An American Divorce is simply the end of America

If the Right believes in the strength of a nation rooted in our unalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, it should believe it is the hill worth dying on

“Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time.”

-General George S. Patton, May 1944 in a speech constructed by soldiers and recorded by historian Terry Brighton.

Americans do love to fight. And when we fight, we fight to win. Right now we are in a war for the survival of a nation. And we are in this fight without the support of our elected leaders and public figures. The notion of a Civil War has been discussed as a plausible outcome of our national discontent. But would this really be a viable option for America? Serious thought has been put into the widening chasm most recently and thoughtfully by David Reaboi. In his new book, Michael Anton argued America is at a point of no return. Jim Antle featured the proposition in his column for The Week. On the left, the argument has a high-pitched nature – more looking at a division as one between sophisticates and knuckle draggers (Deplorables, as a former First Lady of Red-State Arkansas put it). On the “unity” beat, Karol Markowicz wrote a practical, more logistically-oriented piece. If one is to mention David French, he managed to continue his on-brand moral chastising of Americans who don’t buckle under the progressive jack-boot.

Deeper consideration on how we found ourselves at this precipice may be how we back off of it. Could it be we are less at war with our fellow Americans, than witnesses caught in the midst of a ruling class bristling with indignation at their waning power? They need to poke the stick of both sides to keep a perpetual war amongst us so the very social fabric we’ve historically relied upon to contain order tears apart our collective concept of language, reality, and truth and effectually tears us apart? Has our government become so unwieldy, monstrously deformed and debased that it busies itself with petty (and false) accusations of Russian infiltration, meddling in the affairs of local school boards, reincarnating the evils of slavery to punish Border Control agents merely doing the jobs they were tasked to perform? A government that cannot face the gross realities of a looming economic crisis consisting of rapid inflation, a broken supply chain, and the enigma of a massive disconnect between job seekers and job providers, a border crises, rising street violence, and embarrassing foreign policy will tighten its grip on what it thinks it can most easily control: us.

Once we identify the overbearing, incompetent federal government as the entity sowing chaos, it’s easier to see where the fight lies. It isn’t within our borders, but a fight for them. It isn’t to fight in the streets, it’s a fight to save them. It isn’t to liberate the world, but to maintain a beacon of liberty for the world. An American Divorce is simply the end of America. If the Right believes in the strength of its cause- that of the ideals of the Founders and in a nation rooted in our unalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, it should believe it is the hill worth dying on. Anything else is an admission of the failure of the American Experiment.

Instead of throwing our hands up in despair and capitulating to progressives that will continue to dismantle the rest of the institutions still within the reaches of repair; instead of retreating to a temporary détente and divide the country in a national divorce, it is time to double down in the fight for the soul of America that a majority of the country still believes in. This is a fight worth fighting. We must recognize that each of us is an integral part of the American Project.

I will not mourn for America. This isn’t a nation of mourners; it’s a nation of fighters for freedom and liberty and the rule of law for everyone who seeks it.

Democrats have fed the radical beast since the 1960s when it was useful to advance their agenda and ride a rising tide of youthful unrest and a war-weary nation. But then they realized what would happen if they stopped. Eventually the radicals would be at their doorstep, like rabid raccoons, angry when the garbage cans are locked away. The Democrats had no choice but to give in; the beasts they created were no longer content with waiting for their chance at power. Now they want to take it and no amount of appeasement will spare their ire. There are some on in the center and on the left who still believe in liberalism, and they are willing fighters for that cause. Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss, Katie Herzog. Culture warriors such as J.K. Rowling, Abigail Shrier, and Rose McGowan.

For our most of the ‘leaders’ on the Right, the war is lost by fearing the fight. For decades, conservatives have been busy with white papers published by Washington, D.C. think tanks that gladly take our donations and turn around and reduce our lives to statistics and economic numbers. Drug riddled Middle America and gutted rust-belt cities are the cost of trade with China. The Cold Warriors who once sided with President Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II against the Evil Empire turned silent at the Chinese Communist oppressive regime, slave labor, and anti-American propaganda. We are thirsting for leaders who will defend us against radicals who are storming the gates, setting fire to our history and mocking the rule of law.

Our institutions and our leaders failed us. Our religious leaders unmoored the churches from moral objectivism, deciding to capitulate to a self-centered culture to gain popularity. Our culture, then our politics were sent adrift. Moral relativism and a consequence-free society opened the door to the destruction of the importance of the nuclear family, community cohesion, and common values. When anything goes, chaos follows. After decades of letting the left shape the narrative through radical feminism, identity warfare, and controlling higher education, the Right mostly retreated, choosing to engage in interparty skirmishes and pouring energy into think-tanks and policy papers. The left honed their skills at targeted character assassination and overtaking the news media as a means to advance their liberal progressive agenda. When conservatives finally made feeble attempts to fight back and reach main street conservatives, the left had an iron fist around academia, major media outlets, and pop culture.

In an attempt to shield themselves from being labeled bigot, fascist, sexist, homophobic, or generally a hatemonger, Republicans let liberals determine the social and cultural boundaries (or lack thereof) and disengaged from the fight over language and free speech. But as soon as our political leaders and corporate business executives capitulated on any one issue, the left kept marching on like ants over a fresh corpse. Conservatives are left undefended from the radical’s insatiable appetite and are ourselves starved for strong leadership to stop America’s unraveling. We are waiting to fight, but we cannot do it alone. We know America is good. We believe in our Founders’ vision and our standing as the world’s best hope for freedom and liberty. We are anxious for the battle against an upside-down narrative in which victimhood and identity politics have taken the place of patriotism, free expression, and the marketplace of ideas.

Conservatives need to take unconditional, unapologetic ownership of these American ideals. The left will never be satisfied with any concessions and will not make any apologies. Rather, for the progressive left and their propagandists in the media, the only ‘good’ Republican – let alone conservative – either is out of career politics, has a gig on CNN, or is dead. We have plenty of gutless wonders roaming the halls of Congress, making empty promises in the glare of television cameras. We need more Pattons. America and our Constitutional freedoms are worth that fight.

In that same 1944 speech, General Patton said, “Every single man in the army plays a role. So don’t ever let up. Don’t ever think that your job is unimportant.” We are all owners of America’s legacy. Let us be on the side of a legacy of virtue, goodness, and freedom.