We Are No Longer One Nation

The West is entering what may be its darkest chapter since the fall of the Roman Empire. For decades, the Left has been quietly chipping away at the pillars of our civilization--faith, family, reason, beauty, the rule of law--all time-tested virtues rooted in common experience, and the necessary building blocks of greatness. They've worked very hard, spending trillions of dollars, to replace these virtues with an egocentric post-modernism that prioritizes nihilism, chaos, debauchery, hatred and elevates the most mentally ill among us to the status of renowned thought leaders.

At least a decade ago, the Left realized that Constitutional principles were a massive inconvenience--repealing centuries-old amendments became mainstream thought. Attacking our founding ideas didn't really work, so they attacked the men who wrote them. When that also didn't lead to any great political success, they simply started lying about everything, all the time. The Left simply does not care about truth. They have long been animated by Marcusian ideas, such as the notion that tolerance of "repressive" speech is "inauthentic" and the open advocacy of violence against the "repressor"; that even math, science and reason are agents of repression; that the social fringes should conquer and rule despotically; and that every individual can determine their own reality.

Over the last several years, the endorsement of violence on the Left has grown increasingly popular. Last year Donald Trump was shot. Then a CEO was killed by a radical who the Left immediately canonized. And now Charlie Kirk is dead. A man whose offense was encouraging open and honest discourse between Left and Right to avoid violence, was in the end a victim of an assassin's bullet. Ominously, we must consider the probability that our collective will to discourse across political boundaries died with him.

With respect to everything Charlie fought for, American simply cannot continue like this. Any conservative commentator knows that the next open-air event they attend could be their last. Among the millions of homicidal Leftists, only one has to have the motivation and a clean line of fire to silence a major political voice. The fringes of both major parties equate political power with survival. Distrust deepens on a nearly daily basis. Debate and dialogue have failed because each side now has a completely different value system, with near-zero overlap, with each philosophy diametrically opposed to the other.

Without common principles, what is there to debate? When the Left is at war with the philosophical foundations that built the society they live in, how is peace possible? When the Left's political leadership attempts to import tens of millions of the "social fringes" into the country to create a new political base as their existing coalitions disintegrate, how can compromise still be an option? And if peace is not an option, what then do we do?

Assuredly, President Trump will continue the difficult but necessary work of smashing the Left's hold on American institutions. But we all know Republicans won't stay in office forever, and when Democrats come back, they're going to double down on all of Trump's tactics to try to reclaim the power that he's dislodging them from. This will continue to create escalation and erode trust in our institutions. Things are going to get much worse. All of this tension isn't suddenly going to cease in a grand compromise. Its going to lead to violence in the streets, war or a National Divorce. The last of these options may be our only chance at a bloodless revolution.

In the 1940s, Pakistan broke off from India because Hindus and Muslims simply could not co-exist. But I've never heard of a Hindu suicide bomber or a Hindu-plotted 9-11 attack. Muslims, it seems, have a hard time coexisting with anyone. When you live by an ideology that hates every other ideology and calls for violence and subjugation against outside groups, those groups will eventually cast you out. After years of sectarian violence that killed millions, the partition ended up creating lasting peace and stability.

That seems to be the problem with the Left today. They're not going anywhere. They're not going to become any less homicidal. And they're not interested in finding common ground with the Right. The only peaceful solution to stop further escalation now may be to break off the blue states from the United States and let them do as they please. The alternative is almost unthinkable.

As a final note, even if Charlie's movement to maintain open dialogue with the Left ultimately proves fruitless, he was right that violence is no great alternative. He was also right that we are in the trenches of a spiritual war for the soul of the United States, and that God will determine the victors; no matter what happens, we should strive to maintain the high ground, as Charlie did. 

The Left Has Lost the National Narrative

Since Trump's victory in November we're seeing a big cultural shift happening that didn't happen with his 2016 win. Beauty pageant winners are white blonde women. Fortune 500 companies are ditching DEI programs. Even AOC removed her pronouns from her socials. These aren't mere policy changes. The Left has lost control of the prevailing "national narrative" for the first time in twenty years.

The Left has basically been on the offensive side of politics since Obama's "Audacity of Hope" speech in July 2004. Obama's keynote speech sliced through decades of Democratic malaise just as Americans were beginning to tire of the Bush Administration's heavy handed interventionism in the Middle East and regular blundering on domestic policy. The speech, given to support presidential candidate John Kerry at the Democratic National Convention, was energetic, optimistic and conciliatory. It didn't sound off on Leftist priorities, make self-aggrandizing claims about the virtues of Progressivism or vilify his Republican opponents. It spoke of making the national fight not about Right versus Left, but about hope versus cynicism, grounded in the commonalities of the American experience regardless of demographics. 

While Kerry lost to Bush in 2004, the Left had been galvanized in part by this inspired moment and stormed into power in the 2006 mid-terms. This was the election that catapulted then 66-year-old Nancy Pelosi into congressional leadership, a position she has never left. From then until Trump's recent victory, the Left has controlled the national narrative, essentially setting the parameters for acceptable political discussion and pushing their policy agenda forward with a large degree of success. This was made possible by continued public support as reflected in the polls and elections as much as its increasing influence over major institutions and Fortune 500 companies.

Suddenly, on November 5, 2024, it all came crashing down. To be sure, the Left had been in decline for years. The Progressive apex happened in June 2020 with the death of George Floyd, an event that had millions of Americans-- many of whom who had been largely uninvolved in politics-- out in the streets. But the hysteria over race that came after, along with destruction of major cities, the proliferation of vagrancy and the calls to defund police departments around the country soured most of the country on progressive causes. And thus the recession began, setting the stage for Trump's return.

To be sure, 2016 was an important election and Trump had already won the majority of working class votes along with unusually high numbers among minorities and other constituencies that were not exactly traditionally Republican. But 2016 was the set up for a much more significant shift that came in the last few months. 

Twenty years ago, Obama had seized the national narrative that had been established by Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan's "shining city on a hill" was not only a return to tradition and a rejection of Progressivism; more importantly, it was an affront to Communism and advocated a muscular foreign policy. While Reagan was a wildly popular president and is widely credited with defeating the Soviet Union and winning the Cold War, his Neoconservative advisors ran wild without his wisdom and restraint in the second Bush Administration. Reagan died a hero; his national narrative lived long enough to see itself become the villain in less inspired hands. Reagan's narrative did however also witness its apex under George W. Bush: September 11, 2001 was the ultimate validation of the need for aggression abroad, or at least it seemed so at the time, and in its aftermath Bush saw the highest approval ratings of any president in history.

Go back even further and you can see this play out again, beginning with the rise of the New Deal in 1933 and continuing until the decline of Progressive momentum with the stagflation of the 1970s and the fall of the bitter and contemptuous Jimmy Carter (R.I.P.) to Reagan in 1980 after just a single term in office. It wasn't merely an election loss -- it was a re-alignment of national values. That is exactly what's playing out right now.

This may be good news for Republicans. When you win the presidency, you win it for just four to eight years. When you control the national narrative, you tend to control it for twenty or more. Today's national narrative is put simply: America First. America and Americans before international institutions, "strategic partners," giving away money to non-profits in other countries to push DEI values that nobody wants, America before illegal immigrants, America before Ukraine, before Israel and everyone else. 

This narrative is not that different from the "audacity of hope." It is broadly patriotic in spirit, even if the particulars are in fact partisan. Like the 2004 speech, it speaks directly to the middle class, regardless of demographic. It also won over a broader coalition of voters than the Republican party has experienced since 1964, including, promisingly, a wide swath of young voters, particularly young men.

The Left should be particularly concerned about its lack of national-level talent. This is another symptom of a narrative in decline. Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg aren't Obama-level leaders. Not even close. And without a doubt Joe Biden is an embarrassment they'd like to forget. There won't be a new narrative on the Left until there is a new superstar. And considering how Democrats have been cowed by their recent defeat, that could be a long way off.