“How bad do conditions have to get in this country before Democrat voters wake up and realize that their policies and the governance of the Democratic leaders is literally destroying this country,” Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), said on Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt Tonight, reviewing the disappointing showing of the Republican Party in the mid-terms.
Republicans were expecting a “red wave” — one in which Republicans would win control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. But that did not happen, with Democrats retaining — and if Republican Herschel Walker loses in the Georgia run-off Senate contest, increasing their hold on — the Senate. As of now, while it appears that the Republicans will win, by a narrow margin, the House, it will not be the type of win that Republicans had in 1994, when they won 52 House seats, or 2010, when they picked up an astounding 63 seats.
“I mean,” Johnson continued, “you’ve got 40-year high inflation, record gas prices, skyrocketing crime, open border [flooded with] deadly drugs: I just call the list of horribles. It doesn’t get much worse than that. And yet Democrats just kind of shrugged it all off.”
Johnson continued, in an attempt to answer his own question of just how could this happen: “It’s not a fair fight. It’s not a level playing field. We have a mainstream media that, really, they’re not journalists — so many of them are advocates for the Left. They don’t interview someone like me. They argue with me,” Johnson added.
While the Democrats get a media that act like cheerleaders for Democratic candidates, the Republicans have to spend “millions of millions of dollars,” Johnson lamented.
Using his own campaign as an example, Johnson said that the media were hostile to him, while regularly praising his Democratic opponent Mandela Barnes. In a state like Wisconsin, with voter registration numbers between the two parties being relatively equal, Johnson explained that the contest is over those voters in the middle. “You’re literally starting an election, battling over about four percent of the electorate and so it’s difficult and it’s even more difficult for conservatives when you have a very liberal mainstream media, in my case, that literally is trying to destroy me for two years prior to the election.”
Actually, Senator Johnson understates the problem, because it is more than just the media — although the media is clearly biased against anyone who is a constitutionalist, much less just a run-of-the-mill conservative or even just a Republican. The Left controls not only the media, but also academia from pre-school through graduate school. For example, at the University of Oklahoma, located in Norman, where I live, of 35 full-time faculty members of the history department, none is a registered Republican, not even so much as a RINO. This is probably typical of public universities, even in “red states” such as Oklahoma.
Popular culture is also overwhelmingly slanted to the left. “Conservative” actors and musicians are regularly cancelled. Can you imagine an actor appearing at the Academy Awards and condemning the transgender agenda? Ominously, Big Business has moved increasingly leftward, using corporate dollars to push a radical agenda.
Some conservatives have, for years, called for young conservatives to enter these fields of influence. The problem is that it is difficult for a conservative to even get hired in the mainstream media, in academia, or even in corporate positions. The CEO of Mozilla was forced out, one might recall, when it was discovered that he had given a donation to Proposition 8 — which banned same-sex marriages — in California.
There have been many instances of journalists who were conservative, or just tried to be fair to both sides, who were pushed out. And one does not even have to be Barry Goldwater to get run off at some of our woke colleges. A progressive professor at Southern Maine had all but one member of her class call for her removal when she simply said there are only two sexes.
Students understandably take note and jump on the progressive bandwagon, or at least learn to keep their mouths shut. The bottom line is that conservatives have almost no chance to advance in any of these fields of influence. Some Christian denominations even frown on ministers who do not toe the progressive line.
What can be done? We should not sugar-coat the difficult situation, but what Americans who believe in our Constitution — and the limited government it established — can do is get organized and join together with like-minded believers in limited, constitutional government. Instead of waiting until election season, now is the time to educate our neighbors in the principles of the Constitution, and why they are needed. We cannot expect good candidates to do this education during a campaign. While they might sway some, it is unlikely that a candidate can win over enough to win the election, as Senator Johnson said.
If we win the culture, we win elections. We do not have to even swing over a majority of our fellow citizens. As Samuel Adams said, it does not take a majority to prevail, but just a dedicated minority “setting brush fires” of freedom in the minds of man.
The parent organization of this magazine — the John Birch Society — is the perfect organization for people to join if they want the tools to do this tough, tough job of saving our nation from the clutches of socialism.
