Do conservatives have the patience for the long march?
I wonder.
It’s not that conservatives lack courage. But from the evidence I see around the blogosphere, many would rather throw up their hands and say that it’s already over, so let it all go to pot and wait for a shooting war which they think they might win. My response is “dream on”—about the “winning” part, that is. This isn’t 1776, and the weaponry of the opponents they would be facing has changed, as well as the basic values of the American people.
Some conservatives are thinking that letting liberalism play out will lead to an apocalyptic collapse, followed by a period of chaos and regrouping, ending in a rebirth of liberty. To me, that process is more likely to end in tyranny of one sort or another, or continuing anarchy.
But what of fighting what commenter “Eric” calls the “activist war”? Or embarking on a serious endeavor at the long march to take back our cultural institutions, such as the educational one I discuss in the comments section here? Does it take too much patience and organization, without enough glory? Is is just too hard, and too far gone in the other direction?
Of course, the two approaches aren’t mutually exclusive. If the long march fails, there’s always the apocalypse.
[NOTE: As I think I mentioned the other day, I have just ordered Rules for Radical Conservatives: Beating the Left at Its Own Game to Take Back America from Amazon. That’s not an informed recommendation; I have no knowledge of the author, and no idea whether it’s good or not. Let’s just say it sounds very interesting—as does Take No Prisoners: The Battle Plan for Defeating the Left. I haven’t yet read it either, but it’s by an author I do heartily recommend.
Here’s an excerpt from a review of the latter book from one of Amazon’s customers:
A must read for every conservative aspiring political actor, adviser, counselor. Mr Horowitz examines the reasons for conservatives’ inbred reluctance to engage in the rough and tumble of successful political gain, and advises specific ways to overcome a politeness natural to the conservative mind.
Horowitz is probably the person on the right who is most familiar with the mindset and tactics of the activist left, having been an integral part of it for years.]
Activist game (the only social political game there is), actually, but the underlying idea of “activist war” would be the same – it’s a competition. The kind of real-world competition where whether you win or lose matters more than how you play the game.
You can fault the Left for a lot, but you can’t fault them as competitors.
There are only a few of us real men left…who, regardless of the ideal they dreamed, remember that freedom to try and fail, comes first….
thanks to feminism, you must look to the wkmen to save us or reverse the course, as we are here for lysistrada…we have been stripped of station, family, purpose, and discarded as the source of their ills….twas their votes that decide, we cant even argue another side without losing what little we havr…
if you read the daily news you may realize that the ladettes have brought us to the brInk of nhclear wsr….with the psper pointing out that those stockpiles that were to be destroyed, havent been
how you gonna motivate the proginy of this mass who have no purpose, are oit of shape, and cant operate the equipment… ladies line up and multitask your wsy out. i already am sacrificing my son and lsst of my line…
We view ourselves on the eve of battle. We are nerved for the contest, and must conquer or perish. It is vain to look for present aid: none is at hand. We must now act or abandon all hope! Rally to the standard, and be no longer the scoff of mercenary tongues! Be men, be free men, that your children may bless their father’s name. – Sam Houston
“Do conservatives have the patience for the long march?”
In a word, NO.
Don’t be such a silly-willy.
Eric:
Interesting that in my mind I somehow converted your “game” into “war.”
I must be getting a bit impatient myself.
David Kahane is the pen name of PJ Media columnist Michael Walsh.
Let’s recognize what the long war means for conservatives that it doesn’t mean for liberals.
Sacrifice.
Liberals are funded, preferred and coddled by our government. It’s not a “war” to them but a living.
Conservative activism isn’t funded in the all so many ways as in Obamaland. Conservatives must sacrifice time from career, family, exercise, etc. No wonder many prefer an all out war where the issue can be decided and then we can return to life’s real issues and challenges.
I applaud and support the activism of institutions like Hillsdale College. There’s somebody doing something!
It is a time for sacrifice; a time to educate, organize and endure. If it’s just that, endure, then we’ll be here when the disgust and agonies of the misled and defrauded manifest.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.–WBY
Neo,
Like I said, the underlying idea is not off the mark. Perhaps you had in mind my recent comments to Ymarsakar where I said, war is politics by other means and activism is war by political means, and the mindset of activism and war differ in degree, not kind, per setting.
There’s description and diagnosis, which are necessary and you’re good at, but the next, exigent steps are prescription and real-world cure.
I said this under the prior thread you mentioned the book, but I’ll repeat:
Based on just the description at the amazon website, it’s a set of tools worth having, but it’s not the whole activist workshop.
Add organizing manuals like,
http://doingdemocracy.com/
Look at recent examples, such as the Ivy League ROTC campaign, particularly at Columbia, where a student-led movement with alumni and faculty competed with the Left and won,
http://advocatesforrotc.org/
Perhaps Horowitz will have broader coverage in his book.
This can work only if it’s collective all-in, first, non-stop, and always, by the people of the Right. It won’t work if it merely transfers the inadequate electoral mindset where supporting favored GOP candidates is considered enough. While dynamic leaders are always necessary practically, a competitive full-spectrum activist social movement requires the people switched on in revolution.
waitforit: “Conservatives must sacrifice time from career, family, exercise, etc”
There are practical reasons that movements often reify first on campus with students, sometimes not always guided by professors.
Left activists are people, too, with human constraints. What they have as a movement, they’ve built organically over time as competitors. Which means anything the Left has achieved the Right can do, too. Activism is human endeavor, nuts and bolts method.
Don’t cargo cult the Left – adapt, innovate, do what works. Compete.
I am of the opinion that the battle between left and right, at least in America, is a see saw affair. The left have been better at tilting the field in their favor over the last decade and have succeeded in assembling a motley coalition of special interest groups to win elections. However, the real battlefield imo is in the state houses. A majority of states have repub governors, majorities in at least one chamber of the legislature, and by no coincidence the states in the top ten economically have repubs controling state governments.
The more conservative side of the spectrum squandered the first 6 years of Dubya’s presidency. They acted like dem lite by expanding the federal government which results in growing deficits. You can’t win a ‘long march’ by acting like dem lite.
I certainly do not want another civil war, although me and mine are as ready as we can be should that occur. I also believe that economic collapse would have be so dire as to render DC inoperable or it would result in a dictatorship. My ‘activism’ is rather meager, but I am knocking on doors for Joni Ernst. Iowa needs 2 repub senators.
I think that the “long march” plays right into a leftist mentality. It is truly a part of their life’s calling. Conservatives, by definition are going to be individualists… who else would so value liberty, and freedom from government intervention?
The point was brought home to me last spring in a faculty meeting. I don’t even remember the arcane academic point that was being discussed, but people were talking about a “message”. Interestingly, one of our more radical faculty brought up the point that whenever he does a radio interview, etc (he’s not a national figure, but more local) he always check with the national “big guys” to make sure he doesn’t deviate from the current left “talking points”. He said it was important that everyone is on the same page. I was floored. What sort of person would do that? I can’t imagine any conservative person checking with the RNC or the Heritage Foundation before they did a 2 minute interview on a local radio show. These people (leftists) are way beyond what we would even imagine in their dedication and coordination.
In war, one uses the maximum firepower at one’s disposal to take out the enemy in the shortest amount of time. “Long marches” and various other “soft uses of power” aren’t warfare. It’s what people do when they can’t make war yet or can’t win one.
But the Left’s not going to allow you to do whatever you want, while you take the long road. The Left’s march only worked because people let them do whatever the Left wanted, while average citizens stuck their heads in the sand thinking the tsunami will pass em by. The Left will use Active Counter Measures against people, and that will make the long march into a dead march. America wasn’t at war with the Left, so the Left could afford to play games. Since the Left is now powerful enough to declare war, people can no longer use the same tricks. They don’t have the same luxuries or the same strategic time.
The Left isn’t scared of activists, any more than Iran is. They crush them, as they intended to originally. The Left is scared of only one thing, a power higher than them, and if it isn’t God, then it is at least Death.
I do not believe that conservatives can ‘win’ — ie prevail by using the same mechanism as the statists — the Left.
One starting point has to be the matter of endowments.
Lost for the most part: conservatives have been entirely frustrated on their death beds by not being able to bequeath their estates to like minded souls. From (Henry) Ford to (John D.) MacArthur and at all points in between, statists have been able to jump into the management of such estates.
This happens even when the benefactor is explicit in his desire to NOT see such an event happen.
I propose that a master non-profit corporation be established with an exclusive remit: it’s to provide a bench from which conservative estates can draw talent — board members in waiting.
Such an entity must select against statists — of all stripes.
Because of the wholesale corruption of academe, holding ivory tower parchments is not to be determinative for candidacy.
&&&
It’s not as if Liberty has no advocates. It’s just that those advocates are cut off at the wallet. They have no home in big government and big academe.
Soros is a case in anti-point. He provides a deep bench of Leftists, Cronyists, and kept agents of influence. Don’t tell me that you think he’s getting his investment insight based upon his brilliance. He’s got government officials on his rollodex. They let him know when interest rate policies are shifting. That’s quite enough for his plays. (He’s a one-trick pony: his only bet is when a currency is going to take a tumble.)
Until this funding angle is solved, Conservatives can never attain critical mass.
Beyond that, there’s the matter of the opfor jamming your bench with ringers.
This is seen all the time with ‘concern trolls’ and the like all across the blogosphere.
Hence, an organization dedicated to constant quality control is required.
Having more than one would provide benefactors with the ability to salt board management with the kind of conservative activists America needs.
Then wealthy benefactors would be able to deny Leftists any round about entries into control — by merely stipulating that any board member/ management player has to continuously be in good standing with XXXX; YYYY; ZZZZZ.
Because the IRS is fulsomely corrupted, I expect that legislation (circa 2017) will have to be passed to thwart the IRS from thwarting conservative, liberty oriented non-profits.
I also expect that some extra statutes are going to be required to explicitly circumscribe the Fifth Amendment for Official Acts committed by an IRS official.
Namely, IRS actions are not like any other in the legal universe. That in such matters no official can duck behind the Fifth in testimony before Congress. This must be so because the impact of such personal decisions is so epic — in effect making law by (private) writ — that anyone crossing the line is taking the authority of Congress away from the people. It’s a most unusual crime.
This may end up requiring a Constitutional Amendment.
Further strictures against divulging medical details — which are now being vectored to the IRS — also require polishing up the Constitution.
In my opinion, 0-care — as it stands — up ends so much of the US Constitution that both will have to be amended.
@@@
Marching through the institutions figures to be too slow. Further, the opfor is already at the gates. Pocket book voting will keep things on the status quo — until the cliff is reached.
Examination of other end-game societies is telling: there is absolutely no swerving before the cliff.
@@@
America needs a Hari Seldon.
For the Mule is certainly upon us.
http://www.amazon.com/Second-Foundation-Novels-Isaac-Asimov/dp/0553293362
Barry Soetoro = Mule
It’s a 1:1 mapping.
&&&
I wondered why Bibi halted the drive against Hamas.
Then I reasoned that Bibi has received intel on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
It’s high time that the media pull off Gaza and go hammer and tongs on the Donbas.
BTW, it appears that Putin wants to move as far west as Romania, nothing less will do.
And with this, the Mule has reversed the Cold War and gutted NATO.
Nothing to see here, move along, move along.
adapt, innovate, do what works. Compete.
In warfare, it’s adapt, think outside the box, kill more enemies with less resources and manpower than expected.
It’s not about competing with dead corpses on the enemy’s side.
If activism is a veneer for warfare, that’s one thing. That’s the Left’s philosophy and strategy. But can American patriots truly act in the interests of pursuing warfare by pretending to “compete”?
Blert, it’s funny you mention Seldon, because he would have had a psychological defense against’s Hussein’s hypnotic speech techniques used to brainwash people.
Until this funding angle is solved, Conservatives can never attain critical mass.
Logistics and funding is generally what the amateurs fail in, all the time. Logistics is more important than strategy. Strategy more important than tactics. But since tactics is the spark and the excitement, most people pay attention to it.
Rules for Conservative Radicals is excellent, although I’m not sure many conservatives will be able to embrace the Left’s tactics as thoroughly as Mr. Walsh recommends.
“It is a time for sacrifice; a time to educate, organize and endure.”
Educate – that’s my particular forte, because my talent and interest is in writing. There are other writers – in various genres – who are doing their darnedest to educate through the medium of their books. Fiction, mostly – on the grounds that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar – and that it is a relatively simple matter to write an interesting and entertaining novel with neoconservative, or libertarian themes. Sarah Hoyt is one of those – and so are a lot of her writer-friends. She regularly posts at PJM and at her own blog, According to Hoyt.
So am I, although my interest is historical, rather than science fiction or fantasy. Round and about in 2006, I began to have a feeling – rather, more of a near-religious conviction – that hard times were coming, and that we as Americans would have to remember who we are. We would have to recover our history, remember that we were decent, neighborly and optimistic people. We would have to set aside all the ‘cr*p we learned in high school’ (to quote Simon and Garfunkle) and reclaim our United States as the bold political experiment that it was; a system of political governance by the people and for the people, against all odds and the depressing burden of history which more usually has a small elite class squatting at the top, dictating to the lesser orders.
Despair is a sin, remember. And call to mind, 1 Kings, 19:18 – “Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.”
It has become my most favorite Bible verse these days. I have not nor ever will bow to Baal.
Ymarsakar,
Of course it’s going to be hard. It’s competition. And they’re proven-superior competitors who defeat the enemy. Whatever opaqueness they have in their beliefs, they are very clear about the competition.
But they can be beat in the activist game; like I said, it’s competition.
War is about gaining the dominant control necessary to define (impose) the peace with your preferred terms, though in that level of competition, killing is necessarily a means to that end.
Activism is also about gaining the dominant control – across the spectrum, not just with electoral politics – necessary to define society.
They’re on the same continuum. The activist game can and does escalate to war.
Gavin: “I’m not sure many conservatives will be able to embrace the Left’s tactics as thoroughly as Mr. Walsh recommends.”
The priority is do what’s necessary, do what works to compete and win.
That doesn’t necessarily require – though it might – adoption of the Left’s jagged tactics whole and unchanged. At least know them. If they prove necessary to win, then do what you have to do to win. But like I said, don’t cargo cult the Left. Adapt, innovate, and do what works.
A reason I like citing the recent example of the Ivy League ROTC campaign is the advocates – as far as I know – did not resort to the Left’s jagged tactics, though the campus Left deployed the typical jagged tactics against the Ivy ROTC advocates.
And in fact, the Ivy ROTC advocates lost before they won.
Yet the Ivy ROTC advocates used defeat to learn and evolve, and won by tenaciously, aggressively, and intelligently campaigning while adapting other tools from the activist workshop. That’s not to say the Ivy ROTC advocacy model is a magic bullet – it’s not – but it does show that once the activist game is engaged in earnest, the reality of the competition is not the same as the prospect.
What is true is that competing in earnest is always a prerequisite for winning the game.
Some excellent points made above.
I am not sanguine about our chances of electing a conservative President in 2016 but if it happens it will not be because of our ability to persuade. If it happens, it will be from a reality that confronts the public, that cannot be denied. Reality will arrive, in one form or another for the left’s ‘solutions’ and policies, both foreign and domestic, leave no other possibility.
Whether that reality will arrive before 2016, only time will tell.
Europe is our future under the democrats and Europe faces three inescapable consequences of its socialist, pacifist policies; fiscal collapse, demographic collapse and/or annexation.
Letting liberalism play out will lead to an apocalyptic collapse, followed by a period of chaos and ending in tyranny. All democracies suffer that fate, as we shall, if we continue to abandon the safeguards of a Representative Republic and Constitutional checks and balances.
Whether the reality of tyranny awakens a sufficient majority of the public to create a rebirth of liberty it at best problematic. John Adams thought it impossible.
IMO, Ludwig von Mises had the right of it, “[flawed] Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments. They must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe…”
I have reluctantly concluded that, without a very heavy dose of reality, it is too late to avoid that probability, given all the many factors that we have here discussed, ad infinitum. Demographics alone make that future outcome certain without some great catastrophe such as fiscal collapse or terrorist attacks, creating a change in the current paradigm.
IMO, the rot is simply too deep; Student Petition: Have Gun Owners Executed In Concentration Camps
The leftist memes that have dominated our culture are being constantly reinforced by academia and the mass media. The left is and has been using our very cultural institutions and liberties against our social fabric and the evidence is legion that it is working. We simply lack the political leverage needed to, on our own, correct our ship of state’s course before reaching the cliff’s edge that is approaching.
Even should we elect a conservative President in 2016 and possess a Congressional majority, what evidence is there that Boehner and McConnell will back the needed reforms in the face of the political firestorm (fed by the MSM) that will erupt? And if they lack the will and cave, as they surely will, it will be just another delay, just as Reagan’s tenure was, in America’s slow march to the gallows.
I understand the valid point that things may change and pray that they do but hope is a prayer not a strategy.
The applicable portion of Proverbs 29:18 still applies; “Where there is no vision, the people perish”
And therein lies the heart of the problem, which is not the left and their machinations but a people who can only see and listen through the filters of their indoctrination.
No movement will turn this behemoth in time to save the ship from the rocks ahead. Reality is the only force capable of shattering their bonds.
What do the statists want? More government and the power it provides. Some want it just because power is intoxicating. Others because they have utopian dreams that can only be accomplished through the use of state power. Thus, they are always attuned to moving toward the goal of control of the government and an ever larger government.
Conservatives see government as useful for national defense, foreign affairs, and regulation of interstate commerce. Conservatives want to create, build, serve, and be left alone by the government. Thus, conservatives don’t naturally gravitate toward those activities that would block the statists. We don’t want to be bureaucrats, teachers, and union officers. We have more important things to do than try to regulate everybody and everything.
IMO, what will bring the statists to their knees is their inability to understand that the government has no money. Too much government and too much national debt will eventually bankrupt the country. I’m not saying it’s going to happen soon. It may take another twenty-five years, even longer.
The government produces nothing of economic value. A military, State Department, HHS, Homeland Security, Agriculture, Education, Energy, EPA, etc. spend money that comes only from the products of the economy. Except for that which is borrowed – now about 1/3 of the spending. It cannot continue. If conservatives can’t change the tide of statism, arithmetic will.
That said, when you read Niall Ferguson’s book, “The Ascent of Money,” you gain an understanding of how many, many nations have gone bust in the past. Some never recover, but some do and go on to better things. In those countries that recover eventually the conservative philosophy regains the upper hand, but it never lasts. We are witnessing a drama that has been played out many times in history. We may be able to slow it down. It’s certainly worth trying to slow it down, if only for the sake of our children. Who knows, maybe enough LIVs will suddenly become numerate to change the course. What the statists are doing now, so nakedly and open, could be their downfall. It only takes 5% of the LIVs to change their votes. Let us hope the anti-statist vote will turn out in November. Holding both houses of Congress would change many things.
GB, your link to the student petition is kaput.
http://www.bizpacreview.com/2014/02/04/brain-dead-on-campus-students-sign-petition-to-execute-gun-owners-98679
Fixed
Good posts GB and JJ. The herd of elephants in the room is our, and the global, unimaginable level of debt and unfunded liabilities. Then there is the toxic rot that infests all central banks and peripheral banks such as JPMorgan, and all the rest all around the globe. This is true of most state and local governments here and abroad, and in the private sector there are few beyond the very wealthy who are not deeply in debt and staying afloat on easy credit. Easy credit has a shelf life.
No one can accurately predict when the Potemkin global economy will collapse; but as the end nears there will be war. Regional war or global war, I do not know, but those who would be masters will be more than willing to slaughter billions in order to stay on the tiger’s back.
People who have no realistic plan tend to believe in apocalypse, and they tent to believe that the post-apocalyptic world will be more to their liking. Conservatives have no realistic strategy, and they lack the numbers to win a Presidential election. (The GOP has only carried popular vote once since 1989, and there were some unusual circumstances involved in that one.) Having lost the culture war, some conservatives hope they might win a shooting war, but like the Japanese Kamikazes, this is the strategy of losers after they have lost.
Years ago I read an essay by Douglas Southall Freeman called Leadership in the Enforced Defensive. It was about command when the war is going badly. It was actually a lecture that he gave at the Army War College back in the 1930s. Conservatives are now on the enforced defensive. To turn things round, we must first survive long enough to persuade our countrymen that we can do better then the people in charge now. It’s important that our leaders not be seen as desperate, angry, or reckless, but as statesmen, and they must project an aura of statesman ship even while being lied about.
Bush2 carried the popular vote in 2004. Unfortunately that victory was squandered by 6 years of total gop control acting like dem lite. The gop can not survive by offering no real alternative to the dems, governing like dem lite is not the ‘long march’. Many seem to think community organizing to control the narrative is the way to advance the agenda, but the msm (the real enemy) will always block any attempt to control the narrative. Likewise, electing repubs who function as dem lite is a dead end street. Although I always vote repub.
It’s competition.
The Left is out to destroy you. Do you think you can still compete with them while you’re dead? They don’t. That’s why they are risking as many of their assets as they are. They could just play possum and pretend they were competing, as they did for the last century and a half. But now they aren’t even pretending what their real goals of domination are.
And part of why the Left is mobilizing their strategic assets for full war and slave empire, is because they know their enemies lack the will to fight a war. They know it. They smell it like dogs smell fear. That’s why they are willing to risk as many assets as they can. That’s why they aren’t trying to cover up the IRS’ involvement or attempt to keep that asset as a sleeper cell, unknown to the population at large. They are fine with outing their assets and infiltration teams, that’s because for them this is the End Game.
Use it or Lose it.
Bellarion The Fortunate
You’re one of those people who think outcomes are predetermined by some intellectual armchairing a war they have never and will never fight in.
It’s called losing by lacking a Spine and a Will. Those that cannot see the possibility of victory, will not win for their fate was sealed the moment they doubted themselves. They no longer knew themselves.
Bellarion…
Caesar was caught in Greece by Pompey the Great.
Pompey had 10 legions, the $$$ and the position.
Caesar was trapped.
The result: Pompey, no slouch in martial abilities, was crushed.
@@@
And we all remember King Henry V.
@@@
The fact is that highly motivated, properly led souls can achieve astonishing things against the (armchair) odds.
Absolutely no-one bet on Washington to win, circa 1777. Exception: his men.
@@@
The math is simple: the opfor is larded to the hilt with highly dependent, low information voters, who have no sense of history, culture, or much else. They are peons of the Federal plantation, bounded by the video reality of the MSM.
Should the inevitable disruption occur, they will ‘Ferguson’ their own cribs.
All of the real economic power is held by Conservative thinkers. Exception: Crony capitalists feeding at the Federal trough.
%%%
Jerry Brown is inviting in the southern world. That tide will ebb and reverse the moment that the $$$$ dries up.
I give you Detroit.
The Democrat voting bloc is unassailable. It has also run out of money. That’s doubly impressive since Barry Soetoro keeps shunting Federal largesse up that way.
Too late!
SGT Mom,Ive been thinking lately there needs to be some outlet to remind people of the technological advances of Western Civilization in the last 500 years, with of course an emphasis on US inventors and scientist. Western Society -its finer points- are worth saving and has proven to be superior at innovation. The kids do not necessarily know this. If someone could run little cartoon ads on TV, like the “I’m just a bill…sitting here on capital hill” to reach the kids. Ive been hoping Rush and his time traveling horse book series would do one on the American innovators!
Sure the see-saw can be tilted the other way.
Just find another leader. Like Reagan.
@ blert
I understand that an outnumbered force can fight and win on a battlefield (Though they are less likely to do so in an election) I am not advocating giving up, or despair, nor did Freeman, who pointed out that part of surviving and winning on the enforced defensive was sheer courage, and faith, and belief in a power higher than yourself.
One of the criticisms I will make of what passes for Republican leadership these days is that they have no grasp of where to fight, and where to yield ground. Amnesty is hugely unpopular, for example, and the issue has now become existential for middle class voters. And yet even now there are Republican “leaders” who do not want to fight on this winning issue, and who would pass amnesty in a heartbeat if only they could figure out how to do it without being held accountable at the nest election. On the other hand, the government shutdown was an act of folly.
Remember that the Long March was itself a case of the successful enforced defensive. The Communists conducted a 6,000 mile retreat, and lived to fight another day. In so doing they set the stage for a victory that would see the creation of the most successful of Communist slave states (And the deaths of 70,000,0000 people, give or take. Well that’s the sort of thing that happens when the Communists win)
Remember too that when defeated at New York, George Washington retreated all the way across New York and Pennsylvania before he was able to turn and attack at Trenton and Princeton, and save the Revolution. Surviving and winning on the enforced defensive means being smarter than the other guy, as well as more tenacious.
Finally, I not think outcomes are predetermined. To quote Lawrence of Arabia, nothing is written. But if we want to write the future, we’re going to have to be considerably smarter than we have been.
I am not advocating giving up, or despair, nor did Freeman, who pointed out that part of surviving and winning on the enforced defensive was sheer courage, and faith, and belief in a power higher than yourself.
You just want to do your preferred tactics, like any solo player in a ball game, and to do that, you need to convince the rest of the audience that their strategic options are zero or limited.
I’ve seen this play before, but that’s not how wars are won. People don’t pick tactics based upon their personal preference and likes. Because if they did, they end up dead or predictable.
Pray and there will be a Joan of Arc. Pray and there will be a Churchill, a Reagan, a Judas Maccabeus, a Charles Martel. Pray and there will be a George Washington.
If we don’t want to do the former you will not get the latter.
Period.
Bellarion: And the 7:15am is meant with all the patronizing she can summon. The wagging fingers of the 7th Grade Hall Monitor remain within them forever. Ask the ones on nearly every condo-board in the country.
This post made me wonder. I’ve long believed liberalism is rooted in laziness. So how have liberals succeeded so grandly? The answer is that journalists have been lazy, people vote based on feelings and a detailed analysis on topics are few. A look at any topic you see laziness.
So why would Warren Buffet and many other hard working rich liberals not understand that what they worked for would mean nothing? How could they even guarantee their safety?
Seems to me I’d work to educate people of the value of personal responsibility, hard work, property rights, national security. … conservatism.
I think the key to success is conservatives appealing to these people who live in a bubble.
I’ve been dismayed at the percentage of tech people who are liberals. I thought. … how could that be and aren’t tech people logical like myself? (I’ve been in computers for 26 years). The same thing happens in tech. They live in a bubble and vote with feeling. My boss mentioned teabaggers and i almost lost it. I kept my cool and nodded slightly. The man makes over $100k per year and a) doesn’t think we are taxed enough already b) believes we are extreme – i didn’t ask him extreme in what way. I’ve learned that lesson. Never question a lazy person if they are your boss.
And why is he so threatened by the tea party? Why is this man who served 6 years in the Navy, worked in fast food when he was young, been in computers for over 25 years different from me? I did all the things he did including the Navy and worked at a restaurant.
I completely understand that for a free market system to work and a representative republic, the lawmakers and voters have to know that personal responsibility is the key to our prosperity and independence.
ABLE BODIED MEN AND WOMEN MUST LEARN, STRIVE, WORK HARD AND SAVE.
The safety net for non able bodied and elderly is diluted with bad policy, capital not invested here in this country due to bad policy and too many people in the wagon not pulling the wagon.
I could go on but I’ll get back off my soap box
Baklava:
It’s a puzzlement to me as well. I know plenty of people who are intelligent, logical, and even somewhat conservative in their private lives (frugal, married for a million years, etc) who think Republicans and/or conservatives eat little children for breakfast.
Scum, the New Clown, were you referring to me by chance?
When are you going to stop beclowning yourself with these wannabe sly comments. Do you really think they are passing unnoticed or would go unglanced at.
Or perhaps your frustration at your own helplessness and clueless in the face of the Left has finally broken your limited mind. Which is it, pray tell.
I have quite s few liberal Facebook friends who are good people yet they’ll post something from Bernie Sanders about corporate taxes.
I’m thinking. .. don’t they get it yet? Companies keep leaving ca because of a ton of taxes and regulation. Ca tacks on additional corporate tax on top of the cap and trade nonsense.
Maybe they want their kids to always live with them and never realize their potential? J/k
Horo certainly took no prisoners in his fight against Diana West, in favor of academic eggheads that get favors from Moscow for “communist research”.
That was his certainly, Take no Prisoners approach, although it wasn’t against the Left.
People think trust once thrown away or lost, is easy to grab back. Funny, it isn’t.
Unfortunately, we are just going to wake up to the fact that to win elections, we are just going to have to appeal to the LIVs. We will never get the hard Left, but we can get the great unwashed. That’s what we have to do to win elections.
Would I like to see a really conservative candidate? Certainly. But you can’t win elections with one — I was with Goldwater in ’64 and I know of whence I speak.
Marshall McLuhan’s vision has been fully realized: we live in the age of Cool. Actual accomplishments and character mean nothing to a plurality of voters, the ones necessary to win elections. John McCain and George Romney are leftovers from the Hot Age, of course Barry O, Mr. Cool himself, was going to beat them.
So if we want to win, we have to get someone who will appeal to the stupid kids and the brain-dead “born Democrat, live Democrat, will die Democrat.” Mr. Cool(R) may be someone we don’t agree with all the time. Too bad. As I’ve said before, much better to elect someone we agree with 75% than someone we disagree with 100%.
@ NeoConScum
Thank you for the thought. I suppose I may be guilty of wanting to use my “preferred tactics”, though I’m not sure that should be a flogging offense, especially since the tactics used up to this point do not seem to have been particularly effective. I would hope that we all take careful stock of what our actual options are, since the moves ahead will be for very high stakes, and we can ill afford further defeats.
especially since the tactics used up to this point do not seem to have been particularly effective.
As if we were the ones who used those tactics. Way to go blaming the wrong team. Or were you just blaming yourself because you thought you were in command of this battlefield.
Thank you for the thought.
I got something on that too, heh, hold on.
People who have no realistic plan tend to believe in apocalypse, and they tent to believe that the post-apocalyptic world will be more to their liking. Conservatives have no realistic strategy, and they lack the numbers to win a Presidential election.-B
I would hope that we all take careful stock of what our actual options are-B
No realistic plan=actual options.
You almost sound like two different people. One person is talking about “I got this, nobody else has anything” and the other guy is “let’s all work together and take careful stock.
In the words of NC Soft over there.
Please s’plain your 10:21pm so this 00-yr neocon can unnerstan’, will ya please?
We got us here a genuwhine mahlitary genius.
Surely strategy and tactics can be explained to us, given that everybody else has come up Zero on that department. Well except the author of the book we got a reader over here on.
parker,
Hacking up the Tao Te Ching for this post – a long march (a journey of a thousand miles) begins with a single step.
The Left’s strategic advantage in the MSM and other social cultural nodes didn’t just happen from nothing. It happened by progressive process, a long march moving forward a single step at a time. Left activists earned it. Right activists will have to earn it, too.
Bellarion…De nada. Appreciated.
Our needy little stalker is consistently wrong, but never in doubt. Or, as Rev. Jesse said about Billy Boy during the ’92 primaries: “He ain’t nuthin’ but an appetite.” (For Rev. Jackson, it took one to know one!!) Black Holes of Need tend to suck the ions outta the air and the pigment outta the paint and I’ve always found them very tiresome. If you’re not looking at them, they don’t exist. Sad and Tiresome.
The long march will be fruitless without moral company. The key to Democrat success is that they are capable of forming a consensus despite diametrically opposed positions. They have managed to market a “green” economy, while simultaneously destroying and disrupting the environment, including maintaining solar ovens and windmill gauntlets. They have managed to denigrate individual dignity while claiming to be civil rights activists. They have managed to rationalize aborting/murdering several million human lives annually while claiming to be human rights advocates. Unfortunately, not a few Republicans are capable of harnessing the same delusions. Case in point, equating elective abortion to emancipation.
Neo: Just read your “request” on the other thread and will obey. I plead happily guilty to having an oversensitive gag reflex for Bull***t. ‘Nuff said.
http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2014/08/31/3911/
There’s the background story if anyone is interested.
Neo pulled up the commenter guideline fighty thingy now. The real Neo I mean.
Our needy little stalker is consistently wrong, but never in doubt.
Do people here just like pretending they don’t know what he’s talking about here?
It looks like I’m the only one in enough self control to actually read the guidelines of this blog, even though it was made for people long after I stopped reading the comments during the 2008 siege.
Ymarsakar:
As I said, I value the commenters here, and I don’t ban people unless the problems seem insoluble or very serious to me, or unless the person is a troll.
Neo: Your(Very Classy)Site//Your Rules. ‘Nuff said.
I never run out of things to say for people who helped along the Vietnam era disasters that connect to this day. Their guilt isn’t going to get washed out by the internet.
“Do conservatives have the patience for the long march?”
No.
The times and the situation are different.
We face a government that is grooming the police forces not to protect the citizenry, but to protect the government from its citizens and a standing domestic army is being created right under our noses.
The weaponized IRS will not allow any such organizations to flourish without viciously hounding them out of existence or into paralysis.
The overwhelmingly democrat, left government bureaucracies will find reasons to hound and harass any such organizations and/or individuals until they have become so distracted that they fight for mere survival instead of their stated causes.
By providing more government jobs, the government employees will of course fight for the government, it will be in their own economic self interest, or so they will believe.
The mainstream media will provide the air superiority and through lies, rumors, innuendo, unsubstantiated smears, will vilify such movements and its leaders and publicly shame major contributors. Remember, a lie will travel half way around the world before the truth can get its pants on.
The educational system will step up its lies and vilification of all but its own positions. Those who do not conform, will be made examples of.
The justice department will engage in law-fare against those it deems its political enemies and look the other way when its friends are involved.
Think this is all some fevered right wing fantasy? I just described much of the Obama administration.
The long march worked because it was not actively opposed.
The long march worked because when mentioned, its existence was denied.
The long march worked because through ridicule, those who were warning us about it were laughed at and rendered irrelevant in the court of public opinion. The devil’s greatest victory was convincing people that he didn’t exist.
The long march worked because it relied on the decency of its opposition and the opposition’s belief in fair play and its mistaken notion that they were merely discussing political differences in a civilized manner. The market place of free ideas, if you will.
The long march worked because its adherents were true believers who were fighting a war by other means against an enemy who had no idea it was in a fight for its life.
A new long march will never happen because the opposition will recognize it for what it is and strangle it in its crib.
There will be no corresponding conservative long march.
But a long march is not what’s needed.
You don’t fight tomorrow’s battles with yesterday’s stratagems.
Tim P….In keeping with your theme, I pay the Republicans are preparing to wrap ALL of Obama around Hillary’s corpulent neck. Needs to be done with no mercy, no misplaced sentiment and No Prisoners.
Oops…”..pray (not pay)”..
Game Over
Conservatives need only to follow the global warming debate to see how to win. A few smart people with blogs and no funding are winning. Why? Facts and integrity.
Call out the liberals for their nasty, hate-filled slanders. Just keep pointing out what nasty people they are.
Get out the word.
Think this is all some fevered right wing fantasy? I just described much of the Obama administration.
The people with their heads stuck in the sand waiting for the tsunami to pass in 2007 are still here. They’ll pop in once in awhile and ask if things are safe yet.
The long march worked because its adherents were true believers who were fighting a war by other means against an enemy who had no idea it was in a fight for its life.
The new reply I wrote to Eric in the old thread was about how conservatives aren’t going into the activist game thinking about the war end game. After all, they want to use the game to avoid the war. But that’s not how the Left did it. The Left were accelerating to war at step 1. They always knew they had to concentration camp and eliminate their enemies. But conservatives don’t have that fire, they don’t think they can win the war, so they attempt to avoid the war. Thus making it inevitable, once the Left smells that fear and weakness. The Left will ramp it up sooner rather than later, as they have already done.
The Tea Party and Sarah Palin were recognized as authentic leaders of the conservative troops. That’s why they were targeted with an army of thugs and thieves.
A few smart people with blogs and no funding are winning.
How are they winning when the funding still goes to the Green companies? Winning requires the enemy’s funding to be eliminated or transferred to the winning and looting party.
Successfully pushing back the enemy’s advance is one thing, as the independent scientists have done. Winning is a higher hurdle to make.
It’s not game over, but there must be a substantive cause for “Caesar” to invite a moral regime. Perhaps the illegal aliens, if they are not already corrupted by progressive morality and dreams of redistributive change, will force their hand. Perhaps Americans will stop contracepting and aborting their children, and will teach them their parents’ religion (i.e. moral philosophy), will stem the tide of a degenerate secular cult. Perhaps libertines will recognize an inability to reconcile their claims to civil and human rights. Perhaps history will repeat itself. Over and over again.
Actually, there is some hope. They stopped referring to human life from conception to birth as a “clump of cells”. This suggests that a majority of Americans have not succumbed to libertinism. Positive progress. Although, their peculiar concern for single issues has resulted in selective exclusion and creation of moral hazards, which will likely be left for our children to reconcile and cope with. Their parents haven’t even managed to unblock the nation’s toilets.
n.n.
it IS game over….
Mostly people think not is that they dont do anykind of full assesment that takes in laws, demographics, cultural marxisms dominance, money, medical force backed by the state (to hasten beuracratically the removal of those who do know), military equipment, the outside, and more
the less you know
the easier it is to believe the movie emding of saving grace
but without going to google, onecould read the following as part of a survey to a typical posterity and they would side with it…
economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
if certain things are not commonly known, avoiding what they represent is not possible….their songs pull the best to them, and without forethough, they have not the will to resist or the knowledge to know what to resist…who Wasquoted above?
laddettes are the future
they are bribable and naturally vain and narccistic
they vote for freebies from the public till
like now pushing for their pads to be paid
They will not stop anymore than an entitlement wife will stop running up credit charges while someone ekse pays
they are so genius, that they need the state to fotce their presence
And r this smart
50% cant find a vagina on a map
(Inthenews today)
This is merely the beginning of the End Game for the Left. THey haven’t mobilized even half of their strategic assets. But if they are allowed to finish, then they will have a decisive advantage.
I don’t agree with Art concerning battlefield and war strategy. There’s always a way, so long as there is the Will and the resources.
It’s very difficult for people who learn fighting from a book, to think outside the odds.
No.
The reason is that the young believe America is evil and Leftist indoctrination has killed the spirit of independence only under which liberty can survive.
I see it in polls that show less than half of those under 30 believe in American exceptionalism.
To change this, to reverse it, we would need to see the emergence of a a radical move to home schooling to go around the idiot/Left educratic schooling” that indoctrinates and herds people into slavish dependence in favor of independent thought. I
f this movement took off over, say, the debate over “Common Core” curricula, then there would be room for long-term optimism. But I don’t see it happening.
Without this, kiss America – as you’ve known and loved her – GOODBYE. Get used to losing increasing amounts of liberty and your fellow creatures embracing slavery.
Go Galt or leave for freer environments. Or stay and buy guns and gold and land you’re willing to defend, personally. In self-defense.
Art…
Vagina discovery is best left to the lads.
What the girls can’t find is of little consequence as long as the boys can.