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A much needed boost from half-way around the world!
With the Republican primaries having devolved to the
Establishment’s preferred scenario, and all the Tea
Party-favored candidates having been either eliminated
or marginalized, some are beginning to ask an
unavoidable question: Was the constitutionalist revival
just a passing fancy with no staying power, or a
conservative social club with no heart for a real fight?
Is there even anyone left in the room to hear the
question, or is the only reply one can hope for the echo
of one’s own despondent voice filling the hollow
chamber?
At this moment, when so much appears to have been lost,
and so quickly, perhaps it’s time for some good news:
There are still some genuine constitutionalist warriors
out there, they are in the fight for the long haul, and
they are prepared to do whatever it takes to win. You
will meet a couple of them shortly.
First, the bad news, by way of an overview of the war so
far: In early 2011, when the Republican nominating
process was still in the speculative stages, many hoped
that constitutional conservatism would continue its
orderly and friendly takeover of the GOP. Tea Partiers
were organized, they were motivated, and they were
riding high on their extraordinary success in the 2010
elections, in which they, and they alone, saved the
country—not to mention the Republican Establishment—from
at least two more years of congressional wave-throughs
for President Obama’s anti-American agenda.
A year later, however, the mood is quite different. And
so are the results. The Establishment, having grudgingly
accepted the mighty assist of the Tea Party in 2010, was
determined to make sure the same “usurpation” of the GOP
brand (as they saw it) would not happen again—and
certainly not in the process of choosing the defining
face of the party heading into a presidential campaign.
The struggle began in earnest immediately upon the
swearing-in of the new Republican congress. The first
half of 2011 featured a lot of Tea Party-baiting talk
from the congressional leadership, but was much less
heartening in terms of action. The votes did not match
the rhetoric. The meek compromises being held up as
victories smacked of business as usual. The photo-op
rounds of golf with Obama, the pathetic whining about
controlling only one half of one-third of the
government, the debt ceiling debacle, and on and on—the
overall effect was disheartening in the extreme to
constitutionalists who had hoped to see immediate
results from all of their hard work.
Undoubtedly feeling burned and spurned by all of the
defeats “their” Congress was finding a way to snatch
from the jaws of victory, many constitutionalists went
into the presidential primaries with big dreams, but a
much less hopeful perspective on the possibility of
realizing those dreams in the face of an Establishment
that had clearly targeted them as Enemy Number One.
Their fears were realized, and with an ease that has
shocked many devoted Tea Partiers into silence and
despair, while exposing others as well-intentioned but
ill-equipped weekend activists. Less than a month into
the actual primary voting process, the race has
effectively been reduced to a showdown between the
Establishment’s chosen one, Mitt Romney, and the
Establishment’s chosen ersatz constitutionalist, Newt
Gingrich. That is, the party brass has all but ensured
that no genuine spiritual outsider—no one who might
actually clear out the Establishment’s house, spray
disinfectant, and invite some new guests to replace the
old partners in decline—can win the nomination.
This disturbing reversal of fortune for
constitutionalists, coming so closely on the heels of
their dizzying peak of success, has seemingly left some
of them wandering aimlessly in search of a reason to
carry on. They are having to come to grips with the
discomfiting reality that all the sober warnings about
how long this cultural war would need to be waged were
true. Indeed, even the soberest of those warnings may
have underestimated the difficulties ahead. The
imperatives the future holds have to do with more than
merely finding and voting consistently for the truest
conservatives, and being patient. What is needed is no
less than a will to devote a chunk of one’s life to
long-term victory, which requires a continual cultural
debate, a willingness to withstand constant assault and
ridicule from acknowledged enemies and alleged allies
alike, and a staunch refusal to settle for the tempting
immediate gratification of a victory in name only, which
the Establishment uses to divide and conquer the
patriots. What is needed, in short, is an American
Resistance, equivalent to the French Resistance in World
War II.
The French Resistance was a loose affiliation of
disparate groups with two shared purposes: to undermine
an occupying force, and to maintain a kind of
underground shadow of the French Republic to counter the
collaborationist regime that was the country’s official,
above-ground face. In America, the Democrat and
Republican Establishments are the rough equivalents of
the occupiers and collaborationists, respectively—the
one seeking a socialist overhaul of the nation, the
other always willing to meet the “occupiers” halfway,
out of a combination of self-protectiveness and lack of
principle.
In literal, practical terms, America is buried in
irredeemable debt, her institutions responsible for
fostering good citizenship (education and the free
press) are morally bankrupt, and her federal government
is dedicated to maximizing its regulatory control over
every aspect of private and commercial life—liberty,
prosperity, and decency be damned. The basic difference
between the two dominant parties is the degree of
commitment each feels to the goal of micro-managing
individualism out of existence: The Democrats are
hell-bent on this result, the Republicans merely bent on
it.
The “constitutionalist resistance,” then, is more than a
fanciful analogy, and requires more than a fanciful form
of fervor. Men and women must be prepared to dedicate
themselves to the cause, to whatever degree they can—and
without making weak, self-absorbed excuses on the
question of what degree of dedication they can afford to
offer. Everyone, of course, cannot and will not devote
himself to his nation’s survival and renewal. That is
precisely why it is incumbent upon those who understand
how great the stakes are to accept that they cannot
leave the task to others.
Of course, a resistance movement is likely to suffer
defeat, defection, and disillusionment as often as it
experiences success; more often, in fact. That is why
one of the most important elements of the French
Resistance was its underground press. People who are
risking themselves for a cause need the reassurance of
knowing that others share their fight; that even while
those in their immediate circle might disappoint with
their weakness of will, or susceptibility to the siren
song of the Establishment, there remain people out there
who have not compromised, who are deeply committed, and
who can unite you, spiritually, with others who share
your struggles.
In America’s constitutionalist resistance, the
underground media is not actually illegal—at least not
yet. Its importance to the cause, however, is no less
real. It is a gathering place for those who care about
their country’s future enough to fight for it. And those
prepared to preside over such a gathering place are
performing a valuable service to their country and, in
this case, the planet—they are a port in the storm for
weary warriors. As such, they ought to be held up as a
model of legitimate, rational patriotism, just as were
the best examples of the underground French press during
WWII.
The Speakeasy
Meet Guy Green, a grandfather in Brainerd, Minnesota,
and host of a talk radio program,
The Speakeasy with Guy Green.The show airs five
nights a week, from 6-8pm, on
3Wi Radio, as well as being live-streamed and
archived on the internet. It features well-informed,
engaging, and unostentatiously witty political
discussion, focused on a brace of issues that might
collectively be called, “The abyss and how America can
avoid falling into it.” Green and his co-host, Tony
Bauer, are highly personable, well-read, and articulate
constitutional conservatives.
So serious and ambitious is their project that, in spite
of its small, local scale, and the fact that they have
been on the air for less than a year, their recent
guests have included Roger Kimball, editor and publisher
of The New Criterion, and influential foreign policy
specialist Michael Ledeen, who has appeared multiple
times.
The program is noteworthy, and deserves the attention of
conservatives, merely on the basis of its depth of
analysis and discussion of the issues of the day, its
unapologetic constitutionalism, its well-grounded
historical perspective, and the geniality of its hosts.
And then there is this: Green is paying to keep this
program on the air out of what ought to be his own
retirement savings. He has said that he pays more for
the show than he pays for his mortgage. He borrowed
money to get the show up and running.
Why is he doing all of this? Green explains: “The
Speakeasy wants to contribute to the revitalizing of
citizen journalism, and citizenship in general. We want
to prove that not only was Jefferson correct in stating
that Liberty’s price was eternal vigilance, but also
that the price is well worth paying."
As for more personal reasons, Green sums up a motive
that is undoubtedly shared by so many of those who have
joined local Tea Party organizations, contributed to the
campaigns of conservative candidates, or otherwise put
their money and/or time where their mouths are: “The
motivation for launching The Speakeasy with Guy Green
was simply the determination to do whatever I had to do
to insure that my grandchildren would never have to
wonder what Grampa was doing when the feces was flung
into the fan."
In other words, he and Mr. Bauer see the immediate
existential peril facing the American republic—and thus
the threat to the survival of individual liberty on
Earth—and are determined not to go gently into that good
night.
As thoughtful patriots, as opposed to blind optimists,
they see that the war is not merely electoral, but
primarily moral and cultural—and that their side has
been losing for a long time now. They also see that this
war will outlive them. As Green told me, “We will do The
Speakeasy for as long as it takes and as long as we can
talk.” They will do as much as they can. And what they
can do is no mere pittance. Their mission is not
quixotic. The value of a friendly voice in the night is
not determined by the number of people who hear it, but
by the extremity of the need for companionship in those
who do hear it. As I can personally testify, based on
some of the reader response I have received for my own
writing at Canada Free Press, the need is real—and
growing.
It is growing because, as I have noted above, and
explained elsewhere, recent events have damaged the Tea
Party movement, primarily by dividing those who are
truly prepared to be carried out on their shields from
those who needed this to be a lot easier, on the one
hand, and those who lacked the foundational principles
to resist the Establishment’s machinations, on the
other. The first of these three groups—the one which
will have to determine the outcome of this
civilizational conflict, if the outcome is to be a good
one—has proved to be a minority. Expanding their numbers
will be the key to any chance of long-term success, and
this will require continual debate within the ranks of
self-described conservatives, as constitutionalists seek
the most effective means to articulate and disseminate
the case for a rebirth of America’s founding ideas.
An invaluable branch of this long-term effort will be
those “citizen journalists,” the media wing of America’s
peaceful but far from passive resistance, who feel no
stake in any established “system,” but who have rather
declared their allegiance to a cause beyond short-term
personal success. The cause is an America worthy of the
name, of the men who have died in its name, and of the
men who, less than ten generations ago, truly risked
everything—life, limb, family, and country—on an idea
that had never fully been attempted in practice before,
and has never fully been attempted in practice since: a
society founded on the natural rights of man, and
deriving all of its legitimate collective authority from
those rights.
During the occupation of France, paper was a restricted
commodity. Therefore, much of the Resistance press
consisted of one-page newspapers, all of them,
naturally, dangerously clandestine. Nevertheless, the
value of these little amateur efforts—the ultimate in
“citizen journalism”—cannot be overestimated. It can,
however, be quantified. In the northern region of
France, for example, the primary underground newspaper
was distributing 10,000 copies in the summer of 1941; by
1944, through various name changes, distribution had
reached 450,000 copies.
As I have said, it is impossible to overestimate the
value of these publications. They disseminated ideas.
They passed along valuable information. But perhaps most
necessary of all, they inspired courage. They were a
means of reassuring those in darkened cellars, who had
every imaginable reason to give up, that the fight was
continuing in the darkened cellars of the next town, and
hence that there was still hope.
America’s modern Resistance media are constitutionalists
who are putting themselves, their money, and their
reputations on the line to provide a spiritual link for
others—to provide grounds for hope. They deserve the
support of all those who recognize, as these citizen
journalists do, that their present battle has more in
common with that of the Founding Fathers than with any
other battle Americans have had to fight, because
whereas their grandparents were fighting to preserve
America as a free nation, today’s constitutionalists are
trying to regain a freedom that is quickly being lost.
I asked Guy Green about the present presidential
picture. His initial response was typical of his
insouciance in the face of impending catastrophe: “I
would vote for Yosemite Sam before pulling the lever for
any Democrat, much less Barack Obama. An urn of Reagan’s
ashes, resting on a shelf in the Oval Office, would be
preferable to the current dilemma."
When I rephrased the question, however, to focus on what
issues are most pressing for him in 2012, he offered
this: “The 2012 election is a referendum on Western
Civilization. The Progressive mindset is nothing short
of a narcissistic compulsion to perfect the human
condition by application of power. The twentieth century
was a testament to the madness of that endeavor. It has
been the chief source of human agony since the Tower of
Babel. Any step away from it, however small, is our duty
to our children and our God. One more step toward it
will, I fear, be one too many. In that light, there are
no other issues that can really fight for the
microphone."
(Note: Apart from having had the pleasure of being a
guest on The Speakeasy a couple of times, the author has
no affiliation with, or financial stake in, the program
or its hosts. My stake in their success is strictly that
of anyone who wants American constitutionalists to win
back their country.)
Daren
Jonescu
Daren Jonescu has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from
McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He currently
teaches English language and philosophy at Changwon
National University in South Korea. He can be reached at
d_jonescu@yahoo.ca
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