If the political Right wants to defeat the Left, we must understand the tactics by which leftists have made so many gains — and be willing to be just as forceful in the fight against them.
There are, naturally, many differences between Left and Right. The two sides are separated by their understandings of the most fundamental questions regarding morality and the nature of the world. Anyone who is aware of the political environment in America today understands this.
But there is another key area in which Left and Right differ that conservatives would do well to comprehend.
Leftists and rightists generally have differing conceptions of the nature of the political fight. The two camps see the battle as playing out in different ways and on different spheres.
Part of the reason why the Left has made so many gains over the decades is that their understanding is closer to reality. The Right, meanwhile, has often been held back by its naïve understanding of political power and political warfare.
Conservatives tend to be more intellectual. They believe that the political struggle is one of ideas: Constitutionalism vs. Marxism. In the mind of many conservatives, all they have to do to win the fight is to have a better, more logical argument than their adversaries. If they do this, conservatives believe, then the people will naturally see the truth and choose them over the Left’s false promises.
While we might like this to be true, it falls far from the reality of human nature. Edmund Burke famously said that “Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part.”
In other words, humans are not rational or logical beings. We are capable of thinking rationally and logically, but are not rational. Human beings are ruled by emotion and self-interest. Most people make their decisions instinctively and subconsciously based on their emotions and desires and then use reason and logic to justify their decision to themselves.
The Left understands the irrational nature of mankind and extends that to a more accurate concept of politics: Politics is war; and politics, like war, is fought and won, not by ideas, but by people.
We may sometimes think that we make war against ideas. Weren’t the allies fighting against Nazism during World War II? Wasn’t the United States fighting against communism in Korea?
But this is a mistaken view. Again, war is always between people. In the War of Independence, the fledgling United States was truly fighting against George III, not against colonialism. Or, to go back in history, the Greek City States were not fighting against Persia, but against Xerxes.
Ideas are merely a weapon, like guns and bullets. During World War II, it would have been nonsensical to say that the United States was fighting a war against Panzer tanks and K98k rifles. The fight was against Hitler and the men he commanded; tanks and rifles don’t operate themselves.
Our true enemy today is the cabal of globalist oligarchs who control much of the world. They use many ideas as weapons — globalism, Marxism, technocracy, LGBT — and they adopt and drop these weapons as the situation suits them, their end goal being total power.
Like physical weapons, ideas are dead unless given life by powerful leaders who are charismatic and adept at organization. History has never gone to the best ideas, but to the ideas driven by the best leaders and organizers.
The ideas articulated in the Declaration of Independence are true and eternal. But they would have come to nothing if not given impulse by great men such as Washington, Adams, and Jefferson.
On the flip side, scholars generally agree that National Socialism, while playing on ideas that were popular in 20th century Germany, would never have taken over the country if not for the charismatic leadership of Adolf Hitler. Similarly, Karl Marx did not conquer Russia; it took a coterie of revolutionaries — Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, etc. — who were skilled leaders and organizers to bring about the successful Bolshevik Revolution.
Now that we know that it is leaders and people — not ideas — that drive a political movement — we understand how the Left fights: They do not bother to engage the Right in the realm of ideas.
No, they avoid the intellectual fight (through censorship, when they are in power) and instead go after the people who make up the right-wing movement. This includes both the rank-and-file (as seen in the persecution of J6 prisoners) and the leadership (the continual attacks on Donald Trump).
That is how the Left fights. And it works. They took Trump out of power and intimidated conservatives across the country to avoid openly demonstrating for fear of being arrested on false “insurrection” charges.
If the Right wants to win, they must use the same playbook. This is why it is imperative that the Republican Congress impeach Biden over his myriad unconstitutional actions and that Republican district attorneys and attorneys general take steps to have Biden indicted for his and his family’s illicit business dealings.
It does not matter that an impeachment would not result in a conviction in the Senate, nor does it matter that any indictments would probably not result in jail time for Biden.
Democrats likewise know that their attacks on Trump will ultimately go nowhere. But it doesn’t matter. Because what they’re doing is playing to the many low-information voters throughout the country, the ones who only read headlines and hear “Trump indicted! Trump impeached!” and who then base their vote on the hysteria alone.
If Republicans similarly take a stand against Biden, it will damage his reputation among the low-information masses in the same way Democrats’ attacks have made Trump a candidate with lots of “baggage.”
If the Right is unwilling to accept the realities of political warfare, then they are destined to always lose.
