The public persecution of Orson Scott Card is an indicator that it is time for the Right to, in Instapundit’s words, start punching back twice as hard.
A friend posted on Facebook about his interest in the new Ender’s Game film based on the classic novel by Orson Scott Card. Another person chimed in with joy over a news story that Card would not profit personally based on the performance of the film. Why would such a thing be an occasion for joy? The answer is that Card (a Mormon) is a known opponent of same-sex marriage.
Card’s career of late has been affected by his view of marriage. He lost prospective work writing for a Superman project when voices piped up in opposition to him. Was it because of his poor writing? No. It was because of his politics. These same people who villify Card and hope to destroy his career are surely the same persons who curse the “Red Scare” and “McCarthyism.” What is the phenomenon in either case? It is the attempt to prevent a person with a particular worldview from getting work or to prevent others from associating with that person.
The Right has long sabotaged itself through its pride in playing fair and refusing to bar leftists from employment on the basis of their ideological allegiances. Where did that get them? Barred from the mainstream media and the universities. What did that accomplish? Nothing more than the complete loss of the intellectual high ground.
Now that it is in the ascendant in the decision-making positions at the publishers and the large technology companies, we are seeing the same process at work. The leftists at Tor Books aren’t dumb enough to drop Card while he’s still their best-selling author, but they are going to prevent the next Card from publishing there. In fact, they have done so for years, if not decades.
It is no use for the Right to primly disapprove and declare “that’s not sporting, old chap”. When one side clings to the Marquess of Queensbury rules while the other is making use of the full range of MMA options, the outcome is certain. The Left is increasingly confident, in part because its numbers have been swollen through immigration and forty years of public school indoctrination, in part because, rather like Hitler, they simply don’t believe the other side has the backbone to stand its ground.
But the Right still has the bigger numbers. Despite the Left’s loathing of him, it is Card who is Tor’s best-selling novelist, not their left-wing poster girl. Despite the fact that I am not published by any major publisher, I have the most-trafficked blog of any SF/F writer. By every objective measure, the Right remains more culturally powerful than the destructive parasites of the Left. But it is an impotent, mostely unused power.
So, it is time to use it. It is time for the sleeping dog to wake up and bite back. It is time to treat them the way they have been treating us for decades. Don’t hire them. Don’t publish them. Don’t support them. Express social disapproval of them. If you suspect them of left-wing sympathies, if you suspect them of equalitarianism and feminism and other intellectual diseases, inquire further and then drive them into social quarantine. Force them to rely upon their own kind rather than subsisting like vampires upon the human cattle they despise.
Don’t whine about how they won’t let you into the clubs and companies they invaded and occupied and made their own, create new ones, make them bigger and better, and then, (and this is the crucial part), DO NOT LET THEM IN. To “foxnews” should be a verb in every right-winger’s vocabulary; Fox News is the model that shows how easily the Right can dominate and destroy the Left on the Left’s own turf so long as the Right stops trying to appease and accommodate the Left.
Punching back is punching back twice as hard, because the Right has more muscle.
So stop priding yourself on your open mind and your tolerance. Stop thinking you are going to shame them, or inspire them, or convince them into following your lead. Their minds are closed and they see you as an evil enemy. Accept that and treat them accordingly. Support your own kind, give preference to your own kind, and stop paying tribute to the enemy.
As for their vilification, wear it with pride. Feed on it and grow strong. I would be embarrassed, I would be downright disgusted with myself, were the intellectual dwarfs of the Left to approve of me in any way, shape, or form. Persecution either breaks a faith or makes it stronger, and the more they try to increase the pressure, the stronger and harder and more confident they will make us.