At American Thinker yesterday Earick Ward posted a piece titled, “Conservative Think Tanks are Dead.” Think tanks are not dead, of course — they’re doing fantastic work as always — but Ward makes in important point in that “facts” and “reason” don’t seem to carry much weight these days:
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge proponent of facts and reason, but I’m a bigger fan of salvaging our social, economic, and political culture. What solace is there to know that we’re right while society collapses around us?
We were right about Obamacare, welfare reform, the economy, global warming, defense, and gun control. We will be proven right on same-sex “marriage,” and it’s militant approach to traditional believers, and the detriment to society.
Can there be any solace in the halls of conservative think tanks that they were “proven” right about any of these things while simultaneously seeing these ramparts fall in battle?
Earick Ward is basically correct, though “facts” and “reason” would have a better shot at making an impact if our side was to start getting serious about the information war. Ward then writes the same thing I’ve been writing for many years:
Mobilizing people to the fight is the order of the day. We err in thinking that we can “reason” our way to compromise — we can’t. The Left are hell-bent on advancing their agenda. They long ago abandoned “facts” and “reason” and are pushing forward. The Left has tapped into “emotion”, particularly envy and resentment. They have brilliantly “sold” the premise that they are working to settle the score. Social justice isn’t justice, but to the aggrieved constituent, it is enough.
A battle rages across America. Conservatives are losing. Not because we’re not right but because we’ve done a poor job of rallying our people to the fight. We’ll join a fight (Chick-Fil-A, Phil Robertson, etc), but when we think the battle won, we return to our homes, our work, our hobbies, and our places of worship. The Left regroups. They will continue to push, until they’ve fulfilled their agenda — our cultural, economic and political destruction.
We all know this is true — we’ve witnessed it for decades. I do think Ward errs a bit with this, however:
Think tanks can and should continue to analyze our circumstances, but they must re-engineer around a new idea — think first, but act now. All the bright ideas in the world will be for naught, if we’re not in the streets fighting for our survival. Survival is not hyperbole.
The think tanks can’t do everything — and since so many people currently aren’t in the fight, rather than calling on the think tanks to adjust, I’d say calling on idle conservatives to engage in the work of saving their country is the order of the day. The think tanks have provided the ammo — let’s get more people using it.
Read Earick Ward’s entire article here, and my call to action in one recent series here.
Image credit: victorhanson.com.
