THE PROGRESSIVE VISION OF American society as a hierarchy of races, genders, and classes is delusional and destructive, but it has been the dominant force in America’s political culture for more than half a century. It is the creed of America’s society-shaping institutions—schools and the media—and its party line of political correctness is now the conventional wisdom in America’s boardrooms and courts. How can conservatives and Republicans hope to resist the societal transformation Democrats are bent on achieving? How can they stop a movement that is antidemocratic and socialist and determined to weaken America even further in the face of grave threats from powers in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East?
Resistance begins with the will to confront the adversary head on. That is the attitude that characterized Donald Trump’s campaign from its inception. But for many conservatives, no-holds-barred, in-your-face brawling is problematic to begin with. Unlike progressives, conservatives are constrained by temperament and precept from engaging in politics as a form of warfare—even though their progressive opponents do so as a matter of course. Conservatives are also realists about human nature and are therefore prone to resignation. Reluctance to go for the jugular and willingness to accept defeat can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are reluctant to fight, you are inevitably headed toward defeat when the other side is relentless and despises you. It is only for those who persist in the battle and never let up that the possibility of changing the result comes into view.
In thinking about how progressives approach these battles, consider Bernie Sanders, who has spent a lifetime on the left supporting the communist cause. In 1989, communism collapsed amid a sea of human corpses and economic misery. In other words, it was a catastrophic failure, shattering every dream progressives like Bernie and his comrades ever had. Normal people would have accepted the result and given up the fight for a socialist future. But not Bernie and his comrades. They didn’t accept the result, and they didn’t give up the fight. They kept on going. They kept up their attacks on America’s institutions and renewed their opposition to America’s wars. They still believed in the socialist future and the evil 1 percent who exploited everyone else, and they were still ready to fight for what they believed in. Gradually, their ranks were joined by new generations who were innocent of the tragedies communism had inflicted. Eventually, circumstances changed enough that Bernie was able to run for president as an avowed socialist and win enough support in the Democratic primaries to have captured the nomination if the Clinton cartel hadn’t rigged the result.
Republicans have an immediate advantage over Bernie and his progressives. They don’t have to live down a monstrous legacy of oppression and failure. But they do have to overcome the habits of complacency and denial that have handcuffed them in the political wars. They have to fight—and fight hard—if they want to defeat the progressive juggernaut that has rolled over them until now.
Before Trump’s entry into the presidential primaries, there was not a single Republican figure with a national platform who would have called Hillary Clinton a crook or a liar to her face, although she is both. Before the advent of Trump, there is not a single Republican with a national platform who would have dared to be so politically incorrect. The reason for this is that Republicans are well aware of what happens to anyone who would do so. To be politically incorrect, one has to believe passionately in one’s cause in order to advance it. One has to take the hits and carry on.
In the recent campaign, progressives—always ready to defenestrate an opponent—showed how bloody-minded they can be when the stakes are high enough. The progressive attackers were not merely Democratic Party operatives who have made the politics of personal destruction—character assassination—into an art form. Ludicrous comparisons to Hitler and Mussolini and fabricated linkages to the Ku Klux Klan were also daily fare in the national media and were even echoed by unhinged “Never Trump” Republicans. Unprincipled and vicious liberal editors were suddenly willing to run unchecked stories with unfounded accusations by women who claimed they had been inappropriately kissed by the candidate 10 and 20 years in the past.1 In any other context, the same editors would have been fired by their own organizations for such journalistic malfeasance; but in this case, the example was set by the editors of the once august New York Times. In a gesture that crystalized this disgraceful performance, the giant Internet site Huffington Post appended the following fact-challenged warning to every single news story it ran about Donald Trump: “Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims—1.6 billion members of an entire religion—from entering the U.S.”2
To go on the attack against Democrats when the mainstream media are ready to portray them as champions of minorities, women, and the poor is not for the faint of heart. If they attack you as a racist or call you an obstructionist and you are not prepared to throw those charges back in their faces, you are already losing the war. If your first response is to defend yourself by denying the charge, you are losing the war. To have a chance of winning, your first response must be to attack them in a way that is equally strong, that throws them off balance and puts them on the defensive. Mike Tyson summed up this strategy with the following observation: “Everybody has a game plan until you punch them in the mouth.” To turn around the political battles conservatives have been losing for so long, they must begin every confrontation by punching progressives in the mouth. To do so, conservatives must develop an attack that takes away progressives’ moral superiority and smugness.