Time to take the Red Pill, part 3/5
More and more Americans are waking to reality. Time to welcome them over to a big tent GOP focused on isolating and defeating the insane authoritarianism of Wokeism
Picking Up Where We Left Off
This column is my third on red pilling. The first introduced the concept and started walking you through my own turmoil beginning with a piece from late 2002. Understanding the process is critical for those going through it today—the many Americans who have come to appreciate, only recently, that the political leaders they’ve been supporting have been lying to them. The second continued that journey.
Breaking with the leaders who’ve betrayed you is one thing. Warming to those you’ve long vilified is a lot harder. Today’s blast-from-my-past came when the Democratic Party dropped the very sensible Joe Lieberman in favor of the far more leftist Ned Lamont (then a political unknown happy to be known as a leftist, now the governor of Connecticut). I was fed up. I still couldn’t stomach the GOP (and if you think back to what the GOP was in 2006, I can’t say that I’ve warmed towards it), but I was done with the Democrats.
From August 8, 2006: A Declaration for Independents
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one person to dissolve the political bands which have connected him with a party and to assume the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitles him, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that he should declare the causes which impel him to the separation.
So much for opening with a rhetorical flourish. I regret that I must now retreat from Jeffersonian oratory into my own peculiar idiom. The sentiment, however, lingers. With this essay, I renounce my longstanding affiliation with the Democratic Party and assume a new position as a proud, politically aware and politically active Independent American Voter.
I write today for two reasons. First, because I have a decent respect for the opinions of those whom I have long considered personal friends and political allies. I believe that I owe them an explanation. I hope that I can keep them as friends, and that someday soon we will again be allies. For the moment, however, too many longstanding allies (thankfully not those whom I count as personal friends) have betrayed the ideals that we claim to share, and I can no longer stand with them. Second, because I hope that some readers of this essay may agree, and join me in my declaration. I express this hope despite knowing full well how small my readership is; perhaps this is the piece that will impel a critical mass to join us.
Qui suis-je? I am a lifelong active Democrat. My earliest “political” memories are of a Fourth Grade spent making McGovern posters to decorate my bedroom. Though still a bit young, I was energized by Carter’s victory in 1976, but recognized his presidency as a failure. In the campaign that bridged the end of my High School years and my entry into College I backed first Ted Kennedy, then John Anderson, and spent much of the 1980s attending anti-Reagan rallies. During the first election in which I was old enough to vote, I did volunteer work for Alan Cranston’s brief candidacy before rallying behind Walter Mondale. I found Mike Dukakis bland but competent, and Bill Clinton exhilarating as both a personality and a policy wonk—not to mention excellent as a President. I was an active volunteer for the Gore 2000 campaign, and even went to Florida to act as a Broward County recount observer. I found the 2004 primary season disturbing, but still fell in line behind John Kerry.
In January 2005, President Bush gave an inaugural speech extolling the importance of liberty and freedom, and committing the U.S. to its promotion abroad wherever the spark existed. Democratic reaction ranged from lukewarm to hostile. The DNC appointed Howard Dean as its Chair. I dropped my party registration and quietly “declined to state” an affiliation. Today I stop being quiet and trumpet that decision proudly.
Why today? Today, August 8, 2006, marks the day of the Connecticut primary, pitting Senator Joseph Lieberman against a challenger, Ned Lamont. As I write these words, the outcome of the race is unknown. But though that outcome may be critical to Lieberman, Lamont, and the people of Connecticut, it is inconsequential to the health of the Democratic Party. The Party has already sustained serious damage, damage that will remain whether Lieberman emerges defeated or merely chastised, and damage that will take a long time to repair. The Democratic Party, already well into its downslide, will get a lot worse before it gets better.
This Connecticut race has never really been about Connecticut. And despite what you might hear, it hasn’t really been about Iraq either. It has been about the fundamental questions of our time: Are we under attack? Is there a global, anarchic, jihadist movement out to destroy the United States, the West, and the principles of liberal democracy that have come to define us? Is this movement serious enough and strong enough to warrant our focused attention?
I hold this truth to be self-evident: The answer to all of the above questions is “yes.”
Self-evident or not, it has taken a long time for the West’s leadership to acknowledge it, and the populace lags its leaders. Though Ariel Sharon may have been the first Western leader to articulate the problem, Israel’s unique position on the front lines caused many to ignore his warnings. The first leader of significance to realize the scope of the challenge was Tony Blair, whose speeches throughout the late 1990s elucidated the threat in near-prophetic terms. I believe that by the end of his Presidency, Bill Clinton also grasped the scope of the challenge, but it took him most of his eight years in office to see it, and the evidence remains ambiguous. George W. Bush, who campaigned on platforms antithetical to those of us seeking leadership in this struggle, experienced an epiphany on September 11, 2001. From that day forward, he oriented American foreign policy in a direction from which it should never have deviated, and from which it should never again deviate. He reminded us that we stand for the universality of human rights and human dignity, and that we owed it to the people and peoples of the world to help them realize the ideals that we enjoy at home.
That reorientation set the stage for several events that continue to unfold—including but hardly exclusively the self-destruction of the Democratic Party. I had long been a proud Democrat in part because I believed it to be the party that stood for human rights, freedom, and dignity around the globe. I applauded when Bill Clinton committed the U.S. to resolving the various genocidal conflicts racking the Balkans, and complained bitterly when he did nothing to ease the bloodletting in Rwanda. When I heard Bush explain his epiphany to joint sessions of Congress and to the American people, I believed that we had entered a new era. I believed that we now had two parties that agreed about the centrality of promoting liberal ideals abroad, and that we could shift our attention to debating the best ways to achieve that goal. I was sorely disappointed. Not only could I find no one to publish my essays on the matter, but few writings articulating my position appeared anywhere. I subsequently learned that writers of much greater renown and pedigree faced similar challenges; only those like Christopher Hitchens and Peter Beinart, working from contractual bully pulpits, were allowed to make the case. For the overwhelming majority of Democrats and their allies falling anywhere to the left of center throughout the western world, the message was clear: If Bush chooses to champion liberty, we will find something else to champion. For far too many, hatred of Bush now trumps not only love of country, but also love of liberty.
For a while, much of the vitriol was hidden behind opposition to invading Iraq—a decision that implicated enough strategic and tactical complexity to allow some opponents to raise credible points. The 2004 primaries gave airing to this difference. The Democrats fielded two fine candidates fully aware of the scope of the jihadist challenge, but holding divergent opinions about the strategic propriety of invading Iraq. Joe Lieberman advocated allocating the resources necessary to help Iraq out of its totalitarian Baathist nightmare; Bob Graham would have eschewed the Iraqi campaign and eliminated the scourge of Hizbollah from the Lebanese south instead. Between them, they earned about 5% of the vote in early contests before dropping out of the race. The message was clear: What the Democratic faithful repudiated in 2004 was not the decision to enter Iraq, but rather the assertion that we are locked in a bitter global struggle over the future of society.
The Democratic Party’s long downward slide—a slide that started the very day that Bill Clinton handed a successful legacy to Al Gore, who accepted it amidst a rhetorical allusion to a mythical battle pitting the people against the powerful—accelerated with its choice of John Kerry, a fine man with a long and entirely undistinguished career in public service. The Party chose Kerry assuming that hawks would see a war hero; doves a conscientious protester. Instead, both saw a man whose stance on the formative experience of his young adulthood folded into his most humorous gaffe: something that he supported before he opposed it. The American people found Kerry incoherent—though still almost compelling enough to unseat Bush. The forces of incoherence grew stronger; their need to deny the global challenge we face expanded; they rallied behind the rights of gay couples to marry in America while ignoring the rights of gay individuals to escape execution in the dar-al-Islam. They saw greater danger in the peaceful attempts of fundamentalist Christians to write their view of morality into law than in the genocidal attempts of fundamentalist Muslims to enslave the West as surely as they enslave their own women—and then for “balance” berated a mythical political movement of Jewish fundamentalists, as well.
Over time, any semblance of plausible camouflage faded, as the anti-Iraq center-left folded itself into the embrace of a leftist core: pacifists, isolationists, protectionists, authoritarians, anti-Semites, hatemongers, anti-Americans, anti-Westerners, Communists, populists, economic redistributionists, environmental fundamentalists, and extremists of various stripes emerged into new positions of prominence and leadership. Moderates, proud Americans, proud Westerners, advocates for liberty, believers in the universality of inherent integrity and essential humanity, and those willing to admit and to confront the jihadist challenge all fell into the background. They did not disappear; many retain positions of prominence as Democratic members of the House and Senate, and of center-left parties across Europe. It became clear, however, that their stars had faded. They were the past, the leaders whose party faithful had passed them by. They began to downplay their commitments to universal liberty and to focus instead on parochial domestic concerns—or on symbolic votes of little consequence. Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan became iconic. Even those who disagreed with them feared the wrath of the faithful should a center-left leader point out the lunacy of the underlying worldview—and the danger inherent in following it.
The finest leaders of the center-left cowered in petrified submission. All, that is, but for two: Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom and Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut (with respectful and thankful nods to Vaclav Havel, Adam Michnik, Aleksander Kwasniewski, Manmohan Singh, and Shimon Peres). While others hid or equivocated, these leaders remained resolute in their beliefs—and continued to share them with the world. Most discovered newfound enmity and contempt among those who had long been their allies and friends. They supported the Bush Administration’s war efforts not because they agreed with its approach, its methods, its tactics, or its day-to-day functioning, but rather because it was the only game in town. George W. Bush leads the only force on the planet capable of withstanding the jihadist onslaught. He has committed that force to defending the Western world. He has, regrettably, done a poor job in the service of that noble goal. But far too many of those who should be rallying behind the goal while highlighting its numerous operational shortcomings have destroyed their own credibility by proffering only carte blanche opposition. The field has become polarized; the responsible opposition has evaporated, leaving only the Administration’s cheerleaders and an irresponsible opposition. Those, like Lieberman or Blair, who refuse to succumb to irresponsibility, earn endearing monikers like “lapdog” or “poodle.”
This dispute lies at the core of today’s Connecticut primary. Lieberman is not facing a challenge because he has failed the people of Connecticut, failed to protect their jobs, their incomes, their prerogatives as a state, or their interests. He is facing a challenge because he is the last standing vocal member of America’s responsible opposition. He is the last prominent Democrat prepared to state the obvious: Our way of life is under attack from a smart, strong, determined enemy, and we must do whatever is necessary to defeat it. He is the only prominent Democrat still prepared to pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. He may find that his Senate seat is part of the price, for nothing else matters to the ascendant leftists. No position that Lieberman has ever taken, no vote that he has ever cast, nothing that he might do in the future, is even remotely relevant. If you support the promotion of liberty abroad, the far left wants you out of their party.
That is why Lieberman is under attack. That is why he faces a challenger capable of drawing nationwide support. And that is why even if Lieberman ekes out a victory at the polls—or runs as an independent and maintains his seat—the damage is done. The forces of rage and blind opposition have humbled a man once considered the front-runner for a Democratic presidential nomination. All future Democratic hopefuls will heed the message and cower accordingly. Only one—Hillary Clinton—is sufficiently strong to even think that she can withstand the attack, and she is too savvy a politician to issue an overt challenge to her party’s “base.” .” Her cowardice in refusing to back Lieberman in today’s primary is likely but a small taste of the pandering to come. Today, August 8, 2006, is the day that the hard left solidified its hold on the leadership of the Democratic Party. That is why I have chosen today to trumpet my independent status.
To the professionals who remain within the Democratic Party trying to fight the good fight, I can only wish you luck. I spent many years in Washington offering substantive assistance, but found few takers among the insider class. In the absence of substantive support, there is little that I can offer other than good wishes. The greatest assistance that I can provide as an outsider is to help speed the cycle along. So to the wonks at the DLC and the journalists at The New Republic, feel free to use my independent status as proof that the Party’s new leadership is causing it to hemorrhage support. That contribution is more valuable—and more likely to right the Party—than any money that I might send. You—we—have lost. The victors will destroy their spoils before they allow us to retake it.
Some may wonder: Why an Independent? After all, America does have two political parties. And those who orchestrated the challenge to Lieberman certainly believe that he, I, and our kindred spirits are simply Republicans registered in the wrong party for reasons of history or of family affinity. The answer is simple: much as the Democratic Party is hurtling into an abyss, the Republican Party fell into one a long time ago.
For years, I have debated the issue of leadership with my many reasonable Republican friends. They insist that they have placated their fringe with rhetorical support but few policy victories; I believe that the “fringe” they claim to have sidelined runs their party. At the same time, I asserted that the Clinton administration demonstrated responsible Democratic leadership, and that post-Clinton leadership remains up for grabs; they claim that a left-wing “fringe” runs the party. Today I must confess that the grab is over. The Republican view of the Democratic Party is correct. Its leadership retains a gloss of a more responsible era, but the power has shifted to its leftist wing. The party’s energy and drive comes entirely from a group that is pacifist, protectionist, isolationist, environmentally extreme, statist, and economically redistributionist. Over time, its leadership will inexorably and inevitably bear a similar complexion—much as Republican leadership moved from Howard Baker and Bob Michel to Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich to Trent Lott and Tom Delay. It may take a decade, but the Democratic leaders of the future will mirror the faithful of today.
Bush’s epiphany on liberty notwithstanding, the core of today’s Republican Party retains the isolationist, protectionist, nativist, realist patina that disgraced it in the 1990s. The party that opposed Trade Promotion Authority for Bill Clinton and that mocked his attempts to attack Iraq in 1998 as a distraction from the impeachment debacle that it was staging grew into the party of steel tariffs, agricultural subsidies, punitive anti-immigrant measures, and bilateral free-trade agreements held hostage to extraneous concerns. The party that degraded America’s institutional boundaries by reducing “high crimes and misdemeanors” to anything of gravity comparable to equivocating in a civil deposition has the gall to complain that those questioning a President’s prerogatives are somehow unpatriotic. A party allegedly sensitive to a Free Exercise Clause under judicial attack remains impervious to a No Establishment Clause under legislative attack. A party seeking to leave no child behind favors eviscerating biology curricula and shutting down promising areas of medical research. A party that advocates low taxes spends fortunes on unnecessary pork-barrel earmarks. A party that favors tax reform merely tampers with rate cuts while increasing the system’s complexity and distortion. A party that rails against special interests adopts regulatory schemes that protect incumbents at the expense of entrepreneurial entrants. A party that observes correctly that captured terrorists are neither soldiers nor criminals, but that concludes that our limited government may treat them at its own discretion, rather than that we need to draft an applicable set of rules. Perhaps least forgivable of all, a party whose uplifting rhetoric champions the cause of liberty refuses to allocate the resources necessary to meet its own goals—much less to level with the American people about the cost of the undertaking.
This partial list barely scratches the surface. The Republican Party has failed as the party of government. Were I already a longtime Republican I might remain within the Party’s embrace, but join such a Party? I think not.
I am hurt. A plague o’ both your houses.
Yet, the Republicans do have one significant asset that the Democrats lack: their fall from grace began much earlier, and as a result it is far more advanced. The Democrats will not recover until their new leaders destroy the party completely. They will hit rock bottom before they rebuild. The Republicans, having seen the shambles that their leaders have made of their asserted ideals, may be closer to rebuilding.
These, then, are the questions for my Republican friends: Have you yet hit rock bottom? Are you ready to rebuild? Are you libertarians tired of rallying behind a party that does not value individual autonomy? Are you fiscal conservatives tired of voting for the fiscally irresponsible? Are you neocons tired of choosing between realists and those whose watered-down implementations of your ideals guarantee your continued vilification? Are you tax crusaders tired of arguing about rates and prepared to focus on the development of an undistorted base? Are you Christians prepared to focus more on the right to worship as Christians and less on the imposition of Christian morality on others? Are those among you who claim to be pro-business prepared to focus on the integrity of markets rather than on the preservation of incumbents? If so, it is time to rebuild your party—because whatever Republican leaders may have been telling you, they do not represent your interests.
For years, I have been clamoring for a Democratic Party that promotes social libertarianism, pragmatic economics, and a muscular liberal internationalism. In the 1990s, I felt like I belonged to such a party. I no longer do. The Republican Party is not there either—as even a quick glimpse at its performance demonstrates. Is anyone out there interested in building such a party? If so, build it and I will come. Start building it, and I will help. If not, I will remain what I am today—a proud, vocal, active, and aware Independent.
America remains a country of unlimited potential, but we can only become as great as our leaders permit us to be. Our political class is serving us poorly. The fringe movements have shackled us with their own limitations.
Thinkers of the Nation unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains!
There’s more to come. As I mentioned, red pilling is a process. Mine was. If you went through one, I suspect that yours was, too. Most importantly, if you know people going through the process now, please share these columns. It’s critical that they know that they’re not alone.
To be continued…
For more information about Bruce D. Abramson & American Restorationism, visit: www.BruceDAbramson.com
To learn more about how America’s elites destroyed the republic, see: The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021).
To learn more about the ideology driving today’s anti-American leftism, see: American Restoration: Winning America’s Second Civil War (Kindle, 2019).
To learn more about our work at the American Coalition for Education and Knowledge, visit us at https://coalition4america.com/.
To learn more about how I turn the ideas I discuss here into concrete projects that serve the interests of my clients, donors, and society at large, please e-mail me at bdabramson@pm.me.