How To Fight Back When They Fight Dirty

We’ve reached a turning point in the culture wars. The left’s giving up the moral high ground it stole from Christians, and fighting dirty for real now.

Leftists have so convinced themselves that Christians and other conservatives are “haters,” they think anything they do is good, loving and just. If a leftist sucker-punches conservatives, he’s just fighting for justice against a more powerful oppressor.

Disturbing, yes. No one wants to get sucker-punched. But it also opens up new strategic opportunities.

The Left’s Moral High Ground Strategy

The left fighting dirty is disturbing, but it’s not all bad. It undermines one of their most crucial strategies of the past few decades, one in which they’ve succeeded all too well. They’ve taken over almost all the moral high ground in public perception, especially in the minds of young people.

This claim to hold the moral high ground has been the key to their progress. They couldn’t have pushed gay marriage through without painting us as anti-equality homophobes. They couldn’t have convinced state governments to bully Christian florists and bakers, without convincing bureaucrats these merchants were “discriminating.” They couldn’t push their trans-bathroom laws without making it a matter of “civil rights” that conservatives want to steal from vulnerable people.

The wraps have come off. They’re letting us see them as they are.

Of course it took a large dose of widespread ignorance — another of their key strategies — to get that far. The “civil rights” mantra only works until you think a moment about what “civil rights” really means. That’s just one example among many. “Marriage equality”? That takes ignorance, too. They used ignorance to convince people Christianity is “bigoted” and “homophobic,” when all it it takes is knowing some actual, ordinary believers, hanging out at church on Sunday morning, to show it’s just not true.

They also had to keep the country ignorant of who they really were, and what they’d really resort to, if they thought it would advance their agenda. But the wraps have come off. They’re letting us see them as they are. They’ve added a new layer of strategy: physical and relational violence.

The Left’s New Strategy of Violence

They did it to Kavanaugh. Thank God he didn’t fold! That was a rather (ahem) civilized version of a flogging; but they’ve also added physical violence to their list of tactics. Eight recent events might appear isolated and not strategically driven, but that view changes in light of all their leaders who could stop it with a word, but have kept strangely quiet instead. Indeed, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Maxine Waters and others have actively promoted mob action and incivility.

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That which leaders endorse and approve is never merely isolated. It’s strategy — even though it completely negates their moral-high-ground strategy. Which makes it our chance as conservatives to make this a real turning point, and to reclaim the moral high ground in the eyes of the public, especially young people.

Our New Strategic Opportunity

To do it we’re going to have to be very intentional about undoing leftist-induced ignorance. Many people, especially young adults, need renewed teaching to guide them back to the obvious. A roundhouse kick to a woman really is more hateful than her pro-life opinions. A man really can’t be a women’s bicycling champion. A grade-schooler really shouldn’t be changing his name and gender, while the school hides it from his parents. (Did I mention this was about re-introducing the obvious?)

This re-education won’t easily happen in government schools; not until educators have recovered their wits, at any rate. So we’re going to have to do the hard work at home, at church and in our own schools, not to mention public forums like The Stream.

The left has opened up the best door for us in years.

But we’ve got to stay on the true moral high ground as we do this. Where we’ve fallen short on our moral integrity — as of course we have at times — we’ve got to repent, straighten out and walk rightly. We’ve got to practice true self-sacrificial love. We must absolutely reject all deceit. We can and should defend ourselves, but that means no following suit with the leftists, delivering unprovoked kicks.

We should be able to see some quick tactical wins out of the left’s abandonment of their moral pretenses. That has to happen through public forums, where we’ve got to hit it hard and fast. That will only establish a beachhead for us, though; the real advances will, necessarily, take much longer. We won’t get out of this mess much faster than we got in. That means decades, not just months or years.

We’ve got a lot of work to do. But the left has opened up the best door for us in years.