My friend and mentor, Heritage Foundation founder Ed Feulner has always said that in the war of ideas there is no room for pacifists. Even more so in a cultural war.
Why do so few conservatives get that? The left does. That’s why it is winning.
Let me tell you a quick story of what we are up against. A few days ago I attended a small board dinner in Pittsburgh for the group ALEC. ALEC represents conservative state legislators around the country.
In the middle of dinner we were jolted by shouting and screaming. Then about 20-25 leftwing activists pushed past a security guard and stormed into the room. I don’t know if they were organized by unions or MoveOn.org or Black Lives Matter, or some other George Soros-funded “activist” groups.
They were mostly young — 20-somethings — angry, righteous, and obnoxious. They began throwing things at us chanting inane mantras like “ALEC is worse than Trump” (which to a liberal is the highest insult one can deliver). They surrounded us in the room and carried posters urging a panoply of liberal initiatives such as a higher minimum wage. Then they started their antics. One kid carried balloons and skipped around the room waving his hands like a fairy. It was weird, and frightening.
We all sat there, all in a collective state of shock. They seemed semi-deranged, and I kept worrying: what if one of these crazies gets violent?
When the three or four security reinforcements finally showed up and tried to escort these invaders from our private dinner, they became indignant and wrenched themselves away hissing things like: “Get away from me you bleeping fascist.” They seemed to think they have a constitutional right to trespass.
The protesters finally left the place with their arms triumphantly raised — as if they had proved their point, though I still don’t know what it was.
What kept running through my mind afterward was the scene in Godfather II, in Havana, Cuba, during the Castro revolution. The government officials brush off the threat of the communist insurgents, but Michael Corleone declares prophetically: “They can win.”
I have seen first hand and too many times the left’s intimidation tactics to be cavalier about what is happening in America. Their goal is to silence us and shut us down. It is accelerating and is happening at Trump rallies, at Republican gatherings, on college campuses, and at corporate board meetings.
What is going on here? My own suspicion is that the “hope and change” euphoria of eight years ago has melted down into the bitter reality that not much has changed in America for the better. Hope has melted into rage.
Here’s my point. The Trump movement — not necessarily even Trump himself — is a welcome and so needed rallying cry against the radicalization of the left and their ridiculous causes — whether it’s transgender bathrooms, climate change fanaticism, 80 percent tax rates on anyone who is successful, free college tuition for illegal immigrants, or whatever the latest liberal grievance is. The other day the leftists protested in Chicago against a billionaire hedge fund manager for not paying his “fair share” of taxes. This is a man who has given $500 million to Chicago area arts, schools, and charities.
The Never-Trump folks on the right seem not to get the big picture here. Trump, despite his myriad flaws, has had the courage to fire the first missile back against the left’s onslaught of the last decade. He, much more than any other candidate, got to the heart of what’s wrong with America: we are in the midst of a war for our culture. The left wants to slaughter Trump because he is the greatest single threat to their remake of America since Newt Gingrich rose to be Speaker two decades ago.
I almost laugh out loud when I see anti-Trumpers on the right say: “he doesn’t share our conservative values.” I feel like screaming: Don’t you get it. The left has been assaulting our conservative values without serious opposition for decades. We’ve been like the French in the two world wars, just folding as the Germans march right into Paris. Those “conservative values” have been run over by liberal tanks. By joining the leftists against Trump brigades, you’re aiding and abetting the people who were driving the vehicle. I even see there is now a Republicans for Hillary movement. Don’t let the door hit you on your fannies on the way out of the party.
I wish I had a dime for every time someone came up to me asking: How can you be for Trump? He’s not for free trade. My answer is, of course, I’m for free trade. But the stakes of this election are so much more profound and long lasting than Trump’s support for tariffs against China.
The ALEC disruptions and protests in Pittsburgh were a microcosm of what we will see across America with increased heat and violence over the next six months. The alarming scenes of bedlam and chaos at the Trump rally in Chicago several weeks ago, when the left successfully shut down the event, were a picnic compared to what the anti-Trump brigades will do at the GOP national convention in Cleveland. They will paralyze the entire city with their wacko antics and their thuggery.
We need to build a resistance force. Not against Trump. But against the leftist barbarian forces whose demented causes created Trump in the first place.
nathanmac87/Flickr-Creative Commons
