Choose your enemies well

As my girls were growing up, I gave them lots of advice. A common recurring theme was: “It’s important to choose your friends well. But it’s much more important to choose your enemies well.” In my life in school, football, medicine, etc., I always worked hard to be tolerant of everyone. But there have been a few times when, despite my best efforts, I could no longer tolerate someone, and I ruthlessly destroyed them. And it generally turned out that I was not the only one with that view of that person, so my vicious aggression gained me lots and lots of friends. So my choice of enemies was more important than my choice of friends. This is dangerous stuff. And it should be handled with care. But that has been my experience.

Modern leftists have no apparent ideology beyond their hatred of the oppressors (defined as anyone more successful than modern leftists). They don’t even love the oppressed. They just hate the oppressors. Jealousy works. As simplistic and opportunistic as this is, it works, so long as they focus their attention on those who are not really oppressors.

Liberal women march about gay rights, waving signs and screaming slogans as they parade through Madison, Wisconsin. Or Boston, Massachusetts, or Portland, Oregon, or wherever. They’ve created a straw man, and they virtue signal by attacking it. Ok, fine. But imagine if they went to somewhere that actually limited gay rights, like Aleppo, Syria, or Cairo, Egypt. Now THAT would be a true signal of virtue – their willingness to be tortured to death, in a dark chamber away from the cameras, with no hope of improving the lot of those they pretend to care about. That would turn out poorly. Because they chose their enemies poorly. They should have stuck with white Christian Americans. And, obviously, they will. Much safer.

One reason that Ghandi and George Washington were successful in their protests against the British Crown was their good fortune in their common enemy. When the American Revolution gradually took hold, King George’s response was limited by his Christian ethics, by his parliament, and by his nation’s concept of laws over men. Even if he harbored the ruthlessness of an Islamist terrorist or a gender studies professor, he was restrained by the very culture that produced him. Imagine that war against the Imperial Japanese of the 1940s. Or the Islamist terrorists of today. It would have gone very differently.

Liberals in America and Europe are in favor of open immigration because modern leftists think that third-world immigrants will vote for modern leftists to gain more welfare payments. And then they will gratefully take their money stolen from Republicans, plant gardens, march in favor of gay rights, and join a peaceful society like good little Englishmen. Hopefully turn America into another Canada. At long last.

The fact that these immigrants are from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa does not give leftists pause, because leftists learned in school that all cultures are equal. If you find other cultures to be dangerous, that doesn’t mean that those cultures are dangerous. That simply means that you are racist.

Third-world immigrants have chosen their enemies intelligently. They understand the vulnerabilities of their target.

Modern leftists have not chosen their enemies well. They have no idea what they’re up against.

They’re starting to find out.

Although it doesn’t matter for Europe. Europe is over. It was over some time ago. It no longer matters what happens next.

It might matter for America. Trump is doing his best to preserve the country that elected him. He has his hands full.

I would say that the odds are against him. But he seems to have a genius for what I was trying to teach my kids as they were growing up: Choose your enemies well.

He understands that intuitively. And he excels at ruthlessly destroying those enemies, as I did once or twice when I reached my breaking point in years past. He has a gift for this sort of thing.

So maybe he has a chance. I don’t know. Maybe.

We should pray that he succeeds.

Those who insist on vilifying Trump are choosing their enemies poorly. They’d be better off ruled by Trump than by the most ruthless of the third-world immigrants they have imported.

If they still don’t understand that, the rest of us should pray that they never find out for sure.