PrintFebruary 26, 2010
Citizen Cadres of Conservatism
America's elites have become obsessed with the perks of power. They will be replaced by a new governance of ordinary Americans seeking to preserve the blessings of liberty bequeathed by our founders. What Herbert E. Meyer wrote last week about how our nation is undergoing a quiet, peaceful removal of a ruling class from power, I believe will happen. Here is why.
Our Revolutionary War was not won by a well-drilled, paid, professional army. We won independence through the courage and sacrifice of citizen soldiers. If there is a theme to the Tea Party Movement, it is this spirit of voluntary and unselfish commitment to the triumph of liberty. As so many of us know, the brave men who signed the Declaration of Independence risked everything by their signature on that document. They, personally, risked much and sought no gain but the ideals of the Declaration.
The left does not grasp unselfish sacrifice. The Founding Fathers, to the students of moral nihilism produced by our colleges today, must have had a mercenary interest in our independence. What about those soldiers with bleeding feet who with stayed Washington at Valley Forge? They must have been dupes, however poignantly their own letters reveal otherwise. It is not just the left which cannot grasp fighting for higher ideals, it has become a whole, encrusted system of privilege and power which finds sacrifice "stupid."
Yet these are the few, the insulated, the snug members of the hives of power. This means Washington, of course, but it also means academia and Hollywood and all the other safe havens for the toadies of those who would take our freedom in exchange for entitlement IOUs that our children will pay. It is simply dumbfounding how often these elites are wrong, and how seldom it seems to bother them. There is no consequence, of course, for their failure.
Whatever the devotionals of their secular faith in blind power, these perennial insiders are almost always wrong. Global warming is a grand, malicious fraud? So what! The Cold War that could not be won was won? Big deal! Those of us who try to look inside thee minds of these people for sparks of thought and belief, even in the form of a misguided ideology, are looking for something that isn't there: power and conformity to those who have power is the ideology and the holy faith of those who scurry self-importantly about.
Who faces them in battle? Americans who are citizen soldiers and all volunteers: We, not they, hold the lamp of liberty in our arms. We do not wait for orders -- indeed, we do not take orders. Hillary once complained of a "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy," but this was surely projection on her part. The regimented, unthinking mercenaries in our political wars are drones of the left, not the right.
This is why we will win. The roots of ordered freedom run deep in our nation. Those roots have been nourished with the blood of young men who died in lonely places like Anzio and Khe Sanh. Generations have grown up learning less from drearily politicized history books than from the examples of their parents, neighbors, and parishioners living lives which bespoke confidence, hope, and self-reliance.
The citizen soldiers who wait to escort out the political bosses who have squeezed our country for their benefit operate without orders. The Tea Party Movement is entirely self-generating. A precursor in 1993 was "Dan's Bake Sale," begun as a lark when Rush Limbaugh suggested a bake sale to allow a caller to raise money to subscribe to the Limbaugh Letter. Thousands came, had fun, behaved well, and left: No federal regulations, no college syllabus, nothing but free people exercising their freedom.
How, exactly, do the automatons of the establishment deal with these citizen soldiers? The Redcoats faced the same problem in the Revolutionary War, when the harshly drilled tin soldiers of Europe encountered Americans who would hide behind trees (rather than blast in a close barrage) and who fired long range rifles rather than close order muskets.
These citizen cadres of conservatism who will reclaim our land do not take orders from above. We operate individually, like tens of millions of independent, autonomous minds, guided only by broad principles and objectives, and seeking less to capture any citadel or city than to liberate them all. Free men tend to take freedom for granted. It is almost in the nature of that treasure. But when free men fight, slave armies lose. That war is being fought, and won, right now.
Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie and The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.
Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie and The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.
