When You have Something to Say, Silence is a Lie*
There are moments from the past when I can recall being told not to lump all the Democrats into one donkey-cart full of crazy. They can't all be like those wing-nut lefties who defend criminal aliens or Tesla vandals or almost peaceful protests. Most of them are probably not gender confused groomers or anti-white advocates for criminal aliens, but they vote for people who are.
They are not Hannah Dugan, aiding and abetting crimes against the Republic, nor are they fomenting the socialist advance of Marxists bent on replacing free markets with central planners, free speech with thought control, and prosperity and opportunity with dependence and compliance. But they vote for people who are and do.
They are people, many of whom just want to be left alone, but are not uncomfortable with the government doing things that "Real" non-profits used to do. Functions that were handled by churches, good Samaritans, and supported by private businesses.
That is the crux of the issue. And many of them probably feel like those "moderate Muslims" we hear about—people who are not radicals, decent and polite - content to live a life left alone or indifferent to what happens around them politically - but who perhaps enable that which will deny them peace by not standing up for the right to be left alone. Unintentional servants whose silence fuels that seemingly inevitable freight train of radical tyranny.
Not all of them. And increasingly fewer of them. But to paraphrase Dr. Jordan Peterson*, when you have something to say, silence is a lie. And no, he is not suggesting you blurt out every thought you may have in your head, but when you suspect something about how the government or elected officials are spending your money, and you don't speak or act, they take that as affirmation.
Your vote and your silence are both a mandate.
Peterson is famous because he saw the immediate and lasting danger of a law that would compel speech and opposed it at great peril to himself and his family. A stand whose supporters were mostly American, not even from his native Canada. And it was a hill he defended with all his intellectual might to the benefit of everyone. Compelled speech is nothing short of mind control, and the attention he brought to it caused him great pain, over many years, which inevitably yielded massive global success.
He wasn't after success. Nor was he particularly political at that point. If anything, he seems to have been a bit center-left. An academic. He had a career, a thriving practice, his own research lab, all of which he sacrificed so that the government could not compel his speech.
No one else can be Jordan Peterson, so the rest of us might be afraid to speak up or lack the words, knowledge, or skill to properly defend any principle or issue. No one could blame them. Not the least because the radical left long ago mastered the game of conversational whack-a-mole. Mr. Alinsky taught them well. Freeze a target. Isolate them. Ridicule them, make an example of them, and anyone who fails to learn the lesson.
It's the same as the legislation to compel speech in Canada. An operant condition under which you are intimidated systemically into overthinking what you might say until you stop speaking. Not because you have nothing to say or lack the skill, but out of fear you'll misspeak. This creates a silence the Left fills, free from competition or challenge.
We see some of this from people who claim to be on the right but are ideologically disposed toward other forms of tyranny. Anarchy is attributed to the right but is incompatible with human nature and will inevitably lead to mob rule, oligarchy, and despotism. Nazisim is a shade of Marxism; Communism is Marxism in practice. They all rely on power and police states to maintain an order intolerant of opposing parties or thoughts. They compel speech by pre-suppressing it, a marker that should define all such efforts as projects of the political left.
The opposite end of this is maximal individual liberty reigned in gently by limited government—the classic liberalism of our Founders. This is the best possible place to be left alone, with some expectations that mechanisms are in place to protect you from thugs and villains and stupid people who make dangerous mistakes, especially those attracted to every level of government. People are, after all, still human. But that "utopia" requires more work from everyone. You cannot offshore your morality or responsibility to someone else's wallet.
In this model, there is no government-sanctioned weaponization of empathy where adherents can claim a monopoly on morality for which others will be made to pay. Neither the state nor the representatives you elect to serve erect institutions at great and continual expense to perpetuate that false morality. We the people have to take up those causes ourselves, and perhaps there is no longer the will for that, but the alternative, as our history shows us, is a disaster for society, culture, prosperity among the masses, free speech, choice, and individual rights..
What does all that mean in this context?
We need to continue to educate those people in the middle, in the gray area, in the ideological fringe near the center, about (at least) two things. First, explain why Trump and Republicans need to work harder to dismantle the federal system brick by brick. No one else will do it - and while plenty of Republicans will balk, no Democrat is ever going to sanctify the devolution of the centralization of the state. Activity that -if needed at all - belongs at the state, county, or town level, where they can be managed or replaced by something else, based on local priorities.
Second, if what you want is to be left alone (and to pay fewer taxes, or to have more say in how your money is spent when there is no other alternative), understand that this is impossible if you do not embrace the first thing and hold those people, regardless of party, accountable.
Liberty. Property rights. Free markets. Limited government. The value of American culture. It can and will be messy, and there are no guarantees except that if you don't do it, the government will clamber to take it from you, mess it up, make it more expensive, less efficient, hide the truth, and then try to silence you if you want point any of that out. If you do not step up to protect it, they will try to take it from you, your children, or your grandchildren. Take what? Everything, starting with those things enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
All of it.
Everyone, especially in the middle, must understand this in their bones. There is no version of The State besides the most limited one that will not eventually overreach (and that one requires our constant attention).
Thanks to the recent years of COVID-era calamity, it's gotten as easy as it ever may to prove that. It is (therefore) our job to persistently invite the middle into the debate. To honor their interest. To be patient as they learn. To listen and engage with thought and care. Remind them that what the political right should be is the guardians of the flame of liberty. Caretakers of an American experiment that has allowed more people to know liberty while lifting more of them out of poverty than any other.
The government will never stop trying to grow, and as Skip likes to say, the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.
We are on the cusp of something potentially amazing, but Mr. Trump and his disruptors, the revolutionaries you elected in November of 2024, need our help.
A Few Closing Thoughts
Everything Donald Trump's Administration is attempting to undo at the federal level - to the hysterics of many - either already has a footprint at the state or local level or could, if states wanted it. There is no reason for the Feds to be doing it or robbing citizens to fund it, especially if they do not need or want it.
Do not, ever, believe the Government cares about you or will care for you. Individuals within it may, but they answer to a thing that has no interest in transparency, accountability, or responsibility, that exists to protect its own interests even when it is established, as ours was, to protect ours.
The government will use any tool you give it or, through indifference, seize for itself, and then do anything to prevent you from taking it back.
The State that does not exist to protect your natural rights has only one other use for you: as a human battery to power its Matrix.
If you are interested in hearing more about this topic, my podcast delves a bit deeper into the subject here.