I know. I read their planning memos. It was going to be an American Stasi.
They even had a SWAT team—I think pretty much every agency used to—and they carried the same weapons they tried to ban citizens from owning.
I gathered all of the employees together in the cafeteria that first morning after I was confirmed. They were really angry, which I found kind of funny since I was the one who had been in jail for 18 months because of them for saying things the government didn’t approve of.
Anyway, I walked to the front, and they are all looking at me, and I introduced myself. Silence. Then I said, “You’re fired. Pack your personal effects and be out of the building by noon.” Then I walked out.
Of course, I had security there to make sure they didn’t make off with anything incriminating—they tried, though. We found people with papers and files stuck in their clothes. And I had my tech guys turn off the computer system that morning—totally off—so no one could erase anything.
It was good that we took those precautions. The materials we found outlining how the Clinton administration had waged a war on people who exercised their First Amendment rights were some of the most important evidence we offered at the Political Repression Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings.
Rob Patel (President-Elect)
In changing American culture, conservatives found themselves changing as well. During our discussion, the president-elect was remarkably open about the fact that he has changed many of his views over time.
I didn’t like pot or gay marriage, but I chose not to make those my defining issues and to find common ground with people who felt differently. These let me build larger, stronger coalitions as a congressman and a senator. But it also caused some dissension within our coalition.
You can disagree with people on a few issues and still work with them. I was about 90 percent there with the people who we used to call the “social conservatives” during the Hillary years. I’d say I’m about 95 percent with them now, but that’s partly because they’ve moved my way. For example, the gay marriage fight was huge 30 years ago and it’s completely dead now—it’s irrelevant.
But it wasn’t the social issues that made up the big cultural changes we saw. It was, mostly, the fact that we moved from a society where the expectation was that you were entitled to something to a society where you were expected to earn it for yourself. That was the real central change—a move back toward individual autonomy balanced by individual responsibility. All the other stuff was really just superficial.
Sister Margaret Feeney (Nun/Religious Rights Activist)
The Catholic Church—and other nonliberal sects—rose up to become major centers of resistance to progressive tyranny. Initially, many Catholics were reluctant to sign on to constitutional conservatism, but then they saw that the alternative was for each group resisting the left to be defeated individually if they did not stand together.
I’d say I was about 65 percent in line with the constitutional conservatives, but the other side was 110 percent against me. I could reason with one and be able to worship God as I saw fit, or with the other I could submit to whatever small bit of religious freedom they deigned to grant me. It was an easy decision.
I still have some heartburn with how focused the constitutional conservatives are on individual action. I think that as a society, we do need to help the needy—I have been doing that for many years. But I began to see the price liberals exacted for doing so.
With them, government was not merely helping people. It was controlling them. Any aid we received at the food kitchen came with strings attached, and those strings always meant liberal government getting into our affairs.
I am much more open to the idea of individual responsibility today. You cannot be free if you are not standing on your own feet—even when someone comes to my food kitchen, they have to hear me preach, then help clean up. That’s the price, and I am not somehow wrong to charge it. Nothing is free.
But when government does it, it’s not something that brings people closer to God. It’s something that makes them bound to the government. It becomes about the power of the state, and we have seen that the state always grows to abuse its power. That’s why I’ve come to believe that government should be as small as possible.
Chapter Thirteen: Progressive Reactionaries
They didn’t just surrender. The liberals fought back, using some of the classic techniques of counterinsurgents while making many of the classic mistakes of counterinsurgents that allowed their enemies to flourish.
Liberalism had grown complacent, convinced that the levers of power it controlled were the only levers of power in society. The liberals were wrong. The insurgents resisted.
There was occasional violence. Conservatives baited and teased the left, inviting overreaction that would create a moral crisis for both regular citizens and even some of the left’s less ideological members. Censorship, NSA surveillance, IRS harassment, and other un-American acts alienated many of the left’s own allies while encouraging the conservatives. The insurgency focused on the people. Liberalism forgot about the people, focusing only on the elites and their cronies, leaving a vacuum the conservatives eagerly filled.
The two Obama terms and the two Clinton terms were unmitigated disasters for America that the Democratic Party is still trying to live down. In many ways, the 16 years of liberal government tore the scales from the eyes of many Americans who had once believed themselves liberal. Liberal failure—both domestically and internationally—provided an invaluable opportunity for the insurgency.
The American people found their economy stagnant, their nation’s reputation and power abroad diminished, and their freedoms at home increasingly under attack. The bailout and the stimulus of the first Obama term started the fire; the lies about Obamacare and its slow disintegration fanned the flames. The conservatives always had an alternative to offer; it was liberal failure that gave the insurgents a chance to show that conservatism was the only alternative.
Lieutenant Jim Gallegos (Iranian War Vet)
The former Marine earned his Purple Heart when Iranian bullets tore into him during the ill-fated Operation Urgent Unicorn invasion of the Iranian coast. Gallegos’s unit’s mission was to seize an oil refinery, but the plan was confused and interference from Clinton administration officials back in Washington prevented the already hollowed-out military forces from holding their objectives.
When Hillary Clinton decided she needed a boost, she suddenly got serious about Iran. By then the military was gutted—no money to train or maintain or sustain, we used to say—and all to pay for spending on her deadbeat voter base. Protecting the country is in the Constitution; sending welfare checks to losers in Fort Living Room isn’t. But we were soldiers, and we saluted and drove on.
When it went down and we went into Iran to grab some petroleum sites as a “measured response” to nuking our ally, well, we knew it would be a freaking disaster. All these geniuses who never spent a day in uniform were trying to stage-manage the whole thing from DC. We asked for armor. Denied. We asked for air support. Denied.