There is a bit of common-man wisdom that I assume most have heard before: if you see a turtle sitting on a fence post, it is a sure thing that it did not get there on its own. If for some reason the reader’s upbringing was not as complete as mine, I will briefly explain.

Getting to the top of that fence post is beyond the native abilities of the turtle. It had to be put there by something or someone with far more abilities than the turtle itself. If he knows it or not, the turtle is just being manipulated and used even if it has (for now) a higher perch than it could have ever accomplished alone.

Personally, I have the benefit of an addition to that saying offered many years ago by a horse barn philosopher who had few matches. Upon hearing that turtle saying used to describe a local official, he pushed his dusty black hat back almost to his receding hairline, revealing a white line between that hairline and the brownish tan that covered his face. “The problem those turtles have,” he observed, “is that the only way to get down from there is to be pulled off or to just fall off hard. And another thing about those fence posts is no matter how good the view seems, they can get awfully hot and uncomfortable. But that turtle still has to try and stay on or take the fall.”

To this simple mind, there are few better examples of a turtle on a fence post than Kamala Harris. Not only did she not ascend to her present position by any great ability of her own but, she is demonstrating it daily as she tries to make a case for jumping over one more post to an even higher and (for us) dangerous perch.

But she is hardly a rare case. In fact, most of her fellow (hope that term isn’t viewed as completely sexist!) politicos are turtles. And, as is hopefully dawning on most now, so are almost all of what is considered “legacy” media. They are on their respective posts at the pleasure of the turtle handlers, and entirely for the purposes of those handlers. If you doubt it, just watch what happens to those who vary from the set agenda or narrative. It is the mostly faceless handlers who set agendas and narratives to be voiced and practiced by turtles willing to abandon genuine achievement for advancement.

The man whom Harris hopes to replace is yet another classical example. Joe Biden won a seat in the Senate at an early age as the new face who had gained the favor of the powers that be. He was now a sitting senator from a small state in which all he had to do was keep the credit card companies happy to have a lifetime position and line his pockets accordingly. This made him a malleable henchman for the Democrat Party leadership, a reliable seat that could chair different committees and follow the party directives in attacking the likes of Clarence Thomas. He even served a purpose by being Obama’s vice president despite having never been able to mount an effective campaign of his own on several tries. He filled that role and was then passed over and dismissed when a new nominee was needed for the top office. He later was deemed useful one last time when it appeared that the field of presidential hopefuls was too radical to beat Trump in 2020.

Biden outlived his usefulness before his term was up and has been pushed (or was it shoved?) aside again. Even now, as a sitting president, he is treated by all as, at best, an afterthought. He has become a liability and distraction and will be treated as such by all who used him for half a century. They hope he will take the plunder allowed him and sit quietly in the shadows from now on.

Obama may be better-spoken and smoother, but is still just a turtle who was ushered along the political path that the left has been taking for over a century in their “march through the institutions.” He not only checked a few of the “boxes” that make the liberal useful idiots feel important but was also well-versed in the Alinsky style of undermining society. He was successful enough that the left could almost taste what it would be like when history’s freest and most prosperous nation had been completely dismantled and rebuilt. He was rewarded with multimillion-dollar wealth, a few mansions scattered from the East Coast to across the Pacific, and the appearance of being the power of the party.

But don’t feel that the GOP has been left out of the turtle culture. The turtles are there to stand between “the people” and the practice of politics by the party, whichever party it might be. The isolation of the base from the establishment GOP and the frustration that resulted gave us the Reagan administration, birthed the Tea Party, and, finally (at least for now), has made Donald Trump’s rise possible. That rise has given clarity to multiple examples, but the easiest one to cite might be The Turtle himself, Mitch McConnell. Sitting atop the funds available to help elect GOP senate candidates, McConnell has regularly helped to hold back some considered more conservative in favor of those who would be compliant with his leadership in the Senate Chamber.

Falling back to the Reagan years, one might speculate that had The Gipper not chosen his VP from among the party establishment, the movement bearing his name would have continued to build on what he had worked so hard to begin.  Although the election of 1988 was a near landslide in favor of an expected “Reagan third term,” what the electorate got was a return to establishment rule which was more globalist in its worldview. The core cultural elements that support a free, self-governing society have mostly been uncomfortable topics and causes for the establishment types. But those very elements were the ones the left (and increasingly the Democrats) were targeting. They were the essentials that needed to be defended the most. For the most part, those commoners with the muddy boots and dirty shirts understood that even if they could not express it exactly in the King’s English, the Reagan “moment” was lost — but not forgotten.

I will admit that as the Trump administration began to take shape, I was concerned about who the next choice for leadership would be. There were still far too many political types who had not been sorted out by events.

As harsh as the last four years have been, they have served to accomplish a great deal of sorting. 2020 and the years since have supplied a dividing line between those who can be counted on, not just to engage but to produce results without flinching. There is a cost for not being a willing turtle. Many have paid it, and continue to. The game of politics is, in the final analysis, about power. And those who are overly concerned with protecting their fence posts can be both unpredictable and cruel. Those who handle and select turtles are even more merciless. Power is their concern, much more than people.

I have speculated before that most (if not all) good changes come from outliers. Being conservative does not mean never changing. It means having the clarity to know the fundamental things that must be preserved and continue to build a new future around them, directing us toward our better selves as we adjust to a changing world. A late, great drunken philosopher once wrote, “Change is a very most natural thing.” And it is. But so are the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.

We now have a national ticket with two candidates who have not arrived there by way of the political establishment or the political class. That may well be why turtles of all political affiliations have a distaste for them. They have gained those slots on the ticket almost entirely by connecting to those below the elite of politics and media. Power brokers in either politics or media (I am afraid I came very close to repeating myself there) cannot break that connection because they had nothing to do with it. Only the two candidates can break it if they abuse it.

Trump and Vance not only own their own fence posts but they’ve reached the top of them with staircases they built themselves. All the commoners below can climb up those steps themselves, either to join those candidates or pull them down.

And these last four years of sorting have supplied us simple plebs with a decent “bench” of political warriors, one tested and proven by hostile fire. This does not mean things will turn forever back in the direction of founding principles. It only means we have a better chance. We can be thankful for those candidates and the developing bench, but it must be remembered that the work is actually ours to do. Those others are just the implements of the moment. They will not govern perfectly. They are human with human shortcomings. We must be the ones who must hold them to the guiding North Star of Liberty. There must be others, and then others after them. They will only succeed if they represent a people determined to live in freedom. Our role is not just to hold all who govern to the high standards of Liberty, but also to raise generations who understand those standards, and are determined to live by them.

If indeed a Trump “moment” is in the making, it is our job (and duty) to see that it turns into a decade that grows into a century not centered on Trump, but on the return to constitutional liberty for all citizens. The focus of the founding principles was on enhancing and strengthening the voice of a free people as the guiding force for governmental policy. There is a responsibility for those who govern to listen, but there is one just as strong, if not more so, for those free people to make themselves heard.