Clothing The Emperor

Penna Dexter

Many times, over the past decade or so, I have muttered under my breath: “The Emperor Has No Clothes.”  The phrase of course is from Hans Christian Anderson’s tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which dishonest “tailors” provide a vain king with garments, clothes that don’t actually exist. The swindlers explain that they are weavers of fabric that would be “invisible to anyone who was unfit for his office, or who was unusually stupid.” Naturally, the king buys in. The townspeople timidly go along with the charade, praising the nude emperor’s outfits. One day, as the emperor’s entourage carries his fake train, a little boy calls out the truth that no one else dared admit, “…he hasn’t got anything on.”

In a recent column, The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker pointed to this year’s election as an “’Emperor’s New Clothes’ event” where voters repudiated a “regime of oppressive insanities.” He listed five of the most destructive and unpopular strictures:

First, that we are somehow obligated to grant “people who have stolen into this country” many privileges of citizenship and — contrary to our laws —  to give them “sanctuary.”

Second, “to ‘save the planet’,” we must severely limit our use of “one of the greatest reservoirs of natural energy resources on Earth.”

Third, we must believe we are a racist nation. So, Mr. Baker writes, “to right the past wrong of treating people based on the color of their skin,” we must “treat people based on the color of their skin.”

Fourth, we’re to reject the scientific concept of biological sex. Gender is a social construct, and people should be allowed to choose theirs. If deemed necessary, the state may circumvent parents to provide troubled youngsters with medical, and even surgical transitions.

And finally, certain views are “misinformation” and those who hold them are deserving of punishment.

Voters repudiated these bad ideas. Now, perhaps, we can re-clothe the emperor.