I was over at Redsate.org getting my once or twice a week dose of wing-nuttery when I ran across an "article" by an individual named AceInTx. The piece by Ace is long and winding but most of it can be distilled from the ending. Then I came back here and read Kos's piece called "The GOP's Base Problem". I was struck by the convergence. But I was also struck by something else. Follow below the fold for more.
This was the end of Kos's piece..."So what's left? How can a regressive, reactionary party continue to function as a national going concern when its message appeals to a shrinking and aging base, and when the nation's youngest voters reject it by a margin of over 30 points?
Well, it can't, not when its base (unlike ours) is dead-set on keeping its party outside of the American mainstream."
And this was the end of the piece written by AceInTx over at Redstate....
"We’ve lost battles in the culture wars because our leadership refuses to take the field of battle. We’ve lost ground because as in "Brave Heart", our Lords have marched us onto the field of battle and used us for their own self aggrandizement and as a way to live comfortably in the power they’ve amassed for themselves at our expense. All this only to ride off the field at the crucial moment when the battle is at it’s apex and their participation is all that’s needed in a final push to win the victory.
We win when we fight on our ground and stand on conservative principles in the culture wars! When we compromise we lose! We can’t win if we don’t fight and we’ll never fight till we’ve thrown the bums out and replaced them with George Washingrons, US Grant’s, William T Shermans, George S Pattons and "I SHALL RETURN" MacArthur’s who know that in a fight like we are engaged in, there is no alternative but to fight. There is no substitute for victory. That the very existence of our constitutional republic and the survival of our liberties depend on taking the field of battle, grabbing our ideological enemies by the throat and not letting them go until their breath is taken from them finally and irreversibly.
We will not preserve this "last great hope of mankind on earth" until we’ve destroyed our ideological enemies completely and utterly and refuse to allow them one inch of ground! We shouldn’t be focusing on how we hold the line or what we need to do to slow them down. We shouldn’t tolerrate those who would appease them in the name of bipartisanship and expanding the big tent. We need to finall all make up our minds that each compromise we allow with our enemy brings us one step closer to the chains of bondage and WE MUST NOT QUIT WITOUT A FIGHT!!! We need to finally realize that this is a fight to the death and there is no substitute for the total destruction and utter annihilation of our enemies both inside and outside the party!
That’s the lesson of Reagan vs the Soviet Union. That’s the lesson to be learned from 1980, 1994, and 2004. That’s the lesson going back to WWII when Chamberlain tried to reason with the unreasonable and traded away an entire people and an entire nation without a shot being fired in the name of "peace in our time". Lest we all forget...the appeasement crowd led by Neville Chamberlin were still negotiating with Hitler and offering deals after he had destroyed Poland and finally resigned after the Blitzkrieg was unleashed upon France the Netherlands and Belgium. Let’s stop apologizing for who we are and stop supporting those who insist on apologizing for us! and above all...let’s stop appeasing the left and the MSM!"
Even thought the bolding is mine, the evocative imagery of manning the ramparts, smoke and bombs bursting in air, the American flag, tattered and holed, held defiantly in one hand and an assault weapon in the other by a red-blooded AMERICAN patriot, steely eyed, rock chinned, in a word heroic, defending home, hearth, life, liberty, mom, apple pie and above all, the "last great hope of mankind on earth".
This verbage is not unusal for RedState, and it is, IMHO very representitive of a "regressive, reactionary party". In this tortured ending to a wildly pendantic rant, we have all the suggestive iconography in use by the far right. Founding Fathers (George Washington), Civil War Heros (Grant and Sherman) kick ass WW2 Generals (Patton and McArthur), Hitler, Soviet Union, Chamberlin, appeasment, Saint Ronald, and even Willian Wallace, (or maybe he was really thinking of Mel). Purge the unbelievers! Kulturkampf! Seig Heil! ooopppsss, I went there....sorry.
But more bothersome is the verbage of destruction. "Total destruction and utter annihilation", "fight to the death", "grabbing our ideological enemies by the throat and not letting them go until their breath is taken from them finally and irreversibly". These are the rantings of a group of people who belong to a "regressive, reactionary party" and who, again IMHO, if pushed hard enough by their own heros of the airways, (Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh et.al.) may, one day, take their own rhetoric literally to heart.
When the DHS warns of "right-wing extremists", you really don't have to look any further than the "internets" to find them or their own peculiar brand of red white and blue paranoia. As recent events in Pennsylvania and Florida have shown, "Violent action is only one self-rightous heart beat away".
Make fun of them. Ridicule them with gusto. But always be conscience of what they are capable of. Oklahoma City.