The Art of Demolishing Conventional Wisdom

I make no bones about my support for President Trump. I find him a breath of truth-infused fresh air in an age of pretending that has long been dedicated to constructing, spreading, and anointing the “narrative.” By rejecting the rules of “political correctness,” Trump is willing to say what others will not. By rejecting conventional “wisdom,” the president approaches challenges in insightful ways. By rejecting the authority of institutions compromised by political agendas, President Trump challenges corrosive policies camouflaged as “expertise.”

The president’s plain-speaking approach to governing represents a return to common sense. President Trump knows the difference between a man and a woman and does not advance the crazy notion that boys should be in girls’ locker rooms or dominate their sports.

He knows that illegal aliens are, by definition, illegally inside the United States and must be removed (both for the safety and security of American citizens as well as for the preservation of any sense of the rule of law). He knows that trillions of dollars have been transferred from the poorest westerners to the wealthiest westerners in the name of fighting “global warming” and is unwilling to perpetuate a “climate change” hoax that makes everything more expensive for those who can least afford to subsidize the scam. He recognizes that America’s real economy (as represented by local production in towns across the country) has suffered for decades, even though Wall Street’s virtual economy has almost ceaselessly posted record gains. He understands that the U.S. military can be used to achieve strategic successes without shackling multiple generations of Americans to the costly spectacles of regime change, democracy-building, and endless war on other continents.

If your personal politics overlap to some degree with President Trump’s worldview, the previous paragraph is filled with self-evident truths. What is remarkable is that every one of the above statements represents a contentious policy disagreement in the United States and across the West today.

Close to half of Americans believe that biological sex can be changed; that illegal aliens have every right to burden local communities at American taxpayers’ expense; that we should be taxed for using energy, limit our use of electricity, and return to the lifestyles of a pre-industrial era; that America can magically prosper without manufacturing much of anything; and that the U.S. military should be used to promote abstract ideas rather than to secure real American interests.

This divide is not going away. Ever since community-organizer-in-chief Barack Obama encouraged an entire generation of Americans to lecture their family members during Thanksgiving dinners, there has been no escape from politics. Personal relationships and social activities that once provided Americans distinct meaning separated from external concerns over the role of government in their lives are now rare.

Ever since President Trump came on the political scene and refused to pander to the Establishment’s brand of “political correctness” or pay homage to the political Left’s secular-yet-sacred shibboleths, Americans have aggressively separated into warring tribes. Mutual disdain and blinding vitriol make it nearly impossible for Americans from opposing political camps to understand each other. Lacking unifying principles or a common cause more pressing than our disagreements, Americans are at risk of losing each other. Even sober observers largely immune to political passions often publicly wonder whether this Union of ours can long survive.

As is true of most people, there are things that I believe that I cannot defend with charts and graphs. I believe that we are sometimes brought to the edge of the cliff before we remember to dig in our heels and push back against that which seeks to destroy us. I believe that suffering has a way of chiseling character out of stony selfishness. I believe that just as pain brings protective callouses, personal struggle strengthens the armor of our souls. And I believe in America.

It’s not fashionable these days to speak of America as the Founding Fathers did. The New York Times created “The 1619 Project” to rewrite America’s birth as not a seminal moment for inalienable rights and personal liberty but rather as a violent perpetuation of racism and human slavery. Ivy League professors ignore America’s historic role in advancing human freedom around the world and instead describe our origin story as one tainted by imperialism, genocide, discrimination, and patriarchy.

Those same professors go out of their way to hide a century of communism’s systematic crimes, terror, and repression and the hundred million victims communist regimes have murdered. When Marxist-socialists control the universities and teachers’ unions, it should be no surprise when young Americans take their own freedoms for granted and glamorize the homicidal religion of Marx.

For American freedom to survive another century, those who understand what is at stake have a moral responsibility to speak up. President Trump’s term will come to an end in three years. American patriots will lose a loud voice in support of American exceptionalism, personal freedom, and common sense. He has done much to shake sleeping Americans awake before it is too late. But one man alone cannot write America’s future. All of us must steer our country’s ship through the storms ahead. All of us must approach our looming struggles with courage and resolve. A country’s character is its fate. Americans will decide whether our nation stands or falls.