By: Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish

1. There is no conservative party

There is a Republican Party. The purpose of the party and its politicians, much like that of its Democratic counterpart, is to obtain money and privileges for its major donors.  That doesn’t mean that its members don’t have other ideals and agendas, but Republican politicians who rise high enough come from an urban and suburban establishment that is more liberal than its base.

Expecting them to care as much about your issues as you do is unrealistic.

They will only do the right thing insofar as it helps them

A. Get control of money

B. Advance their careers

C. Become popular

And this is a good thing. It means that they’re controllable. It means that the Democrats are also controllable. And this is how the left took over the Democratic Party.

The only way to interact with the large body of politicians is through the carrot and the stick. The “destructive” Republican saboteurs the establishment complains about, whatever their motives, are serve as the stick, undermining and sabotaging efforts to conduct business as usual.

The only way conservatives can get anything done now is by threatening business as usual.

Washington D.C. is never going to be the solution, but to the extent that its business as usual is threatened, sabotaged and held hostage, it will have trouble putting its boot on ordinary people. Until the Republican establishment changes its ways, populist saboteurs are the best conservative weapon.

Don’t expect them to do the right thing. Don’t be disappointed when they don’t. And certainly don’t expect them to solve all this.

The only way they will ever do the right thing is if you have leverage over them.

2. Fight the small stuff

You don’t have to think in terms of a national movement. You don’t even have to think in terms of an organization. Those are things that we need, but you can fight the left in small ways at home.

I’m not talking about Sign X or donate to Y.

Just obstruct any liberal initiative, policy or program in your community. It doesn’t matter what. It doesn’t matter if it’s innocuous. It doesn’t matter if you agree with it.

Undermine it on principle. If you can, vote it down. Encourage others to vote it down. If you can’t, look for ways to tie it in red tape by attaching other agendas to it.

The left wins its biggest victories at the planning stage. Its activists come early and stay late. They propose their plans, rig meetings, use kids and the elderly as human shields, and get their way. They are not used to any real opposition. Particularly the kind that doesn’t bluster, but finds ways to tie their proposals in knots, to make them expensive and drag them out as long as possible.

Oppose them when you can. Concern troll them when you can’t.

If you don’t have that kind of position, think of the origins of the term ‘sabotage’. Workers threw their shoes into machines and stopped the machine. Don’t do anything illegal. Don’t do anything that will get you fired.

But if you have the opportunity to make a liberal program work badly, if you have a legal way to put more stress on it, to tie up the energy and time of the people running it, to make it worse… do it.

We’re the underdogs. We’re the political guerrillas. This is not our system. It’s their system.

Our job is to make it run as badly as possible.

Henry David Thoreau wrote that there’s always injustice in government just as there’s always friction in a machine. It’s when injustice becomes dominant in government, then friction has its own machine.

The left’s friction is now the machine. Get your shoes in the machine. It already runs badly, make it run worse. It already costs too much, make it cost more. You are now the friction. With enough friction, the machine breaks down.

That’s part of what the left did to us. It dragged down our government and culture. It poked a thousand holes in everything. It made it too tiresome and wearying to go on doing this and that. Morale withered, confidence broke down and the left took over.

Now it’s their turn to be on the receiving end.

I’m not going to give the Mario Savio speech…

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

That’s for younger people. It’s for a mass movement.

But you can wear down the machine in a thousand different ways without risk. You don’t have to throw your bodies on the gears. You just have to be a wholly legal burden on it and a pain in the ass of the people running it… and especially the people planning it.

The big stuff begins with the little stuff. When you fight the little stuff, the big stuff starts breaking down.

3. Deny legitimacy to the system

Liberals like to crow that ObamaCare is the law of the land. Now it’s gay marriage. Tomorrow it’ll be a ban on the Dukes of Hazzard.

All that implies legitimacy, order, a legal system. And that’s not what we have.

What we have is a Supreme Court and a White House that acts with brazen illegality. ObamaCare was illegally passed. It was illegally preserved.

No matter how many judges sign off on it, it has no legitimacy. It will never have any legitimacy.

America is built on the simple premise that no system can be more legitimate than its natural laws and founding premises. It does not matter how many judges or politicians try to suspend the First or Second Amendments. All they are doing is removing their own legitimacy.

When a system acts illegally, then its dictates are not the law of the land, they are the law of force.

ObamaCare is coercion. Forcing people to participate in gay marriages is coercion. The FHA ruling is coercion. We may be compelled into compliance, but compulsion is all it is. It isn’t law or justice.

The distinction is important.

When we follow the law, we do so because it is right. When we are coerced, we are at gunpoint by an illegitimate system. Those who compel us are not any different than criminals.

Not only is the system illegitimate, but it is also inconsistent, though it claims there is equality under the law, is favors some at the expense of others.

The system is not only illegal, it is also hypocritical and corrupt. That must be emphasized at every turn.

Liberals maintain a narrative that their way is the inevitable path of progress. We know the truth. Their way has been tried and it failed a thousand times. The only thing inevitable is their eventual failure. Their systems will always be abusive, dishonest and corrupt.

They will always turn undemocratic no matter how they start out. They will always turn to coercion.

When we act and when we talk it is vitally important that we distinguish between the legitimate laws we follow and the illegitimate laws we comply with.

This may seem like a technicality, but it’s a technicality that tyrannies have fallen on.

Every liberal victory is not a triumph. It is another pile of dirt on their own graves. It is another straw on the back of the camel. It is another demonstration that they are corrupt and illegitimate. Their latest victories were gained by abusing the process. They will in the long run lose them just as criminals eventually lose their loot. They have not defeated us. They have corrupted themselves.

4. We’re not done

Every conservative these days seems to have a tipping point for when America will end. None of them are real.

This country was built out of a tiny fraction of the territory and population it holds today. It was built by a handful of people organizing and rousing a movement that spread to a minority of the population at the time.

If the revolution were happening today, it would look a lot like the way it looked then, with major cities in the hands of the establishment and the Loyalists and a handful of farmers that even their formally trained commanders held in contempt fighting against them and the might of an empire.

That’s not coincidence. It’s the whole of human history.

During the Revolutionary War, the entire rebel population of America would be outnumbered by the residents of Manhattan today.

Demographically outnumbered? They had it worse.

Economic collapse? They had it worse.

America isn’t over until it’s over. It will take a long time to happen. At some point the country will be completely unrecognizable, but that’s relative. Would Washington have recognized America in 1952? Or even 1882? America has always been changing. We can’t change it back, but we can change it to.

That’s the real battle.

Contrary to what some conservatives like to believe, the left did not suddenly show up here in 1963 or 1905 and disrupt a formerly peaceful country. The left has always been here. It’s a part of us.

No people and no country are untouched by evil. It’s only a matter of what form it takes. But in any form, we know it by its destructive instincts, its facade of righteousness that poorly conceals a lust for power. Americans have fought it before. Americans have won.

It’s big now, but it’s not nearly as big as we think.

5. A little rhyme and reason

I’ll close with a few selected lines from a children’s nursery rhyme from the days of the big bad USSR that once threatened the world, before folding under the pressure of its people who found the courage to stand up to it.

It’s written for children… but like much that was written in the USSR, it had a message for adults.

The Monster Cockroach

Kornei Chukovsky

To the picnic they all come,
Munching candy and cake,

In a very merry mood,
For a day at the lake.

Then suddenly they grow numb and still!
Who’s that coming down the hill?!

A fierce and dreadful Roach!
A mean cock-cock-Cockroach!
“Don’t you dare to approach!”
He roars, he rages:

“I’ll lock you in cages!
And swallow you ALL

“Or with a twitch of my mustache,
I’ll turn you all to succotash!”

Alas! Not one dares to fight,
Every bird and beast take flight!

Now the Lion climbs a hill;
From there he speaks his royal will:

“We must regain our happy land!
Against the brute we’ll take a stand!”

“And to the warrior who fears not this foe,
Who this monster will overthrow,
To him I’ll give a juicy bone
And the finest pine cone!”

The creatures in one eager crowd,
Surge forth and cry out loud:

“We do not fear this nasty foe,
With tooth and claw
We’ll lay him low!”

And they all rush to do battle-
Birds, fish, fowl, and cattle.

But the Roach moves his mustache
And bellows: “SUCCOTASH!”

One and all they beat a retreat.
The enemy they don’t defeat!

Into the fields and woods they dash-
Terrorized by the Roach’s mustache!

The Lion shouts: “What a disgrace!
Come back! Come out and show your face!
Pin the enemy with your horns-
Bulls, rhinoceros, unicorns!”

But each in his hiding place stays,
And wails: “Horns aren’t cheap these days…”
And our skin is precious too-
What you ask we cannot do!”

Caught in nettles the crocodiles twitch,
And the elephants get caught in a ditch.

Lo! All that’s heard now
Is the flow of tears;
All that’s seen now
Is the trembling of their ears!

To the Cockroach they all yield-
He’s now lord o’er wood and field.
He struts about among them,
Rubbing his tummy,
Looks at their young ones
And says: “How very yummy!”

The poor, poor parents
Are in distress.
Their dear babes
They hug and caress:

For what mother could give up her child,
Her baby tame or her baby wild?!
So that the monster could devour
Her precious crumb, her little flower!

So mommies and daddies moan and cry
As they bid their infants good-bye!

But now we see another picture:
a flighty flying nimble creature-
A carefree Sparrow lands with a trill
right there on the Roach’s hill,

And for a moment all are mute
Fearing the mustachioed brute:

“A monster?! Where?!

“It’s a roach, a roach, a wee-bit roach,
A little beetle you fear to approach.
Look! It’s a midge a mite,
A bug that can’t even bite!

For our trouble we’re to blame!
What a shame!
What a shame!”

The Hippo then comes forth
With slow pace and a worried face,
Muttering in an anxious way:

“Please go away, go away!
Your words will make him very mad,
He may think of something very bad!

Then the Hippo falls still,
Surprised by a sudden trill…

The sparrow bends her dainty neck
Peck, peck, peck-
Not a smidgen, not a speck!

The roach is swallowed in a flash,
All of him and his mustache!