Is the Right Looking for More Lone Hero, Confrontational Candidates?
Turn on the evening news and all across the globe, demonstrators have taken to the streets. No one wants America to become another Egypt or Libya. The middle-class in particular have a long history of avoiding confrontation.
It seems as though our whole social philosophy is based upon “not fighting back.” Leave personal defense up to the police, let the military take care of larger threats to our security. The corollary, of course, is “not making a scene.”
With the left more or less running American society, the right has especially suffered under this form of capitulation. Underdog status to the max. Secularism has all but routed Christianity from the public square. Separation of church and state is now a social juggernaut that unfolds without meaningful opposition–even while the alliance of race and state grows and grows and grows. Few want to speak up or challenge, accepting the invitation from liberal media to approve their worldview as “normal” or “the way things are.”
So if politeness is a self-imposed restraint on the right, isn’t it the source of their demise as well? Most Christians are taught to stand up to the the Devil, but few have the courage to do so. “Different folks, different strokes” provides a way out. So do twisted concepts of toleration.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan seemed almost pathologically incapable of stepping outside their middle-class comfort zones in the last election. Even the truth about the Libyan fiasco couldn’t be pursued, for example. Same with the 47% “bombshell” truth once it hit the table.
Now many on the right are yearning for candidates who will confront, then stay the course. James Boulder’s “Silver Bear Cafe” video below provides an example of a confrontational “answer” to a hypothetical question. Notice that the context and machinery of the organized event has already provided a choreography that excludes opinion from the right, until someone speaks up quite unexpectedly. He isn’t cowed into quietude.
Is it time for more lone voices to step forward with courage and strength? Yes, Gary Cooper was almost a stock hero of popular westerns.
