We can begin by accepting that what is happening to our country is a violent neo-Marxist revolution, and that victory by the Left will mean what Marxist takeovers have always meant: unending misery and oppression. Once we understand that, then we can begin to understand what to do, and how to do it.
If these are Marxist revolutionaries, then they must be utterly defeated. We cannot temporize, compromise, or negotiate with them. They cannot be conciliated or reasoned with. They will accept nothing short of total victory, and therefore neither can we. They must be smashed. Their control over our institutions and culture must be wrecked beyond repair. Their ability to use threats and intimidation to cancel their opponents must be broken.
Their violence must meet with overwhelming power. Their subversion of American civilization must be ruined and reversed. We need a coalition of the sane, which sees the radical Left for what it is and is willing to act accordingly. Only then can reasonable and decent people from both parties disagree and deliberate, and do all the things that free, self-governing people do.
We’re at war. The neo-Marxist Left knows it, and it’s high time the rest of us accepted it, too. At stake is nothing less than liberty, self-government, reason, faith, and our way of life. “The struggle of today,” Lincoln told Congress in 1861, “is not altogether for today. It is for a vast future also.”
Kevin Portteus is the Lawrence Fertig chair in politics at Hillsdale College, where he has taught since 2008. Previously he has taught at Belmount Abbey College and Mountain View College. His articles have been featured in Forbes, Breitbart, Human Events, On Principle, The American Spectator and his forthcoming book is titled Executive Details: Public Administration and American Constitutionalism. He is currently writing articles on immigration and the Founding, and Lincoln’s eulogy on Henry Clay. A 2001 Publius Fellow, Dr. Portteus received his B.A. from Ashland University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Institute of Philosophic Studies at the University of Dallas.