To guide, inspire and prepare Wyomingites and their fellow Americans to act against existential threats to their liberties and to Western Civilization from radical revolutionaries and Emperors who have no clothes.
Truth is forever
First Principles
The Present Crisis
The principles of individual liberty and of representative, constitutional government are at risk in today's America.
Thomas Paine wrote the first of his series of pamphlets later published as The American Crisis in December, 1776 when the morale of American revolutionaries was at its lowest point – the Continental Army driven from New York in a series of defeats, melting away in desertions expired enlistments as it fell back across New Jersey. Read aloud to the troops at George Washington's orders, it helped to hold the army together and restore its morale through the improbably successful midwinter attacks on the British at Trenton and Princeton. Paine's opening words are familiar to many:
"THESE are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
Our crisis is nothing so desperate, yet, because – to draw from another Revolutionary War hero – "We have not yet begun to fight." We hope that it does not come to a fight, but a struggle is well under way, and the stakes are huge.
The first thing we'd like you to consider is that the "old normal" is dead. You may, depending on your location and your particular circumstances, still be able to go through your day pretending that the conditions of 2019, or 2009, or 1999 still prevail. Even then, two decades ago, the slide down from the apogee of American strength, unity, freedom, and greatness was well underway.
We are in fact, and in spite of all denials, in the grip of a new revolution, one that aims at destroying our Constitutional federal republic, and replacing it with a centralized totalitarian state, a controlled and impoverished socialist economy, and a population deprived of their natural rights, distracted by bread and circuses, and intimidated into silent compliance with the dictates of their elitist "betters."
Edmund Burke, a British philosopher of the same generation as Paine and the American patriots, said:
"It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to know how much of an evil ought to be tolerated. . . I must bear with infirmities until they fester into crimes."
American conservatives and libertarians have watched the groundwork of this new revolution being laid for decades, unwilling to recognize it for what it was, or to believe that it was a coherent effort or one that had a chance of success. This is a classic example of normalcy bias, which leads us to believe that nothing we see will differ substantially from what we have seen or experienced in the past. That bias, on the part of people who mostly despise politics and just want to be left alone to live their lives, has been skillfully played by the strategists of the Left.
They mostly hide in plain sight. Their doctrine, strategy, and tactics are readily accessible, in books, articles, theses, speeches, pamphlets, and conference proceedings. After the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980, they retrenched, accepting the failure of their effort to subvert the republic by traditional political methods and victory at the ballot box – destroying American freedom with its own tools. They bewailed the political dynamic, demonstrated by Reagan's victory, that American conservatives, when they are pushed too far too fast, tend to wake up, realize their power, and act on it.
Their new strategy emphasized a different aspect of their long plan: the culture war, a slow, under-the-radar, incremental assault on our society through our schools, our churches, our institutions, and our increasingly top-heavy, over-centralized, and unaccountable bureaucratic governments at all levels. A key part of this new strategy was an attack on the institution of free and open elections, which began long before the debacle of 2020. The Left understood the concept of "preparation of the battlefield" and by the time they ran Barack Obama for the presidency in 2008, they were ready again to push the struggle into the open. They believed that Obama's presidency represented the turning point, the beginning (as he himself candidly put it) of the "fundamental transformation" of America, with a momentum that would be irreversible; but they made the same mistake they did in 1980, underestimating their opposition.
Once more, Americans, although largely still oblivious to the Left's organization, seriousness, and purpose, surprised them (and the world) by defeating Hillary Clinton – Obama's chosen successor – in 2016 and putting Donald Trump in the White House. An outsider not susceptible to the financial and political compromise and corruption that has weakened and subverted both of the major political parties, Trump strove to reverse the momentum of destructive change and decay. Despite occasional victories and inspirational moments, he failed, providing little more than a few years of delay and disruption of the Left's plans, because they were not willing to retreat again. Since Trump took office in 2017, the assault on America accelerated as they employed every tool at their disposal. It almost appears to be a strategy of desperation, recalling Erwin Rommel's description of the difference between a gamble and a calculated risk. A calculated risk, he said, even if it failed, left sufficient resources with which to recover and continue the fight; but a gamble, if you lost the roll of the dice, left you with no plan "B", no means of recovery. Rommel embodied that principle in his brilliant military leadership in North Africa in 1941-42, albeit in an odious cause.
Our job, as patriotic, Constitutionalist Americans, is to ensure that this great play of our enemies is in fact a gamble, one that they will lose. They are "all in," with the mask off. This is the second great, existential American Crisis. If they lose, they will not re-emerge as a threat for a very long time, if ever. Let's make it so.
What is it that we face now? We have a revolutionary movement occupying the seat of federal power, and they are no more prepared for it than a rebellious pre-teen spinning around in his CEO daddy's desk chair. As Jeff Deist of the Mises Institute puts it, we have a "federal government [that] can't manage covid. It can't manage Afghanistan. It can't manage debt, or the dollar or spending, or entitlements. It can't even run federal elections, for God's sake, much less provide security or justice or social cohesion." It has no vision for America's role in the world, and stumbles from one crisis and betrayal to another, pandering to our enemies and squandering the good will, alliances, friendships and partnerships built over the last century and half since we emerged from "splendid isolation" in the late 19th Century. It seeks to exploit all these problems to its own ends – especially the COVID-19 pandemic, the border crisis, and the intentional dismantling of our economy.
Unfortunately, the Left is quite skilled at seizing power, even if they are too incompetent to accomplish much when they have it. They stole the 2020 presidential election, and it is possible (setting normalcy bias aside) that we may not see another fair and transparent national election until they have been decisively defeated by other means.
The continuing and mounting assaults on our freedoms serve a two-fold purpose for them. They continue the far-advanced agenda of conditioning the population to comply with governmental orders, regardless of how much they flout all previous conceptions of individual rights and limitations on governmental power. Roughly half the American electorate welcomed this regime to power, and though there are cracks emerging in their solidarity, there's a very large frightened and compliant constituency. Every order they meekly accept makes them more compliant and less likely to resist further outrages.
It is very important to recognize the other purpose of these measures: to provoke a violent response from people on the right. The theory that government would create or encourage "false flag" incidents is unproven; but it appears to be hardly necessary. False flag events would run a risk of compromise and discovery which would embarrass the Left and work against its agenda; and they are not needed. Instead, they are brazenly proceeding, in public health, gun control, the border crisis, and other areas, with policy decisions, mandates, and actions that themselves are likely, sooner or later to provoke a violent response from a minority who, as Burke might say, have reached their limit on how much evil they are willing to tolerate. Such a response will be characterized as "insurrection" (just as they have tried to do with the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riot) and will be used to paint all conservative opposition to their policies and governance as domestic terrorism, providing an excuse for law enforcement, intelligence, and security-state agencies, and their media and corporate allies, to engage in even more censorship, suppression of political speech, economic harassment, public stigmatization, and quite probably arrests, prosecutions, and intimidating displays of force.
At the end of that spectrum of course, the regime would be entirely unprepared for the scale of resistance that their actions could provoke, and for the disloyalty of their law enforcement and national security apparatus, which is very largely staffed at the operational and tactical level by patriots who will, in the crisis, honor their oaths. Provoking a fight might prove to be a major miscalculation, but as we suggested at the beginning of this post, such a fight could spiral quickly out of control and take us all to places we would prefer not to go.
So then, what alternatives do we have, if we don't want to dance to their tune? The answers below are not necessarily comprehensive, but we mean to point the way to a powerful groundswell of decentralized resistance and, ultimately, pushback, that will defeat the Left's revolutionary scheme. Standing Tall will address them in greater detail going forward:
First, let's agree on our goal: We're taking our country back. All of it. It was once a great nation, and it will be again. Secession by us, or by them, is not a desirable end-state. We give them nothing, no part of the nation they are trying to break down and destroy.
Second, acknowledge that a federation entered into by sovereign states was the vision of the Founders, and a vision into which we will breathe new life. Sir John Glubb, a British general and scholar of the 20th Century, wrote in The Fate of Empires that all the great historical empires collapsed – usually destroyed from within – at an average age of about 250 years, after they became too big to be governable, and had progressed through several sequential phases to what he called the Age of Decadence, characterized by social upheavals arising from:
- a lowering of moral virtues and principles, principally among the wealthy and middle classes;
- a large and undisciplined military with leaders increasingly willing to meddle in politics;
- glorification of celebrities; and
- economic collapse and default.
The American empire (for such it is, in all but name) is showing all these traits, and if it is to survive, it will be by downsizing and decentralizing, by moral renewal, and by a hefty dose of fiscal sanity. This can only be accomplished over the carcass of the federal government super-state, by a return of power and authority to the constituent states in line with the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Founders' original vision.
Third, that vision of a new federalism starts now, by states – each and every one, as they find the will – standing up to the continuing, and worsening, unconstitutional exercise of power by the federal government. Because we do not seek either secession or civil war, we will accomplish this by new, imaginative, legal application of the principles of nullification and interposition, and simple noncompliance. Worthy of a future essay or three in themselves, those concepts boil down to simply saying, "No." We've seen this principle demonstrated, ironically, by the Left in the immigration sanctuary movement, and in state legalization of marijuana in defiance of federal law. More recently and more admirably, we see the surge of "Second Amendment Preservation Acts" passed by states, denying state support for the enforcement of Federal laws and regulations that infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms. States have enormous power, conferred by Constitutional anti-commandeering doctrine, which establishes that the federal government cannot force state agencies or personnel to enforce federal laws. The ability of the federal government to enforce its increasingly toxic mandates with its own resources alone, without state assistance, is very, very limited. And action – or inaction – based on anti-commandeering doctrine is legal, non-violent, and non-threatening. Just say "NO" as an individual, and encourage your elected state and local representatives to do the same.
Fourth, Wyoming has its full share of issues given the strength of Leftwing "progressives" within our state, and the in-state and out-of-state funding sources they deploy. It's time to drop the veneer of politeness and tolerance toward those whose goal is the destruction of our way of life. At all levels – from local governmental bodies like city councils, county commissions, and school boards to the state legislature – these folks are active and successful beyond all proportion to their actual numbers. Why? Because most conservatives and libertarians don't like politics and don't engage until it is – or is almost – too late. The Left loves politics and they engage in it enthusiastically at every level. Take it back. Stand up to unreasonable school board mask mandates; show up for commission meetings and speak up when their actions threaten to betray our fundamental principles of freedom and self-determination. Run for office. And call a spade a spade, even when stating simple truth may alienate a neighbor. They have no respect for the truth, or for you; they only shelter behind those forms when it is convenient.
Infirmities have festered into crimes. Wake up. Act up. Aim to misbehave.