“Wow, you really took the notion of a central bank and ran with it.”

“Last week, the American Association of Pediatricians noted that certain, ahem, “immigrant communities” were shipping their daughters overseas to undergo “female genital mutilation.” So, in a spirit of multicultural compromise, they decided to amend their previous opposition to the practice: They’re not (for the moment) advocating full-scale clitoridectomies, but they are suggesting federal and state laws be changed to permit them to give a “ritual nick” to young girls.

A few years back, I thought even fainthearted Western liberals might draw the line at “FGM.” After all, it’s a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: Its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, many of us hapless Western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don’t demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.”

Western civilization had a good run really, with its 300 plus years of liberal thought and economics.  How long the new dark ages will last is anyone’s guess.

“Who is this lovely Beyonce Knowles?”

Ben Franklin

“GODLESS FORNICATORS!”

John Adams

In Neil Stephenson’s book Snow Crash, the lead character is a man named Hiro Protagonist.  He is a sword wielding, pizza delivering hacker who lives in a 10×10 storage shed just outside of LAX.  The book is fantastic, and one I highly recommend, but there is one part that has been on my mind of late.

At one point in the story, Hiro describes the difference between fencing and swashbuckling.  Fencing, he explains, is a highly stylized form of mock combat, where the goal is to score points on your opponent within a very limited set of rules.  You cannot aim for the head, for example, or foul your opponent in any way.  It is what Bruce Lee described as “classical mess,” an activity that may be amusing to watch, but has little or nothing to do with actual combat.  Fencing is an activity for gentlemen, acting under gentlemanly rules.

Swashbuckling is entirely different.  The swashbuckler isn’t interested in rules, or scoring points.  What he’s interested in is making sure that the enemy ends up dead, as quickly as possible.  This means, for example, that he will kick you in the balls while you’re not looking, and take the opportunity to put his sword through your heart.

There is a lesson for conservatives here, an important one; the progressives are swashbucklers and conservatives are fencers.  For decades, the right has acted as if their opponents on the left were their sparring partners.  Under this (mistaken) impression, election cycles were treated as points in a match.  We win one, they win one, but the great American experiment rolls on. 

And all this time, the left was kneecapping us and trying to kill us.

The progressive agenda is one of destruction.   They want to tear down the representative republic that has stood for over two centuries, and replace it with a statist community where your entire life is controlled by the diktats of a bureaucratic machine,  a machine that has little to no accountability to the citizenry.  These “social planners” believe themselves to be your betters, and will regulate your liberty away one smoking ban at a time.

I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of getting kicked in the balls.

We must stop fencing and start swashbuckling.  We must stop laboring under the illusion that the new left is our sparring partner in the grand traditions of the republic.  They are, by their own admission, a 5^th column hell-bent on transforming this nation into a socialist/communist state.  We must treat them as the enemies they have declared themselves to be.

So when they call you racist for advocating color-blindness, call them out as liars.  When they smear you as a proto-fascist for demanding constitutional restrictions on their power, point out that fascism, Nazism, and communism were leftist ideologies.  Get involved in your local Republican party, and make sure they nominate classical liberals and constitutionalists for every level of government, local and national.

Fight them.  Memorize Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and use their own tactics against them.  Read The Book of Five Rings and The Art of War,  and any other book on tactics and ideological warfare you can get your hands on.  And, most importantly, read your history.  They have only come this far by raising two generations in ignorance; ignorance of their own culture and place in the world, and ignorance of the greater trends of history.  Knowledge is our best weapon in this struggle.

And it will be a long struggle.  The new left has been actively undermining our institutions for over five decades, and it may take that long to undue the damage they have done.  We must take back our schools from the propagandists, we must reclaim a popular culture that denigrates American exceptionalism, and we must reclaim language from those who would pervert plain words to suit their own ends.

So get out there and start swashbuckling.

Clint Patterson is the Editor and founder of Quantum Conservative.  He served in the United States Navy before graduating from Mesa State College, where he studied Philosophy and Psychology.  He has taught the martial arts for over 16 years, first as an instructor with Hawaii Shin Kan Okinawan Kempo Karate, then at his own school, Atomic Kung Fu Academy. He can be reached at: cpatterson@quantumconservative.com

He smiled as he chastised the American people for their anxieties and the Republicans for their opposition, even as he tried to claim Scott Brown’s victory for his own.  His calling out of the Supreme Court was unseemly and unpresidential, and representative of the entire speech.  His manner was careless to the point of callous, an attitude the American people are getting sick of.

The Bulls Run analogy was especially clever, and conveniently buried in the lead.  In case you missed it, it’s in paragraph three: “It’s tempting to look back on these moments and assume that our progress was inevitable – that America was always destined to succeed. But when the Union was turned back at Bull Run and the Allies first landed at Omaha Beach, victory was very much in doubt.” So the President moving forward with an agenda the republic doesn’t want is comparable to the Union under Lincoln and the Allies on D-Day.  Which makes his opponents what?  Confederate Nazis? Disgusting.

Aside from his usual cheerleaders at MSDNC and Time Magazine, the speech impressed no one.  It wasn’t even as lyrical or pseudo-uplifting as his other trope.  This was a bitter address by a man who is unused to personal and professional setbacks, a man who is lashing out in anger at the civil society that has rejected his agenda. 

Amongst all of the lies and obfuscation, President Obama has managed to keep one campaign promise, and for that I salute him.  He pledged to unite the red and blue states, until we were once again a United States, and as the good people of Massachusetts demonstrated, he has done exactly that.  United against his agenda, certainly, but united just the same.

I say bring on 2010.  Let this election be a clear choice between the progressive statist agenda and the enlightenment values of classic liberalism. Obama and his party will lose such an open contest handily.