Generals know it; chess grandmasters know it; left-wing tacticians know it: to win a war, you need to be on offense. If you’re content to rest on your laurels and play passive defense, you’re eventually going to lose. Period. Perhaps General George Patton put it best: “No one ever won a war by going out and dying for his country; he won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.”
In the long run, in terms of outcome, offense is always superior to defense. Offense benefits from momentum; defense only benefits from inertia. Inertia is static and can be overcome assuming that an actor summons sufficient force, which he is almost sure to do, given inertia’s alluring static threshold. Offense also benefits from the inherent superiority of action as compared with reaction. In reaction, crucial time is lost in finding the proper response and executing it. Conversely, action, even where imprecisely directed or poorly executed, has the ability to do damage. Where a boxer throws an uppercut and lands it on his opponent, even if the more appropriate punch for the situation was a right cross, the uppercut still hurts and brings the boxer that much closer to a knockout win.
Moreover, offense is effective in increments, whereas defense is only effective in terms of end results. Imagine the game of football if the offense had an infinite number of downs (as opposed to the customary four) to score a touchdown. Eventually, the offense will score, even if it takes two hundred downs. The offense may throw an endzone-to-endzone pass and score in one play, or they may march the ball down the field with a series of choppy run plays, picking up three yards at a time. Either way, the offense is happy, since they get six points, and the defense is still dejected, since they’re now losing the game. When you’re on offense, you set the pace. If you remain on offense, you will (given sufficient time) accomplish your objectives.
It takes a dedicated effort to wrench the initiative away from an attacking opponent and put him on his heels, since humans don’t possess the instinct to meet aggression with aggression. When a boxer is on the receiving end of a flurry of punches, he has the instinctive reaction to step back, put his eyes down, raise his guard, and cover up. However, to succeed at the highest levels, fighters need to learn to counterpunch, seizing the initiative by force. It’s the same in the culture wars and politics. This is why Rahm Emmanuel infamously admonished fellow radicals, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not before.” What Rahm was really saying is that liberals must weaponize current events so that the events redound to progressives’ benefit. He’s saying to seize the initiative by force and batter your opponent with an unending salvo of diverse shots. He’s saying to use the environment to your advantage, to enable an attack. Tactically, he’s spot-on.
So we retrogrades need to take back the initiative; we need to make a concerted effort to go on offense. After the next mass shooting, don’t passively defend against the leftist media’s mechanical, choreographed calls for “common-sense gun legislation” by pointing out that the proposed laws would do little to curb violence. Instead, put leftists on their heels by organizing a coordinated media blitz wherein commentators are instructed to hammer home the point that crime rates are comparatively lower in regions where gun-ownership is higher. Go on the offensive by challenging network hosts with questions like “Why are you against gun ownership when all the data suggests that it deters mass-shootings?” and “Why do you promote feminism and single-motherhood when you know that the overwhelming majority of mass-shootings are carried out by bitter fatherless young men?” If we want to end mass-shootings, we should encourage more people to carry firearms so that they can defend themselves. Organize a drive to subsidize guns for citizens in dangerous neighborhoods.
It’s the same thing with abortion. When the pro-abortion lobby asks, “Why do you want to hurt women by depriving them of the right to choose?” don’t give the usual pusillanimous, asinine conservative answer of “I want to help women by showing them that choosing life is always the best option.” Instead, ask the smug leftist why he’s fine with hurting girls in utero by allowing their mothers to have them dismembered and sucked from the womb, or boiled-alive in saline solution. Don’t let radicals take up the mantle of being “pro-woman”; show how leftists hate women, as demonstrated by their indifference toward the millions of baby girls being slaughtered by mothers who are literal infanticidists.
If we want to win the culture wars, we have to craft the narrative ourselves—to content ourselves with passively responding to the left’s cherry-picked and farcical narrative is suicidal. Train yourself to attack, work up your courage, and seize the day.