The Long War

I have read Ann Barnhardt's piece on Cowardice, as memorialized at the Western Rifle Shooters Association. You might want to check it out as well. To me, it seems that Ann is calling on the American people to rise up in armed rebellion, or rather, calling the American public cowards for not rising up in armed rebellion. I too have been where Ann appears to be, looking around for someone who shares our values to lead us. But that fire has been quenched by others, and I can name them, but I won't here.

We are not ready for armed rebellion. There is no public consensus that we have exhausted all other means at our disposal to satisfy our grievances, though the passage of ObamaCare is surely the intolerable act that, should the November elections fail, we can get folks to rally around. There is no public declaration of our grievances that justify armed rebellion, and we will need one. The world will have to see that we are just and righteous to go to war with our fellow citizens. Moreover, once an armed rebellion starts, the final outcome is unknowable. You lose the ability to control the outcome, which is why the Left has taken the approach they have. Oh, sure, there have been some impatient souls on the Left who have taken up arms-the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers come to mind, but their efforts had little effect. So, Ann, would you have people shattering their lives for no effect? Would you, Ann, give up your life for zero gain? I know you are courageous, that is not in question. The real question is how to we restore the Constitution, and restore a culture that could declare that men have certain unalienable rights that no government can either grant, or take away. How do we restore liberty to these United States.

Daren Jonescu yesterday had a piece in the American Thinker that deserves a fair reading entitled Conservatives Have a Secret. Go and read it. Now read it again. General George Washington did not have to win battles, he only had to not lose. Indeed, that was his strategy; to keep the army together and not lose it. There we times when the army sought a battle, but many more times when it tried to avoid them, and to force the enemy into exhausting its supplies. Gen. Washington had some other things going for him too. The enemy, the British, were in another protracted war with the French. Had they resolved their differences, the outcome in America would have been quite different. He also had the backing of the Continental Congress.

Mr. Jonescu:

Despite all of Barack Obama's hoopla about "fundamentally transforming" America, the truth of the matter is even scarier than Obama's threatening promise: the fundamental transformation has, to a large extent, already happened. Contemporary society has been gradually undermined, in the strict sense of having had its terrain booby-trapped with moral explosives, over many decades. Obama's promised transformation is merely the paperwork, writing into law what has already been accomplished in culture.

What Jonescu is saying is that we must first take back the culture. As the recent Chick-fil-a appreciation day and its counter "kiss in" shows, they are not the majority. We must determine, therefore, to enforce our standards, not by suppression of speech that may offend us, but by example. We must take back our schools, or we must opt out of our schools. We must take back the press, the institutions of higher learning, and our churches. Some of the stuff coming out of our mainstream churches today can only be described as politically correct poppycock. In order to change the culture, we must engage the culture. We must be willing to speak out, and be willing to be called horrible names. We know we are not racist, or homophobic, or islamaphobic, or xenophobic, or any other name the may call us. We have legitimate issues. The minute they begin calling names, we know that they have no way to counter our arguments. It make take time, but we know we have won.

Mr. Jonescu again:

The result of this resistance, increasingly apparent for decades, has become palpable: whereas the European left presents itself, and even sees itself, as a friend of Europe, the American left has been antagonized into presenting itself more and more openly as the enemy of America.

As many have noted, the declared goal of "fundamentally transforming" America clearly implies a basic distaste for America and Americans. Obama's "You didn't build that" is an open spit in the face to the most time-honored notion of national self-identity, the American Dream; Nancy Pelosi's "Are you serious?" when asked where Congress gets the constitutional authority to force citizens to purchase health insurance displays an open disregard for the principle of limited government; the media's knee-jerk search for law-abiding Tea Partiers behind every act of mass murder reveals the left's hatred of people who care about their freedom.

These revelations -- the progressives showing their true colors -- are the direct result of decades of conservative resistance. The statist left, having won the day everywhere else, has become flustered and furious at its inability to seal the deal in America. Thanks to conservative dams, the progressive current has, as Nietzsche whispered, gathered strength and become more "vehement." This strength and this vehemence have manifested themselves in angry, careless lurches, wild punches that expose progressives and their real agenda more fully than they would ever have wished to expose themselves.

Glenn Beck yesterday mocked the Senate Majority Leader for his transparent lies on the Senate floor about Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Glenn had anonymous callers telling him various lies about Senator Reed, then telling them to Pat and Stu, who of course were primed to play along. They called for Senator Reed to prove the allegations weren't true. Now, I have no love of Mitt Romney's policies, feeling that he has more in common with the Left than with conservative Americans, but they are creating a sympathy vote for the guy. In desperately trying to smear him, rather than honestly debating his policy prescriptions, they are pushing the American public his way. In attacking the Catholic Church, as HHS has done with their ruling on abortaficients and contraceptives, in attacking Chick-fil-a as the gay left has done, in saying to small business owners "you didn't build that!" the Left keeps ripping away at its mask, rather like the Terminator ripping away its skin, and letting the public see the ugly machine beneath.

It has taken the Left 100 years to get to this point. But people are finally waking up.  We must now go on the march to retake the institutions, and replace the people manning the foundations, the government bureaucracies, and our elected officials with people that understand, and respect the relationship Americans have traditionally had with their government.  This is the long war, the culture war, and probably will remain a cold war.  Get used to it, and engage.

Update: In today's American Thinker there is an article on Glenn Beck's Restoring Love event. Beck is another who has advocated that if we want to change the trajectory of our country, we first need to change our culture. To change our culture, we need to change ourselves.  Go check it out.