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Why Have Hope?
While there’s a lot wrong with the nation right now, I remain hopeful that we will undo much of the recent damage and set the country on a better path. I think there are sound reasons to consider that a possibility, beginning with the increasingly visible failures of modern progressivism.
I’m not such an optimist that I believe in utopian solutions to our current problems. I don’t think that has ever been an option, and I think it is unrealistic to imagine that we’ll move the country to some place of enlightened liberty that it has never actually occupied. But I do think that we can move back and forth on the continuum of freedom and prosperity; that we’re largely free and prosperous today; and that we can increase both our freedom and our prosperity in the near future. I don’t think it will be easy. I do think we can do it.
I think we have our best chance of countering the enemies of liberty — the woke activists, the broken universities, the progressive institutions, the leftist bureaucracy — if we engage lots of normal Americans in the effort. By normal, I mean people who aren’t obsessed with politics and culture, but who would like to remain secure and free and who recognize absurdity when they see it. I think there are a great many such people, and that those people are our allies. We should encourage them to join other conservatives in becoming more stalwart supporters of conservative candidates and more outspoken critics of the left’s excesses.
In other words, I think we should strive to rally the troops.
To inspire enthusiasm, to motivate people to enter the fray, it helps to offer some realistic prospect of victory. That’s what I mean by hope: expressing optimism that we can oppose what sometimes seems to be a juggernaut of bad progressive ideas — and oppose it successfully.
There’s a reason that the left would like to prevent us from speaking critically about it. The left knows that it doesn’t win debates. The left knows that coverage has to be spun so that normal people don’t know what activists on the left say and do. That betrays a weakness, a weakness we on the right don’t have. We want to engage the left. We want to ask questions, challenge their assertions, expose their programs. We have the better history, the better track record, the better story. That’s our strength. That’s their weakness.
There are two very different visions of America in conflict here. It’s a serious conflict, with a lot at stake. A competent coach doesn’t go into the locker room at halftime and tell his team that they’re going to get the same drubbing in the second half than they did in the first. A competent commander doesn’t tell his men that they don’t have any hope of winning. A competent businessman doesn’t tell his staff that there’s no way they’re going to prosper because the competition is going to run rings around them. Leaders inspire confidence. They find a way to remain hopeful, and to encourage hope in others. Because without hope people stop trying, give up, go home, and don’t contribute.
Those of us who are engaged in the political and cultural debates are, whether we like it or not, leaders. We would do well to think about how we can inspire the relatively disengaged to join in and support the conservative side. We should think about how we can inspire hope.
Published in General
Your insistence on this is what people want does not make it what people want.
No one here has suggested they want this.
what is clear is that your milquetoast approach is NOT wanted. If you think there is nothing between a hot war and your approach but a dead and barren land of ideas is you having a failure of imagination.
Yeah, you say that. But then we get this kind of stuff:
I’m not saying he or she wants war — “want” was your word, Stina. But that “a lot of us are going to die” certainly sounds like someone who says he or she is ready for a hot war. (I think it’s generally just hotheaded rhetoric when we hear that kind of stuff, but I’m happy to respond to hotheaded rhetoric as well as more thoughtful stuff.)
I’m not sure what you think “my approach” is, Stina. It certainly isn’t abandoning the Constitution and the electoral process. It also isn’t sitting back politely and watching the left run roughshod over us. Feel free to tell me what you think we should be doing, and I’ll be happy to tell you whether or not I agree with you, and why. Let’s talk it out.
The point of my post is that we should speak hopefully to encourage others to join our cause, support each other, and push the Republican party to the right as we increase its membership. I don’t know what’s objectionable about that, or why it garners me the “milquetoast” epithet.
If I start talking about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots, does that make me seem more serious, somehow? I don’t think so.
Really? That’s what you took from “ideological war?” For heaven’s sake. I’m suggesting conservatives are going to have to live up to their ideals. Make sacrifices like have mom stay home with the kids rather than have their minds polluted in left dominated schools. I even said that in my original comment.
Christians probably understand metaphorical “dying” to one’s self — making sacrifices — than you give us credit for.
But, yes, I don’t rule out the possibility of martyrdom. Especially for Christians who are the Left’s #1 enemy. Just ask them.
You may want to have this in your collection, I find it useful sometimes:
WC, good, I’m glad to hear that that “a lot of us are going to die” stuff was really just turbo-charged rhetoric. That makes more sense to me.
But the point of the original post was to bring a hopeful, constructive message to normal people. Most normal people aren’t going to be encouraged to join the political party that tells them that “a lot of us are going to die.” Wouldn’t it be better to encourage them to join the party that says things like “you should be able to choose the school to which you send your kids” and “America needs inexpensive, reliable energy, not a fearful doomsday strategy of alternative energy that lines the pockets of well-connected rich people” and “it’s better for Americans already here and those who immigrate and become Americans if we control our borders and secure our country for all of us” and “despite the reality that there are a very few people with actual sexual peculiarities, the current trans craze is nonsense and is harming our children, particularly our young girls” and “it is abhorrent to teach children that skin color is an important part of who they are, after our nation has struggled for more than a century to teach exactly the opposite; this will end badly and must stop.”
As for martyrdom….
I’ll be more impressed by martyrdom when I hear of mobs of angry churchgoers showing up at school board meetings all across the country, demanding an end to the institutional racism of CRT and the faddish obsession with trans nonsense — and that schools start teaching reading and math again or these parents are going to take their kids home and teach them themselves.
When that starts trending at the same rate as silly little high school girls are making up their own pronouns, I’ll take bold words more seriously.
This would be one of those times where your mask slips, and the “Nice guy” identity goes away.
I have so many eye rolls for you and anyone incapable of understanding metaphorical language. You should be using a facepalm right now.
Dude, I’m not sure what you mean by that, but I’m not saying anything I haven’t said dozens of times before, here and elsewhere. Speak up, speak out, be willing to offend, mock the woke, and don’t back down to the bullies.
(I don’t think that’s un-nice, particularly.)
You so missed my point.
It is like speaking two different languages.
@henryracette I think what you are hearing is that we are at a stage where turning things around to salvage our Republic will take something more than talk. It will require not backing down from where we stand without accomplishing what is needed. Action is needed. Laws are being broken by elected officials, bureaucrats, and others connected to them and official legal action must be taken to stop that.. This will likely have to happen in states like Florida where there are still people positioned to act legally in such actions. There are some other places where such action can be taken but after a certain point all such actions will be deemed illegal and that is when forceful violent action will move to the forefront.
We still have a few options without violence but they are disappearing fast. An example would be for Governor Abbott to control passage of people from Mexico into Texas.
EDIT: I’m adding this as an example of action that private or public entities can take:
Companies Warn Biden Administration They May Need to Drop Fed Contractor Status Because Workers Will Not Comply With Vaccine Mandate
Does art imitate life or the reverse? For those who read police procedural fiction I offer this.
I have observed a trend, accelerating of late, to dismiss the FBI as a reliable law enforcement entity. As a matter of fact, several prominent authors are discounting several federal law enforcement components with the FBI just topping the list as the most prominent. Sometimes this trend goes so far as to make the federal agencies complicit in criminal activity.
A number of authors of these works are experienced journalists who have a wealth of actual marketplace experience with how these things work. Are we losing our best journalists to the art of writing fiction?
I think you’re badly misreading the signs of the times and your “reasonable” dialogue with the unconvinced shows how clueless you are about the enemy within. You’re definitely not going to inspire any Christians with timid talk about things with which they already agree. And you seem to think voting correctly is still the answer. I demur.
There are political prisoners being held in DC — for months! People cave to all manner of left wing bullying lest they lose their jobs, or their scholarships at Prestigious-U, or have banking services withheld for holding the “wrong” political positions. You think electing Republicans is going to solve that? I don’t.
This is what the end of a civilizational cycle looks like — decadent (murdering a million babies a year with the loosest abortion regulations in the developed world apart from communist countries) and depraved (endorsing all manner of sexual deviancy) — targeting children for indoctrination and even mutilation (transgenderism). It’s neo-paganism and it can’t possibly end in any other way than slavery without a major conversion to God. It’s binary. We’re either moving upward toward the divine, or downward toward hell.
You know what attracts young people to the Church these days? Small-o orthodoxy. Because it asks something of them. All you’re asking is a change in voting habits. I’m suggesting a change in lifestyle toward moral excellence. This republic is suited to a virtuous people, and no other. Decadent people are unsuited to self-governance.
I’m guessing you haven’t read that Michael Warren Davis piece I linked either. . . so much for an exchange of ideas.
And, btw, you’ve been a member of this community long enough that you should know I’m a woman. The avatar is kind of a giveaway.
Here’s another thing that involves more than changing just voting habits.What makes hospitals, fire departments, and police departments in big cities fire employees for not being vaccinated for Covid? I’ll say it has nothing to do with health and everything to do with federal money. I’ll listen to arguments to the contrary.
Do you have a link for that???
Who do you think the terrorists at school board meetings are? A good many of them ARE Christians.
I pulled this link out of an article on theconservativetreehouse.com.
written by Politico
Yes, I miss stuff sometimes. I can’t keep track of who says that we’re past the point where winning elections matters, that we’ve already lost, that we’re in the civilizational end times, that there’s a conspiracy to poison us all with vaccines, that we’re all going to hell in a handbasket.
If this were a liberal site I’d be hearing about how racism is tearing America apart, how cops are out murdering black kids, about how climate change was going to kill us all, and about how trans people were being murdered in the streets.
And it all sounds kind of the same to me: alarmist, over the top, panicky, and not particularly realistic.
All of which seems oddly out of place on a post the anodyne purpose of which is to encourage people to be encouraging, so that the more conservative party can prevail in elections.
I guess I simply forget, for those of you who use pseudonyms.
That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about, and I hope we see a lot more of it. (The religious aspect isn’t as important to me as the civic aspect.)
Bob, you could be right, but I don’t think so. I think we’ve hardly begun to flex our civic muscles. I’m always surprised by how few people even know what “woke” means, or have any idea how messed up the trans movement is.
The left is broad and shallow: it’s everywhere, but it’s fragile in the sense that it’s often absurd, can’t face criticism, can’t afford for people to find out what it’s doing, and is quick to consume itself over internal disagreements.
I think we are beginning to see, for the first time, a significant and growing pushback against it.
Yes.
I expect commentator wannabes to at least attempt awareness before going off half-cocked.
Right now, you are lacking in self awareness.
No one here is asking for a hot war. They are demanding better tactics and less hand-wringing from people like you.
Your interpretation of their voiced frustration is only in your head. You don’t have to keep track of anything. Glen is not asking for a hot war. He is demanding more than this. And so am I.
Like I said, I certainly miss things. Sometimes I wonder if my age is catching up with me, or if I’m trying to do too many things at once and not giving Ricochet enough attention. Or perhaps both.
Undoubtedly. And I’m probably the only person here who is.
Now that’s not quite fair. I don’t think I’m doing any hand-wringing. I’m actually doing kind of the opposite. I don’t think the end of the republic is nigh. I don’t think elections are forever tainted and corrupt. I don’t think the Republican Party is a useless relic and utter failure. I don’t think we should be talking about a new conservative party to replace it.
What I do think is that we should be speaking up more, encouraging others to join the conservative cause. I think we should be bold about it. I think we should get our kids out of the public schools if we can — even if that requires the kind of sacrifice Ms. Chauvinist was referring to earlier. I think we should act like adults and support the most conservative electable candidate in each race, even if that person sometimes disappoints us.
I actually feel pretty good about our prospects. That’s why all the gloom and doom strikes me as inappropriate, and why I keep counseling against it.
Well, I will acknowledge that you and I disagree on the point. I’ll grant you that.
I don’t know what Glen is demanding. I know he spends an awful lot of time saying demonstrably untrue things about the Republican Party. I don’t know how he thinks we might win elections without the Republican Party. Perhaps he’s explained that and I’ve missed it.
Fr. Longenecker at CRISIS Magazine (Facing the Atheism All Around Us):
I don’t know how comparable 18th Century government with 18th Century weapons is to 21st Century government with at least 20th Century weapons.
This
When I first saw that, I thought you were a dirty old man, and that was cheesecake. I didn’t know one way or the other until you appeared on Land of Confusion.
Indeed. If avatars were “accurate” it would appear that Ronald Reagan has risen from the dead and joined Ricochet.
And apparently he abandoned the 11th commandment.
That’s because you’re a male chauvinist about chauvinism. ;-)
I don’t understand. Are you saying that Ronald Reagan was a cross-dresser?