I watched the interview of my friend and former political opponent, Senator Mike Braun, Republican of Indiana, on the Tucker Carlson show recently regarding the topic of BLM and police reform.  I know Senator Braun because we are both from Jasper, Indiana, a small town in south-central Indiana, population of 15,000.  Braun is an immensely successful businessman whose company employs more than 600 individuals.  I came to know Mike when we ran against one another for the state representative seat for Indiana’s 63^rd district in 2014.  We spoke before the same audiences and sat at the same tables.  We discussed issues and philosophies.  He defeated me handily. 

I would not describe him as a movement conservative, which meant he was likely to move leftward once ensconced in D.C. after winning the Senate seat in 2018.  He favored lower taxes and large deductibles for health insurance coverage.  All well and good, but limited.  Beyond that, I felt he knew little.  Not on national or international matters, on energy or immigration.  Nor on cultural issues, which Republicans have ignored, to the nation’s detriment, for decades.  Braun provided a clue of the direction he would take when in his very first year in the Senate he joined with Senator Chris Coons, (D-DE) to form the first Senate bipartisan caucus on “finding solutions to ‘climate change.’”  Not a good start, Mike.  Still, I thought, in most ways, at least, he would have conservative, common-sense instincts as a Jasper man, Midwesterner, and successful businessman.

As many have seen, I could not have been more wrong.  Braun’s response to the post-George Floyd rioting was to introduce a bill named the “Reforming Qualified Immunity Act.”  This bill would have taken aim at “qualified immunity,” which protects police from frivolous lawsuits pursued in the regular discharge of an officer’s duties.  Braun, in so doing, was accepting the BLM-leftist premise that one of the significant problems confronting blacks in America was the statistically invalid claim that there is widespread police brutality targeting blacks.  He neglected to mention the exploding rates of black out-of-wedlock childbirth, welfare dependency, educational failure, drug addiction, criminality, incarceration, and the formation of an entrenched black underclass since the Great Society.  Braun felt that cops needed to be held accountable.  He brought up the cases of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, and Breonna Taylor.  He signaled his support for Black Lives Matter, a Marxist organization that has called for the killing of police and the abolition of the “Western-prescribed nuclear family.”

We also learn of the efforts of Senator John Cornyn, (R-TX), who sponsored a bill to make “Juneteenth” a federal holiday.  This day, June 19, marks the anniversary of the last slaves officially liberated in Texas and the Confederacy in 1865 after the Civil War had ended.  Senators Ron Johnson, (R-WI), and James Lankford, (R-OK) agreed with the bill but went a step further by recommending exchanging it for Columbus Day, effectively eliminating that holiday, a position advocated by BLM Marxists.  Johnson cited concerns over the debt.  This, after Johnson and most of Congress had already voted for stimulus packages of more than $2 trillion in the wake of the COVID pandemic and a likely federal deficit of $4 trillion for 2020. 

In the aftermath of the George Floyd incident on May 25, Republican Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, announced to reporters on Capitol Hill that “we are still wrestling with America’s original sin [of slavery].” He later spoke of “obvious racial discrimination” in policing that would require legislation.

Joining a protest against police brutality, Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah stated that “We need to stand up and say that black lives matter.”  A GOP-led Senate Armed Services Committee approved a proposal to strip Confederate names from military bases.  House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, (R-CA), said he was “not opposed” to renaming bases.

These Republican efforts come as avowed communist activists pull down statues, deface monuments, loot, burn, and pillage their way through the land, undertaking to destroy our economic and political systems and erase our history.  The tactic of destroying memorials to Robert E. Lee and other confederates moved at lightning speed to engulf the founders and other historic American heroes, including Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Grant, Frederick Douglass, and others.  Columbus became another favored target.  For leftist book burners, Columbus is a genocidal racist, responsible for Western colonialism, slavery, and oppression of “indigenous people.”  Their cultural jihad has now moved to our churches, synagogues, and Jesus himself. 

In the face of this cultural onslaught by the Left, supported by our dominant institutions, including academia, the media, the Democrat Party, and corporate America, the Republicans speak of “police reform,” renaming military bases, and eliminating Columbus Day.  But then Republicans begin every confrontation with the Left by accepting their premises and narrative, fighting, in effect, on their territory and disagreeing minimally if at all, seemingly oblivious to the threat. 

Wars, however, are not won by playing defense.  Republicans should begin by defending our culture, institutions, and history.  They should extoll our legacy of human rights, liberty, Constitutional governance, and Western achievements in art, music, literature, science, and technology.  Our unparalleled standard of living and material, moral, and spiritual riches should be proudly brandished and upheld. 

But Republicans must also go on the offensive, and attack the decadent, degenerate Left, within our country and without.  Point out their record of poverty, oppression, and genocide.  Describe the devastation of the Soviet Union, Red China, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.  Wrap the Marxist record of destruction around the necks of their successors in the American Left and the Democrat Party who now openly embrace that corrupt system.  Draw inspiration from a previous Republican leader, Ronald Reagan, who confronted tyranny and defended liberty.  Reagan lambasted the Soviets as the “evil empire,” and demanded that Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev “tear down this wall” to the chagrin of RINOs and Democrats of his day. 

But that is not what you will get from the BLM Republicans, our chestless Republican boys.  They lack the stomach for political warfare.  A new political vehicle is required, or the party drastically reformed.  It must become a party and movement that will unabashedly defend our institutions and history.  Only when we have such a party, capable of attacking the Revolutionary Left, can we save the country.  Would that Braun of Indiana, or others in the Republican fold, consider such change with the nation under siege.

Richard Moss, M.D., a surgeon practicing in Jasper, IN, was a candidate for Congress in 2016 and 2018. He has written A Surgeon’s Odyssey and Matilda’s Triumph, available on amazon.com.  Contact him at richardmossmd.com or Richard Moss, M.D. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.