By Tim Daughtry
Now that the confetti and balloons have been swept up, it is time for a sober assessment of the nation's predicament after the Republican landslide of 2010. Lurking underneath the national sense of relief and hopeful anticipation is a gnawing feeling that we have been here before. This is not the first time mainstream Americans have awakened from our political slumber, taken stock of the damage wrought by the left while we slept and thrown the leftist scoundrels out of office. And to what effect?
Looking at the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, the Republican seizure of the House and Senate in 1994 and Republican control of the legislative and executive branches of the federal government in 2000, it becomes evident that we occasionally convince government to let us keep a little more of our own money, and that is about the extent of our accomplishments.
Our borders remain porous regardless of which party wins elections. No federal judge has been impeached and removed from office for substituting political bias for law. The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 that fueled the recent collapse of the mortgage market survived under Democratic and Republican majorities. No federal department has been eliminated or even reduced. For example, the Constitution delegates no responsibility to the federal government for education, yet the Department of Education, Jimmy Carter's payoff to the teachers' unions, has survived and grown year after year under Republicans and Democrats alike.
The record clearly shows that periodic mainstream victories at the polls have only succeeded in slowing our descent into socialist tyranny; we have not yet found the key to stopping or reversing that descent. Until we find that key, mainstream America will continue to win the occasional election while losing our republic.
Oddly enough, the European Marxists of the early 1900s can show us the key. Realizing the futility of violent revolution in industrialized countries, these Marxists conceived a new strategy. Marxist rule would come not by sudden and violent overthrow of government, but by gradual erosion of the cultural foundations of society. Following the teachings of early European Marxists, American leftists realized that the path to power ran through the culture, through the educational, entertainment, news and other institutions that shape terms of the national discourse.
From their high-ground positions in newsrooms, schoolrooms, and college classrooms, liberals can snipe at mainstream politicians and shape the narrative of current events. Because of their control of the cultural institutions, liberals may be out of office, but they are never out of power.
Consider two narratives for 2010 and beyond. In one narrative, fearful and ignorant tea partiers resisted reform and progress and gave "the party of no" control of the House. "Gridlock" resulted, along with the possibility that the Republicans would "shut down the government" and cause chaos for children and the elderly. Film of frightened senior citizens at 11. Racism suspected.
In another narrative, mainstream Americans grew weary of abusive and out-of-control government and used the machinery of government to correct our course. The people said "no" to the plan to follow Europe into the moral and economic quicksand of socialism. Our system of checks and balances worked. Obama's use of the veto raised the specter of government shutdown. Stay tuned for our special: "Is Obama Politically Tone Deaf?"
Of course, it will be the first narrative that will ring from the rooftops of the news and educational establishments with all the fervor of the Muslim call to prayer. And if they do what they have done in the past, the Republicans will eventually bow to the power of the cultural institutions rather than face the hatred and vitriol the left showers on those who resist. And it is this pattern of Republican appeasement in the face of liberal attacks that has enabled the leftist minority to rule the country.
The Republicans will appease the left, that is, unless the second narrative rings more loudly in their ears than the first one, unless the mainstream narrative prevails and it is the liberals who have to defend their every action and position. Then and only then will we see Republicans with backbone.
It is time to realize that the key to our future is not in the hands of the Republicans in Congress but in the hands of the people who put them there. Mainstream Americans outnumber liberals by three or four to one. We can control the cultural narrative if we choose to do so. To change the outcome this time, we the people have to change our ways.
To borrow from the old leftist slogan: "When the mainstream leads, the leaders will follow."
Mainstream Americans are the summer tourists of politics. Liberals are the locals. The mainstream goes to the polls like tourists streaming to the beaches in summer. Sometimes we win the election and sometimes we lose, but either way we go back to our homes and jobs at the end of the season.
But the liberals are the locals who run the schools, the newsrooms, the bureaucracy, entertainment and other cultural institutions, and the locals stay in town all season. Tourists might provide the money, but it is the locals who run the town.
Though in the minority, liberals use their positions in these cultural institutions to define the narrative, the "good guys" and the "bad guys," the hot issues that must be addressed. Mainstream America was not concerned that the climate normally cycles between warm and cold periods, nor were we demanding that government seize control of our health care. A small number of committed leftists put "global warming" and health-care "reform" on the national agenda.
How does the leftist minority dominate the mainstream majority? The European and American Marxists who carried out their "Long March through the Institutions" understood the mainstream all too well. They knew that we would go back to work after each election, back to minding our own business and taking care of our own families, regardless of the outcome of the election. They knew that we would not pay much attention to politics until the next election because we are not by nature political animals.
And they knew that a small minority willing to gradually push their agenda through the cultural institutions would eventually rule a complacent majority whose primary desire has been to mind our own business. Distort American history in the schools a little at the time, twist news coverage to favor the left a bit here and there. The left knew that we would tolerate their agenda in small steps, just not all at once. The left sets the agenda and determines the narrative about that agenda, and the rest of us react. Maybe we slow the advance of that agenda with compromise, but each compromise advances the agenda.
The cultural Marxists were right: Those who control the institutions of culture eventually control the society because they control the national narrative. That is why the only thing that changes when the mainstream wins elections is how fast the government grows, not whether it grows.
And that is why changing the faces in Washington is not enough. Mainstream America has to reclaim control of the national narrative. We have to become political activists. We have the numbers. We have the better narrative. The only question is whether we have the will.
A good place to start would be holding tea-party rallies all around the country on Jan. 3, just as the new Congress is sworn in. The tea-party movement has enfranchised the millions of mainstream Americans who pay for government but whose voices have been routinely ignored by government. Mass rallies on the first day of the new Congress would send a clear signal that we are not going home this time. In fact, we are setting up shop in the political neighborhood.
From there, the tea-party movement needs to move from just campaigning for conservative candidates to backing those candidates when they are under attack from the left's institutions. Talk radio, the Internet and social networking media allow quick communication and response. Any attempt by the leftist media to target and isolate one of our representatives should be met not only with overwhelming support for the representative but intense pressure brought to bear on the attacker. Don't call the newsroom to complain. Call the advertisers in stunning numbers and let them call the newsroom.
The numbers are there. The technology is there. Do we have the will?
Quick response to leftist attacks is crucial, but it still leaves the left in charge of the narrative and leaves the mainstream in a defensive posture. The mainstream has to become adept at seizing control of the political narrative and denying that control to the left.
For example, the left will quickly label tea-party conservatives in Congress as "the party of no." But millions of mainstream Americans willing to speak up around the water cooler, in social gatherings, in classrooms, on call-in shows and in letters to the editor have the power to pre-empt and overwhelm that liberal message with our own narrative: "The tea-party conservatives are the brakes on the stupid train."
Now that would be a change we can believe in
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