I've thought about this for a long time now and I've come to some conclusions about why we allow ourselves to be constantly pushed around by our fellow Americans on the Left.

My conclusion is that we bend over backwards, turn the other cheek and give the benefit of the doubt to those who've declared themselves our political enemies because we feel we must remain on the moral high ground and be true to our beliefs.

One of those beliefs is that all people have the right to speak their minds however objectionable or wrong-headed/wrong-hearted their comments and core beliefs may be. We conservatives defend the right of every person to be wrong, and because we've been brought up to believe that there are just some things that civilized people don’t do to each other, we leave our flank exposed to attack from those on the Left.

We let our ideals get the better of us.

The same is true of our better nature. While we try to avoid lying to others and to ourselves, we cannot control those who repeatedly lie to us nor are we able to keep conversations with liberals on topic and avoid their attempts at personalizing them through name-calling, aspersion-casting and downright animus. We're suckers for principles and for our faith in the inherent goodness of others. We operate on a single guiding philosophy that includes fairness, civility and charitableness. Straying from even one of these unwritten rules of behavior and allowing ourselves to openly push back at our accusers - even in the face of an ad hominem attack - guarantees us a guilty conscience, accompanied by a nagging feeling of moral desertion to our principles. So, we let ourselves be verbally abused by liberals who have no scruples and who play by a totally different set of rules… or make them up as they go. Their rules of engagement do not include giving us the benefit of the doubt nor do they accord us the same freedom to speak our minds as we provide them.

It's as if the 'blue' team enters the field outfitted with a completely different rulebook and proceeds to play the game according to those rules to the total confusion of the 'red' team to say nothing of the bewilderment of the fans in the stands!

My second conclusion is that we conservatives have not seen through nor understood the Left's overarching strategy, which is to repeatedly attack us and our culture with impunity and without warning. This is contrary to how we on the right wage war. We fire warning shots, give the enemy enough time to move civilians from the target zone, and if we must retaliate, we do so with proportionality.

Remember Pearl Harbor.

On Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, Americans were shocked to learn that the Japanese had launched a "sneak" attack on our naval facilities in Pearl Harbor. How dare they! Totally without warning and on the Lord's Day to boot! Americans woke up to a new reality, that its enemies weren't bound by the same code of conduct as our own. It was a painful experience, but it taught us a powerful lesson - that in war, the first casualty is always the rulebook. The Democrats took that lesson and stuffed it into their muscle memory and would save it for later use against the rest of us in their attempt to radically transform America from the traditional, rules-based country it is into a 'government town' where they would reign supreme.

Let's step back for a minute and look at what the Left wants and how it is going about getting it. First and foremost, it wants a heavily centralized government that takes its marching orders from ideologues who see a constitutional republic as an impediment, not an empowerment, for progress. It opposes states' rights and the sovereign right of the individual to chart his/her own future. They see religion as a threat to their plans to secularize the country and make God a bit player in their drama. They view the Constitution and Bill of Rights as mere suggestions on how to form a more perfect union. To them, diversity is more important than unity, and they view everything in terms of race. They believe that our history is reprehensible and steeped in white supremacy; that it needs to be re-written and that they should be its new authors and censors.

They regard our children as property of the state and that the state has the ultimate say in how they are educated and raised. They believe that America's majority should not have the power to decide issues of importance and that that task be Left to the minorities as partial reparation for slavery and generations of oppression.

They believe in a borderless world, one where freedom of movement and residence do not depend on nationality or status nor require a country's permission. This is especially true with our borders with Mexico and Canada. They view criminals as victims of society that deserve a second, third and fourth chance - that incarceration is cruel and unusual punishment and that even dangerous felons should be set free to roam the streets while their cases are pending. The Left regards the wanton destruction of property, arson and even personal crimes like car-jackings and muggings as rooted in systemic poverty and because of that those crimes must be seen as minor infractions of the law… if that. Protests that serve the values of the Left are permitted while those that serve to protect our individual freedoms are not. Liberals who protest are victims while conservatives who protest must be considered as perpetrators/purveyors of violence or domestic terrorists.

The levers of governmental power are to be reserved for liberals' use only, and those levers may be manipulated and 'weaponized' in defense of liberal goals and objectives. Conservatives' individual liberties may be suspended at will and they may be prosecuted for exercising them. Liberals see no hypocrisy in their defense of abortion on demand and their steadfast objection to capital punishment. They see no problem in destroying a potential innocent human life while forgiving another for a serial killing. They are fundamentally economics-illiterate and cannot grasp the obvious connections in destroying whole sectors of the economy and putting millions out of work in order to 'save' the planet from an unsubstantiated threat.

They are anti-war except when it comes to fighting proxy wars with a major adversary (like Ukraine with Russia). They happily sign on to treaties with avowed enemies of America (Iran) while thumbing their nose at an ally (Israel) over that country's right to exist - in peace - without the threat of a nuclear neighbor. They have no qualms about forcing experimental vaccines into their citizens' arms and then denying the science that questions their efficacy. They see traditional mothering and fathering as destructive to children and advocate for 'gender choice' among grammar school students while assaulting them with 'drag queen' shows and pornographic books that encourage them to question their own sexuality while the majority of them cannot even read or write at grade level.

The Left's desire to 'level the playing field' through identity politics, and implementing diversity and equity into every facet of American life is antithetical to the tenets of the civil rights movement and the integration process. To the Left, it is a numbers game that treats society not as the fluid, ever-changing entity it is, but rather as something static that doesn't demand workers with aptitude, experience and skills, but only checks the appropriate racial or sexual identity box to qualify them for jobs of authority or responsibility.

The Left has wagged the tail of our society for far too long. We have allowed it to spread its lies through an unholy alliance with the media, academia, the 'deep state' and with special interest groups to the detriment of our traditional American values. The Left has truly shown itself to be the embodiment of uncommon senselessness and we must stop enabling it.

Stephan Helgesen is a retired career U.S. diplomat who lived and worked in 30 countries for 25 years during the Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, and G.W. Bush Administrations. He is the author of twelve books, six of which are on American politics and has written over 1,300 articles on politics, economics and social trends. He operates a political news story aggregator website: www.projectpushback.com. He can be reached at: stephan@stephanhelgesen.com.