https://tennesseestar.com/2019...he-fight-is-upon-us/

Last week in a dinner speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., Princeton professor Robert George had some advice for social and religious conservatives: “You must fight.”

It was an exhortation that does him no good in the academic world. A distinguished Ivy League scholar and teacher isn’t supposed to talk about the “culture war.” George has strong connections with the established conservative world, too, which balks at the confrontational style. In my year at the James Madison Program at Princeton, which George directs, visitors included George Will, Steve Forbes, and Andrew Napolitano. But the other night was a firm declaration of resistance.

It was fantastic.

One of the people cheering at the end was William Barr, who delivered his own call to arms last month in a speech at Notre Dame. “I think we all recognize that over the past 50 years religion has been under increasing attack,” he said. Traditional believers have felt the “force, fervor, and comprehensiveness of the assault” again and again. Barr called it “organized destruction,” a deliberate campaign to destroy the religious foundations of American society.

What progressives have rosily characterized as a noble movement for equality and freedom is no such thing, Barr argued. It is a coordinated effort of academia, popular culture, mass communication, and the entertainment industry to remove faith and the faithful from the public square, forever.

It, too, was a marvelous speech. No soft rejoinders to people who want to force bakers to design same-sex cakes, no attribution of benign motives to the other side.

In the last year I have seen Tucker Carlson deliver three speeches. In the first, in St. Louis, he described his transformation from young libertarian to middle-aged social conservative who believes in God, family, and country, but in a self-mocking mode.

“I was so stupid back then,” Carlson said, “because I actually believed liberals when they professed to favor free speech, individual rights, and religious conscience” (I’m paraphrasing from memory). It was exactly what we wanted to hear—not only the commitment to a finer conservatism, but also an acknowledgment that what has counted so long as conservative inside the Beltway is a smug form of naïveté.

Carlson knows better now; he recognizes the actual character of the opposition. It has changed him. The boyish quibbler of the ’00s has become the moral force one sees every weeknight. In the third speech, which he gave at an American Greatness/New Criterion conference in Washington, D.C., last month, he admitted that there are very few places he can dine in the city and not fear an attack or something done to his food. An Antifa gang stormed his house in November 2018. But 10 seconds in Carlson’s presence tell you he isn’t going to waver.

I wonder if these figures realize how extraordinarily satisfying and innervating their statements are to people who have experienced progressivism in America as a steamroller leveling their workplaces, schools, and shopping zones for a good half-century. Did Lindsey Graham suspect that social conservative households would erupt in cheers when he finally had enough of the Kavanaugh hearings and thundered his objections? Did Donald Trump suspect in 2015 that a simple insistence on national borders would resound so loudly among Americans who regard the United States as their home, not their accidental place of residence?

How can other Republican leaders and conservative commentators remain unaware of how much social, religious, and national conservatives want them and need them to assume a fighting stance? Those of us who work in professional spaces—academia, big business, medicine, mainstream media, public schools—retreated into foxholes years ago, and we await backup.

Two years ago, after speaking to a small religious group in Atlanta, my host drove me home but not before asking how I got along with my colleagues.

“Just fine,” I answered, ”Emory is a good place, with mostly good people. Sure, they can’t understand how anyone could have supported Trump, but they never mistreat me.”

“Wait,” he interrupted, ”they don’t get it?”

“About Trump—no,” I said, “but that goes for just about any college campus you can name.”

He didn’t hesitate: “Then it’s war.”

He wasn’t excited, he wasn’t angry, just matter-of-fact. His logic was pat. If a political opponent won’t listen to you, if he considers your politics inexplicable, it isn’t so big a leap to judging you indecent, repugnant, deplorable. From there, yes, it’s war. Unless, of course, you give up before the fighting even starts, or you’ve become so accustomed to losing that you don’t even imagine that the winners despise you no matter how many times they beat you down.

This summer at a conference at a well-known university, I sat down with the head of a new institute on campus who was just as blunt. For some reason, the 2012 ticket came up, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. He offered a summary remark: “At this point, if you can’t answer yes to a basic question, nothing else counts. Doesn’t matter where you stand on taxes, foreign policy, regulations . . .” He then shook his head.

“What’s the question?” I asked.

“Are you ready to fight?”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah,” he replied with a shrug, “that’s it.”

No more compromise, no more calls for bipartisanship. Republicans have been outfoxed on that score every time. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) is retiring—good. The old liberal promises of compromise and conciliation were and are false (remember the pledge that when we get same-sex marriage we’ll be done with sex and gender issues?). Barack Obama’s reasonableness was a disguise, Joe Biden’s Scranton liberalism a pose. Obergefell was but a step in the never-ending reduction of traditional sex roles. The inclusion of minority literature and history in the curriculum during the 1970s and ’80s wasn’t to serve the ideals of diversity. It was to redefine America as a racist creation from 1619 to the present.

The Left has been making war by other means for 50 years, changing history textbooks, peddling films that mock fatherhood and faith, designing bogus studies that show pay gaps and systemic racism. But it’s been a war nonetheless, and a successful one because conservative leaders and intellectuals have failed to assess the other side. And when conservatives have identified it for what it is, as in Pat Buchanan’s prescient 1992 speech, they were made a laughingstock in the press.

No more. Awakened conservatives don’t care what ABC News says about them. They’ve learned the Alinsky tactics of the Left, and they acknowledge that Alinsky was a brilliant man. But they have also discovered that Alinsky methods fail if the target refuses to be intimidated and announces that if you continue this war we will march into battle.

As the parade of illiberal violations of civic norms continues and leftists proceed from one malicious absurdity to another (“collusion,” Michael Cohen, James Comey, Stormy Daniels, the Covington Catholic High School boys, Kavanaugh, Jussie Smollett . . .), more and more conservative leaders are gaining the adversarial confidence that liberal politicians and intellectuals have enjoyed for decades. It is a great awakening, and it’s spreading.

Great article, thanks for posting.

I think this hits at a concept us gun folks have understood for years. It’s so obvious the “gun safety” laws are all just a power grab; we’ve seen the lefts mock call for reasonable & common sense compromise for the ruse it really is. Conservatives focused on other issues have now experienced the same bait and switch by these tyrants, but it’s old hat to us.

Great article, thanks for posting. I sure as hell hope it is spreading, we’re way past the point of being decent and hoping people will get it and change. The fight is starting to amp up. I’m in.

OK, I agree with the article and it’s point completely.

PWELCH001 agrees and notes “The fight is starting to amp up. I’m in.”

What can be done by us individually, in small steps, to support this?

Signs for conservative candidates on the lawn? Bumper stickers? Donations to our side for elections?

I think (not sure about this) the left was gobsmacked in the last election, in part by the fact that the conservatives (us) weren’t so visible. They thought because they didn’t see us that we weren’t there. Or that because we were invisible we would be that way at the poles.

Let them continue their self delusion. It is better for us that way.

So, if that is (part of) the situation, where do we put our efforts to be most effective?

[/QUOTE] So, if that is (part of) the situation, where do we put our efforts to be most effective?[/QUOTE]

Being a invisible "silent majority" force is how we in America can and have changed our elected officials. Do we need to do more to spread the word. Yep, tell everyone you know what is good about our current President and what he has accomplished. Do we need to arm and act like the Democrat socialist/communist Antifa crowd ? Absolutely not. We need to fight by spreading the word that all people need to do, is to look around them and see the amount of good Trump has done even with the other side piling on with ridiculous BS over and over again. The best way I see to fight is in your house and neighborhood. We need to continue to be the voice of reason. After all "We" are the country. Getting out the vote is where we can do the most good.

quote:

Originally posted by pwelch001:
Great article, thanks for posting. I sure as hell hope it is spreading, we’re way past the point of being decent and hoping people will get it and change. The fight is starting to amp up. I’m in.

Flying Sgt, I used to volunteer my free time working for a former Congressman from Illinois who has flipped out of his mind and is now running for President against PRESIDENT Trump. Because Illinois is done as far as electing the right people, there are about 200-300 of us that previously worked for that former Congressman who are going to be working towards the re-election of PRESIDENT Trump up in Wisconsin early next year. I'm not sure where in Wisconsin but if you are interested we could always use the help. We usually do things like place campaign fliers in mail boxes, handout fliers in malls, at grocery stores etc. If you are interested, let me know and I'll give you a heads up as to where and when we will be in your neck of the woods.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bulldog7972,

what we do among ourselves is far less important than what we do do the socialists

talking and voting will not solve the problem

you can easily vote yourself IN to socialism - I don;t know anyone that was ever able to vote OUT of socialism