Here is a politically incorrect look at why our civilization is the way it is. It reveals how one of our most closely held sophisticated beliefs is producing some of our most intransigent problems. It applies the principles and the prophecies of the Bible to the politics and everyday life of 21st-century British and American moderns.

You may strongly disagree. But whatever your beliefs, I urge you to seriously consider this perspective.

The principle goes back to the first man and woman—and it explains what’s happening right now in Washington, in London, and even at No. 10 Downing.

‘The First Girlfriend Problem’

The British Spectator calls it “the first girlfriend problem.” The wife of the president of the United States is called the first lady. Britain doesn’t have a president or a first lady. It has a prime minister, and the prime minister’s spouse stays out of politics. Usually. But that convention, like many others, is being ignored.

In the summer of 2019, Carrie Symonds moved into No. 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s residence, to live with Boris Johnson. She was the first non-married partner in history to do so. The example this sets is one thing, but then there are the reports of what has been happening since. Symonds apparently is exerting startling influence, not just on how she has redecorated their flat, but on how the prime minister actually governs.

“Carrie Symonds herself is a perfectly nice, intelligent person who successfully worked her way through Conservative campaign headquarters,” Spectator author Douglas Murray wrote. “But she is having too great an impact on the course of government. There are issues the prime minister avoids because she does not favor them. And there are others—principally green issues—which he appears to adopt to satisfy her. The feeling is growing that the first girlfriend wants political power without the trouble of having to run for office, and to wield it without any resulting criticism. This is not a sustainable state of affairs. …

“It is not just policy she seeks to influence. The first girlfriend seems to have a desire to be involved in all personnel issues. Her principal ambition seems to be for her friends to make up all the central control flanks around the prime minister.”

Meanwhile, her critics get attacked. Late last year, top adviser Dominic Cummings quit, and some say it might have been partially due to clashes with Carrie. But here is the point: “In the UK anyone who wishes to have political power should run for elected office. The emergent Office of First Lady is clearly a source of tension in Downing Street, and is already responsible for an unprecedented number of interventions in policy areas that affect our country. We hear nothing from the prime minister on issues he was elected on, and far too much on ones that Carrie happens to favor. The prime minister may have need of a first girlfriend, but the country does not” (ibid).

How often is this happening with leaders in our world?

When we think of women in politics, we only consider how many are actually in office. Many insist that we need more women mayors, representatives, senators, heads of government. We are supposed to infer that this will somehow solve many of society’s problems. There are powerful points to be made in this debate, but for now let’s focus on the issue at hand: women who are not in office but are actually ruling.

The Royal Divorce

Surely this is the case far more than people realize. There are few people like Murray willing to even point it out for fear of the flak they’ll take.

We see a similar situation with the man once known as Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle. They have been married less than three years, yet they have already divorced themselves very publicly and messily from the British royal family and have trashed them and their staff as oppressive—and racist. Reports suggest this is all her doing. After the blockbuster wedding, she quickly decided that royal life was “unbearable.”

Angela Levin, a royal biographer, has said that Harry’s relationship with this woman changed him completely. She said that before Meghan he was charismatic, sincere and an open book. “Less than a year on, however, I witnessed this warm young prince morph into a nervy, tense man who seems constantly on edge. It is as if the dark side that we had only had glimpses of previously [has] fully enveloped him.”

The situation has been compared to the succession crisis of 1936, when Prince Edward viii abdicated the throne itself to marry another American divorcee named Wallis Simpson.

Harry and his wife are the royal debacle of our era. And once again, the center of the conflict is the influence of an unaccountable woman.

‘Women Rule Over Them’

To mark his first 100 days in office, Joe Biden gave a presidential address to both houses of Congress. Much was made about the fact that the two chairs behind him, reserved for the vice president and the speaker of the House, were occupied by two women. The woman on the left, Kamala Harris, has reportedly taken on a far more active political role than is typical for the vice president. This is being hailed as obvious progress. But many have predictably argued, No—it’s not enough until the president speaking in front of them is also a woman. We still don’t have equity until at least half the representatives and senators in the audience are women. Women don’t rule—not enough!

Here, though, is God’s assessment of the power of women in our society: “As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths” (Isaiah 3:12).

Wow! That is not politically correct. People can say that is not sophisticated or progressive. They can label it primitive or patriarchal or misogynistic or whatever they want.

But it’s true.

The evidence is all around us.

Why Go Deeper Into Debt?

Take, for example, Biden’s speech. Part of it was dedicated to promoting what he called the American Families Plan. As you might suspect, it doesn’t aim to increase the honor, the significance or the morals of American families. It focuses on government spending and government control of American families. It would spend $1.8 trillion to gain greater influence over your children and those who teach them: government-funded preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, government-funded child care for parents with lower incomes, up to 12 weeks of paid family medical leave, extension of the child tax credit, government-funded community college. This is $1.8 trillion this country does not have, yet which Biden says must urgently be spent—even though the United States is already $28 trillion in debt.

Why spend such a dangerous amount of money so urgently on these social and educational programs? It is undeniable that feminist thinking has spread in our government, and decisions like these are directly attributable to that thinking.

These are not the fiscal priorities of a right-thinking, masculine man.

I am referring to general tendencies, but generally, if a man is going to put his family or those he leads into a deep financial hole, he is not going to do it to pay for things like preschool and family medical leave.

And what are the leaders of our government and our educational system using these mountains of tax dollars to put in the minds of American children? Not hard sciences and advanced math. These subjects are increasingly branded as imperialistic and patriarchal. Anything traditionally associated with men is taboo. No—the push in education is all toward “sensitivity training”—teaching children of certain races and a certain gender to feel offended and angry over tiny or even imagined slights, and teaching children of a certain other race and the other gender to feel timid and ashamed, that they’re out of line and need to apologize for everything.

The Telegraph, in an article about what it called “woke weaning,” mentioned how one educator used the recent murder of a woman in London to take the boys in the class to one side and urge them to “respect girls and women.” “Of course children should be educated about misogyny and harassment,” the mother of one of the young boys said. “But the narrative seemed to be that boys were, by definition, not just ‘bad’ but capable of extreme evil. That’s a lot for an 11-year-old to take on” (April 19).

Examples of such extreme, bizarre, dangerous indoctrination abound in our schools and colleges. This is like a toxic, overbearing mom who continually guilt-trips her children.

Right-thinking men would never approve or allow such curricula.

In the same speech to Congress, Biden urged lawmakers to pass a bill called the Violence Against Women Act. No one supports violence against women, of course, so you have to look beyond the name to see where this law is coming from and whether it is good. If you do that, you will quickly see that it is a way to advance government restrictions on the right to bear arms and government promotion of transgenderism, all in the name of “protection” and “equality.”

At the same time these leaders are dumping trillions we don’t have into indoctrination programs for 3- and 4-year-olds, they are demanding that we strip money from law enforcement and the military. These are two institutions that are still male-dominated and represent what is left of strong male authority in our domestic policy and foreign policy. Some of the most prominent women in politics advancing this agenda say we must dismantle policing itself.

We will never be able to solve this problem if we refuse to trace it back to its source: feminist thinking wielding the power of the educational system and the state.

Bubble-Wrapping Society

This effeminate thinking is plainly visible in the biggest development of the entire last year: covid-19 lockdowns. We have a virus that causes varying levels of symptoms in different people: A great many get it with very little effects, some have more serious effects, and in a few, it’s very serious. But rather than taking an even-handed, cautious, lawful approach aimed at protecting the most vulnerable, society’s response has been a hysterical overreaction. We want to do everything we possibly can to keep everyone safe.

Everyone must stand apart from one another, wear one or two masks at a time (even if they are young children playing outside), sit in their homes, forgo gatherings and events, and forsake freedom of assembly. Elevators must have no more than four riders at a time, with each person facing a corner like a naughty schoolboy. You can’t be too cautious. In fact, we are so concerned about this that we must forcibly enclose the entire society in Bubble Wrap and be willing to shut our economies down over it—all in the name of “health and safety.”

The entire government in America, and in other countries, has turned into a domineering, toxic, micromanaging, overprotective, guilt-tripping mommy state.

This has been a spectacular demonstration of the feminization of our world.

The major media are eager to stoke fears, encourage overreaction and enforce compliance. Turns out, a whole lot of the major newsrooms in America are run by women: cbs News, abc News, Reuters, msnbc, npr, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Economist and many others.

Too few real men have stood up and said no. Too few have said, Let’s use some sense. Let’s exercise some logic and have some courage here. Let’s not destroy people’s God-given rights and turn our lives completely upside-down over the mere fear of a flu bug!

The way these policies and causes are taking over the Democratic Party—and American politics in general—also shows the fulfillment of Isaiah 3.

Men Taken Away

“For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water, The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator” (Isaiah 3:1-3).

This prophecy is what precedes Isaiah’s warning that “women rule over them.”

God says that because of our sins, He has removed strong male leadership. And He says that the resulting void in strong male leadership is a curse!

Look at the results. We are in an effeminate age. Feminized thinking has taken over our education, our politics, our business, our economics, our news, our entertainment, our whole society.

Today it seems most people reject that there are differences between men and women. At least that is what the most powerful people in education, politics and the media clearly want us to think. If you state that men have different bodies than women, and men have different ways of thinking than women, they get upset. Yet so many of these same people say we need more women’s perspectives in politics and other leadership positions. If there are no natural differences in how men and women think, then that makes no sense.

But there are differences. Men tend to think differently from women. And more women’s perspectives are taking control of leadership positions. And the society under that leadership is changing.

The perverse bias against boys for being boys; the weaponization of “tolerance,” “compassion” and “equality”; the idolization of feelings over facts; the increasingly aggressive “cancel culture”; the systematic shutdown of free speech; the confiscation of rights, freedoms and accountability by the “nanny state”—such policies are not implemented by leaders who are truly masculine. They are implemented by leaders who are feminist and effeminate.

This combination of effeminate fragility, logic in neutral, and emotion in overdrive is Isaiah’s prophecy in action!

It is a problem that women are leading. Not because men are better, but because men and women are different. Their bodies are, undeniably, different. Their minds are, clearly, different. Their strengths and weaknesses are truly different. And yes, their roles in society should be very different.

The Author of Male and Female

These different roles trace back to the source of male and female: our Creator. He created men and women completely equal in their spiritual value and potential, yet distinct from each other with complementary strengths that combine to create something far greater. In fact, these differences are so fundamental to human existence that He focuses on them throughout His Word, starting in the very first chapter of the very first book of the Bible!

The Creator of human beings established the godly, self-sacrificing, loving leadership role with the very first man and woman He created. God commands boys and men to respect girls and women far more deeply than primary school counselors with a psychology minor have ever dreamed. But the first man and so many other men since have failed at that role. In our era, women and weak men have said that the solution is not to better keep God’s laws and roles for men and women, but to reject them completely.

Feminists think the true feminine role defined in the Bible by the Creator of male and female of submitting, enhancing and raising the next generation of women and men is inferior. They think the masculine role is superior. That is why they reject true femininity and pursue masculinity, especially leadership, power and control.

This is one of the worst tragedies of the feminization and effeminization that is affecting all of us: The significance, beauty, glory and, yes, power of the true feminine role is ignored, despised and destroyed.

In fact, destroying that role is the point.

Why? Because they are unwittingly inspired by a spirit that hates the human creation itself and is destroying it down to its very foundation. By destroying the fundamental roles of men and women that have transcended nations, cultures, generations and millennia, that spirit is destroying harmony between male and female, destroying the raising of future generations, and obscuring the potential and purpose of mankind itself. And at this advanced stage, it is working to destroy the very economic, military and personal security of, and even to mutilate the bodies and end the lives of, those whom it has deceived.

Men, resist that feminized thinking. Be men. Be masculine. Honor, protect, sacrifice for and lead women. Don’t be ashamed of it. Use your masculine traits and energy—not to serve yourself, as many men over the ages have done, but to serve others.

Women, embrace your exalted role that so many are working to destroy. Love it. Use your feminine strengths to support, nurture and educate.

Realizing, fulfilling and clinging to the roles of men and women that God created will lead you, your spouse and your children not only to a meaningful life here and now, but to your brilliant, incredible human potential.

Request Conspiracy Against Fatherhood, by Gerald Flurry and The Incredible Human Potential, by Herbert W. Armstrong.