We need a name for structural anti-Fabianism. I propose it be called the Anaconda Strategy.
As those with a decent familiarity with history will readily recognize, this was the strategy Winfield Scott–the most brilliant American General nobody has heard of–came up with to win the Civil War. He knew that the South would not fall easily. Amateurs, looking at maps, assumed that Richmond–less than a 100 miles or so from Washington–could just be marched to, conquered, and the war would be over within a month.
Scott knew that they were too strong there, and that the action would have to begin in the West, by controlling the Mississipi, then the ports, like Mobile Bay. That’s where Grant cut his teeth as a General, and it was only relatively late in the conflict that he got involved in the Eastern theater, I guess I can call it.
The movement was one of constriction: of supplies, of movement, of men. The goal was to make the effective South smaller and smaller and smaller, and finally, at the very end, to complete that short march from Washington to Richmond. It was a non-obvious strategy, but it worked.
Here is an interesting thought: the Leftists in our midst have in effect seceded from the Union. What they want is not a strong and unified America, but one riven by SECTARIAN conflict, of precisely the sort they continuously engender. They no longer want to be part of a larger whole, but rather to attack anyone unlike them, in the hope of ending the defense of our national traditions outright, to be followed by a post-Constitutional world.
We need to be clear that with an intact Constitution, the stakes for winning national political contests would be greatly muted. If the Supreme Court had not arrogated to itself the power to impose unanswerable legislation, it would not matter as much who sat on it. If the Executive had not metastasized to include hundreds of bureaus and–over the course of a Presidency–TRILLIONS of dollars in largely discretionary spending, the Presidential election would not matter as much. If Congress were not needed to counter the power of such an Imperial Presidency, then it, too, would be much less important.
That is neither here nor there, though at this moment. What I want to propose is that the advance of Leftism in the dark has been checked. It is now in the open. Large numbers of people–larger in my view than ever before–are wide awake and largely immune to the smoke and mirrors that have worked so well before. It was not that hard to argue that the Vietnam War was in process of being lost in 1970, even though that was not the case. It was not so hard to argue that an arms race with the Soviet Union was dangerous, even though it manifestly wasn’t. It was not so hard, even recently, to argue that America contained large resevoirs of residual racism. Yet, we just elected a black President, and one with no qualifications and many figurative and literal red flags at that. Even that case is not going to be easy to make going forward.
All the things that leftists have used to distract people from their failures are gone. They have spend their ammunition. They got their Keynesian Stimulus. It did nothing. They claimed their health insurance mandate would decrease costs; it is increasing them, predictably, for clearly definable reasons. Where, in their political landscape, is there room to hide from the truth?
Certainly, the media will continue failing to cover important stories, and failing to provide historical context for current events. The universities will continue to spew out poorly educated, but nonetheless overly self confident graduates.
But they won’t have jobs. And as they ponder, they will slowly realize, if they have any intelligence at all, that small businesses create jobs, and that Democrats in general put pressure, unnecessary pressure, on small businesses, often to the benefit of the very transnational megacorporations they have been bred to hate.
Sunlight is the cure for infections of this sort. The Anaconda Strategy is very simple: educate, educate, educate. Most college graduates have literally NEVER BEEN EXPOSED to coherent conservatism. They literally DO NOT KNOW why nice people could even consider voting Republican.
The task is to shrink the base of ideologically faithful continually over time, such that in 5 or 10 years, Communism is once again the universally evil word it should have been these last 50 years and more.
Look at Occupy Wall Street: these are the sybarites I talk about. They are soft and weak. They believe nothing and know nothing. They don’t even know why they are there, and are incapable of articulating credible reasons why their presence will make the slightest difference to the businesses of the men who drive by them every day in their limousines. I doubt any even bother to look up from the pages of their paper as they drive by.
These people talk about “revolution”, but none of them have the capacity to really grasp what the sort of thing they are calling for would mean. They think they will still get their Starbucks, and video games, and Dave Matthews concerts, their Free Trade Granola (but from local shops), but that instead of having to pay their bills, their bills will be paid for them. And if they just want to sleep in, well the fantastically compassionate State will let them. Basically, all the responsibilities of their lives will be gone, and all that will be left is the stuff they like, absent the evil corporations.
To call this magical thinking is perhaps generous. It is really a form of functional psychosis, that is entirely divorced from the realm of the possible or historical. An analogy I would use is this Monty Python Skit. Our Chartered Accountant dreams of a life of adventure as a lion tamer, but shrinks back when he finds out what lions actually are.
All of these children–and they are all children, regardless of their apparent biological age–are either imagining squirrels, or possessed of such abundant rage that they would qualify as clinical sadists of the Bill Ayers sort.
In both cases, the simple fact is that they can be marginalized, and this process has already begun. Our task now is to continue it. Every copy of a book by Hayek, or Friedman, or Sowell, or Hazlitt, or Paul Johnson, or Jacques Barzun,or of course Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Mona Charen, or many others, that sells, shrinks a little the space they occupy.
Of course the left will continue putting out their books. But we have a basic advantage over time: we are right, and when our policies are implemented–real conservative policies, not RINO policies–they will work. If Perry or Cain get the nod, they will make an immediate difference for the better in our economy, in my view. Same for everyone else in the field but Romney. Make that O an Obama symbol.
Now, given the level of indoctrination out there, it is not inconceivable Obama could win a second term. We need to be clear that this will almost CERTAINLY come with a Republican Senate. Between the two houses, Congress can vitiate almost every Socialist initiative coming out of the White House, and put a cap on much of his spending.
This would not be good, of course, but please think back to the Civil War. 600,000 Americans DIED in that war, which convulsed our nation for 4 long years. We survived that period. We can survive the next 5 years too, one way or another.
Americans are not bred for pessimism, and the simple ineluctable fact is that ALL OUR PROBLEMS HAVE SOLUTIONS IF WE CAN GET THE IDIOTS OUT OF THE WAY. This again will only be possible with education, education, education.
As one good example of the sort of thing I’m talking about, Hillsdale College has apparently put together a set of lectures on the Constitution.
Two more reasons I like the Anaconda analogy:
1) It recollects the encirclement that enabled the complete destruction of the Roman Army by Hannibal at Cannae, after they abandoned the strategy of Fabius Maximus, as the left indeed did by nominating Obama.
2) Don’t tread on me. Different snake: same idea.