What Will It Take?

     “The news is all bad, but it’s good for a laugh.” – Tom Paxton, “Jimmy Newman”

     How strange, to be quoting an old communist peacenik at the opening of a column he’d surely despise! But then again, the “W” in my name – the middle initial, for those too crippled by arthritis or gout to run their thumbs along the words as they read – is generally taken to stand for weird. I suppose I’ve earned the reputation.

     There’s no point to following “the news” any longer. “The news” is in your backyard. At least, it had better be...and you had better be alert to it.

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     The day before Election Day, I wrote and posted this:

A tactic that succeeds will be repeated, intensified, and emulated.

     Violence is increasing because it gets the violent ones what they want. Remember what I said in large font at the outset: A tactic that succeeds will be repeated, intensified, and emulated. Violence is apparently working for those who employ it. That is, its practitioners’ gains outweigh its costs and risks.

     Violence didn’t always succeed. Sixty years ago, it was common for an assault that took place before onlookers to be answered by counter-violence and the placement of the attacker in a jail cell: not always, but often enough, and with consequences severe enough, to hold occasions of violence to a socially endurable level. For various reasons that is no longer the case, while the prospective gains from violence remain what they were.

     Violence works whenever it’s not met by a swift defense and appropriate retribution. It worked for Lenin’s Bolsheviks and Hitler’s Brown Shirts. The lesson is not lost on those who mastermind American politics.

     I shan’t minimize the immense significance of what occurred on November 8, 2016. It might have indicated a mass awakening to the danger the Republic faced. But we still face that danger. Our nation’s internal enemies have merely resorted to more violent tactics...and those tactics are working.

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     Today at Free North Carolina, we have this:

     Americans agree with President Donald Trump's defense of Confederate monuments, and few think getting rid of the statues will lessen racial tensions, a new poll shows. The Rasmussen Reports survey released Monday found 50 percent of registered voters agree with Trump's tweet it is "sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments."

     As this is from Brock Townsend, in whom my trust is unbounded and for whom I have limitless admiration, I’m sure it’s absolutely correct. I didn’t even bother to check the links. Feel free to do so if you’re more inclined to be skeptical.

     No, my problem is with the significance of the findings. A majority of those surveyed are on the president’s side of this contretemps. Perhaps the majority is even larger than the survey suggests. (Is Richard Dawson still around? Perhaps appropriately large cash prizes would help us to find out.) Yet the monuments continue to be destroyed – in some cases, by municipal or state governments. Why?

     It’s actually quite simple:

A mobilized, militant minority always beats a passive majority.

     That’s how the Nazis took Germany. It’s how Lenin and his confreres took Russia. Why would anyone think that “it can’t happen here” -- ? Especially over something with as little immediate impact on most Americans’ lives as historical monuments?

     Do you want those monuments to stay up, Gentle Reader? Very good; I thought you might. So what are you going to do about it? Other than email your Congressman, that is.

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     The monuments under attack are, of course, only symptomatic in the larger scheme of things. The Left’s whole effort is aimed at detaching the young from the history of these United States, especially its founding principles, its seminal struggles, and the words and characters of those who articulated them.

     The “Antifa” and “Black Bloc” thugs attacking peaceable patriotic gatherings have the same end in view. There’s no way to separate a people from its history if they’re allowed to talk about it, or any element of it...especially the Founders’ emphasis on freedom of expression.

     They who believe it’s sufficient to be prepared to defend themselves are sadly mistaken. No one has ever won a war by doing nothing but playing defense. The Right must seize the initiative – go on the attack.

     The notion horrifies many decent persons. Yet it is so. Two questions then arise:

• What will finally make us rise to the occasion, if anything?
• When and where will it arrive?

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     It is not enough to stay abreast of the news and deplore the trends in progress. It is not enough to speak out against them. It is not enough to attend a rally or two in defense of freedom of expression or the preservation of historic monuments. It is not even enough to attend such rallies armed and ready for the eruption of violence. Those are all defensive measures: necessary but sadly insufficient.

     The one and only remedy is to go on the offensive.

     The first, absolutely indispensable step is infiltrating the opposition. We must learn the individual identities of those who gather to suppress us, and we must pursue them individually, just as they strive to pursue us. If they have gatherings, some of ours must be present. If they don’t, we must tap their communications and monitor them ceaselessly. The information we can gather that way is beyond price.

     Once we know who they are, it’s a short step from there to learning where they will be. That gives us what we’ll need for what must follow: charges, against both the individuals and the groups, of conspiring to violate others’ civil rights. That’s a federal criminal charge that can’t be dismissed. According to our family lawyer, a police commander who tells his subordinates to disregard such complaints is himself guilty of misfeasance – for instructing his men to commit nonfeasance — so make sure all such complaints are properly witnessed.

     Even if those charged ultimately escape prison sentences, they’ll suffer from the experience of having to defend themselves against the charges. As the saying goes, “the process is the punishment.” It might be enough to deter them all by itself.

     If the so-called forces of order prove unwilling to do their sworn duty, then it will be time to discuss more direct measures. But we’re more likely to reach that point if we continue to be passive before the assaults upon us.

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     Sound harsh? Scary? After all, you wouldn’t like to be spied upon or hounded into court to defend yourself against the weight of the criminal law. But what they’ve been doing to us is far worse...and as I wrote above, it’s getting them what they want, so we can’t expect it to stop.

     I know, I know: Who bells the cat? Obviously I can’t, being old and too well known from my writings. But some of my readers, at least, are less conspicuous.

     Nothing else will suffice to stem the tide before actual blood is shed, so give it some thought.

     UPDATE: To the pseudonymous fellow who wrote to call me a “stupid mutt:” My dear sir, if a Martian were to find the two of us standing side by side, he would undoubtedly conclude that you are a member of some much lower species...a houseplant, perhaps. Have a nice life.