Methods Other Than Argument

     President Trump, who has come to seem a Godsend to this beleaguered nation, delivered a rousing, pitch-perfect speech at the Mount Rushmore monument on July 3. Here’s a full transcript. The passage that struck me as most important was this one:

     These immortal words set in motion the unstoppable march of freedom. Our Founders boldly declared that we are all endowed with the same divine rights — given [to] us by our Creator in Heaven. And that which God has given us, we will allow no one, ever, to take away — ever.

     Seventeen seventy-six represented the culmination of thousands of years of western civilization and the triumph not only of spirit, but of wisdom, philosophy, and reason.

     And yet, as we meet here tonight, there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for, struggled, they bled to secure. Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.

     Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they are doing this, but some know exactly what they are doing. They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive. But no, the American people are strong and proud, and they will not allow our country, and all of its values, history, and culture, to be taken from them. (Applause.)

     One of their political weapons is “Cancel Culture” — driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America. (Applause.) This attack on our liberty, our magnificent liberty, must be stopped, and it will be stopped very quickly. We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nation’s children, end this radical assault, and preserve our beloved American way of life. (Applause.)

     In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished. It’s not going to happen to us.

     Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.

     To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol, and memory of our national heritage.

     This is a concise and entirely accurate description of the Left’s agenda and current operations. Not one word of it exaggerates in the slightest. Yet this is how the Mainstream Media commented on the speech:

     The media’s influence may have diminished these past couple of decades, but they remain capable of swaying significant numbers of people. Never forget that. Meanwhile, the “21st Century town square” of the World Wide Web is “progressively” barring access to persons of pro-freedom, pro-Christian, and pro-American sentiments. Little has been done to counter this neo-censorship. Whether anything more will be done is unclear.

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     The nation is tottering. It’s been badly shaken by rioting, wanton destruction and looting, and an unending barrage of attacks upon its founding principles, its history, and the morals and ethics of the majority of its people. However, police power is being marshaled against the violence and vandalism. In some parts of the country, private citizens are forming armed cadres to protect businesses, institutions, and objects of historical significance. Yet little has been done, to this point at least, about the ceaseless verbal attacks on American history, American principles, American institutions, and decent Americans generally...and those attacks are having more of an effect than many would care to admit.

     It has begun to seem that despite our majority status, we in the Right have tied our own hands in responding to the Left’s denunciations of our legal and political systems, assaults on our institutions, and imputations about our motives and character.

     There are many who believe that we are obliged to argue with the Left: to persuade them out of their convictions and away from their disruptions with facts and logic. Most of these persons are good-hearted souls, who deplore conflict and wish all men well. They want to believe that those attempting to tear down the country are equally good at heart, and are therefore susceptible to reason. Herein lies their fatal error.

     The convictions that underlie affiliation with the Left are not rational by our standards. To the extent that they’re sincere, they’re essentially religious, and therefore impenetrable by evidence or reasoning. The insincere ones, who merely seek power, prestige, pelf, or some combination thereof, have no convictions at all. Indeed. they’re immune to their acquisition. Yet many in the Right continue to grant them the assumption of moral integrity compatible with the precepts on which Western morality is founded.

     A phrase from Atlas Shrugged comes to mind: The sanction of the victim. By attempting to defeat our would-be destroyers by argument, we have granted, by implication, moral standing to the thrusts and those who make them.

     That standing is undeserved. Their thrusts are lies from top to bottom and first to last. Lies have no moral standing. You cannot defeat lies except by calling them out as lies and showering contempt on those who proffer them. Yet decent Americans continue to try to argue with their promulgators, a losing strategy from the very first word.

     The time has come to abandon argument.

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     What methods other than argument are available to us?

     It’s a good question, given the state of the law and the depressing left-wing colonization of major Internet institutions. Violence, for the moment, is off the table – but not necessarily so forever. However, three measures that don’t involve violence – always in the proper meaning of the word, never in the meaning attributed to it by the special snowflakes among us — have hardly even been tried:

• Unconcealed contempt;
• Open derision and mockery;
• Ostracism.

     All three of these things are quite legal, along with another that’s seldom even contemplated: refusal to hire on the grounds of political-ethical posture. (Cf. Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics.) However, they all require a hardening of mindsets and attitudes that will challenge many in the Right.

     As I’ve written before, we’re too eager to be taken as “nice guys,” even by those who would see us subjugated. Yet a willingness to be hated is essential in a combat of this sort. Besides, the Left already hates us for not kowtowing to them.

     Once the hardening of attitudes has occurred, decent Americans will discover something they desperately need to know:

The majority of those on the Left are consumed by a need for the approbation of others.
It’s how the Left’s strategists and tacticians hook them.

     A sufficient intensity of rejection, especially by better, more accomplished, and more admired persons, can counteract that attachment. As I’ve said more than once, people tend to emulate those they deem more successful – where “successful” includes success at winning the approval and admiration of others. Making it plain that our best and brightest despise those on the Left as beneath their notice – which must include refusing to argue with them as if there were something to argue – is our best chance to detoxify this poison without actually going to the flying-lead stage.

     And with that I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.