We Are Still at War
America is at war, but we don’t know it. As I have said more often than I can count, you can’t win a war if you don’t know you are in one.
To understand this, it would be helpful to reassess the recent election. At present, we see the election as a contest between different policies on immigration, crime, abortion, the economy, and so forth. President Trump got the better of this contest. At the same time, we see it as a contest between competence on the one hand and “joy” (that is, incompetence) on the other. Trump got the better of this too. Wokeism and condescension on the part of the Democrats also worked to Trump’s benefit. This assessment makes it appear as if the election was a rather typical one — different in intensity, but not different in kind.
It is true, many thoughtful observers thought the election was very consequential, even as consequential as the election of 1860; but even most of these never thought the Democrats were running candidates that consciously sought to destroy America. Hyperbolic? I think not.
The key to understanding the revolutionary nature of the election may be a video by a little-known academic by the name of Brian Lozenski. In this video, Lozenski says, multiple times within the span of 80 seconds, that the goal of critical race theory (CRT) is to “overthrow” America.
Who is Brian Lozenski? He is a national leader in the CRT movement, the foremost authority on CRT in Minnesota and, most significantly, Tim Walz’s most important education advisor. Lozenski is not on the fringes of Walz’s administration but at its very center. Lozenski was the de facto leader of Walz’s so-called “ethnic studies” curriculum (“ethnic studies” is, in effect, a new name for CRT), which is at the heart of Walz’s education program.
Walz has been working diligently for years to embed ethnic studies in the curricula of all grades, in all required courses in all public schools in Minnesota. According to Katherine Kersten, a senior policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment in Minnesota, Walz “has used both legislation and administrative rulemaking to achieve … radical Ethnic Studies instruction. … Between 2021 and 2023, Walz proposed and pushed Ethnic Studies in a series of ‘governor’s policy and budget bills’ at the Minnesota Legislature.”
Under the new ethnic studies standards, Kersten reports, first-graders must “identify examples of ethnicity, equality, liberation and systems of power” and “use those examples to construct meanings for those terms.” Fourth-graders must “examine how discrimination and the oppression of various racial and ethnic groups have produced resistance movements.” High school students are taught to view themselves as members of “racialized hierarchies” based on “dominant European beauty standards.” However “jargony,” it is clear enough that these standards are intended to lead students to disdain America and join in the overthrow of their country.
If Lozenski is a revolutionary, and he incontestably is, then so is Walz. Walz was a very weak candidate. Moreover, he was to the Left of Harris — exactly what Harris, who was trying to tack to the center, did not need. But, odd as it may sound, Walz was chosen as Harris’s running mate, not because he was the most likely to help her win — he clearly wasn’t — but because he was the most ideologically compatible with her and the machine that ran her. It actually is not so odd if we keep in mind that the destructive Left, like all revolutionaries, is more concerned with maintaining ideological purity than winning. Likewise, Harris, who was far from the strongest Democrat, was also chosen because her views were most compatible with the revolutionary views of the machine that selected her.
What do we make of the fact that Harris chose as her running mate a man who wants to overthrow America? Could it be that she didn’t know whom she was choosing? No, it couldn’t be. She, and/or the machine that ran her, knows perfectly well Walz wants to overthrow America. The evidence could not have been missed. Walz’s ethnic studies program has been visitable for years, as has much other evidence, from cozying up to CCP entities to support for socialism. It is sometimes the case that a presidential candidate fails to see some aspect of their running mate — say, a personal failing — but a candidate does not choose, say, a communist or, in this case, a revolutionary by accident.
Many people on the Right knew Harris and Walz were extreme liberals, perhaps radicals, but I heard virtually no one say what Lozenski, Walz’s most important education advisor, said: “Harris/Walz want to overthrow America.” We should understand the recent election as a contest between those who, like Lozenski, Harris, and Walz, want to destroy America and those who want to recover it.
How did we get to this point? One reason is that we were not paying attention. We still aren’t. Another reason is that our “leaders” are focused solely on satisfying their constituents’ articulated concerns. This is, of course, their job, but only part of it. At times, they must identify dangers their constituents fail to appreciate. This is an important element of leadership. For example, Trump alerted us to the existential dangers of China. This was leadership. We need this kind of leadership today. Republican leaders must alert the American public of the dangers it faces. Trump is the best we have at this, but as good as he is, he needs help.
Lozenski never became a significant story during the election. The video surfaced late in the campaign when everyone was focused on other issues: immigration, inflation, crime, and so forth. Additionally, the Right was focused on Harris and those few in the media on the Right who were aware of the Lozenski story thought that he was too far removed from Harris to tie his views to hers.
I think there were other explanations for why this story was not covered, the most important being that it simply sounded too implausible that a vice-presidential candidate of a major party wanted to overthrow America. Walz was a radical, we got that, but a revolutionary? Very, very few people, even on the Right, would go that far. Most people understand that there exists a great divide in America today, but they are not prepared to believe that the divide is so wide that a major political party could nominate candidates who want to destroy the very Constitution that, had they been elected, they would have sworn to “preserve, protect and defend.”
The politician who comes closest to understanding that we are in a war is President-elect Trump. He often says, and quite correctly, that the enemy within is “far more dangerous” than the enemy without. Unfortunately, neither he nor any other politician elaborates. Someone must explain to the American people who the enemy is, its goals, and the means it employs for achieving them.
I am not sure even Trump has a clear handle on who exactly the enemy is. I think he believes it is the Democrats, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in particular. But these once-centrists are only the enemy’s titular leaders. Although they are “bad people,” in Trump’s morally confident language, they are not revolutionaries. They may contribute to the overthrow of America, but that is not their intention. They are simply useful idiots, controlled by the radical wing of the Democratic Party, the “destructive Left.” This is the machine that ran Harris and Walz.
At present, the conventional wisdom has it that Trump should advertise himself as a unifier. He is supposed to say, “I am the president for all Americans, even to those who did not vote for me.” At the risk of stepping outside my expertise — I am not a political consultant — I would ask Trump to consider an alternative. He might say, “I am the President of all Americans but the 10%-20% who want to destroy America.” He should try to separate the decent, patriotic Democrats, most of the party, from the revolutionaries. And then Trump must go after the revolutionaries with vengeance. If he doesn’t, he will give them time to regroup. And he will lose valuable time. He needs to act quickly.
There may well be another advantage to moving quickly. The well-meaning, go-along Democrats are up for grabs. Many Democrats realize that their party was ill served by its radical wing, whose policies were too extreme for the rest of the party. But as of yet no one has come forward who can lead the well-meaning Democrats. Until then, these Democrats are ripe for the picking, and Trump can appeal to them without pandering.
If we are to understand we are in a war, then we need a narrative. A narrative provides your goal and the justification for that goal. Obviously, you can’t achieve a goal without justifying it. Our enemy has a clear narrative with a goal (destroy America) and justification for that goal (America is systemically or irreversibly racist).
At present, our narrative must be: “We are being attacked by an enemy that wants to destroy us” That’s our justification for fighting. If your enemy wants to destroy you, as Lozenski said, then you know you are in a war. Republicans might make Lozenski the face of the enemy regime.
Trump can make this narrative stick. If Trump uses it, others will follow suit.
Moreover, we need a name for our enemy. You can’t win if you can’t name the enemy. My preferred name, “the group quota regime,” has not really caught on, which is why, in a recent interview with President Trump, I tried to get him to come up with a name for the enemy. He didn’t, but he did come up with a name for the ideology of the enemy. He called it “stupidism.” I laughed. It was so Trump. I have proposed “destructivism” as the enemy regime’s ideology, which is more accurate than “stupidism,” but may not be as good.
Let me repeat my oft-made argument for claiming that we are in a war. Perhaps the most important part of the argument is theoretical: in America today there exist different understandings of justice. Their side believes a just society is based on group quotas (social justice). Our side, on the other hand, believes a just society is based on individual merit (American justice). These two understandings are irreconcilable. You can’t admit people to college (or anything else) based on both group quotas and merit. It’s one or the other.
At this point, you know we are in a war. If you were a Martian and you only knew that there were two understandings of a justice in America, you would know America is at war with itself, because it is necessarily the case that the two mutually exclusive understandings of justice produce two mutually exclusive cultures (ideology, laws, values, etc.).
This is to say, today in America we have two sets of values, laws, etc. We think the other side is breaking our laws, and it is. But it would be more instructive to think about it from their point of view: they are operating not by our laws but their laws, ones that flow logically from their understanding of justice. If we thought about it this way, it would be much clearer than it is that we are in a war. We would stop trying to convince them with arguments to stop breaking our laws and start using force, as they use force against us.
As my Martian would have known, with two understandings of justice, serious political conflict abounds. The group quota regime shows every indication of being a soft or incipient totalitarianism. The evidence is plentiful. (For a detailed analysis, I suggest you read Glenn Ellmers’s and Ted Richards’s wonderfully illuminating essay, “Totalitarianism, American Style.” )
The enemy regime has a strictly enforced ideology. If you object, you are called “racist.” If that does not shut you up, you are censored, intimidated, fired, subject to lawfare, denied critical services, even imprisoned.
The enemy regime promotes socialism and has an effective monopoly on mainstream communication (propaganda), and it uses the Justice Department and intelligence agencies to punish its enemies.
America is now run by unelected bureaucrats, virtually all of whom are soldiers of the enemy regime. The destructive Left seeks to destroy our history, religion, the traditional family, and the nation state. Without a nation state there can be no freedom.
The upshot of all this is that one party wants to destroy America while the other party is not willing to defend her. Republicans will not defend America until they realize that America requires defending. Trump’s victory must not let us become complacent. The group quota regime still controls most of our major institutions, which are overwhelmingly woke. If you doubt just how woke, see the report Equity Everywhere: 500 Ways the Biden/Harris Administration Infused DEI into the Federal Government.
If we would realize that we are in a war, we would start acting like we are in one. We would understand that in a war, facts and arguments don’t matter very much. For example, the 1619 Project has been debunked from stem to stern by some of our best historians, including several liberal ones. Predictably, this hasn’t discouraged blue states from teaching the 1619 Project because, for the group quota regime, what matters are not the facts but whether the thing in question, in this case our history, supports the group quota regime’s narrative: America is irreversibly racist. Nor shall we win by calling their ideas “stupid.” Of course, they are stupid, but they think our ideas are stupid. (This may appear to be a weakness in Trump’s name, “stupidism,” but I am not so sure it is.)
In a war, you do not compromise, because there is no ground for compromise. You insist on party discipline. As Trump recognizes, the Republican Party did not, except in the case of impeachments, always have his back. Republicans must be as unified as the Democrats. Republican leaders must stop publicly criticizing their commander-in-chief. They must even lie under some circumstances. At present, our side is behaving like gentlemen; their side is not. On these terms we lose. Trump gets this. He is a fighter, courageous, and, above all, he is a winner. Our side must follow his lead. He is the commander-in-chief we need.
But we need more than a good commander-in-chief. We need an officer corps that can develop both a rhetorical and operating strategy, mobilize politicians at every level of government, and guide and inspire the troops. The good news is that we have the troops: the majority of the citizens who voted for Trump. They are ready to go, but they need to be led.
Republicans, however, will not dare do any of the things required of them until they realize what is at stake. You can’t win a war if you don’t know you are in one.