We should be outraged sometimes. We should be animated, showing our disgust with a system that keeps forgetting we’re here. We used to tar and feather tax collectors. Our Founders taught us that resistance to tyranny is obedience to God. We need more attitude, less fortitude.
Stoic fortitude without accompanying attitude is tantamount to accepting the way Washington already does things. You thought you stood firm, but the next thing you know you realize you’re standing motionless while the system buries you alive, having tricked you into thinking you’re “doing your duty” and “respecting the process” when you should have been raising hell.
Fortitude alone will not help you defeat the deep state; the deep state will bury you.
The allies of America’s byzantine intelligence sector and the political partisans who steer it to their own advantage are not threatened by your quiet sense of honor. They eat that stuff up, I’m afraid. When the FBI or the CIA wants to pull political strings in favor of politicians they like, nothing helps them more than well-meaning Americans—especially conservatives—thinking they’re doing their patriotic duty by believing what such agencies tell them and doing what they suggest. Former Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy had to sheepishly admit to Tucker Carlson that he now regrets taking the word of the FBI and Justice Department since they made him look foolish by parroting their lies on television. Gowdy, unfortunately, proved that deference means complicity.
Former FBI director Robert Mueller certainly has fortitude. He’s no loudmouthed hothead. Superficially, the determined, square-jawed, Joe Friday-like demeanor and mindset of a Mueller is exactly what traditional conservatives cherish. How fake it all turned out to be.
That’s a superficial version of conservatism. Place too much naive faith in the disinterested workings of the American system of justice and in the hands of deep state insiders like Mueller and James Comey and it will roll right over you. These people want Americans to be compliant instead of unruly, quiet instead of combative. That’s central to their plan to rule over us in perpetuity.
You don’t stop these deep state partisans by trying to match their quiet, cold adherence to procedure. They’ll win. The process is the punishment. You need to get loud and unruly and fight in an unruly way.
Fortitude—the “trust the process” faith conservatives were preaching, the soothing sounds of wait and see, as if the wheels of justice would soon render an acceptable, fair verdict if we just kept still and let them turn—fails in a situation like impeachment. Of course, by letting it play out, President Trump’s presidency was nearly ruined.
Now that the impeachment farce is over, you don’t recall the moments of heroic fortitude. You recall the Firebrand moments. They are memorable precisely because they are revealing.
These moments are what enabled Republicans to prevail. You may recall my colleague Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, who in a fiery exchange during House impeachment hearings got Ambassador Gordon Sondland to admit that “nobody else on this planet told [him] that Donald Trump was tying [Ukraine] aid to these investigations” and called the assumption that Trump was pressuring Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden “somewhat circular.”
You may also recall Rep. Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, who tried repeatedly to get Rep. Adam Schiff to admit to blocking Republican witnesses, and asked, “Mr. Chairman, will you be prohibiting witnesses from answering members’ questions, as you have in the closed-door depositions?”
Or perhaps you remember Rep. Jim Jordan questioning the integrity of the Judiciary Committee chair—or me, telling Rep. Jerry Nadler that he was out to “overturn the results of an election with unelected people.” These moments were dramatic because they were substantive. You will lose every fight you don’t engage.
But nothing we do in Washington would matter if there weren’t a far more vibrant and interesting culture to defend beyond the Beltway. Out there, too, there are foes who won’t be impressed if we behave like predictable cogs in a vast machine, doing our duty—and meekly accepting their dominance.
“Cancel culture,” for example, won’t be stopped by silent resolve or hoping that tech lobbyists will suddenly embrace the virtues of pluralistic debate. Our silence is exactly what they want! Like the architects of impeachment, the social justice warriors will happily thunder and pontificate about white privilege and fragility while we sit, shamefaced, waiting for them to pass judgment on us. No way! Watch footage of these clowns screaming in unison until polite, elderly professors give up and stop talking—then tell me stoic silence is the best weapon against them or that it will spur them to greater civility. I doubt it.
We have tried to be polite conservatives for the past few decades, like quiet, well-behaved children in a church pew. But the big tech companies—YouTube, Facebook, Twitter (which shadowbanned and “labeled” me)—have removed or demonetized our channels. This is the largest in-kind contribution in political history.
The blatantly biased Southern Poverty Law Center has gone from its noble origins defending civil rights to a thoroughly partisan outfit that labels inoffensive conservative, Christian, or libertarian groups as racist purveyors of “hate.”
I am not, nor will I ever be, a defender of Nazis or Klansmen. I shouldn’t even have to say that. But the Left throws around these sorts of smears to silence its critics and drive anyone it doesn’t like out of the national conversation. These smear organizations like the SPLC should be defeated, not tolerated,
