America’s internal political conflicts notwithstanding, some of them traumatic (e.g., the Civil War), America managed to stay within established boundaries of what it meant to be living in a country dedicated to protecting individual rights from an abusive federal government.
Now those sacred boundaries have been breached. American patriots are scrambling to preserve what they can of the many extraordinary gifts the Founders gave them. But look what challenges they face.
How do they resist a political enemy that has already penetrated the human mind so effectively that ever-increasing numbers of Americans are now rejecting values, morals and beliefs that once made America great? How do they challenge liberal concoctions of “correct thinking” that defy common sense? How are patriots supposed to respond to America’s new blind faith in a promised, perfect future where patriotism is no longer honored? What political strategies can break through liberal lies and misrepresentations? How does any American address the dark nature of liberal attacks on critics, liberalism’s hate, its intolerance, its chronic rage, its grievance mentality, its race baiting, and the widespread suffering liberals predictably cause?
At the present time, more and more of us are failing to internalize the significance of liberal politics running wild within political institutions once sworn to safeguard our liberties. We’re growing more receptive to the idea that we can spend our lifetimes dependent on government. Collective will to preserve America’s heritage is diminishing. Morality is no longer fashionable. Public apathy is the celebrated emotion of choice.
Ethnic balkanization is replacing assimilation. Racial divisions are growing wider and deeper. America’s future is left to those who are determined to transform it into a financially, militarily, and morally bankrupt shadow of its past, and a weakened player on the international scene.
America’s response is, to say the least, mystifying: Let a cabal of power-hungry politicians and obedient bureaucrats replace our God-given liberties with their “liberties”? Is America devolving into a country of the government, for the government, and by the government?
We often forget that there is a political movement (conservatism) dedicated to preserving America’s historical respect for itself. But where is conservatism today?
People speak of what they believe are conservative values, e.g., lower taxes, preserving property rights, individual liberty, a smaller and less intrusive federal government, protecting life in the womb, good fiscal management, a strong military, etc. Nonetheless, these values don’t seem to resonate enough for Americans to stand up for them in the face of creeping liberal domination. The cultural hammer of political correctness has already silenced most conservatives. Their objections to liberalism are turned against them as anti-American, sexist, racist, extreme, or mean-spirited.
Will conservatism eventually fade away? It won’t because it can’t. Faith is enduring even though conservatives fail to sell its virtues, let liberals define conservatism for them, fear being embarrassed by liberals because they are conservative, reflexively bending to liberal arguments, sheepishly submitting to media attacks, accepting blame for what they believe, and most importantly failing to highlight features of conservatism people would embrace if they only knew what they were.
Conservatism will never fade away because its true values are timeless, a constant in Nature, and therefore in tune with everyman’s best instincts. People striving to be their best instinctively find conservative values to be in step with their own efforts. Note what the late great prime minister of England Margaret Thatcher said, “The facts of life are conservative” (emphasis mine). In other words, conservatism is on the side of people who are struggling to do the right thing for the right reasons.
Yet the only option left to most conservatives is to respectfully disagree with liberals. But that will never cut it; neither will compromise for compromise’s sake, or nodding to promises that curry favor with voters. Frustration, weak objections, and silence seem to be the best conservatives can muster. But this is as it should be when we don’t understand the psychological foundation upon which conservatism derives its true values—precisely what is missing in today’s political discourse.
So we end up with conservatives quietly defending the family, morality, religion, and individual liberties and responsibilities thinking they’re just battling a political opposition they don’t happen to agree with while liberals are loudly disparaging the family, morality, religion and individual liberties and responsibilities knowing precisely what they want and how to get it.
Liberal values, if we can call them values, constantly change to synchronize with political strategies of the moment. For example, liberals love conflict and social chaos, but not within their own ranks. Consequently, each liberal mind is in lockstep with every other liberal mind. There are unspoken rules: Criticism of liberal ideology is not an option; objective analyses of the liberal mind and of liberalism itself, especially its dark history and devastating implications for quality of life, are off-limits.
Soon after America’s revolutionary victory, less enlightened leaders would have built their government on a representation of the very tyrannical power they replaced—like most military victors would have at that time. Instead, they transferred political power to the people.
Liberals speak as if they are giving political power to the people by empathizing with the little guy of America. Sorry, The Framers beat them to it long ago by giving the little guy his own power to live in a government of his choice, not in a government chosen by nameless others.
Liberals believe the little guy should have no say in who should hold political power nor be free to choose his own path in life. This slow but certain process of empowering an ever-growing government is working, and has been unstoppable.
The historical record is painfully clear: Whatever liberals wanted, liberals got. They have no reason to stop. Why would they? Who would stop them? Failure is no obstacle. Their gaze, focused like a laser, is on feeding a pathological optimism belying a deeply flawed, political premise: America can be remade into a perfect society if everyone would just stop thinking about individual liberties and quietly roll over to “enlightened” government command and control.
If we the people of American want good government, we’re left with only one option: conservatism, liberalism’s political nemesis. Yet as weak and ineffective as today’s conservatism is, some conservatives still sense an eternal power buried deep within the idea that political power must be held by the people. When The Founders looked to the individual for better government, they were not merely appealing to better politics; they were unconsciously appealing to something like conservatism that would establish a republic for virtuous, informed, and patriotic Americans who, it was hoped, would do the right thing. But The Founders could not, and we today are not, taking that deeper step into understanding why the people must hold political power. That will take a psychology able to weave itself into conservatism’s true values so that both can join to finally reveal how understanding who we are as individual personalities and what we are as members of a species is key to creating the better politics that actually creates that better world.
Without a union of psychology and conservatism fearlessly standing up to liberal ideology, why would liberals not feel free to attack and blame, obfuscate and lie, misrepresent and deceive, and embrace nonsensical ideas with little fear of recrimination? With nothing better to compare liberalism to, liberals feel no need to hide from the fact that they’re in it for themselves, and will spare nothing to punish critics.
Why then should we be surprised when liberals strut with bold and brassy confidence? They’ll criticize anyone while the slightest hint of criticism toward them immediately receives their wrath. Even suggesting that people are responsible for the effects of their own poor decisions triggers a chorus of liberal outrage.
Who could have imagined that the people of America would someday relinquish political power to fast-talking, political charlatans painting glorious visions of an impossibly perfect world? If nothing is done, these same people will someday wake up from their denial to view the wreckage they helped cause while sheepishly asking what just happened to their America.
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