Sheep in Wolves Clothing? Or Calling Out Our Own?

The phrase “sheep in wolves’ clothing” caught me off guard when a friend recently used it to accuse me of being a political progressive in disguise—a supposed infiltrator pretending to be a conservative. It blindsided me, not because I feared the label, but because it revealed how fractured our moral and political rhetoric has become. I hadn’t changed much, but the public square around me had. Our definitions of conservatism, liberty, and morality have drifted so far from their roots that holding to their original meaning now looks subversive.

When I reflect on what shaped my convictions, I return to the 1990s and early 2000s. It was my mentor, Don Tack, who first introduced me to Jack Kemp—the “bleeding-heart conservative” who spoke passionately about economic opportunity, racial inclusion, and the rule of law as inseparable pillars of a just society. Don also handed me Marvin Olasky’s “The Tragedy of American Compassion,” which chronicled how 19th-century faith-based charities effectively fought poverty through discerning, personal aid that demanded work and moral renewal. That same conviction brought me to the Acton Institute, which defended the moral and theological case for free markets as a means of empowering the poor and marginalized, seeing liberty not as license but as responsibility under the rule of law. Around the same time, I resonated with thinkers at Reason Magazine and the Cato Institute. While I never embraced every libertarian conclusion, I appreciated their classical liberal roots: a belief that limited government, voluntary association, and free exchange best protect human dignity.

A rich blend of theological, philosophical, and economic influences shaped my views on social justice. From John Perkins, the father of Christian racial reconciliation, I learned the importance of local empowerment and community stabilization through his Christian Community Development (CCD) model. Perkins began calling for reconciliation between Black and White Christians rooted in the Gospel as early as the mid-1970s, long before it became a fashionable slogan in evangelical circles. His approach insisted that justice and mercy must work together through discipleship, community renewal, and shared life.

From Carl F. H. Henry and Carl Ellis, I learned that justice must be grounded in transcendent moral truth—an ethic that refused to separate right beliefs from right actions. Michael Novak, through his book “The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism” and his work “Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is,” which draws on Catholic social teaching, helped me see that free markets require moral people—citizens formed by virtue and a sense of responsibility to their neighbors.

To this foundation, I add the scholarship of Anthony Bradley, whose work on criminal justice reform, fatherlessness, and Christian Personalism calls Christians to see human beings not as categories, but as image-bearers. True justice, he argues, cannot exist without moral formation, responsibility, and family stability.

Likewise, Rachel Ferguson, in Black Liberation Through the Marketplace, demonstrates that the classical liberal tradition—with its emphasis on voluntary associations, free markets, and civil society—was not abstract philosophy. Black Americans leveraged fraternal orders, mutual aid societies, churches, business networks, and family structures to create strongholds of flourishing and self-determination even under segregation. Yet Ferguson also exposes what was missing: the rule of law was not applied impartially to Black citizens. Freedom existed on paper, but not in practice. Her work reminds us that the rule of law, without partiality, is indispensable for human flourishing—for every community, every class, every race.

Bradley and Ferguson both model a humane classical liberalism that resists hyper-individualism and insists that freedom, virtue, and community belong together.

The more I studied these thinkers, the more I realized that this older tradition—rooted in moral realism, respect for law, and concern for human dignity—is largely forgotten in our polarized age. The framework Thomas Sowell described in A Conflict of Visions helped me see why: the constrained vision of human nature, once central to conservatism, has been replaced in both major parties by the temptation of cultural domination.

So when I critique my own political tribe, it isn’t because I’ve abandoned conservatism or because I secretly belong to another movement. I critique my own side because I want to recover its moral core.

Reviving civility in this country will not come through political victories or viral takedowns. It will begin when each of us is willing to hold our own side accountable. But motives matter. Calling out our own must never be about virtue signaling, public approval, or trying to impress the broader culture. Moral correction only has credibility when it is driven by love for truth.

This matters because the alternative is already infecting our public discourse. Even a month after Charlie Kirk’s tragic death, instead of empathy, some corners of the internet continue to respond with mockery. A far-left political influencer named Kyle Kuluski, with over 2 million subscribers on YouTube, posted a grotesque meme on X that went viral, mocking Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, as a “fake grieving widow grifter.” The image depicted Erika with smeared mascara and money spilling from her hands, as if her grief were nothing more than a performance for profit.

That wasn’t satire. It was cruelty. A woman had just lost her husband to brutal violence, and her mourning was turned into a spectacle for cheap likes and ideological vengeance.

And conservatives are not innocent in this cultural decay either. At Charlie Kirk’s own memorial service, Stephen Miller used the moment not primarily to honor a fallen friend, but to caricature progressives as the embodiment of evil and corruption. It wasn’t a eulogy; it was dehumanization delivered as a political rallying cry, taking away from Erika’s message of forgiveness in Jesus towards her killer.

Not to be outdone, it was recently revealed in Virginia that progressive lawmaker Jay Jones stirred controversy by sending a series of private text messages in 2022 in which he fantasized about shooting then-House Speaker Todd Gilbert, including an imagined scenario where Gilbert would “get two bullets to the head.” Jones later acknowledged the texts, apologized publicly, but remained his party’s nominee. That wasn’t dissent or principled disagreement. It was imagining violence towards a political adversary. What’s worse is that Jones was still elected as Virginia’s Attorney General on November 6th.

However, this isn’t a call to never critique the other side. Hardly. Evil is evil—and it should be exposed wherever it appears. Nor is this an indictment of those who publicly challenge the values, beliefs, and behaviors of the political opposition that differ from their own.

When we lose the ability to hold our own echo chambers accountable, conversation collapses. As Charlie Kirk himself once said, “When discourse ends, violence begins.”

Nevertheless, Politics and cultural renewal alone will never be able to restore what has been broken. We as a nation have tried identity politics, outrage, celebrity pastors, moral posturing, and even social media shame—and none of it has produced repentance or virtue. If anything, it has made us more cynical. A genuine spiritual revival is necessary to restore moral seriousness in our public life. Some have suggested that it might already be underway with Gen-Z, as more twenty-somethings rediscover faith, community, and purpose beyond partisan political tribes. If that’s true, then the next cultural renewal won’t start in Washington or on social media, but in living rooms, campus ministries, churches without global platforms, and local friendships—places where hearts actually change, transformed by Jesus.

Maybe then, the future of civility will be built one courageous conversation at a time.

And maybe—just maybe—that’s how liberty finds its soul again.