Political Prisms - A Domestic Cold War

Let me put this as starkly as I can: What's going on today in our country isn't normal politics. In normal politics honorable people will disagree, sometimes fiercely, about how best to deal with the issues that confront us. What's going on today is a kind of domestic Cold War -- a seemingly endless standoff, with the occasional hard skirmish -- between those of us who see the US for what it really is, and those of us who are seeing the US through a prism.

This is why Americans who see our country and the world through a prism are impervious to facts. For example, if you say to one of these people:

"Whether or not you support the war in Iraq, it's obvious that the surge is working and that the Iraqi government is finally starting to get its act together.

The prism-afflicted American will reply:

"The surge is a failure. We're less safe now than before Bush launched his war in Iraq. Bush lied about weapons-of-mass-destruction, and this war is about oil."

... So far, our response has been to focus on the issues while ignoring the Left's efforts to implant these political prisms. In effect, we've been playing defense. We go about our business, we contribute to the campaigns of those political candidates who seem to be competent and on our side, and when we do speak out on issues we base our arguments on history, logic, and on facts.

[But] we're losing. The momentum is on their side, not on ours, and the November elections won't change this no matter who wins. Regardless of who wins in November, the Left won't cease working to implant political prisms into the minds of Americans. And when they've succeeded in implanting these prisms into more than 50 percent of us -- and they're getting close -- our country's ability to cope realistically with the world will have ended. It's time to go from playing defense to playing offense. [snip]

Our first target is those among us in whom these prisms have already been implanted... [snip]

Our second target is those among us in whom these political prisms haven't yet been implanted. I'm talking about our kids...

[not crazy about 'offense' and 'target' analogies, but the piece is excellent at providing examples of the basic, gross, inequity of shaping public opinion between 'conservative' thought based on being left alone, and 'liberal' thought based on telling everyone how they should think. By their natures the latter has a huge advantage in influencing opinion because while the conservative ethos is near the 'to each their own' end of the scale, the liberal is the exact opposite: insisting on politically 'correct' thought is central to their values - hence their focus on creating (or subsuming) institutions toward that end (think media, academia, government agencies etc.). Long, but does a good job of explaining that not actively countering {i.e., speaking up} the vociferous-left yields the field to it - with potentially dire consequences. Highly Recommended > ]

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