Tom Klingenstein is the chairman of the Claremont Institute, and you may have seen his “America is Good” video that made the rounds almost a year ago. His latest video is equally important and builds on his “America is Good” message by enjoining the GOP to recognize that we are, effectively, in a cold civil war over the American way of life.
Tom Klingenstein is the chairman of the Claremont Institute, managing partner of the New York-based investment firm, Cohen Klingenstein LLC., and playwright. He believes that we are in a cold civil war. The enemy—what he calls the “Woke Comms”—are winning, in large measure because Republican leaders have yet to engage. His essays, speeches and plays all encourage Republicans to do just that— to think, talk, and act as if we are at war.
Klingenstein lays out the cold civil war he perceives and offers concrete ways for the GOP and right-leaning voters to fight back, even in the current absence of “generals” in this cold war.
Watch:
The full transcript is available here, but following are some of Klingenstein’s key points.
He begins by noting that the GOP does not currently recognize that we are in a cold civil war, laying out exactly how we are engaged in a cold civil war, and demonstrating the need for our elected GOP representatives to wake up and begin defending our great nation. Yesterday.
We find ourselves in a Cold Civil War. But we have no real generals. A war without generals is no war at all. There is no liberty or death, only death, the death of our once cherished republic.Leading Republicans who should be our generals fight battles, sometimes with spirit, but they don’t seem to see the war in its entirety, particularly its cultural aspects. This is a war not over the size of government or taxes, but over the American way of life. The war is between those who salute the flag, and those who take a knee. Those who believe that America is built on freedom, and those who believe America is built on racism. Those who are convinced that America is good, and those who are convinced America is bad. These differences are too large to bridge. This is what makes it a war. In this case, a Cold Civil War.Winning a war requires two fundamental understandings. First, you must understand that you are, in fact, in a war. War time requires very different rhetoric, strategy and people than peace time. Trump is a wartime leader. Second,you must understand your enemy, what it wants and how it goes about getting what it wants. What our enemy wants is the destruction of the American way of life. It goes about it by trying to force everyone to say “America is systemically racist.” If it can convince us of this falsehood, it will be well on its way to overturning the American way of life. Every time Joe Biden accuses America of being systemically racist, he is, though he doesn’t know it, calling for the overthrow of the American way of life.In a war, you must play to win. But you cannot win against an enemy that has no name, or has many names, identity politics, multiculturalism, anti-racism, wokeism, and more. My entry for a name is Woke Communism, Woke Comm for short. Whatever the name, I think it should communicate totalitarianism because this is what the enemy seeks to impose.. . . . In short, woke communism will replace American justice with social justice, and destroy law and order, the rule of law, and both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
The lies of the Woke Comms are clear to every American patriot, but they are permeating–unchallenged by the GOP, except by President Trump–every social, cultural, public, private, and economic institution.
Klingenstein continues:
The first and most important lie is, as I have said, America is racist. It is this that is the big lie. We hear it from every direction from morning to night, but endless repetition does not make it true. It isn’t.The corollary to the big lie is another lie. America is about to be overrun by white supremacists. This is pure nonsense. What the woke comms mean by this lie is that anyone unwilling to kneel before Black Lives Matter is a white supremacist.. . . . Trump endorsed white culture. This is a lie. Trump endorsed not white culture but American culture, which is open to anyone, of any color, willing to embrace it. I am Jewish, but it never dawned on me that George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, neither members of my tribe, belong any less to me than to any other American. This is one of the glories of America. The Woke Communists want to destroy it.. . . . We are told that moderate Joe Biden is in charge. Biden is neither moderate nor in charge.Black Lives Matter care about black lives or righting past injustices. These are among the biggest whoppers. But we should pay attention to BLM because, as we learned during the riots, BLM represents the leading edge of the Democratic Party. Any doubt about the prominence of BLM should have been dispelled by the Biden-Harris administration encouraging American embassies to fly the BLM flag.Think about that. Our embassies, beacons of American freedom, are flying the flag of an organization committed to the destruction of American freedom.January 6th, was an insurrection. Every bit a lie. No, this may not have been Trump’s finest hour. And yes, the riots were very wrong and disappointing for a movement that has avoided violence. But let’s be honest, the riots consisted of a score or two of really bad apples, together with several hundred idiots (not a one armed) who thought it would be cool to take selfies in the nation’s capital.
From there, Klingenstein briefly addresses the ongoing censorship by Big Tech, now in collusion with the United States government to silence wrongthink, before going on to discuss the breakdown we are already seeing in the American way of life. A breakdown that is going largely unchallenged by the GOP, a problem he urges them to correct immediately.
Again, watch the video and/or read the full transcript.
Not only must the GOP give up on the clearly failed “live and let live” libertarian fantasy (our enemies in this cold civil war have zero intention of letting anyone live and let live, but they are happy to take advantage of such peace-time thinking while they grab all the power and control they need to crush all opposition), but they must also push back by proclaiming, loudly and often, the truth: America is good. We are not racist, systemically or otherwise, we are not evil, and we will no longer allow these lies to go unchallenged.
The essential thing, as I’ve tried to stress, is for Republicans to understand we are in a war and then act accordingly. War is not a time for too much civility, compromise, or for imputing good motives to the enemy. Our generals must fight as if the choice were between liberty and death. This is no time for sunshine patriots.And the Republican Party must minimize the influence of libertarianism. Most libertarian influenced republicans are not fit to fight this war. They tell the Woke Communists, “You can live your way, just allow us to live our way.” But the Woke Communists respond, “You must live our way or we will punish you.” “Live and let live” will lose to “do it our way or else” every time.Of the talked about possible presidential candidates, Donald Trump understands better than the others that we are in a war. And we know he has the courage to lead the charge. 2024 is a long way off. But if the Republican primary were held next month, Trump would be my candidate. True, Trump is risky, but risky times require risky solutions. So yes, it would be nice to find someone with Trump’s virtues without his vices. When you find such a person, I’ll be all ears. Until then, I’m with Trump, vices and all.Whoever the candidate, he or she and other Republicans should tell the truth as Trump did. They must rebut the lies starting with the big lie, America is racist. In failing to rebut this lie, as virtually every republican has, Republicans are conceding the basic premise of Woke Communism. When we fail to rebut lies, we perpetuate them. Republicans must say America is not racist, period. Republicans must assert this not once but a thousand times. War is a time for assertions.
Republicans must, Klingenstein continues, not only defend America with words, a vital part of recognizing and engaging America’s enemy, in this cold civil war, but also with actions.
They must, as Trump began to try to do, defeat critical race theory in schools, the military, businesses and everywhere else. We simply cannot teach our citizens, current and future, that their country is no good and expect to have a country for very long. No country can survive on a diet of endless self-loathing. We need to teach our citizens to love and cherish their country.And we need to stop wallowing in our sins of racism. We are talking ourselves into ruin. As far as I can tell, all this talk about racism has brought us nothing but hardship for blacks, division, and race hustlers. Let’s instead talk about what we Americans have in common, and let’s start judging Americans by the content of their character.
Klingenstein concludes with a message of hope.
Americans know perfectly well that their country has sinned. Even so they believe, and quite rightly, that America is as good as it gets. They know that America has, by her example, brought freedom to many millions around the world. And they know that progress in civil rights over the last 60 years has been nothing short of miraculous. We should be very proud of America. It is this pride that makes us strive, as we have always strived, to do better.I am not without hope. There are many pockets of resistance bubbling up around the country. Parents are pushing back against “America is racist” curricula. Even San Francisco had a rare moment of sanity when it decided not to remove Abraham Lincoln’s name from the high school. The manly don’t tread on me remains part of the American spirit. Many Americans still salute our flag, honor our military dead, and ask God to bless America. Such citizens are part of the huge army that Trump has mobilized. This army is raring to go, but it needs direction. If Republican leaders start speaking the truth, loudly and passionately, the army will follow.
That seems like a big “if” to me. If Republican leaders had a clue, had an inkling of the truth, they would already be defending our nation against the enemies’ lies, they would already be standing up for American exceptionalism and greatness. That they largely are not bodes ill for America, for our way of life, unless the silent GOP at all levels of government are replaced with those who understand where we are and where we are going if things don’t change.
Although Klingenstein doesn’t say it, I will. We, the people, American voters, have a responsibility to ensure that we do not continue to elect Republicans who are silent in the face of and submissive to the anti- and un-American Woke Comms whose singular goal is to destroy our great nation and our American way of life.
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