Menninger’s dreamy confusion serves as an exemplar for why Progressives could not be stopped.

Progressives criticized Christians for failing to live up to their own ideals.   At the same time, they redefined those ideals.

Progressives proclaimed themselves “not-religious” (and therefore, technically, not subject to the first amendment).  At the same time, they re-interpreted Constitutional provisions designed to limit the scope of the central government.  They pursued sovereign power.

In short, they claimed dominion over what the Founding Documents had set aside, and when the Constitution complained, they raped her then gave her a little office with a nice title, “Living Document” (in service to the Union god).

How could anyone figure out what was happening?  The Progressives followed a script as unwritten and ancient as Civilization itself.  The hero in the script is primitive, archaic, creative, like a wind blowing between the waters above and the waters below, grasping sovereign power, and confident that the fault for every horror lies not in the hero, but in the image in the mirror.