[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]

Fresh on the heels of Politico’s fear-mongering article warning about the ominous Christian influence of Lord of the Rings genius JRR Tolkien on Trump VP pick JD Vance, the outlet now devotes space to a profile of Vance’s “weird views on gender.” And by “weird,” Politico means “normal” – the traditional, biologically based understanding of sex and family that has held for all but the last ten minutes or so of human history.

In an opinion piece titled, “JD Vance Has a Bunch of Weird Views on Gender,” Politico’s Laura K. Field begins by calling Vance “a rabid participant in the culture wars” – that’s a dog whistle to leftists that Vance threatens the cultural hegemony the Left spent over half a century establishing precisely because the culture is where the real ideological war is waged and won. Conservative politicians like Vance and, say, Ron DeSantis, who understand this and are willing to get in the trenches of that fight, terrify the Left.

Politico’s Field then takes exception to a comment Vance once made to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson that “We are effectively run in the country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” Vance named Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as examples.

Is he wrong about that characterization? No. Leftists are anti-family Karens driven by a deep hatred of the bourgeois values of their political opponents: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nothing brings them greater satisfaction than to impose their own miserable worldview on others by curtailing those values.

Field goes on to describe Vance “and the rest of the New Right” as sharing “a deep skepticism about modern feminism and gender equality” and an “[o]vert chauvinism that seeks to roll back much of feminism’s gains.” Well, bravo for him then, because modern feminism and gender ideology are the tip of the spear of the cultural Marxist subversion of Western civilization (change my mind). What Field and Politico laughably call “feminism’s gains” have been disastrous for America (more on that below); we can’t roll them back fast enough.

The article does concede that Vance, a father of three whose wife is an Indian legal immigrant, “appears to be a decent family man — someone who supports traditional conservative values.” But it claims “his thoughts on women and gender reveal some unusual opinions that lie outside the American mainstream,” including opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. Those may be minority positions now, thanks to the degrading influence of the Left and the moral weakness of the Republican Party, but they were not “unusual” until very recently. Remember how Barack Obama only came around to embracing same-sex marriage in time for his re-election campaign?

Field goes on to try in vain to damn Vance by association with “postliberal,” “New Right” figures and institutions she finds very ominous, like Regime Change author Patrick Deneen or the Claremont Institute. She cites a 2021 speech of his for Claremont’s Center for the American Way of Life in which Vance stated, “I think that we should fight for the right of every American to live a good life in the country they call their own, to raise a family and dignity on a single middle-class job.” Every single word of that normal goal is like a stake through radical leftist hearts.

Then Field tries to connect Vance to the “musings of far-right extremists” like former American Enterprise Institute president Chris DeMuth, who opened a National Conservatism conference earlier this month by declaring, “A revival of faith, family, and fertility are not far right; they are the new mainstream!” The fact that Politico finds faith, family, and fertility to be threatening, “far-right” values speaks volumes about the Left, none of it good.

Field also cites a 2022 Vanity Fair interview in which Vance said his vision for the country “will mean that my son grows up in a world where his masculinity — his support of his family and his community, his love of his community — is more important than whether it works for fucking McKinsey.” The Left bears a visceral hatred of traditional masculinity, so of course Field finds the thought of an America in which masculinity is valued repugnant.

In all fairness, Politico isn’t the only left-wing outlet to demonize Vance’s normal views on sex and family. MSNBC, to name just one more, predictably smeared him (and by extension, all normals) as holding “a host of bizarre, ultraconservative views on gender.” Of course, they’re not bizarre or ultraconservative at all; they’re normal.

Politico concludes by warning Trump supporters that his VP choice is going to be a barrier to picking up more women voters: “While Trump’s sexism has manifested as a crude machismo, Vance, along with his New Right fellow-travelers, is about to introduce voters to a more conceptual take on sexism — one which many women, and indeed many men, might find even more alarming.”

Politico believes Vance’s brand of “sexism” is alarming because it is not sexist but normal. Nowhere in the article does Politico acknowledge that calls for faith, family and fertility resonate with greater numbers of Americans now because since the Sexual Revolution, which launched a nuclear attack on faith, family and fertility, our culture has degenerated into one in which: our elites are now unwilling to define the word “woman”; the sexual grooming of children in classrooms by non-binary identifying gender activists posing as educators, and in public libraries by demonically-costumed drag queens, is normalized; men claiming to be women are destroying women’s sports and eradicating women’s private spaces; marriage and fertility rates are collapsing; young women, indoctrinated by feminism to embrace promiscuity, now view degrading themselves on OnlyFans as a legitimate path to financial security; and young men are “going their own way,” rejecting marriage and children as a bankrupting trap.

These are the feminist “gains” that Politico calls Vance “sexist” and “weird” for rejecting. They are not gains but markers of civilizational collapse, and growing numbers of Americans have had enough. They want a return to sexual morality, not cultural deviancy; social stability, not disorder and fragmentation; and gender sanity, not the eradication of masculine and feminine. You know – normalcy.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior