I received criticism from a person on a website that made me stop and go, “hmm.” The commenter accused me of “preaching to the choir.” Well, I’ve certainly been accused of much worse (racist, bigot, and jack-booted thug come to mind), but the commenter has a valid point. To which I reply, “So what?” The right-wing choir needs preaching and, even more, should do a bit more singing.
The right hemisphere of the political globe is often far too silent. Oh, the right-wing has some outstanding preachers: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham, etc. And some great chapels, too: Fox News, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Twitchy, Lifezette, etc. But the right’s choir, especially when compared with the left’s, is relatively silent, thankfully non-violent, and too often tentative about singing its political notes and defending them when necessary.
This has got to change. Part of the reason the left has dominated so much of the urban political discussion is because liberals are never tentative about expressing their political views, while at the same time never hesitating to quash your political opinions as hate speech. Most frustrating are the blue metropolises blemishing predominantly red states as you see in those lopsided red-blue county electoral maps. The right needs to push back or, at the very least, stand its ground.
And what about elections? In certain liberal areas, many on the right no longer think their votes matter. I wonder if that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, I haven’t delved into the numbers—far be it for this English major to venture in the vicinity of math—but with such pathetically low numbers of Americans casting ballots, shouldn’t the right at least try even in left-wing enclaves during elections? Although I understand the concept, and know sometimes it’s true, I hate it when respected conservative pundits give too much credence to “wasted votes.”
According to Pew Research, “About 55.7% of the U.S. voting-age population cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election…well below turnout levels typical in most other developed democracies.” Who knows, with nearly half of Americans not casting votes, perhaps your vote could count, especially if you got more of your fellow conservatives to vote with you.
Look, those pundits could be wrong; many of them were way wrong about the Trump election. What if those conservative, libertarian, and populist Democrat voters in the blue states had stayed home instead of voting because they thought their votes would be a waste of time?
But that didn’t happen. And why? Because many of these voters were Americans who hadn’t voted in a long time or ever showed up. They made their votes count, even in some blue states. CNN, no bastion of conservative politics, reported, “Donald Trump on Tuesday eviscerated a piece of conventional wisdom that had become demographic and Democratic gospel in recent cycles: that blue states will always be blue states.”
Yes, the right-wing choir needs to stand its ground and even push back. Think about it. We’ve all seen the photographs of those silly “vagina” hats grown women (and some men) are actually wearing in public with pride. The sight always gives me a chuckle. But then that’s the end of it. I figure people wearing hats like that already have plenty of problems in their lives without me making them feel worse.
That snicker and warm feeling, kept to myself, of course, comes when I realize that those people will see an old photograph of themselves wearing the hat one day and wonder what the hell they were thinking. In other words, offended is the last thing I am. It’s their right.
I’m an American, so I’m obligated to tolerate their choice of attire and respect their right to free expression. This seems to be the reaction of most people on the right (okay, I know the right-wing has its own obnoxious boors—I know a few. But, thankfully, particularly when compared to the number on the left, they seem insignificant).
Actually, for many on the vocal left, obnoxious boor would be an improvement. For just one example, how many incidents can you recall, during the run-up to the presidential election and since, where leftist nasties have assaulted folks on the right who simply attempted to exercise their free expression rights?
The Internet has no shortage of reports and videos of liberal bullies beating up people for wearing Make America Great Again (MAGA) hats in support of President Donald Trump. Even a woman with a significant social media following. Blaire White, who describes herself as a “trans-activist,” was physically assaulted several times simply for wearing a MAGA hat on Hollywood Boulevard.
And anyone reading this who is thinking that’s what she gets, shame on you! What, she asked for it because of what she was wearing? Do you really mean that? Not in the United States of America, she shouldn’t. The leftist’s warped conflation of a red MAGA ball cap with a white hood is repulsive.
There’s a lot of good that can come from preaching to the choir. People become armed with powerful information they would not have come up with on their own. I’m constantly thinking, reading, and watching newscasts about this political stuff, so I can write about issues competently.
Yet I can’t think of a more enjoyable moment than when I’m reading or listening to a “preacher,” famous or not, who says something that clicks with me—puts another arrow in my quiver. Bittersweet though it is because those are things I wish I’d come up with on my own.
This happened a few years back when I read radio talk show host Ben Shapiro’s book, How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them: 11 Rules for Winning the Argument. I’m in the right-wing choir, and I learned a lot, and it’s helped me to do a little preaching of my own—by writing.
As a conservative commentator, writer, or advocate, it seems there are only three kinds of people you can reach: Other conservatives, those people in the open-minded middle, and intellectually honest liberals.
So many folks in the right-wing choir go through life barely humming—or even tapping their toes, afraid to offend their left-wing brethren as they bellow out their tunes with abandon. The left has no qualms about using partisan political indoctrination against the right (and the right’s children) at schools, on media, and in government…even going as far as attempting to indoctrinate police officers and other city employees and then using extortive means to force their compliance.
But the extortion is not limited to the cops. Recently, the leftist administration at the University of Washington tried to extort $17,000 from a conservative group before the UW would allow them to exercise their free speech rights by demonstrating on campus. I can’t recall them doing this to a leftist group. Fortunately, the school didn’t get away with it, but it says an awful lot about that publicly funded educational institution that they even tried.
By the way, the “security fee” wasn’t intended to mitigate the violence, damage, or police presence required to control the conservative demonstrators. It was to protect them against the leftist agitators who campus officials obviously expected would become violent.
At least the radical leftists (many of whom are overtly or tacitly supported by so-called mainstream Democrats) make it easy for you to know that their political message is clearly wrong. Think about it: they fight like banshees to the point of using violence against people and property, not to prove they are right but to prevent people from hearing the political views of anyone who disagrees with them.
To the contrary, this leftist behavior also shows why the right happens to be right. The left’s violence directed against the right is the best evidence of just how powerful a message the right must have. If its message, limited government, fiscal responsibility, and individual liberty weren’t so potent, the left wouldn’t bother trying to eradicate debate. If their ideas were really so good, they wouldn’t believe something as simple as an opposing idea could sway people away from their side.
The political right, those right-of-center, and some left-of-center are the ones I consider liberals because true liberals, though vehemently disagreeing with conservatives on many issues, would never infringe on free speech. True liberals want to engage in the battle of ideas. They don’t shut down their opponents’ free speech. In fact, if they are intellectually honest, they don’t want to shut down anyone’s First Amendment rights.
Professor Alan Dershowitz is an unyielding, current example of an honest liberal. Some leftists accuse him, specifically, of defending President Trump. However, it’s much more accurate to say he’s defending the American system of justice. He wants the system to work—for everyone—and is intellectually offended to see it misused and abused. The good professor’s defense of American justice and common sense is refreshing.
Bottom line, the right needs to follow in the Harvard liberal legal legend’s footsteps. To paraphrase the Declaration of Independence, and at the risk of being corny, “the right-wing needs to assume among the politically engaged of our nation, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle us…[emphasis added]” In other words, it’s time to take our place among the citizens of this nation, all of us, in expressing our political opinions and not to concede any more ground to the left.
This is not necessarily about provoking political disputes but about not being afraid to hold your ground when someone else provokes one. Don’t allow them to spout their political beliefs while calling your’s microaggressions or hate speech. This is not about berating people who hold opposing opinions but always tolerating free speech and expression with a good nature and demanding that the left tolerate our free speech as is our, and their, God-given right. Let’s stop allowing them to define all the terms and frame all the narratives.
No more cowering in the face of the leftist onslaught. We need to reach back to 2010, a time when the right had no backing from the White House or most federal agencies and, perhaps, even overt hostility from them. It was a time when conservatives, libertarians, Republicans, and traditional Democrats combined to form a modern “Tea Party.” They created it to hold all government abusers accountable for their reckless fiscal conduct and their ongoing battle against individual liberty.
I remember attending one of the very first Tea Party events in the country held, ironically, in ultra-leftist Seattle. As people shuffled into Westlake Park, I noticed a particularly hesitant, smartly dressed, middle-aged woman looking as if she had no idea what to do at a political demonstration.
We chatted with her for a few moments. She said she’d never gone to a political rally in her life. She said she operated a small real-estate company in one of the suburbs north of Seattle. She said she’d finally had enough of government intrusion and overreach and just felt compelled to attend. Think about what a powerful force that is to tug her out of her conservative comfort zone and impel her to gather with her compatriots in downtown Seattle.
Getting lefties to protest is as easy as attracting squirrels with peanuts. Getting the right-wing to demonstrate is an extraordinary feat—and extraordinarily meaningful.
It is in the spirit of that nice realtor, who felt compelled by a duty to her country and her fellow Americans to politically demonstrate for fiscal sanity and individual liberty, to join the right-wing choir and sing out. We must raise our voices and create a cacophony loud enough to drown out the socialists’ dark scores, the social justices’ Marxist dirges, and the anti-police requiems conducted daily by leftist bullies.
