According to the dictionary, compromise means mutual concessions, but politicos only mean unilateral surrender.
The Left cries loudly for peace and harmony while promoting nothing but violence and domination. They are gaslighting the country so that we doubt what we see and believe a false narrative. They do want unity, but they mean a unity of beliefs that no one is allowed to question. And they do want compromise, but that compromise means continual movement toward their political goals.
There has not been one bill in recent history where Democrats compromised on a Republican-proposed issue. The national government spends more money every year, never less. Every election cycle passes without national voter identification laws but instead gain provisions that decrease election security. Restrictions on firearm purchases only increase. Immigration policy perpetually moves toward leniency. Public school administrators are curbing students’ right to free speech by adding more language that they either cannot or must use. Punishments for crime are disappearing when they should be increasing.
Neither will leftists endure the presence of opposing views in their communities. Professors and students immediately vilify a student who dares share a right-wing opinion. Colleagues ostracize someone whom they called “friend” a moment before. Church groups silence any opinion that would incite aggression from left-leaning members. Religious denominations distance themselves from traditional doctrine and their brothers and sisters of faith who believe what has been standard for centuries. Businesses punish employees who choose to maintain control over their medical decisions instead of submitting to groupthink.
The United States’ debt currently stands at $22 trillion. Through four administrations it has only increased; the last time the country made more money than it spent in a year was during fiscal years 1998 to 2000 under President Clinton. Since then, budget deliberations have consisted of Republicans begrudgingly—or elatedly, depending on the bill—allowing the government to spend obscene amounts of money and being proud that the actual increase was smaller than initially proposed. Conservatism has long desired a government that spends within its means, but every ‘compromise’ continues to move that goal out of reach.
More people voted in the last election cycle than ever before, which would be great if they all confirmed that they were U.S. citizens casting only one vote, but they didn’t. More people voted because there were fewer safeguards on our elections. The schedule and requirements for mail-in and absentee ballots were more lenient, voter registration deadlines were closer to election day, and some state executives arbitrarily made those changes without the approval of their legislatures—an action the Constitution forbids.
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector. (Emphasis added.)
One might ask the reasonable question of why the Left cannot compromise on voter identification laws since the GOP often compromises on budget issues, but he will be met with the unreasonable question of why the GOP cannot abandon their commitment to election security, which is obviously racist. And so the discussion goes. Every attempt by conservatives to enact their preferred election policy is met with accusations of racism, public condemnation, and political backlash; all those were plainly evident in Georgia’s election reform efforts, whose bill itself includes capitulations to leftist demands.
The Second Amendment is another important battleground for conservatives, and another one where only leftists are taking consistent ground. Red flag laws, policies allowing the government to confiscate firearms from a person because of what he might do, are coming in vogue, even among conservatives. Representative Brian Babin (R-TX) introduced the TAPS Act in 2019 that has red flag provisions, and Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), an ex-Navy SEAL, tweeted that the bill and red flag laws generally might be things that “we must try” when working to stop gun violence. Such thinking is the consequence of leftist propaganda; it has infected some conservatives so that they compromise into believing the government should punish individuals “before they can hurt someone” instead of presuming them innocent until a] stopped in the middle of a crime or b] convicted by a jury, and instead of safeguarding their liberties.
Expansions for background checks passed the House of Representatives early this year and are working their way through the Senate. More background checks work against the conservative goal of increasing the public’s ability to exercise their God-given right to own weapons, but the bill is being marketed as a compromise because the Senate Democrats may eliminate a few provisions. Once again, that’s not compromise; it’s simply a smaller step along the leftist path. The same is true of every “common-sense” gun law, regardless of how many Republicans support it or how the media portrays it.
Perhaps the most pressing and tangible issue for the country is that of immigration. A migrant caravan of 4,000 people was on its way to the southern border of the U.S. until Tuesday night, when many of them accepted an offer of humanitarian visas from the Mexican government. Several key Republican leaders have advocated for generosity toward such caravans, despite the fact that waves of foreign labor crashing against America’s job market only means more competition for our own citizens and more government dollars taken from them, and leftists disparage those Republicans because they failed to change national immigration policy. They compromised their party’s support but did not codify that compromise; for the Left, that was equivalent to failure.
Conservative think-tank types similarly plead the cause of mass immigration as a necessary conservative ‘compromise,’ obfuscating facts to ignore the crime that such immigration brings. Those think-tankers also protect the status of highly skilled foreign workers in the American job market because Americans, obviously, just cannot produce the same quality of work. ‘Compromise’ on immigration policy supposes that adding peoples of other cultures will preserve the best of American culture, but neither conservatives nor leftists apply that logic to any other country or culture; what culture can preserve itself by welcoming oceans of strangers? And why is America the only culture whose preservation is prejudiced? It’s absurd.
These compromises will result in the Great Replacement—that is simultaneously a far-right conspiracy theory and a real source of celebration for the Left. The Left’s fantasy world is one in which white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) have little to no political power and are all but ostracized from society; they want this because is WASPs comprise the largest demographic of right-wing individuals.
Conservative columnist Pedro Gonzalez exposes the truth of conservative immigration policy, “There is no compassionate case for more immigration when we can’t feed or educate millions of people who are already here.” Compromise on immigration is not compassionate; it is spiteful.
Free speech, too, is subject to conservative ‘compromise.’ As the subject of our Constitution’s very first Amendment, we should hold it to be sacrosanct, but we have defiled it with our compromises. It is commonplace today for businesses to penalize or fire employees for things they have said in their private lives and do not impact their job performance; the NFL did so to ex-coach Jon Gruden. At universities, students must become acquainted with their peers’ preferred pronouns. That is, students must participate in their peers’ self-image—biologically accurate or not—or become a social pariah. (But how can we expect otherwise when the Supreme Court already redefined the ancient concept of marriage for ‘compromise?’) Universities also enforce free speech zones for student organizations, outside of which they cannot advertise, despite the fact that universities are public property. For the sake of civility and ‘compromise,’ we conservatives have allowed our very thoughts and words to become subject to leftist censorship, and we have received nothing from the Left in return.
Even Thanksgiving feasts with family are fair game to the Left. Columnist Molly Jong-Fast for The Atlantic and Vogue writes that this Thanksgiving is an opportunity to “deprogram your relatives” from their conservative views. Jong-Fast says that even though “last Thanksgiving, many of us didn’t see our families,” it would be “completely wrong” to suggest that families should make this holiday a time for “harmony and niceties and gratitude.”
Yes, the Left is so committed to politics that they cannot take one day to be thankful for the things they have instead of trying to force their ideological opponents into submission. Families are barely people to them as much as they are machines to incubate and enforce proper thinking. Indeed, if a relative is guilty of thoughtcrime, “maybe you’ll need to report [him] to the FBI!”
The Left has largely abandoned any fear they previously had of publicly declaring their true goal of political domination, for they know that conservatives will just surrender under enough social pressure to compromise. Leftists of all stripes suppose that they should not have to seek compromise; they have the congressional votes, after all. Author and USA Today commentary editor Jill Lawrence wrote in 2020, “Republicans are eating our lunch. I want a 2020 Democrat tough enough to eat theirs.” Another USA Today contributor, Tom Krattenmaker, writes, “For progressives and liberals and the Democratic Party that more or less represents them, there is only one solution to the national impasse: resounding political victory.” Krattenmaker quotes climate writer David Roberts as having said, “There is no level of calm, reasonable, open friendliness that can bridge the gap that exists now.”
Once we conservatives open our eyes to the fact that compromise leads not to mutual concessions but only to our submission, then the attempts at social pressure will fail and we conservatives can simply ignore (or laugh at) the Left’s appeals for unity. The Left is feeding everyone—including us—the false narrative that we are the ones harshly wielding political power to control every issue, when nothing could be further from the truth. We can begin to achieve the political victories that the Left fears when we recognize the intent behind the Left’s words instead of taking them at their word; otherwise, we will lose every time because we’ll be believing a lie.
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