DANIEL GREENFIELD: HOW TO FIGHT THE LEFT AND MAKE YOUR LIFE BETTER
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2015/07/5-ways-to-fight-left-and-make-your-life.html?
Lately I’ve been looking at Organic Opposition instead of Organizational Opposition. The latter is still important, but people are rightly disappointed and angry with everything from the GOP to assorted national groups and bewildered by a wide array of candidates.
Organic Opposition doesn’t require organizations or a movement. It’s about living in ways that naturally oppose the left.
Most of the people here already live in ways that the left resents without even thinking about it. Organic Opposition is about finding new ways to oppose the power of the left in your life.
This is not a complete checklist. It’s a set of general ideas and people are welcome to add to them in the comments.
5. Don’t Give Money to People Who Hate You
Imagine meeting an actor or a CEO, and telling him your political views and envision his response to them. If you can see his lip stretching into a sneer or a spittle-flecked rant as he orders security to throw you out, you really shouldn’t be giving him your money.
That doesn’t mean that you should lose out, but there are ways that you stop rewarding people who hate you.
For example, when buying new books, you are helping that writer and his publishers. If you don’t support the writer, save money and buy the books used. It’s easy to find most of the books you want in good condition for a fraction of the price on sites like Alibris.
Buying new books should be reserved for writers you support. Do look into writers on our side, like Edward Cline, if you like mysteries or Peter Grant, look at if you like Science Fiction, look at the projects that Adam Baldwin is involved in, and if you really must have that Stephen King or John Grisham novel, buy it used. You’re not just saving money, you’re denying income to people who hate you.
I know that conservatives don’t like doing this. I don’t like doing this. But the left does this and it works. Look at the politics of the writers, actors and directors you support. That doesn’t necessarily mean only reading only those writers you agree with, but a reasonable acid test is decency.
Decency, for example, means standing up for basic freedoms. People who are on the political left can do that and when they do it, they should be rewarded for it. When Patrick Stewart recently said that a bakery should not be compelled into writing a pro-gay marriage message on a wedding cake, that was a rejection of the totalitarian norms being imposed by social justice warriors.
People who hate you don’t want you to be able to live in peace. That’s the essence of the SJW.
Those who take a stand against them on an issue, even if they’re on the left, should get some support and a note or tweet telling them why. Likewise those who make the wrong choices should be told that from now on that even if you buy anything they make money from, you’ll do it in a way that they won’t see any proceeds from it. That will make them angrier than a straight boycott would.
And there’s a lot more you can do that will hit the left in its pockets.
Use AdBlockers on its sites. Not on conservative ones. You’ll save time and hurt the left.
Dump subscriptions to liberal magazines and newspapers.
Get rid of your cable. Cable is a financially shaky proposition. If enough people leave, it falls apart. And even if the only thing you watch is FOX News, under the current system, you’re subsidizing a whole bunch of left-wing channels. If you have cable internet, you can access a wider range of programming online than you could on cable. You’ll save money and hurt the left.
4. Shop Small Business and Become Independent
People were surprised when Wal-Mart turned left. They shouldn’t have been
Under the current system, major corporations will almost inevitably turn left to align with the authorities and tastemakers. Liberals have become champions of big government. The bigger a company becomes, the more it aligns with the system.
We all buy things from Amazon or Wal-Mart, but try to support local small businesses in your community when you can. They form a community in ways that a megastore won’t and when they get a monopoly they will step on you, not just economically, but politically as well.
The Confederate flag hysteria and the Trump purge are a warning sign of things to come. Imagine a day when it’s Ted Cruz’s books being purged from every online retailer and Apple blocking his App.
It will come to that.
Look at the politics of major corporations and their policies. Avoid ‘gated communities’ created by the hardware sold by Amazon and Apple. Yes the Kindle and the iPhone are convenient, but you’re giving control of your digital life to two left-wing corporations. As bad as Google and Microsoft are, they’re somewhat better when it comes to freedom of speech.
A good test is imagine yourself working at a particular company. If you can’t imagine even being tolerated there, maybe you shouldn’t be rewarding it.
Learn something about the products and brands you buy. If you know of a company that shares your values, keep it in mind during your next purchase. Choose small manufacturers and stores when you can.
And avoid becoming dependent on megacorporations. The St. Patrick’s Parade was undone because it had become dependent on Diageo, a mega whose vast catalog of brands includes Guinness.
When a corporation becomes big enough, it will find it easier to bend to the left than tolerate you.
A megacorp whose brands you eat will rob them of nutrition and taste to comply with the left’s food police. Its cleaners will turn into useless junk to comply with the environmentalists. Even if it hasn’t sold you out yet, it will sell you out later. And if you wait for it to become a monopoly, you’ll have trouble finding alternatives.
Find ways to become independent. Make some of the things you’ve become accustomed to buying. Or buy and trade with other craftsmen. Those are useful skills in the best of times and we may be headed for darker times.
Independence threatens the left and makes your life better.
3. Build Likeminded Communities
You don’t need to move to X to find a conservative community. You can build one organically by making friends, online and offline, cultivating ties, sharing and helping other people who share your worldview.
Make your own tribe. The left is doing it.
Find sane people at work. If you’re in a position to hire sane people over likely leftists, do it. Be careful, don’t risk your position and don’t tell anyone what you’re doing, but do it if you can.
A community is about more than setting up a Facebook group. It’s a support structure and you’ll need those, if not now, then later. The members of a community help meet each other’s needs.
Don’t get seduced by telescopic philanthropy. Don’t focus on helping Third World countries. Help your neighbors and friends. An hour spent helping someone you know does a lot more good than all the ‘penny a day’ for starving children in X, which really ends up going to the marketing department.
Protect communal institutions you have and avoid hostile ones. Don’t stay in a church or synagogue that has gone to the left. Find one that meets your needs. If it doesn’t exist, work with other dissatisfied worshipers to make one happen.
Never subsidize left-wing clergy. America got Hillary Clinton because she came under the influence of a left-wing minister at an impressionable age.
The left is trying to break up the country’s traditional social structures. One of the best ways to resist them is to maintain them, whether it’s a family, a religious institution or a club. Protect them and they’ll protect you.
By being part of a real community, you’ll be naturally resisting the left and making your life better.
2. Have Fun Starting Trouble
The pushback to the left may not start where you expect. The Cliven Bundy standoff and Gamergate both happened when groups of ordinary people with little in common pushed back when they felt pushed into a corner.
It wasn’t a national issue. Grazing sites and corruption in gaming are about as narrow as you can get.
They became national because when people fight back against the left, local goes national and then global.
The American Revolution started in part over a dispute with a British officer over a bill in Boston. That led to the Boston Massacre and by then the issue that started it all no longer mattered. What people come away with is who is being abusive in that particular situation.
People rally to unlikely flags and causes and fight for unexpected things that they care about.
A revolution against the left won’t be led by the GOP. It won’t come out of Washington D.C. But the pushback just might come because a group nobody pays attention to is angry about some issues you’ve never even heard of.
That group might be next door to you.
Fighting back does not have to be about convincing them to read Thomas Sowell and Bill Buckley. If you think like a community organizer, it’s about getting them to make the connection between what they’re angry about and the source of the trouble from the left.
People want to know why they’re being kicked around. They don’t want to hear about the politics. Those come later. They don’t need the big stuff. The little stuff is pointing them at their abusers.
Community organizers spend a lot of time listening to people’s grievances, especially people not one else listens to, and then slowly pointing them in the right direction while making them feel empowered. You don’t have to look at it as a job.
Think of it as being a troublemaker. It’s not a chore. It’s fun.
The next major issue may start in your backyard and you, not some national organization, might just be the one to help set it off.
1. Focus on Your Family
You can have more influence on your kids than you ever can on Facebook or Twitter. If you have them, your biggest job in the world is making sure that you are a bigger influence on them than the latest movie or trending topic.
Be involved in their lives.
Even if they’re in their forties and seem to have turned out liberal, plenty of people have turned around their politics right at that age. Don’t argue with them. Shouting matches never changed anyone’s mind. Show them that the way you live is better in the long run.
If you win there, the left loses big. Its big gamble is generational. If it loses your kids and grandkids, it loses. Period.
And your life will be better for it.
Lately I’ve been looking at Organic Opposition instead of Organizational Opposition. The latter is still important, but people are rightly disappointed and angry with everything from the GOP to assorted national groups and bewildered by a wide array of candidates.
Organic Opposition doesn’t require organizations or a movement. It’s about living in ways that naturally oppose the left.
Most of the people here already live in ways that the left resents without even thinking about it. Organic Opposition is about finding new ways to oppose the power of the left in your life.
This is not a complete checklist. It’s a set of general ideas and people are welcome to add to them in the comments.
5. Don’t Give Money to People Who Hate You
Imagine meeting an actor or a CEO, and telling him your political views and envision his response to them. If you can see his lip stretching into a sneer or a spittle-flecked rant as he orders security to throw you out, you really shouldn’t be giving him your money.
That doesn’t mean that you should lose out, but there are ways that you stop rewarding people who hate you.
For example, when buying new books, you are helping that writer and his publishers. If you don’t support the writer, save money and buy the books used. It’s easy to find most of the books you want in good condition for a fraction of the price on sites like Alibris.
Buying new books should be reserved for writers you support. Do look into writers on our side, like Edward Cline, if you like mysteries or Peter Grant, look at if you like Science Fiction, look at the projects that Adam Baldwin is involved in, and if you really must have that Stephen King or John Grisham novel, buy it used. You’re not just saving money, you’re denying income to people who hate you.
I know that conservatives don’t like doing this. I don’t like doing this. But the left does this and it works. Look at the politics of the writers, actors and directors you support. That doesn’t necessarily mean only reading only those writers you agree with, but a reasonable acid test is decency.
Decency, for example, means standing up for basic freedoms. People who are on the political left can do that and when they do it, they should be rewarded for it. When Patrick Stewart recently said that a bakery should not be compelled into writing a pro-gay marriage message on a wedding cake, that was a rejection of the totalitarian norms being imposed by social justice warriors.
People who hate you don’t want you to be able to live in peace. That’s the essence of the SJW.
Those who take a stand against them on an issue, even if they’re on the left, should get some support and a note or tweet telling them why. Likewise those who make the wrong choices should be told that from now on that even if you buy anything they make money from, you’ll do it in a way that they won’t see any proceeds from it. That will make them angrier than a straight boycott would.
And there’s a lot more you can do that will hit the left in its pockets.
Use AdBlockers on its sites. Not on conservative ones. You’ll save time and hurt the left.
Dump subscriptions to liberal magazines and newspapers.
Get rid of your cable. Cable is a financially shaky proposition. If enough people leave, it falls apart. And even if the only thing you watch is FOX News, under the current system, you’re subsidizing a whole bunch of left-wing channels. If you have cable internet, you can access a wider range of programming online than you could on cable. You’ll save money and hurt the left.
4. Shop Small Business and Become Independent
People were surprised when Wal-Mart turned left. They shouldn’t have been
Under the current system, major corporations will almost inevitably turn left to align with the authorities and tastemakers. Liberals have become champions of big government. The bigger a company becomes, the more it aligns with the system.
We all buy things from Amazon or Wal-Mart, but try to support local small businesses in your community when you can. They form a community in ways that a megastore won’t and when they get a monopoly they will step on you, not just economically, but politically as well.
The Confederate flag hysteria and the Trump purge are a warning sign of things to come. Imagine a day when it’s Ted Cruz’s books being purged from every online retailer and Apple blocking his App.
It will come to that.
Look at the politics of major corporations and their policies. Avoid ‘gated communities’ created by the hardware sold by Amazon and Apple. Yes the Kindle and the iPhone are convenient, but you’re giving control of your digital life to two left-wing corporations. As bad as Google and Microsoft are, they’re somewhat better when it comes to freedom of speech.
A good test is imagine yourself working at a particular company. If you can’t imagine even being tolerated there, maybe you shouldn’t be rewarding it.
Learn something about the products and brands you buy. If you know of a company that shares your values, keep it in mind during your next purchase. Choose small manufacturers and stores when you can.
And avoid becoming dependent on megacorporations. The St. Patrick’s Parade was undone because it had become dependent on Diageo, a mega whose vast catalog of brands includes Guinness.
When a corporation becomes big enough, it will find it easier to bend to the left than tolerate you.
A megacorp whose brands you eat will rob them of nutrition and taste to comply with the left’s food police. Its cleaners will turn into useless junk to comply with the environmentalists. Even if it hasn’t sold you out yet, it will sell you out later. And if you wait for it to become a monopoly, you’ll have trouble finding alternatives.
Find ways to become independent. Make some of the things you’ve become accustomed to buying. Or buy and trade with other craftsmen. Those are useful skills in the best of times and we may be headed for darker times.
Independence threatens the left and makes your life better.
3. Build Likeminded Communities
You don’t need to move to X to find a conservative community. You can build one organically by making friends, online and offline, cultivating ties, sharing and helping other people who share your worldview.
Make your own tribe. The left is doing it.
Find sane people at work. If you’re in a position to hire sane people over likely leftists, do it. Be careful, don’t risk your position and don’t tell anyone what you’re doing, but do it if you can.
A community is about more than setting up a Facebook group. It’s a support structure and you’ll need those, if not now, then later. The members of a community help meet each other’s needs.
Don’t get seduced by telescopic philanthropy. Don’t focus on helping Third World countries. Help your neighbors and friends. An hour spent helping someone you know does a lot more good than all the ‘penny a day’ for starving children in X, which really ends up going to the marketing department.
Protect communal institutions you have and avoid hostile ones. Don’t stay in a church or synagogue that has gone to the left. Find one that meets your needs. If it doesn’t exist, work with other dissatisfied worshipers to make one happen.
Never subsidize left-wing clergy. America got Hillary Clinton because she came under the influence of a left-wing minister at an impressionable age.
The left is trying to break up the country’s traditional social structures. One of the best ways to resist them is to maintain them, whether it’s a family, a religious institution or a club. Protect them and they’ll protect you.
By being part of a real community, you’ll be naturally resisting the left and making your life better.
2. Have Fun Starting Trouble
The pushback to the left may not start where you expect. The Cliven Bundy standoff and Gamergate both happened when groups of ordinary people with little in common pushed back when they felt pushed into a corner.
It wasn’t a national issue. Grazing sites and corruption in gaming are about as narrow as you can get.
They became national because when people fight back against the left, local goes national and then global.
The American Revolution started in part over a dispute with a British officer over a bill in Boston. That led to the Boston Massacre and by then the issue that started it all no longer mattered. What people come away with is who is being abusive in that particular situation.
People rally to unlikely flags and causes and fight for unexpected things that they care about.
A revolution against the left won’t be led by the GOP. It won’t come out of Washington D.C. But the pushback just might come because a group nobody pays attention to is angry about some issues you’ve never even heard of.
That group might be next door to you.
Fighting back does not have to be about convincing them to read Thomas Sowell and Bill Buckley. If you think like a community organizer, it’s about getting them to make the connection between what they’re angry about and the source of the trouble from the left.
People want to know why they’re being kicked around. They don’t want to hear about the politics. Those come later. They don’t need the big stuff. The little stuff is pointing them at their abusers.
Community organizers spend a lot of time listening to people’s grievances, especially people not one else listens to, and then slowly pointing them in the right direction while making them feel empowered. You don’t have to look at it as a job.
Think of it as being a troublemaker. It’s not a chore. It’s fun.
The next major issue may start in your backyard and you, not some national organization, might just be the one to help set it off.
1. Focus on Your Family
You can have more influence on your kids than you ever can on Facebook or Twitter. If you have them, your biggest job in the world is making sure that you are a bigger influence on them than the latest movie or trending topic.
Be involved in their lives.
Even if they’re in their forties and seem to have turned out liberal, plenty of people have turned around their politics right at that age. Don’t argue with them. Shouting matches never changed anyone’s mind. Show them that the way you live is better in the long run.
If you win there, the left loses big. Its big gamble is generational. If it loses your kids and grandkids, it loses. Period.
And your life will be better for it.
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