As a student of the martial
art known as “Guided Chaos,” a contemporary but significantly more
sophisticated elaboration of what is better known as “World War II close
quarter combatives,” my instructor—a retired Marine Lieutenant-Colonel who, in
addition to having participated in numerous combat operations, taught both
armed and unarmed combat during his tenure in the service while fighting such
agents of evil as the Taliban—repeatedly assures his students that he is doing
nothing more or less than teaching them how to “kill the bad guys.”
To this end, Master Al,
following in the tradition of such famed military geniuses as Sun Tzu, author
of The Art of War, and the 17th century
samurai warrior, Miyamoto Musashi, is at pains to impress upon his students that striking power is in and of
itself insufficient in a fight for one’s life. Just because you have a toolbox,
Master Al has said more than once, doesn’t mean that you are a carpenter.
One thing that is essential to victory is what Master Al calls, “ruthless intent.”
To prevail over the enemy, one
must not only possess the capability to destroy him, but the willingness to do so.
Bearing this in mind, it should be
painfully obvious that Big Conservatives, i.e. those in the so-called
mainstream “conservative” media, or “the Big Con,” who are forever imploring
the members of their audiences to “fight” the left so as to prevail in the
“cultural wars,” or this “second Civil War,” are either dishonest or profoundly
inept.
Big Conservatives at least
speak as if they conceive of our contemporary politics as war by other means.
We know that the left sees matters this way. Yet Big
Conservatives, though they possess the ability—the resources in money and
influence—to fight the left, their will for doing so is sorely lacking.
Anyone
with any doubts about this should simply engage in the following
thought-experiment.
Imagine that an alien from another
planet, an alien, say, who knew nothing more than what “conservatives” and
“liberals” claim to believe, came to
Earth. It’s inarguable that upon canvassing the scene for just the
shortest periods of time, he would arrive at one of the following two
conclusions:
(1)Self-identified
conservatives cannot possibly believe what they claim to believe. The reason
for this is quite simple: Between their talk—rhetoric regarding limited or
Constitutional government; the sanctity of life; personal responsibility;
equality before the law; equality of opportunity (as
opposed to result); individual liberty;
traditional marriage; revering the Founders, etc.—and their walk—the policies
that they’ve either explicitly endorsed or permitted to be enacted—there lay an
unbridgeable chasm.
(2)Second,
self-identified conservatives are utterly ineffectual when it comes to
arresting the advances of the left.
How could our alien draw any
other inference? Lip service to the Constitution notwithstanding, both
Republican or “conservative” Presidents and Congresses, no less than their
Democratic or “progressive” counterparts, have betrayed—repeatedly and
dramatically betrayed—the vision of these United
States that the men who ratified it originally intended for the Constitution to
embody.
Consequently,
given that the federal government has been divested of its federal character
and made into precisely the sort of national behemoth that the Founders
dreaded, the Constitution is, today, all but a dead letter, murdered by leftist
ideologues, yes, but by self-avowed “conservatives” too.
Whether
it is the income tax, fiat money, socialized medicine and health care
(Medicare, Medicaid, etc.), or any number of the legions of
government-subsidized agencies, programs and sectors that exist, Big
Conservatives are as responsible as their ostensible opponents for, if not
always necessarily the creation, then at least the preservation and expansion
of these.
“Conservative”
politicians, by way of the power with which their offices have endowed them,
have directly subverted the Constitutional design, but the scribblers and
chatterers in Big Conservatism have aided and abetted them at every turn.
So-called
“affirmative action,” race and gender-based preferential treatment policies
favoring non-white minorities and women over whites and white men, are endemic,
and filicide in the womb (“abortion”) has been the law of the land since
1973. Big Conservatives have indeed voiced their objection to such
things, but their resistance has been about as timid and effective as their
resistance to “same-sex marriage” became after a handful of lawyers on the
Supreme Court “discovered” that homosexuals have a right to marry one another.
This is to say, Big Conservatives have done nothing more than proclaim
their opposition to these things. But even here, they
articulate their positions only and always in their enemies’ terms.
For example, “affirmative action” is wrong because it is “racist” and “sexist,”
but not toward the qualified whites, Asians, and men
who are discriminated against in favor of less qualified non-whites and women,
but toward the underqualified blacks and women who are its intended
beneficiaries. Or Big Conservatives will object to filicide, but not,
ultimately, because it consists in the destruction of an innocent human being
in its mother’s womb, but because it irrevocably traumatizes the mother who
kills her child, or because, insofar as black babies are disproportionately
aborted, it is “racist.”
Big
Conservatives not only stopped objecting to “same-sex marriage” as soon as the
Supreme Court issued its ruling. They say remarkably little about such
implications of trans-genderism as the abolition, in some quarters, of
gender-exclusive bathrooms. As one popular blogger recently said, it’s
laughable to think that conservatives can conserve Western Civilization; they
can’t even conserve something as rudimentary as the ladies’ room.
We could continue
endlessly. To be sure, it is a good thing that Big Conservatives call
attention to some of the outrages of the left. But while talk is
necessary, it is far, far from sufficient. Big Conservatism is an oasis
of resources in money and influence. Rush Limbaugh alone is worth
hundreds of millions of dollars, and he reaches approximately 20 million
Americans each week. If we really are in the throes of a “second Civil War,”
then it is imperative that talk radio hosts, Fox News commentators, and the
writers for “conservative” journals appropriate these resources so as to
genuinely fight, rather than incessantly whine over the partiality of their
enemies to themselves!
And make no mistakes about
it, whenever conservative media personalities identify the “double standards”
of the left, all that they are doing is crying about the fact that those who
they have declared their enemies are supporting one
another while taking advantage of every opportunity to
undermine and defeat their enemies:
conservatives.
As long as they insist upon
using “the Civil War” as their model, Big Conservatives need only bear in mind
that neither the Union nor the Confederacy would have so much as dreamt that
complaining about the other side’s partiality toward itself was either a tactic
or a strategy to victory. Similarly, Big Conservatives are not fighting anyone when they do nothing more than
whine and cry about the left’s “double standards.”
Alternatively,
since Big Conservatives purport to revere the Founders, they should ask
themselves why George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James
Madison, and the other members of the Founding generation—you know, those men
who sacrificed their very lives to fight, truly fight, the largest empire in
the world at that time—didn’t just content themselves to wax indignant over the
hypocrisies and double standards of King George.
The resources
of Big Conservatism could almost effortlessly be gathered to organize massive
rallies and demonstrations of Americans who have long since crossed their
threshold of tolerance for the anti-American predations of the left. If
the commentators of the Big Con wished, they could collaborate with one another
to engineer boycotts of anti-American corporations and products, and,
importantly, work on constructing technological, educational, and entertainment
alternatives to the forces that wish to marginalize, malign, and silence them.
There is a final thought.
That Big Conservatives aren’t interested in doing what it takes to defeat the
left can be gotten readily enough by their unequivocal refusal to so much as
hint at just the possibility that conservatives may have to use violence in defense of themselves (to say nothing
of the defense of others who fall victim to the left).
Doubtless,
violence is ugly and should be used only when necessary. But not only is there
nothing intrinsically immoral about violence; it is a moral good when it is the
means by which the prey becomes the predator and the predator the prey.
Violence
is or would be a moral good if and when an unassuming Trump supporter—an
elderly man, say, a slender woman, or a teenage boy—knocked the lights out of a
bike lock and chain-wielding Antifa or Black Lives Matter thug who was
determined to assault a “Nazi” or “white supremacist.”
That leftist street punks,
with the help of leftist media types and Democratic politicians, have been
intimidating, threatening, suppressing, and, what is most alarming,
physically beating up on those who they
perceive as conservatives is a well-known open secret. These victims, in
the vast majority of instances, are those who make it possible for Big
Conservatives to exist, for they constitute their audience(s). This being
said, it’s beyond irresponsible that Big Conservatives, ever-fearful of saying
or doing anything that could lend credence to the left’s charges against them,
won’t so much as call for their constituents to protect themselves.
Leftists have succeeded in
mainstreaming violence against their political opponents. Big
Conservatives, who effortlessly raise small fortunes for charitable causes and
sponsors and who organize cruises, speaking events, trips to Israel, and book
signings, could utilize their resources to promote self-defense training, of both the armed and
unarmed varieties, for those in their audiences. Just as Glenn Beck alone managed to hold a huge Tea Party rally in
D.C. some years ago, so too could today’s Big Conservatives assemble equally
huge street protests. Only in the latter case(s), the mood would or
should be one of righteous indignation as “Deplorables” from around the country
gathered together to denounce the unprovoked political violence of the left
while putting their opponents on notice that, from this point forward, any such
violence against peaceful conservatives would be met with swift, unrelenting
violence in response.
The left bullies and pummels upon the right as much as it does because they know that they can. Big Con radio and cable news hosts may derive a sense of self-satisfaction whenever they pat themselves on their collective shoulder for categorically refusing, on behalf of all conservatives, to exercise their right to self-defense when attacked by leftist thugs. But unless one is a pacifist—which, given their readiness to send young Americans off to wars in foreign lands, none of these Big Conservatives seems to be—this is nothing of which to be proud. And it is certainly not the path to victory in this “second Civil War” that Big Conservatives insist we are engaged.
The “ruthless intention” to
which Master Al speaks is a matter of being in it to win it, so to speak. Big
Conservatives, inasmuch as they do nothing but essentially whine that the left
dislikes them and favors itself by way of its “double standards”—all of the
while accusing leftists of being the
snowflakes—give no indication that they are interested in doing anything other
than enriching themselves.
Big Conservatism has the ability to
genuinely fight the left. It lacks the will.
Thus, the left will continue to win the
war as long as it is the only side that is intent upon fighting.
Jack
Kerwick [send
him mail] received his doctoral degree in philosophy from Temple
University. His area of specialization is ethics and political philosophy. He
is a professor of philosophy at several colleges and universities in New Jersey
and Pennsylvania. Jack blogs at Beliefnet.com: At the Intersection of Faith
& Culture.