Apostate activism in the visible Church parallels Leftist activism in society. Both use the same tactics.
They leverage their marginal status by sticking together and excommunicating anyone who dissents from the program. They use a constant (albeit anonymous) stream of abuse against anyone who gets in their way, but they howl like worn brakes whenever someone identifies what is wrong with their agenda. For example, while the Shrinkers were busy destroying doctrine in the ELS, WELS, and LCMS, anyone who questioned them was "lazy, brain-damaged, senile, contentious, legalistic, and always finding something under a rock."
Best of all, the Left and the Apostates love to have nominal conservatives in positions where they can advance the agenda by appearing to be moderate, reasonable, and willing to negotiate. By appearing seriously concerned, they block what needs to be done while demoralizing the faithful. For example, most people would call WELS DPs "conservative," and I have often heard Glaeske and others called "conservative." But who will block the Love Shack clean-up ordered by the convention? The Doctrinal Pussycats will.
Bush I and II did their best to destroy the conservative base in American society. Barry-McCain, once elected, did their best to communicate their loathing and contempt for the LCMS conservatives who elected Barry. The Bush team paved the way for the Obama victory, and the Barry team made it possible for the LCMS Left to get their candidate permanently installed.
In the visible Church, the confessional Lutherans need to get over their need to be loved by Apostates. That will never happen. The Apostates have their own support system, and it is extremely effective. If they savage the Second Table of the Ten Commandments, losing everything to fast women and slow horses, their people say, "They are only human." If they savage the First Table, which is far more serious, the conservatives say, "Oh! They are so creative!"
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Robert Lewis Dabney, a Presbyterian pastor once had a few relevant thoughts on those political conservatives that don't actually conserve anything.
From Women's Rights Women:
It may be inferred again that the present movement for women’s rights will certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent, Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always, when about to enter a protest, very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its “bark is worse than its bite,” and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance. The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it “in wind,” and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip. No doubt, after a few years, when women’s suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position.
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