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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
I’m a male chauvinist piglet.
Nice!
Just made it tonight. :-)
I’m keeping it.
As your avatar the “jolly joker” part is not visible, but maybe that doesn’t matter.
I suppose I cropped it so the image would fill the field. But Jolly Joker is the point.
“I own Schotzie Toy Company!”
For whatever it’s worth, I’m with Hank. Thanks for the post, buddy.
This is a hypothetical for you @arizonapatriot since it involves legal issues that could arise in your state and are relevant to the topic here. We have existing laws designed to control foreign access to our borders with other countries. A normal process would have those laws enforced by the executive branch of the federal government. If that is not done, suppose the Arizona state and local law enforcement does that job and suppose any court orders to affect that are not followed. Lots of law breaking going on with armed individuals in each group and this could lead to conflict. What do you think?
Suppose illegal immigrants within a given state are arrested for trespassing and held in confinement for an indefinite period without formal charges or a trial like those 400+ individuals being held in the District for ??? on Jan 6.
Bob, sorry, this issue is pretty complicated and I’d probably have to do a lengthy post to analyze it. I’m not even sure what my conclusion would be. There is the 2012 SCOTUS decision on the issue, Arizona v. United States, which generally applied preemption pretty broadly to invalidate some Arizona state laws regarding illegal immigration, even though those laws were not facially inconsistent with federal law.
If SCOTUS says the states can’t stop illegal immigration because it’s a federal matter, then Arizona and Texas et al need to just pick up the illegals at the border, and transport them to the other side of the state.
Heck, maybe transport them to SCOTUS and let SCOTUS deal with them.
It depends on the state. Texas has very little federal land on the border (basically Big Bend National Park). The rest of the Texas border is virtually all private property owned by Texans.
So the current situation is that Texas is arresting illegal immigrants for violating state trespass laws. They are not turning over those people to the border patrol.
I suspect most of AZ and CA border lands are federal land.