In the very German study of war and strategery, there is the concept of the "decisive battle."  It means, more or less, the confrontation after which the losing side just loses the will to continue.

Maybe the #SchumerShutdown is Trump's decisive battle, and maybe it isn't.  At any rate, as President Lincoln said about Gen. Grant, "I can't spare this man: he fights."  That is why we normals voted for Donald Trump.  We wanted a president who could go up against the liberals without fear and fight them.

As we all know, the problem with conservatism over the past fifty years is that when it came to the crunch, the conservative leaders would always cringe.  And some of the most notable cringes have been "government shutdowns," in which the Democrats and their bribed apologists in the mainstream media managed to blame the Republicans.

Obviously, we are not going to have our wicked way, policy-wise, unless we can win one of these shutdowns.  It is not enough to have the best ideas; we normals and conservatives have to be able to win the street battles in the public square.  Otherwise, we may as well go home and let the SJWs harass us with their Codes of Conduct and let Democrats continue to cow Americans with the vile accusation of racism.

Actually, you can't blame the Democrats for trying the shutdown option in order to push their immigration agenda.  The American people don't like unlimited immigration.  They don't like illegal aliens; they don't like Muslim extremism.  They don't like the stagnant wages of the last forty years.  And they don't like the rusting of the Rust Belt.  So the Democrats are not going to win on immigration in a fair fight, with an honest discussion of the issues and a proper analysis of policy recommendations.  They have to cheat, and hey, why not go to another "government shutdown" and tell President Trump to prove he is not a racist by agreeing to their DACA bill?

As I said, we elected Trump to put a stop to this kind of shenanigans, and you may have noticed that the result ain't pretty.  A lot of people on the right think the male Culture of Insult Trump epitomizes is so recherché, darling.  No, wait!  The right word is de trop, darling.  Well, whatever the word is on the Upper East Side, we know what they think on the Upper West Side: raaacist!  Sexist!  Homophobe!  Xenophobe!  It's amazing what a bit of education will do for you.

And now we have Peggy Noonan writing that "America Needs More Gentlemen."  No doubt, but first we have to win, and not just win the decisive battle of the shutdown, or the midterms, or the 2020 election.  We have to demolish liberals every day before breakfast like Jordan B. Peterson demolished Surrey Girl Cathy Newman last week in a decisive battle on BBC Channel 4.

But how?  Perhaps the answer is a critical theory that critiques the left's Critical Theory.  That's what Uri Harris proposed in his piece on the Cathy Newman demolition job.

[The left's] Critical Theory draws heavily on Karl Marx's notion of ideology.  Because the bourgeoisie controlled the means of production, Marx suggested, they controlled the culture.

Therefore, the bourgeoisie controlled everything else.  Critical Theory was necessary to show the self-serving assumptions behind the bourgeoisie's bland assertions of "universal truths and values."  Well, the bourgeois culture may have been self-serving, but it also increased per capita income by 3,000 percent in 200 years.  It also celebrated the code of the gentleman.

What we have to critique is the educated ruling class and its willing accomplices like Cathy Newman, that today acts as if equality and liberation are "universal truths and values" and brook no dissent.

And so the question becomes: are the values and beliefs of critical theory itself universal, or are they also partial to particular interests?

Well, I don't know if the left's agenda of equality and liberation is "unquestionable and universal."  But I do know this: the left's culture of equality and liberation has failed every time it was tried.  Hello, Soviet Union; hello, Venezuela.  Hello, Veterans Administration; hello, the Peoples Cultural Revolution.  Think about it.  The left's Critical Theory was criticizing a system of truths and values that raised humans from indigence to fabulous wealth in 200 years.  No wonder the left wants to "no-platform" and silence all voices raised against it.

I say let's up and at 'em.  Let's critique the left and everything it stands for back to the bare walls.  And then, just for fun, let's give another try to the awful patriarchal culture of the Code of the Gentleman, as long as it doesn't turn into The Code of the Woosters.

Christopher Chantrill (@chrischantrill) runs the go-to site on U.S. government finances, usgovernmentspending.com.  Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.