https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/29/conservatives-as-revolutionaries-how-to-fight-when-youre-an-alien-in-your-own-land/Conservatives As Revolutionaries: How To Fight When You’re An Alien In Your Own LandOctober 29, 2021
Christopher Bedford
Today, the left is better at revolutionary ideas, in part because they’re willing to be revolutionary in their thinking and in their governing.The story of the past 100-plus years is the story of the rout of American conservatism — and the near complete and total takeover of the country and its Commanding Heights by a cadre of highly intelligent, determined, and ruthless individuals.
How did the century begin? The left started from a humble base: a few people here and there, but certainly not dominating the levers of society. They were scattered about entertainment and Congress, and only truly formidable in the union halls and universities.
One hundred years later, it’s all over. The old “rebels” now control Hollywood and Silicon Valley and sports and television and the American Medical Association and both houses of Congress and Wall Street and the White House and the Boy Scouts and your child’s elementary and the bathrooms they use. Oh, and they still have the big unions and nearly all the universities, too.
So how did they do it? How did all their rage against the machine become the machine? How did they win the Second American Revolution? It’s worth understanding how they won the second if we’ll have any hope to win the third.
The first thing we need to do when figuring out the conservative revolution is to understand this: We may have been good at it once — when men like John Adams, James Madison, and John Jay strode the earth — but no longer.
Today, the left is better at revolutionary ideas, in part because they’re willing to be revolutionary in their thinking and in their governing. Notice they don’t tinker around the edges quite the same way we do. Read a left-wing publication like Vox or Mother Jones or The Washington Post, and they’re bursting with a whole list of things they want done to ensure the left gets what it wants in the years to come.
To them, there’s no barrier too difficult to remove; no norm too sacred to violate. If the U.S. Senate stands in the way, just abolish the filibuster. Electoral College causing you heartburn? Come up with a clever go-around to negate it!
Conservatives actually believe in the Constitution and tradition so we aren’t willing to go these distances to get what we want. That’s fine — it’s what sets us apart from the lesser beasts. But conservatives also have to escape from their self-imposed paralysis. “Too bad, we tried, time to go post a meme on Facebook owning the libs then feel sad when Facebook bans it.”
Seriously: How many times have you heard “it’s the law of the land” delivered as some unassailable reason that thousands of years of Western tradition rooted in God’s laws ought simply to be abandoned?
We can’t afford the political assumption that nothing that’s been done can be undone. We need to look around us — at the systems and institutions of the United States in 2021 — and realize that in our current state, precious little of this is worth conserving at all.
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