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Americans Are Hungry for the Fight
“Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time.”
— General George S. Patton, May 1944 in a speech constructed by soldiers and recorded by historian Terry Brighton.
Americans do love to fight. And when we fight, we fight to win. Right now we are in a war for the survival of a nation. And right now we are in this fight without the overt support of our elected leaders and public figures. America’s enemies are my enemies. We are in this fight against people who would rather destroy a statue of Frederick Douglass than listen to his words that became a defining moment in the fight to end slavery. This is a blatant example of erasing history to cast it in the darkness of evil from which there can be no comparison. The present is the oppressive. The past is privilege.
I will not mourn for America. This isn’t a nation of mourners; it’s a nation of fighters for freedom and liberty and the rule of law for everyone who seeks it. Democrats have fed the radical beast since the 1960s when it was useful to advance their agenda and ride a rising tide of youthful unrest and a war-weary nation. But then they realized what would happen if they stopped. Eventually the radicals would be at their doorstep, like rabid raccoons, angry when the garbage cans are locked away. The Democrats had no choice but to give in; the beasts they created were no longer content with waiting their chance at power. Now they want to take it and no amount of appeasement will spare their ire.
For most of the ‘leaders’ on the Right, the war is lost by fearing the fight. For decades, conservatives have been busy with white papers published by Washington, DC, think tanks that gladly take our donations and turn around and reduce our lives to statistics and economic numbers. Drug-riddled Middle America and gutted rust-belt cities are the cost of trade with China. The Cold Warriors who once sided with President Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II against the Evil Empire turned silent at the Chinese Communist oppressive regime, slave labor, and anti-American propaganda. We are thirsting for leaders who will defend us against radicals who are storming the gates, setting fire to our history, and mocking the rule of law.
Our institutions and our leaders failed us. Our religious leaders unmoored the churches from moral objectivism, deciding to capitulate to a self-centered culture to gain popularity. Our culture, then our politics were sent adrift. Moral relativism and a consequence-free society opened the door to the destruction of the importance of the nuclear family, community cohesion, and common values. When anything goes, chaos follows. After decades of letting the left shape the narrative through radical feminism, identity warfare, and controlling higher education, the Right mostly retreated, choosing to engage in interparty skirmishes and pouring energy into think-tanks and policy papers. The left honed their skills at targeted character assassination and overtaking the news media as a means to advance their liberal progressive agenda. When conservatives finally made feeble attempts to fight back and reach main street conservatives, the left had an iron fist around academia, major media outlets, and pop culture.
We have seen this struggle session and white-flag waving before. In the aftermath of the counterculture of the 1960s, churches such as my own Evangelical Lutheran Church caved to the demands of liberal social-justice peddlers and virtue scolds who made inclusivity demands of Protestant churches. In a vain and cowardly attempt to try and win temporary favor, church leaders caved to the demands. It was the end of the ELCA’s reason for being. If it didn’t believe in its own beliefs and Gospels, why would anyone else? And the outcome was completely foreseeable. It did nothing to attract those lost sheep looking for leadership and moral stewardship within communities. Those social justice warriors ironically asking ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ were never going to be loyal church members. They could get the same inclusivity indoctrination sermons at their coffee shop, spin class, or drag queen story hour. Their demands of inclusivity was a ruse to force the dissolution of societal norms and erase objective moral truths.
What did end up happening to church attendance and fellowship was another win for progressives: faith in organized religion dropped. Churchgoers who were looking for a strong faith community upholding traditional values and Protestant ideals turned away from a weak, inclusive ‘spirituality’ representative church. Organized religion agreed to a suicide pact but the agreement was completely one-sided.
The same is happening with cancel culture. In an attempt to shield themselves from being labeled a bigot, fascist, sexist, homophobe, or generally a hatemonger, Republicans let liberals determine the social and cultural boundaries (or lack thereof) and disengaged from the fight over language and free speech. But as soon as our political leaders and corporate business executives capitulated on any one issue, the left kept marching on like ants over fresh meat. Conservatives are left undefended from the radical’s insatiable appetite and are ourselves starved for strong leadership to stop America’s unraveling. We are waiting to fight, but we cannot do it alone. We know America is good. We believe in our Founders’ vision and our standing as the world’s best hope for freedom and liberty. We are anxious for the battle against an upside-down narrative in which victimhood and identity politics have taken the place of patriotism, free expression, and the marketplace of ideas.
Conservatives need to take unconditional, unapologetic ownership of these American ideals. The left will never be satisfied with any concessions and will not make any apologies. Rather, for the progressive left and their propagandists in the media, the only ‘good’ Republican – let alone conservative – either is out of career politics, has a gig on CNN, or is dead. We have plenty of gutless wonders roaming the halls of Congress, making empty promises in the glare of television cameras. We need more Pattons. We need more J.K. Rowlings, more of our own Bethany Mandels. Americans love to fight and we will follow a strong leader into the fire of battle for a just cause. America and our Constitutional freedoms are worth that fight.
In that same 1944 speech, General Patton said, “Every single man in the army plays a role. So don’t ever let up. Don’t ever think that your job is unimportant.” We are all owners of America’s legacy. Let us be on the side of a legacy of virtue, goodness, and freedom.
Published in General
I actually don’t think Lefties want the fight
They want to change rules so the Right can’t get on the field, or just be declared the winner.
I do agree with you that people sacrifice best when called explicitly to do so. I’ve observed that any number of times, in work in churches and schools and other civic settings. And I agree that such calls should be clear and direct.
When Jenna writes “Conservatives need to take unconditional, unapologetic ownership of these American ideals,” I think she is doing precisely that. Because our single greatest problem today, I believe, is that we have been unwilling to stand bluntly and unapologetically for the things we believe. Partly that’s out of politeness, partly that’s out of a belief that it isn’t very serious and will fade in time, and partly (mostly, I think) it’s out of fear. But regardless of the reasons, our unwillingness to assert and defend our beliefs is precisely what has allowed the left’s ludicrous yet destructive alternatives to take root and flourish.
Many of us are willing to speak up and say “incorrect” things, to irritate family members, to be looked at askance by our more liberal friends and, on occasion, endure discomfort and the occasional loss in our professional lives. I think that’s what Jenna’s phrase implies. I hope more people will step up, speak boldly, and risk the opprobrium that often results.
I think this is absolutely true. It’s a good rule of thumb that the side that doesn’t want an open debate is not comfortable having its ideas challenged — or perhaps even exposed.
Yes, but without describing the means of fighting, “unconditional, unapologetic ownership” could mean, “go in there and vote really hard for Donald Trump in November.” There’s a lot of text around those words, but not much description of exactly what we’re to do. Fighting on the beach was literal.
I think there’s more to do than speaking up. If we’re not taking our kids out of public school, we’re not serious. If we’re not running for school board, mayor, county commissioner, and on up, we’re not really sacrificing. Whatever you think of Donald Trump’s character, he gave up a pretty swank lifestyle to enter the swamp and take an ocean of abuse. And he’s running for four more years of it, and if he wins, he’s going to get it.
My family is locked into these lefty corporations destroying our country. We have Google phones and use Google Chrome. We shop on Amazon and have monthly subscriptions. We consume entertainment from Amazon, Netflix, Disney, . . . I’m working on Mr. C to extricate us from all this. Imagine if half the country did that. Imagine the job losses and economic hardship that would follow if we hollowed them out. It would hurt. Good people would suffer. Are we really up for this fight? I’m still asking sincerely.
Thank you. I appreciate what you’re saying, and that you spelled it out so clearly.
I probably have a different, and perhaps more conservative, sense of change than most people. I agree with you that we need big efforts and big wins, and as many as we can get.
But I think we’re in a cultural battle more than anything, and that the culture changes — usually — from the bottom up. It’s an emergent phenomenon, unless we choose to step back and let radicals be the only voices. Most of us will make small contributions, nudging those around us a little to the right, discouraging the leftists among us. I think, if more of us will do that, we’ll bring about the kind of restoration we want. Culture is a bell curve. We don’t need to jump it to the right. We need to shift it, and not that much.
We do it in different ways, depending on our skills and interests and situations. For me, one of the ways is to speak bluntly about things I think are foolish and yet are treated as sacred cows. So I criticize the so-called “trans” movement a lot, point out biological reality. I try to tell people about socialism and what a disaster it has been. (It’s amazing how many people really have no idea.)
And I wear the darned Trump2020 hat because I don’t want to be silenced, even though the guy drives me nuts sometimes and I often get unpleasant looks.
(And, by the way CW, I apologize for my comment about throwing in the towel, earlier. I get triggered (ahem) when I read conservatives sounding like the battle may already be lost. I’ve reread your comment and see that isn’t what you were saying when you expressed your skepticism. My error, as your subsequent comments have made clear. — H.)
Apology accepted.
It may be that only Chiefs and Jets fans know this.
I respect your position. It is very conservative. It is very rational. And it is very polite.
Yet, this is what conservatives have been doing virtually forever. But conservatives speak rationally, and socialists argue emotionally and pedantically. They are immune to common sense. And the result is that, it very certainly seems, that has brought us to a crisis that can possibly be won, perhaps one last time, with the election of Trump, against great odds; given the new voting system, designed to allow massive fraud, that many states are engaging in; and given that the Democrat party sees it now acceptable and favorable to openly lie, and demand that we conservatives speak the lie, not believing the lies, but knowing that it they are lies.
Many rain drops don’t rile the waters. But a waterfall does. Individual complains, criticisms, and arguments can and are ignored by the left’s citizenry, by those in power, and those of moderate ‘swing’ opinions. I think that interpersonal conversations, especially those done not face-to-face but on-line, are good but not particularly effective, given that they can be individually dismissed, and even can be ‘disappeared’, blocked or banned, by the few corporate carriers that don’t want the conservative word to be spread, acknowledged, or even heard.
I think that the answer is in coordinated non-violent protests that swamp streets in major cities and stand together in principle; like the riots in intensity and prominence but completely law-abiding, which will make the news broadcasts, and will encourage all conservatives to band together and give them the awareness that they are not alone. and this will put fence-sitting politicians on notice.
And, I think that it will galvanize public opinion toward reason and rationality among the undecided ‘swing’ voters. Calm, reasoned, rational private conversation has only brought us so far, while the very public irrational screaming and threatening of the left is often the dominant voice, and has gotten people cowed.
I think many of us are already doing this to one degree or another. Homeschool enrollment is through the roof where I live. People are shopping local stores and local vendors where they can, and many relationships have been strained if not completely dismantled as a result of some stands we’ve taken.
As for Netflix and Amazon etc…I don’t think disengaging from that medium is the answer, quite the contrary, we need to swarm it. I don’t want to destroy Amazon, I want conservatives who love America to write books and make movies and own the top spot on the bestseller lists. I have no love for Google, but Duck Duck Go is a fine alternative and the more content we put out there, the more it gets shared, the harder it is for the gatekeepers to ignore it. We may never conquer Hollywood, but if we stop creating art that lines up with out values then we’ve already lost that battle.
Yes, and many more of us are spending 20 to 30 to 40k per year to send our kids to universities with mandatory “inclusion” training and white privilege self-flagellation sessions. The branch of the University of Colorado I graduated from asked kids to pledge to “ally” with gays at freshman orientation. I have friends whose daughter withdrew before she even started over it. She works in the family real estate business without that coveted college degree. Doing fine.
I wasn’t suggesting we stop creating. I was recommending we stop consuming the Left’s garbage.
Respectfully, I don’t think it is. I think normal people, normal conservatives, have, for the most part, been politely silent while the craziness goes on around them. I have friends who are huge Trump fans — much more than I am — but who won’t wear their Trump hats for fear of antagonizing a relative. I post quite a bit on Facebook: I have about 900 friends, almost always conservative, and they repost a lot of what I post. But the one category of post that almost never gets reposted is the one that’s critical of the “trans” movement. It’s just a topic most people don’t seem to want to touch, even though it’s deeply stupid and, I think, deeply harmful.
I think too many conservatives are afraid… sometimes with good reason.
And no, I don’t agree that we should have protests. I think we should live our lives out loud, in plain sight, and without apology. That “without apology” part is important: it’s the critical thing in Jenna’s post, in my opinion: be conservative, state your views, and don’t apologize for believing what you believe.
The trans movement is so obviously a case of people being mistreated for a break with reality that discussing it openly, in their hearing, is literally being cruel to the mentally ill. The fact that the vultures that prey on them will vigorously defend their right to maim and butcher the sufferers while vilifying anyone with the courage to pipe up and enjoying bizarre judicial decisions in their favor. The greater the evil, the more self-righteous the evil doer.
Though knowing the social media censors, are you sure those posts are actually getting seen at all?
Polite. Afraid. Sometimes it’s a combination of both. But generally, I’ve seen conservatives are too polite to fight back. That’s probably one reason Jonah et al hate Trump so much: he’s not polite when he fights back.
There was a time when even political enemies were polite, and erudite, and intelligent and witty toward each other, from what I’ve read. Those times are gone with the Democrats. But Mitt Romney still was too polite to beat 0bama, or to even respond convincingly when insulted; re. binders of women; and Russia is not our greatest geopolitical foe. Etc.
I think we more or less agree, and we’re debating form over substance.
Wouldn’t have recommended this even ten years ago. The costs far outweigh the earning potential.
I agree, but thousands and thousands of conservative parents are doing it and paying for it. And the excuses will be along the lines, “well, my kid’s getting a STEM degree,” as if that’s some kind of shield impervious to left wing lunacy. They should talk to my astronomer nephew who earned his PhD from the University of Colorado, Peoples’ Republic of Boulder, twenty-five years ago. He went in a vegetarian, soft-left punk and came out a meat-eating, rock-ribbed conservative because of what he experienced there, it was so crazy. But, he’s one of the few with that reaction. All through his career (BU, UNH) the left wing lunacy has been infecting his field of work. He’s one of the very few who will speak openly of his conservatism, either because he’s one of the few conservatives, or the others are too cowed. We’ve lost the universities. Now what?
My daughter goes to Hillsdale, and while I may not have said it this explicitly, I wasn’t willing to pay for her to go anywhere else (her dad was softer on the matter, as always. Such a softy with his girls). I did tell her, if she was going to go for an English degree (her original intention; now pre-med) I wouldn’t trust any other English department in the country to educate her. We’re limited to a handful of decent schools. If more than five, still fewer than ten.
But, hey, as long as they graduate with earning potential, does it matter if they’ve turned away from everything we hold dear? These are questions I fear we’re not asking, and why I’m skeptical about our commitment to the fight.