steeped in human limitations in the face of an unknowable God. By their acts, they will pauperize their states. Yes, corporations like low taxes; but they also like educated workforces, and the ability to attract talent from the country and the world. And any state which stands in the way of this will not get their business.

I'm not saying that exercises like this won't cause grave harm to many people. They will, and it's tragic. But as a global culture, we are on a particular path. And that path consigns the likes of Ken Paxton to history's dustbin. In the rolling out of time, they will be forgotten or castigated as yesterday's people. They will be held up as negative examples, their actions to be avoided. They will not be lauded by the great mass of humanity.

A liberal majority will not be shackled by an illiberal minority. History is written by those with power. They should well remember this. I don't say this as threat; I say this as promise.