Summary: The Left has been winning since the 1970s. Now their war on us enters the pursuit phase of battle, the last phase. Their success results from a powerful but unmentioned alliance. The next battles will help determine America’s course for the 21st century.
Leftists celebrating their generations of victories.
This is the pursuit phase of battle
The Left has won so big and for so long. In three generations they have reshaped our society in ways that would have gotten anyone declared insane who predicted this in 1970. Marriage is radically different, and open to gays. Transgendered rights requires guys on girls’ teams and in their bathrooms. A candidate for high office is hounded by one woman’s unsupported account of a minor event at a high school party decades ago. Borders closed by FDR are thrown open, with gifts to migrants. Children are taught in elementary school how to use condoms and invent their own genders, then they are sent to Drag Queen Story hour. You can continue the list as well as I.
Now the Left begins the pursuit phase of battle – chasing down and destroying the fleeing broken remnants of their foes. They understand Rule One of street fighting: when your foe is down, kick him. Finish him off. They can taste victory. Here is an example of political power skillfully applied …
Question from a reader
“What do you think of SB-868, signed into law by Virginia Governor Northam on April 11?”
The decades since the 1964 legislation has made “discrimination” a vague and broad terms.
SB-868 adds “sexual orientation and gender identity” to the Virginia Human Rights Act’s already long list of prohibited discriminations in public accommodations, employment, credit, and housing. SB-179, also signed on April 11, adds “gender, disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation” to the categories of victims of hate crime offenses, resulting in a higher criminal penalty for the offense.
SB-868 further weaponizes the civil courts in the Leftist crusade to change our society, with well-funded activists or the State able to unleash potentially crippling lawsuits against individuals, small businesses, churches, and charities. The law allows brutal fines: up to $50K for first offence and up to $100K for each subsequent offense, unlimited compensatory damage awards (including emotional distress), up to $350K in punitive damages, and (best of all) a loser pays provision (the loser pays both sides attorneys). There are no loser pay provisions available to the peons, creating a giant barrier preventing them from suing even for outrageous violations of our rights (even in victory, the costs can exceed the award).
Facing powerful activists or the even more powerful State, even the largest of groups often choose to surrender. Here is an article about the likely results by Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation.
This expansion and weaponization of discrimination claims has led a few to question the wisdom of the great civil rights bills of the 1960s, saying that their critics were correct – and they represented a serious change in the Constitutional structure. Such as the brilliant Christopher Caldwell in The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties (2020). I have not read it, and have no comment on this line of thought. But his Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West (2009) was brilliant and prescient.
Their key tactical decision
Hitler and the Nazi Party did not invent everything in the 20th century, only almost everything. Hitler’s political innovations were many, but among the most effective was taking a socialist and revolutionary party and allying it with the rich. Much as America’s Left did during the 1980s. They closeted their dreams of economic revolution and focused on social change. This drastically reduced the opposition from the 1%. Most of the 1% supported (including their corporations) became neutral or even supporters (perhaps sincerely, perhaps as DaneGeld). The Clintons were one of the key figures leading this shift.
A tacit alliance with one foe to defeat others is one of those tactics often considered to scurrilous to admit – but usually ignored by their tribal followers – and usually wins.
But few of these marriages are made in Heaven. Often there is a final battle before the victory banquet. The rise of Sanders on the Left suggests that many on the Left have remembered that the Left’s platform has an economic component in addition to calling for a social revolution. So far the 1% have successfully suppressed this uprising among the ranks. Matt Taibbi points to the appointment by Nancy Pelosi of Donna Shalala to the Bailout Oversight Panel, a big-name Clinton apparatchik, shows that the 1% – Left alliance remains strong.
I will bet that this alliance will fracture, one of the many sources of discord I see in America’s future.
What about a civil war as …
…the trod-upon majority rebel at being used a lab rats in the Left’s social science experiments (e.g., here and here)? That’s an important question, which I will discuss soon. My answer is that this is not going to happen as most expect, but it might happen in a very different way.