Many conservatives may be frustrated with the direction our country is heading. For decades, the country has slid ever more to the left, with ideas and behaviors that once would have been condemned as evil and perverse now being celebrated, while those maintaining traditional values and mores are denounced as bigoted and dangerous. There’s a reason for that: leftists always break the rules. And that makes them not only effective in winning the culture war and at politics, but also very difficult to combat.
We need only look at elections to see an example of how the left operates. Leftists push for mail-in ballots because they know that mail-in ballots make electoral fraud significantly easier. They push to eliminate voter ID laws because they know they can take advantage at the polls. And they know that it’s far easier to engage in fraud than it is to prove fraud. As a result, they keep winning elections even when they shouldn’t.
The left’s rule-breaking behavior extends to other areas too. Witness the recent trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. The New York Times is publishing as much information as it can about the jurors in the trial. While juror identities are secret, in order to keep jurors safe, the Times’ efforts are clearly part of an intended chilling effect. Fail to find Chauvin guilty and we’ll doxx you is the clear implication to be drawn from the Times’ reporting. Try to call them on it, however, and they’ll hide behind the First Amendment.
The left’s rule-breaking similarly extends to matters of personal decorum and societal expectations too. The left isn’t afraid to engage in behavior that would normally be deemed beyond the pale, harassing women and children at rallies, spraying pepper spray and urine at opponents, and other sorts of dirty tactics. But subject them to the same treatment and they’ll be the first to scream bloody murder.
The problem with conservatives is that we’re law abiding and follow the rules, even when it’s to our detriment. The left knows that we’ll follow the rules and that we’ll trust in societal institutions to enforce the rules. So when courts continually throw the book at the Proud Boys, abortion clinic protesters, or those who were at the Capitol on January 6, we decry the heavy-handed overreaction but we trust that mistakes will be corrected through the system. Meanwhile, Antifa rioters are treated with kid gloves, murderers and thieves are released on bail to kill and rob again, and hardcore criminals receive slaps on the wrist.
Until conservatives realize that the system won’t correct mistakes, that harsh treatment of law-abiding citizens and lax treatment of criminals is a feature welcomed by the left and not a bug, we’ll continue to lose ground to the left. At some point we’re going to have to wake up and realize that continuing to play the game by the rules imposed on us by the left and its allies within state organs is a losing proposition that will result in failure. We need to break the left’s rules, introduce our own, and see things through to the end. That’s the only way to break the left’s stranglehold on American society.