A Letter to My Fellow Concerned Conservatives
Fear is defining the American moment in which we live.
I know it’s from Yoda (from Star Wars), but we can find a ton of wisdom in one of his most iconic lines:
Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to the Dark Side [or to “suffering” in another quote].
We live in a hateful time. I have called it a “Cold Civil War” for almost a decade now. Some significant portion of the American people are at war with each other (a civil war). Thanks be to God, it has, thus far, been a cold war. We haven’t started hurting each other yet.
That cold war warmed up a little in the last 12 months. From violence in Milwaukee, Kenosha, Portland and other American cities last summer to the siege of the US Capitol this week, this cold war threatens to get hot.
My interest is in easing the tensions and finding a way forward. So, in this moment of real hatred for each other, what can we do? I suggest reverse engineering Yoda’s wisdom.
We are hateful because we are angry, and we are angry because we are afraid.
The hatred we see acted out in the streets and online emanates from the reality that people are afraid of each other. We’re terrified of what happens if “those people” get the power of the government.
For my ideological compatriots, we fear losing the country we love. We see the United States as set of ideas that has led to the greatest national force for human flourishing in human history. We see forces and ideas antithetical to the ideas that has led to so much freedom and prosperity. We see those forces growing, and we fear.
I wonder if I could help you have less fear as the party of the Left dawns nominal control of the levers of the federal government.
Remember what you’ve been through already.
Friends, it was only about a decade ago (January 2009-January 2011) that the following was true:
Barack Obama, a truly anti-American radical, was president.
Democrats had 60 (SIXTY!!!) seats in the Senate.
Nancy Pelosi had a few-dozen seat majority.
Remember what they got out of that dominant time? It was the Affordable Care Act. Of course, they spent insane amounts of money and enacted other regulations/policies that slowed the economic recovery. The seminal “achievement", though, was Obamacare.
Obamacare was indeed terrible. It was a fiscal monstrosity, an affront to human freedom, and has broken almost all of its promises. But that’s all they got, folks.
You made it through the time most friendly to radical Lefitsm we had ever seen (I hope ever see), and we came out with a lot of the Constitution and human liberty intact.
Now, consider where you are.
A doddering older man who ran (falsely) as a moderate is about to be president.
It’s a 50-50 split in the Senate.
Nancy Pelosi has one of the smallest majorities in the history of Congress (9 seats).
That set-up for the next two years will not be fun, but listen to me: it’s going to be fine. The stuff we rightfully fear (being rid of the filibuster, packing the courts, adding States, real, by-the-book-defiinition socialism) is not getting through that governmental set-up. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, has already made that clear. Other vulnerable Democrats in the Senate will be wary of those items as well because all of these people exist only to be re-elected.
Do you know who to thank for that?
The real MVP of the United States are our founding fathers. They installed a system of governance that makes truly radical ideas almost impossible without really broad consensus.
So, friends, I know there is fear. I know that fear feeds the anger and the hate. It’s happening to a lot of Americans on all sides. Here is my call to you: you do not have reason to fear. We’re not at the end of our Republic. We must be vigilant for human freedom right now, but we’re not at the end.
Don’t be afraid. Life is long, and we have plenty of reasons to believe we can maintain and build even better a world to leave to our progeny.
Peace and love,
Cory Truax
