You’ll be gratified to know that I had planned to write on this earlier in the week, holding a draft in queue until the debt ceiling deal was done, and then Rush Limbaugh led off his show yesterday with a monologue on the very same subject, taking the same position I am here….thus saving you about 1000 tiresome and repetitive words.
I’ll just hit the highlights from where Rush left off.
Mr Limbaugh’s position and mine are that irreconcilable beliefs, by their nature, can never compromise.
In the end, one must vanquish the other.
This leaves the idea of “vanquish” open to some interpretation, for much of American liberalism arose out of the misguided notion that you can defeat evil with kindness, sort of like buying Yassar Arafat a coat and tie and asking him to come have supper with you at the UN. And before him Castro. And before him Adolf Hitler. As trial after trial failed in this regard, the next step for liberalism, of course, was to declare that Evil didn’t exist. Vanity, all is vanity (Eccl 1:2)
It is our morality, not our politics, that dictates we should be nice in victory. It is also the cause of our having to repeat our victories every few generations, for it is niceness that often gets the best of us. It’s just a cross we must bear, so get used it. They will always be with us.
But many in my generation (the 60s) grew away from liberalism not so much because we better understood its vanities, but because we came to see Evil for what it really is.
Law: The Left will never quit until they have taken everything. They cannot stop, for they take “getting us” very personally. They have gulags, re-education camps, and the most insidious tyranny planned for us, should they finally win. In their view, they will be getting even. They, too, will always be with us. Our bottom line here (below) is changing the terms of their being with us.
Of course, we can win and be merciful, but by being merciful, I don’t mean offering them a seat at any table, or spending too much of the public treasury trying to rehabilitate them.
Conservatism, a United Front
This is not to say conservatives can’t disagree with one another. Conservatism, as with any political ideology can be quite nuanced, allowing for a broader spectrum of ideas and bases for debate than many imagine. This is why I dislike seeing opinions turned into take-it-or-leave-it demands. The Buckley wing of the movement were stridently opposed to the spread of communism and the Soviet Union, up to and including meeting it militarily, where possible. Other parts of conservatism were more focused on the economy, while still others with social issues.
But they all came together in a unified whole, for all shared a deep and abiding fealty to the broader purposes of the Constitution and the specialness of this republic as it unfolded. They just didn’t wax quite as poetic as we do here. Buckley, Hayek, Kirk were not, on the surface, sentimental men.
That you and I can get more misty-eyed about it all is because we see it slipping through our fingers. Buckley may have seen it coming, but only we can bear witness to it all sinking beneath the waves, should that finally be the case.
Like it or not this wahr has moved from brandy-and-cigar chats in black tie into foxholes, where a life-and-death loyalty to both the soldier on your left shoulder and your beliefs are in constant need of reinforcement with chaplains, pray and shedding of tears.
The final battle is with us, the common ordinary foot sojurs. Trust me on this.
The Constitutional Playing Field
The original political scheme was always that political warfare was carried out of field defined by the US Constitution. Until the 1960’s or so, both (classical) Liberal and Conservative understood this, and they both went about their nuanced games, jockeying back and forth for political power. Conservatives tended to have the upper hand on survival grounds alone.
But at both ends of the political spectrum there were people who would have none of it, from John Birchers who could distort the Constitution the same way Wahhabis distorted the Qu’ran, to communists and anarchists, who just laid in wait and played every useful idiot they could until they finally could step out into the light in business suits and then, ultimately, move into power.
Liberalism, the Great Pretender
For the left, Liberals facilitated their every step of the way for the same reasons the Birchers, on the far right, could never get any traction on the right, nor any other snot-eyed inbred militia around the country…because there were bedrock fundamental beliefs in conservatism they would not bend. They were easy to roll. Vanity + Nice= Easy
It’s no more complex than that.
Conservatives and Liberals contested on a field of play defined by a thing each party considered to be holy writ, only Liberals were too easily seduced into believing that “fairness” dictated they allow others players onto that field, players dedicated to the proposition that the very field itself should be torn up and a new one put in its place.
This is where we are now, fighting a war to save our field of play, against an opponent that insists we play on one of his own design. And classical liberalism, the useful idiot, is but a memory.
While true conservatives can never compromise with communists, and liberals not only can…but often did. The proof is in the pudding, mainly Europe, which we are watching slowly erode into meaninglessness, a Andy Warhol Campbells Soup can laid in a vat of urine and put on display at the Louvre. For European-style socialism is little more than a compromise between liberalism and communism, which after approximately 60 years (Europe had fatter geese) will soon lead to the same dire result that occurred in Russia in 1918, after only 13 years.
For you see, Russia’s fall into communism was because the Tsar attempted to compromise with democracy, by creating a legislature, then that legislature attempted to compromise with communists by allowing them in as equals, then moderate communists called Mensheviks, attempted to compromise with the democrats, while the Bolsheviks, who every time the word “compromise” was brought up said exactly that, “Bolshevik!” I still use it daily, as when I hear Harry Reid speak.
Within 13 years (1918) the Bolsheviks had seized power, and inside another four years had killed every single compromiser that had unwittingly ushered them into power.
Liberalism is a failed experiment at co-existence with Evil.
When we win…first we take out all the lawyers
This is where Rush left off and we need to take up and consider next steps, which we’ll discuss as the weeks and months permit. In fact, I’d like to hear from you as to your own list of “we can’t let this happen again” rules. Pretend you can be king of queen for one year only. What would you do?
My rules:
1) We already know we cannot destroy our souls to put the Left down permanently.
2) Nobody touches the Constitution, although I’d like to back and revisit some of the Court’s decisions as to what it says…yes, beginning with Roe
We have to reestablish the Constitution as the only playing field, the only sidelines and boundaries, and the only playbook. We have to banish all other playbooks.
This does not mean putting all the Left in jail. But we can send them back to their basement bomb-making factories. We can remove Bill Ayers from his nice Georgian home, sweet $150K job, and business suit and put him back in tie-dyes and blue jeans. Beanie-weenies over Sterno instead of grilled chicken ….
We can remove them from the bureaucracies, and certainly from academe. Let them compete with Manual Vargas for the hedge-trimming gig over on Mason Avenue.
What may surprise you is that only a few will go into those basement, fewer than you might imagine. And they will recruit fewer still, for one, because we will no longer subsidize their recruitment in the media and schools. In the open spaces of a reborn, free America…a culturally renewed America…liberty will far out outdraw their ideology. Victimhood and nihilism will not be a part of the public school curriculum anymore. Freedom, self-reliance, even marriage-for-life, will be cool again.
Now, I’ve just taken a spade and roughed up the dirt here. Feel free to play in it and plant whatever you like.
From here on, this is an open thread…
Once we win, how do we make sure we don’t let it happen again?
