"Let us assume for a moment that the war is over. Let us further assume that the Restoration has begun. The bloated corpses of erstwhile plutocrats, communists, and other leftist rabble festoon the lampposts of the nation. The deep state has been unearthed. The leadership imprisoned, shot, or on the run. Vast swaths of urban American lie in smoking ruins, including large parts of Washington D.C. The flotsam and jetsam of war, the bloody detritus of internecine conflict, sloshes across the continent. The political landscape is irrevocably altered.
Should such a horrific vision come to pass, we would do well to be certain of the reasons we chose to fight. That brings us back to the here and now. The purpose of this essay is to lay out, as I see it, the broader vision of why we must fight. Perhaps a second part will serve to explore the details of what comes after. Make of these words what you will. I have finished my gut check and await now, with calm spirit, the coming storm.
Why We Must Fight: For what will we fight? Will we shed blood to maintain a status quo that has become intolerable? Is that the extent of our vision? Will we fight simply to maintain and uphold a system of government that is orders of magnitude more intrusive, overbearing, and dangerous than the monarchical irritations of George III? The revolutionaries of 1776 found sufficient cause to fight an eight year war over offences to human liberty that seem quaint compared to the egregious usurpations perpetrated by that festering pustule of tyranny astride the Potomac. That city, whose existence has become an affront to the character of the man for which it is named, is merely the brick and mortar manifestation of a twisted political ethos that has brought this once great nation to the abyss.
If we would make this fight, it is incumbent upon us to make known, both to ourselves and to our enemies, why we freely choose to enter into the chaos that lies before us. Patrick Henry urged the fight upon his compatriots because, as he made clear, “Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?”
With all its uncertainties, vicissitudes, and potential for utter disaster, the fight is as squarely before us as it was before them. My friends, it is not our brethren who are already in the field. It is our enemies. The ground must be contested now, lest the martinets now ascendant bury themselves like ticks in the necks of every free man and woman left in the nation, and like ticks, they will suck the lifeblood from every productive person and enterprise in this land. It is already being done.
Questions: A Rubicon of blood lies before us. Let us be clear then, why we choose to set foot in such a torrent. We cannot flee to some distant horizon as our ancestors could. The cancer of despotism metastasizes all around us. There is nowhere left to run. The days when one could live a lifetime barely aware of the existence of the central power are long behind us.
What new edifice will we erect on the rubble of what will, most assuredly, be destroyed? To what purpose will we commit our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor? Further, since the purpose of war is to make the other fellow die for his cause, for what purpose are we willing to destroy the lives and property of our enemies? To what end will we starve and dispossess his children and his wife? What will we build upon the ruins of his home? As deluded as they may be, our enemies are still human beings. They will bleed and die, as we will. Their homes will burn, as will ours. Make no mistake, a choice for war entails the full use of all its tools and will manifest all the ugly attributes of which fallen human nature is capable. There will be wanton cruelty and wholesale destruction on a scale barely imaginable to modern American sensibilities. Nevertheless, the alternative is worse.
What We Face: The central power now seeks to combine (in fact is already combining) with corporate technocracy, financial oligarchy, and scientific tyranny. It now reaches into every corner of the nation. It has thrown down every barrier erected against it. It now turns its malignant gaze on what remains of our liberties. It is not Yeats’ “rough beast” that now “slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.” It is a gleaming artifice of techno-tyranny, a gross parody of the human form now gliding silently, with deadly intent, toward the Cradle of Liberty.
The issues at stake are more than existential. They are profound beyond the reach of human language to describe. They are elements of the eternal struggle of men to wring from the world and its would-be masters that degree of freedom, without which, man remains little more than a beast of burden. The scales of human history weigh heavily on the side of tyranny over the lives and fortunes of men. The American Revolution gave our forebears the chance to balance those scales and so they did, at least for a time. An American Restoration can recover what has been lost and redress the imbalance being forced upon us by the perennial and unrelenting enemies of ordered liberty.
What Must Be Done: Half measures will not suffice. Large parts of the central power require thorough dismantling. The body politic of this nation will return to health and vigor only when the accretions of a century of “progressive” policy are scraped away, and the suppurating boils of leftist ideology are lanced and their noisome infection drained. As for the droves of government drones left jobless in the wake of the Restoration…well, they have lived off the creative energies of others long enough. Let them find their own way in the world as every other self-respecting American does.
The paramount purpose of this fight must not be to simply reign in the excesses of despotism, or tinker at the edges of tyranny. The federal power is not simply an unruly bush to be pruned and shaped. It is a monster that must be permanently disarticulated. Leviathan must be thrown down, disemboweled, castrated, decapitated, and hurled into the abyss.
The organs of authority in a restored America must be made to understand that their position is, and ever will be, one of subservience to the natural rights and liberties of the American people. I care not a whit for what the rest of the world may choose to do in this degenerate age, but within the borders of this land, liberty must be reborn and all that would inhibit its flowering must be extirpated forever from its governance. Such a weight of chains should be loaded onto any new government that it will never again be a threat to the life, liberty, or happiness of the American people. Let the rest of the world know that on the American continent, if in no other place, the proper place of the state is not riding the backs of free men. Its proper position is prostrate at their feet.
A Promise and a Warning: Perhaps one day, when Yeats’ “blood-dimmed tide” has receded, and the Restoration is accomplished, a wiser nation might give some thought to an endeavor of a different sort. In my mind’s eye, I see a new Lady Liberty in the harbor. In her right hand, she holds aloft the familiar light of liberty, a promise to all those seeking freedom with stout heart and generous spirit.
