Now that I have your attention...Jennifer Lawrence is a Hollywood ignoramus who knows nothing of our democracy, which is in fact not a democracy, but a constitutional republic.

It has been reported that Jennifer Lawrence is planning to take a year off from acting in order to pursue a career in activism.  While I don't envision anything of substance coming from her effort, she (and the left) recognizes the virtue of activism.  In this, she and the left are right.

I have made appeals to Republican Party officials for a decade and have attempted to reach out to conservative think-tanks to spur them to shift their efforts from political battles to cultural ones.  Culture is upstream of politics, and liberals are micturating in the stream.  By the time a student graduates from high school, or college, he has been inculcated to think of societal issues through the prism of the left.  Any doubt?  Look at last week's school shooting in Parkland, Florida.  Students have accepted, almost universally, the dogma espoused by the media and leftist activists.

While evidence and reason inform thinking persons that liberal policing policies created a killer and are solely to blame for the deaths of 17 students and teachers, community organizers and media have appealed to anger and emotion to point to a (false) cause: guns.

Truth has lost ground to emotion and force of narrative.  As we work to reason through the issues of the day, the left is using emotion and brute-force media messaging to overwhelm the senses.  While the left was entirely exposed this past week, it is my contention that we lost ground electorally.

I don't propose that we abandon reason, but we must do a better job hitting the streets, as Jennifer Lawrence has proposed to do.  We must meet students, single women, minorities, and others where they live.  We must make direct appeals to the virtuousness of our ideas (and the truth) and link those ideas to the aspirations of our particular audience.  Liberal policies have failed, and they've failed liberal constituents the most.

We have a severe messaging deficit.  The media are 90% liberal.  Hollywood is 90% liberal.  College campuses are 80-90% liberal.  Popular culture is 90% liberal.

Where and how do we think young people are hearing about our ideas?  How do we think that these young people will vote this year, in 2020, or beyond? 

As I said, Jennifer Lawrence may be a know-nothing, but if she hits the college campus circuit in tight jeans and a low-cut top to register voters, we are doomed.  We'll be a democracy soon enough, followed immediately by dictatorship.

Image: celebrityabc via Flickr.