It’s understood that the left uses divisive rhetoric to set classes and groups against each other, setting up one group as the supposed oppressor and the other as the victim. The idea is to leverage the will of the “victim” group to wrest resources out of the “oppressor” group. Usually, the victim group will have larger numbers with fewer resources per capita- they need a reason to resent the oppressor group. In Communist Russia, this tactic was used to convince the masses to rise up against successful farmers. In so doing, the party destroyed the means of food production and the resulting famine killed millions.
We fell victim to it again during the Obama years, as he pushed the idea over and over that a huge divide exists between whites and blacks in this country. The result has been the worst state of race relations since the 1930s. But today, something has changed. Vast swaths of the public are tired of being called racist when they know they are not, tired of being called sexist, anti-Semitic, anti-gay, Islamaphobic, ableist, ageist, or whatever the cause du jour is at the moment.
Roughly half the country, many of whom voted for Obama twice just to prove that we’re beyond racist nonsense, who once took the accusations of hidden biases seriously are not listening to the shaming anymore. We’ve spent much of our lives seriously examining ourselves for hatred, bigotry, and bias. In the end, we came back with the realization that we wouldn’t even care if we were hateful people. So the name calling of the left isn’t working on us anymore.
But the left has a serious problem with that, because if you know that you do not harbor hatred in your heart- then they have nothing to preach to you. When they cannot convince you that evil is hiding somewhere in your mind, then their jobs disappear, their votes vanish, and their publicly funded grants dry up.
This should be the point in the conversation when liberal academics, culture critics, and left-wing politicians politely bow and say there is nothing more they can do here. The trouble is they have no marketable skills other than fomenting outrage. Worse, the hatred they are so convinced is hidden in the hearts of conservatives is really a reflection of their own hatred for family values, for people with a work ethic, and persons of faith.
In short, they have become desperate, and they are responding by doubling down on the name calling. By doubling down on the name calling, they have convinced themselves that anyone who thinks different to them is a Nazi.
And Nazis are legitimate targets for violence.
For some time now, we have been told that we are in a culture war, that there are two Americas which fundamentally disagree on the state of the country and the human condition. And they are correct. There are a left and a right and they are engaged in perpetual conflict. This is the natural state of any culture as it is natural that people of conservative and liberal sensibilities are roughly evenly distributed and because the two types of people inevitably see the world in different lights. The natural result is an unending state of conflict. But the founding fathers understood this. They understood that societies naturally tend to gravitate toward violence, and that power naturally gravitates toward corruption. Their remedy was Freedom of Speech. That’s why the right to speak freely is the first Amendment.
What this means is that things are actually going well. We have our debates, we disagree, we argue, and by grace- we arrive at a solution. As long as we have free speech, there is hope.
But we are being told that all is not well. It would be right and well for each side to continue saying that the other is wrong and for the debates to continue. But the left is trying to dismantle free speech, and by telling us that we are in a cold civil war, they push the notion that violence against people with whom we disagree is acceptable.
The fact is that our republic, flawed and tyrannical as it is, is working in the way it should. We fight like cats and dogs, (verbally), in the debate halls, classrooms, in the streets, on television, the Internet, and at the polls. But if the left manages to convince us that we are in an actual civil war, then the talking will stop and the bloodshed will start. And this, they imagine, will be the beginning of the next grand revolution.
~ American Liberty Report
