On Knowing Your Enemies

Facts that are not frankly faced have a habit of stabbing us in the back. – Sir Harold Bowden

Let's face the facts:

1. The country is going to Hell.
2. So is the world beyond our shores.
3. The Left's divide et impera tactics have succeeded brilliantly.
4. So has its use of the country’s educational and entertainment systems.
5. Many persons in federal office are dedicated to nullifying the Constitution.
6. That includes the great majority of those who stridently claim to be "on our side."

There's a civil war in progress. To evade that conclusion and its logical implications takes a degree of willful blindness akin to that required to maintain -- as a number of Japanese will tell you to this day -- that Japan defeated the U.S. in World War II.

What's less clear are the battle lines and what groups are on which side.

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Before we proceed into the analytics most Liberty's Torch readers come here for, allow me to ask you a question: Which side are you on, Gentle Reader? Are you quite sure? For that matter, are you quite sure "your side" really exists, in a coherent and persistent sense?

I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut that you haven't asked yourself that question in a long time, if ever. You have a powerful sense for where you stand, even if you've never fully articulated it. Your moral conscience -- your sense for what's intrinsically right and intrinsically wrong -- is well developed and has served you faithfully over the years. Your positions on various issues flow from those things, so why imagine even for a moment that you wouldn't "know your side," or that you wouldn't be able to tell those who stand with you apart from those who stand against you?

Perhaps you're right. Perhaps your political vision is as clear and accurate as your moral conscience. Trouble is, we keep putting the levers of power into the hands of our enemies. Given that the electorate has several times elected nominally conservative executive administrations and legislative majorities, and that poll after poll has declared Americans to be fundamentally conservative, that demands an explanation.

Since the New Deal, regardless of which party has held federal hegemony, the federal government has grown monotonically larger, more intrusive, and more expensive. Republican "wave" elections have made no difference. Neither did the much-hyped Reagan Administration, despite the desire of so many conservatives to believe otherwise.

Allow me a quote from a favorite novel:

    "What of this one, this Louis Wu?"
    "For us there has been much profitable cooperation with men. Naturally we choose at least one human. Louis Gridley Wu is a proven survival type, in his casual, reckless way."
    "Casual he is, and reckless. He challenged me to single combat."
    "Would you have accepted, had not Hroth been present? Would you have harmed him?"
    "To be sent home in disgrace, having caused a major interspecies incident? But that is not the point," the kzin insisted. "Is it?"
    "Perhaps it is. Louis is alive. You are now aware that you cannot dominate him through fear. Do you believe in results?"

[Larry Niven, Ringworld]

Well, do you, Gentle Reader?

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David Limbaugh's column of today sidles up to the problem but refuses to confront it squarely:

I have long contended that the differences between tea party conservatives and the so-called establishment are far deeper than "tactics"; they also involve policy disagreements....

Let's say Republicans then win the presidency and retain control of Congress in 2016. Then what?

I would wager that many of my establishment friends will continue to advise restraint, urging us not to drastically roll back Obama's liberal policies, either because they'll be horrified about the next election or because they have really, in the end, lost their stomach for political battle and their taste for free market principles.

So far, so good, but wait: there's more!

I suspect that many of them have come to accept a large, "energetic" federal government and believe that Republicans should just accept it and instead devise original and creative yet "conservative" policy solutions within the big-government framework. In other words, we should throw in the towel on our founding principles, accept the liberal narrative that Reagan conservatism is extremism, and do the best we can within the new paradigm....

Will Republicans, if they regain power of both political branches, have the political will to begin to unravel the nightmares caused by an abandonment of our founding principles, or will they just nibble around the edges with insignificant modifications because they no longer believe in either conservative principles or their ability to convince the people that our ideas are still superior?

Limbaugh displays a remarkable resistance to the evidence in the above passage. The question isn't "Will they?" It's "How could we possibly believe that they will, given what we've seen from them up to this point?"

Republican politicians' credibility, and our credulity, should both be zeroed out.

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Americans might be more conservative than not, but when election time rolls around our behavior is much like that of rats that have been forced to run the same maze ten thousand times without respite. We continue to support persons whose conduct when in power diverges dramatically from their rhetoric. They prattle about "limited government" yet allow government to grow without limit. They orate about "Constitutional restraints," and do nothing to enforce them. Should we attend to their words, or carefully note the vectors established by their deeds?

When a more principled, more courageous individual pokes his head up above the general mass of mediocrities, the Establishment does its best to cut it off. Note the hatchet jobs that have been done to Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and most recently Chris McDaniel...all with GOP Establishment connivance and material support. Is that any way to respect Reagan's Eleventh Commandment? Doesn't it suggest that the Establishment is covertly in league with its supposed adversaries?

Even generally intelligent persons have failed to grasp this principle. Hugh Hewitt's book If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat, while it does contain some points of value, harps relentlessly on the notion that "Only majorities matter," by which Hewitt plainly means partisan majorities. But what good to freedom lovers is a GOP majority made up of the likes of Thad Cochran and John McCain? What could we expect from such a caucus other than what we've already seen: continuing collaboration with the Democrats in expanding federal power over us?

Think it over.

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The Republican Party will not act to rescue Constitutional government. It hasn't done anything about it for eighty years; why expect it to start now? Therefore, electoral politics, conveniently rigged by law and the collusion of the major media to permit only Democrats and Republicans to bid successfully for high office, is no longer of use to us. Indeed, it has become our enemies' principal tool for keeping us in subjection.

The implication should be clear. As unpleasant as it sounds, only if decent Americans tired of deceit and oppression were to boycott electoral politics completely, thus reducing national vote totals to unprecedentedly low levels, could we emphasize that the political elite has lost all mandate to govern us.

There would be consequences, of course:

1. Government worshippers would elect ever greater majorities of Democrats.
2. Those majorities would go on expanding the power, intrusiveness and expense of the federal leviathan.
3. It would become ever more important for individuals to adopt defensive tactics, whether one merely opts to reduce one's visible profile, chooses to "go Galt," or selects any alternative between the two.

If Americans devoted to freedom were to adopt this approach in sufficient numbers, Washington would be progressively enfeebled despite the Left's apparently overwhelming grip on power. But will it happen? Doubtful. Remember the rats, the maze, and the ten thousand uninterrupted repetitions. We're conditioned to believe that the system can be cleansed by the electoral mechanism. Acting against that conditioning would require more will than most persons possess.

But at the very least we can know our enemies. We can give true coloration to their statements and their deeds when given power. We can cease to deceive ourselves about who's really "on our side."

Given all the above, and all the history on which it's founded, that doesn't seem likely either. But I retain my hope. I must; we who understand and love freedom have little else.

Have a nice day.