A Call for Counter Revolution

If you stand athwart history yelling “Stop” you will be run over – by a club-wielding mob of Mostly Peaceful Protesters.

The younger generations are mad as hell for good reason. Their futures have been mortgaged to appease Grover Norquist. Their brains have been crippled by leftist educators. Their careers have been outsourced to China, India, and evil robots. Homes in safe neighborhoods to start families have become ridiculously expensive.

Conservatism is an undead political philosophy. There is little left to conserve. For professional class power couples living in gated burbclaves, things still look pretty good. Ditto for aging Boomers with fat 401(k)s and over-appreciated real estate. But for the majority of the younger generations, America has been a great disappointment. Many are ready to scrap it all and start over.

Demographics is destiny. Change is going to happen. The only question is whether it’s going to be revolution or counter revolution.

I prefer the latter. I’m ready to turn the clock back a half century or more, back to a time when Christianity, the Constitution, motherhood, apple pie, and the American flag were in high esteem. I want to go back to a time when schools attempted to teach good values – and good grammar, a time when kids could safely roam their neighborhoods without being kidnapped by Social Services, a time when money had stable value, a time when a working class man could support a family with a stay-at-home mom, a time when there was such a thing as local community.

I don’t want to go directly back, mind you. We don’t need to bring back lynchings, lead paint, and the Lawrence Welk show. Indeed, pure Reaction is by definition a losing political strategy: if you wind back the clock exactly, you recreate the conditions which got us in this mess in the first place. Much of the material to follow will be about cleaning up the mess left behind by past persecutions. We need to deweaponize the Civil Rights Act and make Black lives matter too. (In this woke age, Martin Luther King's Dream is in fact a reactionary vision.)

Conservatism is an Undead Movement

If you think we can save America by reciting Sean Hannity's talking points, you are living in La La Land. You cannot ignore 95% of the political battle space and come back from behind. And yes, we who love America are really far behind.

In 2020 the Democrats dropped all pretense of moderation. They openly compromised with socialist Bernie Sanders. They embraced Identity Politics. They celebrated the destruction of downtown business districts and national monuments. They expressed solidarity with those who disrespected the American flag. They attacked Motherhood and Apple Pie. And they won.

They won the Presidency. They won the House. They won the Senate. The only branch we hold is the Supreme Court and there’s talk of packing it.

And they won while running a terrible campaign. Their presidential nominee went senile. Their vice presidential nominee was so unlikable that even the Democrats don't like her. Biden mostly campaigned from his basement. In person rallies were comical affairs consisting of people sitting in cars and honking their horns for applause. And yet Biden/Harris won.

What happened? Was it fraud?

Some, maybe. But was it seven million votes worth of fraud? That’s how badly Trump lost the popular vote.

Maybe it was Trump’s pro wrestling heel of a public persona. Some notable neocons voted for Biden, including P.J. O’Rourke. (I used to like P. J….bummer.) But what about the losses in the House and Senate?

There is an answer, and it’s as scary as the fraud theory: the Far Left has been playing the Long Game. While the Right focused on fundraising, redistricting, and talking points, the Left has patiently taken over the core institutions of our land: universities, public schools, non profit foundations, Hollywood, PBS, Silicon Valley, and even many mainstream churches.

The Woke Left has even taken over Wall St. and Big Corporate America. Our biggest corporations have embraced Big Government, Anti Americanism, Critical Theory, and censorship of most things conservative. Even mushy mainstream conservatives are getting a taste of what it felt like to be a Libertarian in the 1980s.

And as I write these words the Biden Administration is working to make the military Woke as well. And the Democrats are having too much fun with the secret police they now control. They are playing mad libs with old Nazi propaganda. They refer to an unarmed out-of-control demonstration as a full on insurrection. They speak of using the Fourteenth Amendment to take away voting rights. And they salivate at the possibility of making the emergency hard-to-verify voting system of 2020 permanent.

These are terrifying times.

The Pendulum should swing back a bit in 2022 assuming the vote counting is semi honest. Midterm elections almost always favor the opposition party. And the Biden Administration is both incompetent and guilty of extreme overreach. This should buy those who love America a bit of time.

But if you depend on the Pendulum, you are too short for this ride. The Left has been moving the pivot point for decades, and the Right has been mortgaging America in order to buy Boomer votes.

Needed: A Handbook for Reactionaries

Back in the 1970s the Left got Rules for Radicals and Steal this Book. The Right got direct mail and Santa Claus Economics. Well, today direct mail is mainly for reaching retirees, and Santa Claus has maxed out his credit card. The Right needs new strategies and an updated platform.

Like it or not, the Moral Majority isn't. And between outsourcing and merger mania, business owners are also a shrinking demographic. The Republican Party has become the Rural and Retiree Party. The Republican Party is thus dying—literally.

Our most populous and beautiful regions have gone single party. When Democrats cease to have real competition, Democrats cease to be liberals. The Democratic Party becomes dominated by socialists, nut cases, puritanical satanists, and/or race-baiting Internazis. These are terrifying times. When the political Left resorts to censorship and secret police, PEOPLE DIE!

Even some old school liberals are getting scared. (We can use this! Stay tuned.)

The Republican Party needs to up its ideological game and craft an agenda that can appeal to the younger generations. This starts with weeding out long festering internal contradictions. You cannot expect the unskilled to get off welfare when it takes two jobs to make up the lost revenue. You cannot fight radical feminism when it takes two incomes to support a middle class lifestyle. You cannot expect young adults to abide by traditional notions of family values when they cannot afford to start a family.

If you want capitalism and democracy at the same time, you need to mix in a healthy dose of populism. The sweet spot for smaller government is somewhere between Ron Paul and Ross Perot, with a bit of Teddy Roosevelt thrown in for good measure (Sorry Glenn!). If we want to keep America capitalist, we need to increase the number of capitalists, and that means taking positions which will Trigger both die hard Reagan fans and my younger Libertarian self. Saving America is not a job for Snowflakes, including right wing Snowflakes like P.J. and John Kaisich.

Donald Trump got it. He used his fame and fortune to drag the Republican Party kicking and screaming towards the political niche it needs to be in. Unfortunately, the bravery and belligerence which enabled Trump to face down the Man Behind the Curtain made him frightening to the wine-and-cheese set. Many longtime Republican intellectuals couldn't handle the excess testosterone and defected to Team Biden. And Trump's Man of the People rambling rhetoric came off as incoherent to the college educated.

Trump's biggest weakness was with the college educated demographic—including the top bureaucrats who run the Deep State. His biggest failures as President stem from his lack of think tank support. Trump was doing battle against not just Democrats and Big Media; he was battling against basic textbooks, and he was hopelessly outgunned.

Rule 1 for Reactionaries will provide the necessary intellectual ammunition that future populist politicians will need to continue and refine Trump's trade policies. Future rules will address other aspects of populism, including areas utterly overlooked by The Donald. We need a complete and coherent populism that the college educated can embrace.

Many might despair at such a project. After all, our universities—and indeed our education system in general—have been horribly corrupted. Fortunately, in states where Republicans and/or sanity prevails, there are things we can do about it. Rules on the subject are forthcoming. Indeed, I intend to address the corruption of our institutions in general. The chapters to follow on punishing woke multinational corporations should be particularly entertaining, and potentially profitable.

Alas, re-educating the educated and reversing Antonio Gramsci's March Through the Institutions are long term strategies. We might not have a long term to carry them out. This is where things get ugly. 4D chess is a rough and dirty game. You might get hemp and hair gel on your precious principles. But for those willing to play, I'll show you some surprising places to look for potential reactionaries. I want to bring the battle back to California and other geographically pleasant places. Retreating to reliably Red states is against my nature. I refuse to cede the good real estate to woke socialists.

But defense is important too, so if you find any of the offensive rules to be offensive, don't do them. Leave that part of the battle space to others. There are plenty of squares on the 4D chessboard. Play the zones which fit your talents and inclinations. Do your part and the job will get done. We can restore America, but it will require mass quantities of real efforts.