By STEPHEN M. KRASON
The assault by the left on American and Western traditions, the institution of the family and the sound sexual morality needed to sustain it, the principles of natural law generally, and on religious belief and in many ways religious freedom has reached a point of being unparalleled in our nation’s history.
The historic tendency of the left has been to flee reality — to fantasize — as in thinking that economies can sustain themselves when the profit motive is suppressed and people somehow become free when government manages every aspect of their lives. The left’s fantasies have now become more extreme than ever, believing in such things as people being able to change their sex.
While the current cultural mania exploded onto the American scene in a big way in the 1960s, that tumultuous decade seems almost tame compared to what we are seeing now. The left’s attempt to steamroll its sweeping and destructive agenda and suppress opposition also is unprecedented in American history, as is the uncanny way the elected officials from the political party it has captured — the Democratic — just fall in line with hardly any questioning of the views of those within its ranks leading this leftist juggernaut.
In light of this overwhelming, dangerous assault by the left, it is now necessary to develop and implement a plan for a well thought-out, organized, and concerted way to not just respond but also make a sustained counterattack against it. To be sure, we should always attempt to engage those on the left who are willing to listen, to show them the problems and dangerous implications of their thinking. After all, the Christian must always seek to evangelize.
It is not likely that many on the left will want to listen, however. Most have increasingly become blind ideologues, and their ideology is almost a religion for them. The left simply has to be defeated.
The war against the left needs to be carried out at all levels: national, state, local, and in private entities. At the local level, we can take inspiration from what parents in Loudoun County, Va., have been doing to oppose the leftist school board’s attempt to put sexually explicit books into the schools and teach critical race theory. People need to regularly come to school board, city council, county government, and other public meetings and be prepared to speak. They should have rallies at county courthouses and city government headquarters. There should be letter-writing campaigns to local newspapers.
If the papers routinely won’t publish anti-leftist letters, people should flood their telephone lines with objections and even be prepared to picket them. Opponents of the left should connect up with sympathetic advocacy groups to initiate lawsuits when needed to oppose overreach by leftist local officials. They should closely monitor the actions of their state governments and organize frequent letter-writing, emailing, and phone-calling campaigns directed to state governors and legislators to stop outrageous leftist-oriented executive, bureaucratic, and legislative initiatives.
They should be sure to show up at local events where state officials are appearing and make it a point to express their views to them. Frequent rallies at state capitals should also be held. Intensive efforts should be made to recruit the best candidates possible to contest local, county, and state elections. People of solid character should be sought who it is certain will uphold American constitutional principles and sound moral positions and who have the capability and willingness to run aggressively against the left.
A concerted effort should be made to educate these candidates on the ins and outs of the issues so they will be ready to face off against their leftist opponents and rebut their distortions and deceptions. For congressional offices, adequately experienced individuals with these qualities, who have shone in lesser elective office, should be sought out. There should be regular rallies opposing dangerous leftist-inspired legislation in Washington and at federal buildings around the country and the same kind of citizen efforts to communicate with officials as at the state level should be organized and carried out in a continuous and concerted way.
Also, it almost goes without saying that anti-leftist legal advocacy groups should be ultra-aggressive in challenging dangerous federal legislation and, perhaps even more so — since it has become the predominant part of federal law — bureaucratic regulations.
An organized, concerted effort against the left’s influence is needed not just in the political realm, but in higher education and the corporate world. Since colleges and universities are where the bad ideas germinate, pressure should be put on them to straighten themselves out.
Citizen groups should organize opposition to increasing the budgets of state higher education institutions that fail to protect conservative students, refuse to hire non-leftist faculty, and suppress authentic academic freedom and true diversity (i.e., diversity of thought and ideas). They should routinely publicize and hammer away at the outrages of the left at both public and private campuses. They should expose the typical weak-kneed responses of administrators. They should routinely reach out to alumni of institutions and potential benefactors to urge them not to contribute to them unless these things change.
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Widespread boycotts should be organized against corporations that embrace “wokism” and strong support should be given to the few, such as Mike Lindell’s MyPillow company, which have resisted the left and faced its fury. They should arrange boycotts of those companies and retail outfits that won’t carry the products of companies like Lindell’s because of his resistance to the left.
At the highest level of American politics, we need to bring forth solid presidential candidates who fully understand the stakes involved, will take unremitting and courageous stands against the left, and will not succumb to the temptation of “politics as usual” of refusing to take the heat and shy away from controversy.
Quite the opposite, a president is needed who will lead the charge and understand, as must be the case with all resistance to the left, that one must always be on the offensive. While prudence is always important, these are not times for a defensive posture (which is something the Republican Party keeps failing to realize). What should be aimed for, at this point, is a president of extraordinary courage and assertiveness. A central part of what he will need to do is to stand up to the Supreme Court and not tolerate its unconstitutional decisions.
To be sure, prudence (again) must rule. He cannot resist or refuse to enforce every problematical decision—otherwise the rightful authority of the Court would be undercut. Examples of what he should do along these lines is to order the federal bureaucracy not to accept the Court’s outrageous interpretation of sex discrimination in the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include homosexuality and transgenderism, tell the states that they can ban same-sex “marriage,” and order the U.S. Marshal Service — which is an executive agency — not to enforce any federal court orders against state and local officials who subsequently refuse to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. It’s also time for a presidential stand against the Court on abortion if it does not step back from Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.
The left’s power should not be overestimated. Even where it is deeply engrained and seems to have its cadres and ideological soulmates all over, those who embrace thinking that is grossly untrue and, in fact, that slips ever further into irrationality — like, again, believing that sex is fluid and changeable — fundamentally weaken themselves. It is said that “the fish rots from the head,” and so the whole structure — that is, the predominance of the left — then becomes vulnerable.
Careful planning, organization, coordination, knowledge of the enemy and how to confront his flawed thinking is essential to defeating him, however. What does that mean in practical terms?
Conservative and religious organizations must partner in an ongoing way with existing and newly formed citizen groups — with a genuine spirit of cooperation and putting aside any tendency toward one-upmanship — to work out this battle plan in the different arenas mentioned, move forward with it, and engage in ongoing consultation and joint effort involving and supporting each other in their particular role in this crucial cause — indeed the stakes are nothing less than upholding true freedom, morality, and the highest principles of Western Civilization.
What this war demands is intelligent, well-planned, concerted action. We have been talking mostly about activism, but education is also critical. The left’s opponents must constantly explain to the American public the left’s errors and the dangerous implications of its thinking and initiatives and what the elements of a sound public philosophy and policies consist of. While they must always be civil and charitable, they must also be relentless.
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