Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
It’s Time to Fight
We now face real subjugation or real resistance to true domestic enemies of our constitutional republic. It is still a cold civil war (see Kesler 2018, Klingenstein 2021) but keeping it cool requires real and effective resistance now. Thankfully, the left and their useful idiots or pilot fish GOPe enablers have lost their inhibitions and started saying the quiet part out loud. The rank hypocrisy of the new American upper class is not hidden away like the old aristocracy’s excesses. We can all see them in the social media public square.
In “Stay Home, Peons!” John Hinderacker quotes the truly fascist left’s proclamations about those who dare resist the lab coat left’s lies about COVID-19 and their vaccine/mask/social control claims.
Somewhere in America there may still be a few actual liberals. (Many would point out, of course, that American conservatives are in fact liberals in the classical sense.) But where are they? The last year and a half of covid opportunism has revealed that what we conventionally call liberals are, with perhaps a few exceptions, would-be fascists who will seize even the most feeble pretext to start issuing orders to the rest of us. Up to and including orders not to leave our houses without their permission, as Ms. Wen urged and, to name just one example, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz did.
Glenn Greenwald illustrates, with photographs and clear prose, the political and cultural elite’s vile lording over all the rest of us, reduced to the servant class:
Even with all of this deceit and manipulation, there is something uniquely disturbing — creepy even — about becoming accustomed to seeing political and cultural elites wallowing in luxury without masks, while those paid small wages to serve them in various ways are forced to keep cloth over their faces. It is a powerful symbol of the growing rot at the core of America’s cultural and social balkanization: a maskless elite attended to by a permanently faceless servant class. The country’s workers have long been faceless in a figurative sense, and now, thanks to extremely selective application of decisively unscientific COVID restrictions, that condition has become literal.
Mollie Hemingway says that it is time to really fight, and to pick our battle and tactics carefully.
For conservatism to mean anything now, it has to be about rejecting this rigged system. Don’t just say “stop.” Our duty is to not to say “stop” but then bend the knee in cowardice when the mob comes. That brings even more harm to our more vulnerable neighbors and does nothing to prevent the destruction of the country.
…It’s not enough, though, that someone fights. The fight must be smart and tactical. While we are clearly entering an era where dissidents will be required, there’s no value in secular martyrdom or being just another victim of the regime. The fight must be supplemented by prudence and strategy. Be bold and defiant, but we must also know where to aim our fire.
On the other hand, figuring out where to aim our fire is not that difficult right now. It brings to mind a quote from legendary Marine Chesty Puller: “They are in front of us, behind us, and we are flanked on both sides by an enemy that outnumbers us 29:1. They can’t get away from us now!”
It’s a target-rich environment. Now go out and pick one.
Josh Hammer calls for four specific steps in resisting the subjugation of the deplorables:
Published in Group WritingThe COVID era has revealed the extent to which our elites no longer even deign to care about a “neutral” rule of law that respects and protects all our fellow countrymen. We deplorables no longer have any time to waste in pushing back against their excesses. So [1] survey the landscape, [2] stop clinging to vestigial notions of a bygone nonpartisan legal “neutrality,” [3] strategically sue to protect our most basic rights, and [4] get off your butt and move to red states. If not now, then what are you possibly waiting for?
Someone researching the Pfizer vaccine discovered there are four separate COVID injections: one is with 10 units of COV vax material, one with 20 units, the third with 30 units and the fourth is a saline solution.
Does anyone think these celebrities would really be risking Bell’s palsy even for a few days?
Every single day, someone on social media posts a film clip of those governors and other elected officials who tout how “we must patiently remain acting safely for the benefit of one another” and who diligently wears a mask while promoting that, and then, the moment the cameras are no longer rolling, he or she have slipped off their mask.
https://ricochet.com/755268/youtube-and-facebook-please-stop-censoring/
https://ricochet.com/839102/quote-of-the-day-confucian-advice-for-policymakers-in-the-age-of-coronavirus/
Did that. The challenge is that when Blue States fail they create economic refugees who do not understand the source of the economic disaster and pad the vote totals for Progressives in Red States. Red States must vigorously protect their traditions and ideals from these one dimensional refugees. This is not dissimilar to the illegal immigration problem. It isn’t the shear numbers but the expectations and attitudes that threaten to undermine our traditional values.
Source please, @caroljoy. Thx.
Sort of make you wish you could create a five-year moratorium on transplants voting in state and local elections.
An interesting poll:
https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/COSA-National-Vaccines-Full-Report.pdf
Even a majority of Democrats in this poll are against vaccine mandates . . .
The “cold civil war” is no longer just about ideas, it is about territory. Moving to a red state is the safest bet but I don’t see how this doesn’t break up more granularly than that…red counties in blue states (or large groups or red counties in blue states) will not peacefully choose the progressive abyss.
That’s a real problem. When I moved here thirty years ago, Cape Cod was uniformly a rural and Republican part of Massachusetts. Back then, the biggest problem the towns and townspeople faced was the ever-rising tax burden from Boston. We were the only part of the state that was sending more money to Boston than we were getting.
Under Republican leadership, the Cape was thriving in every way. That, of course, attracted Democrats, who always mismanage where they live and then move out, leaving a mess behind them and going to the pretty places with low taxes.
It’s basic executive management skills–Republicans have them, Democrats don’t.
I have two steps to early strategy for red states:
1) pass laws that make your states unbearable for lefties. Go after city ordinances and local school boards. Make it a hostile environment for them. They can move to a blue state to escape it. Offer to help your blue haired neighbors pack the moving truck.
2) If your state does not have an active state guard, start lobbying your governors, Governor candidates, and legislature to reinstate (I think it’s executive purview, so legislature may be unnecessary). Encourage people who would have joined the federal army to join the state guard instead. It’s not full time and doesn’t come with the bennies, but it is far more likely to protect your family and your freedoms than the federal military.
The 2nd amendment provides the states with access to a well-regulated militia. We can’t simply be building independent and loosely organized backwoods “militia” gun clubs. We need to be organizing these at the state level.
Exactly. And not one Red State is doing this. There is no civics education public service announcement campaign, like School House Rock or Smoky Bear or the anti-littering Don’t Mess with Texas.
I’ll dust off a draft on the AZ case for a separate post.
California is one of the states with a viable state guard, but only acting as support to the California National Guard, as far as I could see a decade ago. The California State Guard web page highlights volunteer wildland firefighters backing up the professionals, with college benefits and valuable certifications in EMS and firefighting.
Right flight to a red state is not close to sufficient as a strategy. California will not abide Texas being Texas.
And this is what Californication really means: every town becomes L.A., with L.A. Murder and assault rates.
L.A. ain’t Detroit because Cali ain’t Michigan.
Redistricting is key. As long as a state legislature is solidly one party, they hold the reins. I just read an article about how New York is trying to weaken their GOP representation:
https://nypost.com/2021/09/15/dems-look-to-cut-half-of-nys-gop-house-with-gerrymandering/
Or has that all been rendered mostly irrelevant? I have gravitated more towards the “parallel structures are key” position.
More later…
Maybe official “shadow governments” in all states, including ones led by wobbly Republicans.
Republican minorites are pretty much already shadow governments . . .
But too often don’t really act that way.