No doubt, after the glorious victory in November 2022, a new Republican Congress will start to enact an America First agenda that, while honoring the needs of all Americans, will focus on the needs of ordinary middle-class Americans: the kind that obey the law, go to work, and follow the rules.

But there is another problem, a big problem, that the new Congress needs to tackle. And that is the cozy relationship between activist groups and the administrative state, including both the bureaucracy and the judiciary. Nothing is going to change unless their condominium is broken up.

We all know this and yet we don’t, not really. But for me, it was illuminated like a shooting star across the night sky by a Ron Unz piece celebrating the 25th anniversary of his California Proposition 227 that ended the domination and hegemony of “bilingual education.” I blogged about his recollections here.

Ron started his campaign after reading about LA Latino garment workers protesting to have their kids taught English in school. If a kid was "limited English proficient," he would be stuck in Spanish language classes, and never really get to be literate in English. Unz found out that there was an education activist group backing bilingual education.

Although the bilingual advocates were relatively few in number, they were fiercely committed to their programs and intensely focused upon that sole, overriding issue, expressing the sort of fanaticism that persuaded far larger organizations to steer clear of any direct conflict.

And mainstream organizations, including the Democratic and Republican Parties and big corporations, don’t like to rile up “fiercely committed activists”.

We have seen this operate in recent weeks in Florida's so-called “don’t say gay” bill. I read a telling piece in Quillette that tipped me off to the central problem with gender-bending in schools.

Lawsuits filed under Title IX (the 1972 law that prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex” in education) involved children who’d been diagnosed as gender dysphoric, with courts being asked to view plaintiffs’ claims through the lens of medical need. And the judges proved amenable.

Really judges? Discrimination on the basis of sex includes failing to treat “gender dysphoric” children? Well yes, given how “fiercely committed” the gender “advocates” are to the normalization of gender-bending. And the Science™! And if regime media is all in for LGBT issues, judges would want to be “amenable.”  Because nobody wants to be on the wrong side of Science™ and fiercely committed advocates, unless his name is Ron DeSantis.

Then there are judges like Ketanji Brown Jackson that just instinctively follow their friends and just know that pedophilia is not such a big deal. And I dare say that there are a few advocacy groups “fiercely committed” to the decriminalization of pedophilia to help folks like her make up their minds.

Think about this, that I explored in “Which Enemy is Best?” last Fall. There are, I said, four political strategies, given that “there is no politics without an enemy.”

1. Unite the country against a small country for a quick win
2. Unite the country against a big country for a world war
3. Unite half the country against the other half for a civil war
4. Unite most of the country against a small minority for a witch-hunt.

However, there is the concept developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, that “the most intolerant wins” so that a small “intransigent minority” can force “the entire population to submit to their preferences.” Except for one thing. As I wrote:

It requires an intransigent minority supported by the ruling class to force the entire population to submit to them. If the ruling class doesn't care about them, or actively wants to use the small minority as a punching bag, well, keep your heads down fellahs.

When our present ruling class was young, its over/under political formula was all about beating up a small minority of “malefactors of great wealth” to help the workers (See Strategy #4 above.)

But today the ruling class is beating up the majority on behalf of an advertised minority of “oppressed peoples.” (See Strategy #3 above). That is when they are not encouraging various “intransigent minorities” against the overwhelming majority.

Then you have a politician like Ron DeSantis. He is taking out after an “intransigent minority” on behalf of the overwhelming majority that doesn’t want teachers talking to their kiddies about sex -- any sex, from Adam and Eve to whatever creative rubbish the LGBT intransigent minority came up with last week. I don’t know about you, but I suspect that DeSantis is trying to execute on Strategy #4, uniting the majority against a small minority.

You can now see the outline of politics for the next decade. Will the intransigent activists continue to be supported by the deep state in media, the bureaucracy, and the judiciary? Or will a new generation of politicians marginalize and isolate the intransigent activists and remind the bureaucrats who pays their pensions?

Tune in for next week’s exciting episode.

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

Image: Pixabay