Summer Soldiers

Guest Post by The Zman

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

–Some old white guy

Street protests and street theater are largely useless as political tactics in the modern age. A century ago, a gaggle of prim-faced scolds marching through the middle of town, demanding the end of alcohol, not only got people’s attention, it changed their minds about the issue. The street protests projected strength and suggested that the numbers on the side of the marchers were larger than assumed. The men in charge responded by giving women the franchise and banning alcohol. The downward spiral started soon after.

Today, people know that the street protest is a made for TV event and that the “protesters” are often paid to show up and make noise. Alternatively, it is assumed that the true believers are batshit crazy and best ignored. In other words, it’s just another TV show in an age where we are awash in TV shows. For the most part, the street protest is for weak losers desperate for attention. The only impact they have on the larger public is to confirm that the “movement” is impotent and can be ignored.

That does not mean street theater is entirely worthless. The alt-right showing up at Berkeley to beat up the Antifa losers was entertaining and it did scare the people in charge of the place. So much so they moved heaven and earth to block Ann Coulter’s speech last week. Make no mistake, the reason the school went to all this trouble is they feared a bunch of dudes in home made battle gear beating the hell out of the Potemkin Protesters the Left now hires to do their protesting for them. A replay would be embarrassing.

Berkeley is the epicenter of West Coast progressive lunacy so for the true believers at the center of the hive to feel this uncertain is suggestive. They have been in charge for so long they just take it for granted. The narrative says they are the ones in the street fighting the man. When the roles are flipped and they are suddenly the man, their go to move is to shut it all down. They have no choice, as to do otherwise would mean facing up to the reality of their situation and that’s never going to happen with true believers.

The real lesson, the one most useful to the alt-right, is seeing the controlled opposition confirm what many have been pointing out for years now. As soon as things got a little tough, the College Republicans folded their tents and blamed the “extremists” of the alt-right. The Young American Foundation, a Conservative Inc. racket to recruit college students, made a show of “defending free speech” but made sure they did not offer any material support. It was just another way to raise money for their racket.

In contrast, a handful of rednecks down south were able to force Auburn to host the notorious Richard Spencer, a guy everyone seems to think is Hitler in a cardigan. They went to court and quickly forced the school to honor its legal obligations. They were also able to rally a security force and get the cops to enforce public order. The result being a peaceful and orderly event. Conservative Inc. has tens of millions in cash at their disposal and an army of elite educated lawyers and they could not even defend Coulter.

What they could do though, is attack Ann Coulter when she correctly pointed out that the summer soldiers of Conservative Inc ran and hid as soon as things got difficult. David French is a mentally unbalanced crackpot, but he does speak for the dwindling number of Buckley Conservatives, who claim to be the vanguard of anti-Progressive forces in America. French speaks for all of the so-called conservatives when he is more upset at Coulter’s noticing than he is at black clad thugs shutting down her speech.

The whole affair is insignificant in isolation, but it is a another reminder to those who have begun the journey away from Buckley Conservatism, Libertarianism and boomer politics that those well-paid heroes of the Right never win these fights. They invest so heavily in the symbolism of conservatism because they conserve nothing but their own place at Lefty’s table. At best they are well-intentioned losers. At worst, they are willing props deployed by the ruling orthodoxy to disrupt the opposition.

The people in the dissident movements are not without their problems and many of them are certainly nuts, but that’s the nature of outsider movements. What’s increasingly clear is the fact that it is the outsider movements who are scoring the victories. They are the people changing minds and forcing the the fight onto the turf of Lefty. It’s not the dorks in blue blazers mooning over photos of Reagan. It’s the guys with home made armor decorated with sun wheels and cartoon frogs.

The other day, an old friend, who was a “happy warrior” type, mostly in the libertarian wing of the Buckley Right, quoted Mike Cernovich to me. I cautioned him to not take everything Cerno says at face value and he responded with, “Hey, no enemies on the Right.” A year ago he probably would have sided with David French or at least frowned upon the alt-right guys raising hell. When given the choice between those who are not afraid to be called a heretic and those who live in fear of it, people naturally choose the former over the latter.

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suzanna
suzanna

Z,
I love your point of view on the Berkley issue.
Some are suggesting the uninviting of Ann Coulter is
a sign of deep state manipulation as with the censorship
of the internet. Some say the deep state is winning.
I am really hoping the fight is on and the power of free people
will be in the running.

jackson
jackson

TheZman is a statist who prefers the jackboot worn on the “Right” foot.

Don’t be fooled people!

“Left” foot or “Right” foot… they both march in the same direction.

Tyranny.

And it makes perfect sense.

Your betters know better than you what’s best for you!

Right? :))

Ed
Ed

Miz Su, I really enjoyed Gary North’s column on Annie’s surrender. He wrote:

“When she backed out of her speech at Berkeley, I realized that she really does not understand politics. This was a tremendous opportunity to embarrass the far-Left crazies. I wrote about this in March. The best possible tactic that a conservative can use against the Left today is to let these crazy people act just as crazy as they are willing to act. The public is fed up. ”

http://www.garynorth.com/public/16534.cfm

suzanna
suzanna

Good, I think so too.

MN Steel
MN Steel

“May you live in interesting times.”

“Be careful what you wish, for you may get it.”

“If you must play, decide on three things at the start the rules of he game, the stakes, and the quitting time.”

3 Chink proverbs that may result in good or harm…

Methinks the third one is very applicable at this moment…

Gator
Gator

I don’t get this guys hardon for cernovich or libertarians lately. Did he not break the Susan rice story, and do we not all owe him gratitude for that? For the record, I don’t take everything at face value from ANYONE in the media, alternative or otherwise, but he keeps making underhanded comments about him.

His other recent piece I saw on WRSA was ‘first we kill all the libertarians’. Seriously? I used to like Zman, but that’s fucking retarded. We are on the same side of almost every issue, including the dislike for beltway republicans he mentions. We have also been beating a lot of these drums for years before the alt right was around. The only ones who ‘win’ this fight would be these communist agitators and the left in general.

If you want to talk about the libertarian party itself, we can agree they are entirely pointless and useless. But the millions of us who consider ourselves ‘small l’ libertarians are the last group of people he should be attacking.

jackson
jackson

@Gator:

TheZman is a Red State Fascist!

He hates Leftist’s, but he hates Libertarians more!!

Why??? Because Libertarians represent a threat to state power.

Right Statist’s like the Zman worship the state just as much as Leftist’s do…

… Common ground for would-be tyrants/thugs/thieves and murders!

Now you know why the Zman puts out articles like this:

“The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All The Libertarians”

Translation:
“We gotta get rid of the trouble makers in our own house first.”

Unfocused
Unfocused

The “old white guy” Z quotes at the top of his article is Thomas Paine of course, but the latter part of that quote, I believe, speaks more to the issue at hand:

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

The “guys with home made armor decorated with sun wheels and cartoon frogs” should really worry less about any leftist street thugs and focus their gaze more towards the guys wearing the black, government-issued, riot protection gear, body armor, and face plates; with AR’s slung-over their shoulders while watching the drone feed of the street theatrics as they congregate around the Humvee.

Anonymous
Anonymous

How could you put David “Waterloo” French in the same sentence as Ann Coulter? Sad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgmNiyg5t9s

Ed
Ed

You mean David and Ann aren’t the same person? How can you tell?

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