Winning Leads to Unity and Peace

My kids and I played team sports at a high level, and we learned so, so much. You learn how to work with people with whom you have little in common. How to work toward a common goal with people that you don’t even like all that much. How to lead, and how to follow. How to succeed, and how to fail. How you can help a team, and how you can hurt a team. You can learn so much from team sports – so much that will help you later in life.

One thing we’ve all learned is that the inevitable personality conflicts that arise from the stress of competition seem to magically disappear when you’re winning. You can have a group of people who can’t stand one another, but if they’re winning, everything is great. Until they lose. Then all those smoldering resentments and jealousies turn into insurmountable barriers. Once a team starts losing, it sometimes just tears itself apart. Coaches of losing teams try to build a cohesive team spirit. That’s important, but it’s backwards. You can’t have cohesion unless you’re winning. It doesn’t work the other way around.

America has been the wealthiest country in the world, with the largest and most dominant middle class, for a long time. Most people in America would be considered wealthy if they lived anywhere else in the world. And guess what – America has also been remarkably free of tribalism, political violence, and revolutionary conflict. If you played team sports, this is not surprising. Winning often hides underlying conflicts. Until you start losing. I think we may be reaching that point.

For generations, we’ve been teaching our kids in school that Americans are not the good guys. That America is just another imperialist empire, making money by colonizing poorer countries and destroying the environment and taking advantage of poor people around the world. And now America is failing, as it should. Some kids who are immersed in this stuff for years start to believe it. They are taught that America’s best days are behind us, and that we have little hope for a bright future.

Once we believe that we’re losing, then the smoldering resentments and jealousies that we all have move from the dark recesses of our mind to dominating our thoughts and actions. Then we go from Richard Pryor joking about racism, to Black Lives Matter burning down neighborhoods. Our previously winning team starts to tear itself apart.

Unity is important. But that’s really hard without winning.

We need leadership that reminds us of the greatness of America, and who makes clear that our primary goal is in making America great.

After that, unity will take care of itself.

If you want team unity, you’ve got to start winning.

The left's efforts to degrade America are leading to resentments, divisions, and violence. As surely as night follows day.

The left can't fundamentally transform America if we're unified. Only by sowing resentments and divisions can the left succeed. They need us to tear ourselves apart, so they can build back better into something that they would prefer.

Unity doesn't lead to success. Success leads to unity. And that unity is poison to the left.

The left understands this. And if you understand that the left understands this, then much of what they do will start to make sense. They don't need to destroy America so they can replace it with something else. They just need to start a losing streak, and we'll destroy ourselves. Then the left can replace it with something else.

Simple strategies are often the most effective.

The left doesn't need America to decide to move from individual liberty to centralized control. That won't happen, anyway. They just need us to start losing. They'll help however they can. Once we start losing, we'll destroy ourselves.

Works every time. Just ask a dead Roman.