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The last few weeks have been interesting; for all the hyperbole surrounding the presidential election, some 3 million fewer votes were cast for the president than in 2008. Go figure. As a snapshot of what that means, John McCain got 2 million more votes than Mitt Romney this year, while the president garnered 3 million fewer. In the end, the margin was about 2.5 million votes.
Having followed the march of the American left for about 40 years, I can see a few self-evident conclusions. Certainly some significant changes have occurred, and their impact has been years in the making. Much of traditional constitutional governance has been challenged.
But this onion has exponentially more layers than we can even divine at this point. The left started in earnest in the 1960s, and while their rabble rioted, blew up buildings and occasionally killed someone, the real minions were insinuating their secular collectivist ideas into every last compartment of American society.
They control mainstream media, therefore depriving the people of the truth on any subject they believe might be deleterious to the cause; they own academia, so the vast majority of all young people spend their entire educational lives virtually buried in a sewer that flows with animus toward our founding principles.
Mainline churches—Methodist, Presbyterian, Disciples of Christ, Episcopal, even Baptist—have been infected with a huge and perpetual flood of calumnies that have more than eroded, and in many ways extinguished, many of the essential holy bulwarks of the Christian faith.
We hear weekly from Catholics as well as Protestant organs about social justice, the social gospel (still can’t find that one in my Bible, must be in the back), gay rights, the plight of persons of color, the edict that we wear the cloak of the white man’s guilt, and the hair shirt in which to suffer under the utter fraud that behaviors of every description must be preached and accepted.
The federal bench has been so undermined that in many districts and nearly all the circuits, the same odious shibboleths that rotted religion and destroyed the media often hold sway without question or meaningful appeal.
Sadly, the elephant in the room is the victory of these feckless conspirators; behind the scenes, they have so impugned faith, morality and rule of law that they can now make serfs of just about half the American population.
Victor Hanson said on my radio show Nov. 7 that (my paraphrase) victory came at the cost of reason, responsibility and religious scruple. Folks by the millions now vote their self-interest only. Their pocketbooks are their masters, with their intellect now and ever more bereft of higher issues, and those purses are full of somebody else’s money.
The elections of Clinton and Obama amply demonstrate that that corner has been turned.
If we but stand still for four years, we will still have lost all—again—as those forces that are now so entrenched will burrow ever deeper into what is left of the republic. Leftists have been hyper-focused on task always, and Congress has been their tool, along with too many presidents who have let us slip ever further into the abyss of statism. Give ’em their due—they never, ever let up.
This much is clear. We have lost a war that raged invisibly for five decades, mostly because conservatives either didn’t see it for what it was or lacked the firepower to turn it back. From Johnson to Obama, we have observed the march of collectivism. If it is to be turned back now, forces invisible to me will have to appear.•
• Garrison is a partner in Garrison Law Firm LLC in Indianapolis and a talk show host on WIBC-FM 93.1. Send comments on this column to ibjedit@ibj.com.
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