Libertarians and small-government conservatives may not like it, but the cold truth is that reforming a titanic mega-government is impossible without amassing and using State power. You have to play the game, and play to win. Your adversaries most certainly do.
You have to play the game at every level, too. It's important to organize at the local level and win state and county races, but that doesn't count for much in the long run if the gigantic central government is wholly run by aggressive totalitarian statists.
Totalitarian ideologies prosper by exploiting the natural desire of dissidents to be left alone. They don't like win-at-all-costs politics. They fear corruption. They aren't looking to impose their views on others by force. They're focused on family and individual achievement.
But totalitarians LOVE all of those things. They absolutely do want to impose their views on others by force, and they do whatever it takes to amass the government and corporate power to do so. They laugh as the desire to be left alone gives them isolated targets to pick off.
When the totalitarian Left was out of power, it spent decades mocking the notion of teaching positive "values" in school or transmitting them through culture. Those who value liberty and individualism, who want to be left alone, were easily bullied into silence by these lectures.
But the instant the totalitarian Left gained power, it began constructing gigantic government and corporate machines to transmit ITS values. Culture became the endless, dreary woke scolding we're accustomed to now. Private employees are force-marched into indoctrination sessions.
Clearly the Left never believed for an instant that values cannot be transmitted, or that the State should not "impose morals" on citizens. It only needed to bully ordinary people into silence for a decade or so, until it gained total control over government and capital.
Totalitarianism is a game you cannot elect not to play. You can't hide from it. You cannot impress totalitarians by showing them how YOU refuse to compromise your libertarian principles. There are no cease-fires, no safe areas, no holy ground where swords cannot be drawn.
The deeper problem is that you cannot reform a titanic, aggressive, totalitarian State by simply winning elections now and then. Lord knows everyone should see that clearly by now. You have to develop the political infrastructure necessary to exploit electoral victory.
That's the part of the game libertarians naturally shy away from, but if you win elections without a deep bench of dedicated, energetic, skilled professionals ready to sweep into the bureaucracy and implement your programs, you'll be easily thwarted by the permanent State.
The Left has such armies constantly ready to roll, with reinforcements on standby. It has institutions, both private and funded by taxpayer dollars, that exist primarily to keep left-wing officials and bureaucrats paid and ready for the next Democrat administration.
Of course sincere small-government conservatives recoil from such endeavors. They don't want to siphon off tax dollars to finance ideological armies and crusades. They don't dream of conquering the federal bureaucracy. That's the kind of thing they oppose on principle.
Most people with libertarian leanings are very leery of anything that smacks of "imposing values" on others. It's why they fell so easily into the "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" trap the Left built for them, while Lefty ran wild building his indoctrination machine.
But as we've learned painfully over the course of the post-Reagan era, if you don't fight to defend and transmit your values, the totalitarians will enshrine and forcibly transmit THEIRS. The only two options in a "culture war" against totalitarians are fight and surrender.
That means you have to develop institutions that can protect and transmit your values - and you have to build aggressive institutions that can win, and ruthlessly USE, central political power. If you don't take and hold ground, you will be conquered, simple as that.
We're far past the point where the march to totalitarian - and, increasingly, authoritarian - centralized power and national ruin can be won by playing defense. We need leaders who will pick important fights, win them, and exploit their victories with gusto.
And we need generals with bureaucratic armies lined up behind them, not just a few charismatic vote-getters or skilled rhetoricians. Not people who can win arguments, but people who can win battles - and who know how to use those victories.
The Left realized long ago that whining about tactics is transitory. With titanic amounts of money and power at stake, what matters is the victory. That money can be spent to change people's lives, to hire more bureaucrats, to build ideological machinery that lasts for decades.
Look at any corrupt cesspool on Earth, and you'll see honest people backing completely away from politics because they're disgusted, they fear they would themselves become corrupted if they participate, and they think defeating the entrenched power cartel is impossible.
Can you grapple with a monster without becoming a monster? Yes, with faith and discipline - but in any event, you MUST. If you don't get into the game, you will lose. You must control the State to make it smaller. Ride the Leviathan, or you will be devoured by it. /end
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