As the prospects for actual conflict grow, more and more right-wingers are beginning to realize that conservatives cannot be relied upon to fight for anything:
Would conservatives achieve an easy victory against the left if it came down to civil war? The question seems less absurd by the day as tensions increase between the right and left. Many conservative writers seem to think the left would fold quickly and the right would triumph. One has good reason to doubt that. Consider basic issues like political bias in universities, or religious integrity. After decades of exposés and outcries from conservatives over liberal tyranny, universities are as biased as they ever were….
I am nowhere near as confident as Kurt Schlichter that the right wing could trounce the left wing in battle. We can’t even unite to keep Alex Jones on Facebook. It is true that conservatives have more guns and are probably better street fighters. But conservatives also cave in large numbers even when their most sacred cows are in danger – such as the First Amendment or Christian principles. The two latter issues sit at the core of academic bias and debates on sexuality, respectively. I have the war wounds from both battles and can attest to the repeating scenario: conservatives talk and talk about what they believe and how bad the left is. Then they give up droves when it comes time to fight.
Take the question of defending the gospel. We hear constant sermons from Christian preachers that speak of standing by God’s word even in the face of popular criticism. In anticipation of the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting, I spent months searching for people be willing to sign on to a resolution affirming Christian sexual ethics and supporting churches’ rights to offer counseling in defiance of laws like California’s “stay gay” bill. Almost sixteen million Americans claim to be Southern Baptists. I could not find a single person willing to back the resolution. When I submitted it under my own name, it was killed in committee and never brought to the floor.
If you look at the history of ideologically-based civil wars, the odds most certainly do not favor the more conservative sides. The Spanish Civil War was one of the few in which the socialists were ultimately defeated, and yet, neither Franco nor the Phalange were ever embraced by the Right throughout the West.
I’ve been reading James Burnham’s Suicide of the West, and one of the things that is particularly shocking is his 39-question poll which divides the conservatives of 1965 from liberal-progressives. I’ll post it later today, as it shows very clearly that today’s conservatives are yesterday’s progressives.