The Causes Which Impel

“Faster,” she muttered to herself. For only a few minutes more, she was hidden away in her dimly-lit bedroom, seated at the small desk she had moved several times with her since she assembled it in a college dorm two decades ago. She scribbled and jotted thoughts feverishly, but she could scarcely scribe quickly enough.

The world had changed since her college days. From staid yet inspiring leadership to the “fundamental transformation” of her beloved homeland towards a wretched mass of people yearning to be subjugated wards of the state, she–and millions who with her comprise a silent majority–watched in disgust as the Stars and Stripes became a symbol of something… impotent.

For many years, a vocal and growing stand of ignorant simpletons, with the aid of mind-numbing entertainment and an actively adversarial media, denigrated and marginalized her and those of like mind. These fools were never content to leave misery unaccompanied; if they could impose themselves on the many for the unnecessary accommodation of the folly of a few, they would not cease until they had imposed themselves upon all for the triviality of causes that might not support even one.

She had had enough.

And so had many others. As the values and priorities of her society had devolved to the point that some could make mockeries of themselves in the public square in absurd protest for the plenary abdication of their own personal duties and responsibilities, as these groups availed themselves of novel technologies with which to immerse themselves more deeply in their failing culture, her compatriots in liberty had seemingly become lost and undirected. Until she had an epiphany.

She threw more thoughts onto the paper before her in nearly illegible scratches and strokes. Then she began to transcribe. She had puzzled over the spectacles she had seen with increasing frequency on the television news. Forefront in her mind was the ability of the feeble causes to put bodies in front of cameras and in front of influential people on short notice, and the willingness of these people to behave in base, puerile manner with neither a whit of shame nor an ounce of self-regard.

“They bring out their jesters for their false causes,” she typed into her small, underpowered, aging laptop. It bore the wear marks of a modest lifestyle, as did all of her possessions, as did she herself. She persevered through eight years of her society’s race to the bottom with a persistent hope that the country would reinvigorate. The difference between her and the millions of her fellow Americans who felt similarly, however, was that she refused to believe that the country would right itself without her intervention. She knew it was her duty and her privilege to fight back and to bring others to arms with her. She eschewed luxuries to provide stability for herself. She knew that even if she had riches to spare, she would never have to “give back,” because she herself had earned her keep. Instead, she knew it was time simply to “give.”

She continued, “and they pay menial wages for uncommitted Hessians to inflate their ranks. But how can they lure these mercenaries from appreciable, rewarding work to ephemeral, inane chanting? By understanding that the loud protestors do not take pride in their regular work, do not fear retribution for abandoning their day jobs, and do not require dependable paychecks when they live exclusively on credit and under the promise that the government will provide for them. So they undermine the industries and the businesses that create jobs. Rather than working to succeed and climb the ranks, these sellout lemmings subsist on the wages of their menial work–wages the government forces upward without requiring employees to increase their performance for and value to their employers–and these sellout lemmings see the token stipends, the table scraps tossed their way, as easily-claimed bonuses.”

She flipped through the few pages of her notes and returned to her keyboard: “The rest of us, those of us repressed for fear of being deemed ‘racist’ or ‘whatever-phobic’, are coerced into silent complicity. But no more. Today, on this blessed day, more than two centuries since our forefathers rose up, in that same spirit, we shall dissolve the political bands which have connected us to this insidious mentality. ‘[A]ll experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.’ We refuse to suffer any further. We refuse to become accustomed to this.”

She had woken to the realization that the term “conservative” had become a pejorative, even an epithet, by the hands of conservatives themselves. And she realized that she could say, “No!”

No, she would no longer care who called her a “phobic.”

No, she would no longer let media darlings spew blithering idiocy and duplicity without stating her disagreement.

No, she would no longer struggle against extremism alone.

No, conservatives did not need to stage infantile spectacles to sway public opinion, nor did they even need to abdicate their jobs to stage protests. She had conceived of a better way.

She flicked on several lights, drew a brush through her hair, surveyed her smile and her makeup in a mirror, and took a deep breath: She wanted to start a new revolution, yet she feared the next step, and the staggering uncertainty beyond it. She focused her eyes on her screen and clicked the “Record” button with a surge of defiance coursing through her veins. Calmly and confidently, she read into her tiny camera the script she had been writing feverishly, scrolling through the paragraphs as she read. In what felt like seconds, she came to the most important part:

“Today, I charge myself, you, and the millions of others who believe in this higher cause with a new imperative. We will not punctuate our ideas with front-page photos of our unkempt pubic hair or hats made to resemble comical genitals. We will not scream and cry on cell-phone video at the oppressors in the big-government political left. We will be smarter. We will make better arguments with less effort, because we believe in a way of life that is far superior. And we will take this up as an impassioned calling, a true imperative, like the start of a side business we wish to grow, because we have a responsibility to each other and to future generations not to preserve the American way of life, but to improve the American way of life.

“Today, my friends, you and I begin to agree to disagree with the idiots who claim to suffer under the label of a gender, but gleefully ascribe to each of us the label of a hater. How different is that from a raving lunatic calling you or me something as nonsensical as an eggplant? From today on, we will brush off the insults of these elites like the rantings of a nutcase.

“Today, my friends, you and I begin to respond without fear to the morons who believe that big government can better manage our healthcare. How sane is it for someone to want to rely on a bureaucrat to determine what diseases to treat and at what ages to stop treating them when that same bureaucrat happily spends tax dollars to kill millions of the unborn every year?

“Today, my friends, you and I begin to decry the rapid decline of standards in our government education system as a crime and a travesty. How does it benefit our country that we dilute the history we teach, that we simplify the tests we give, that we do not instill in our young a desire, nor a capacity, to assimilate facts and thoughts, but instead praise the little sycophants who ask questions that fly in the face of reason and logic?

“Today, my friends, you and I take ownership of our country again. We must do this; now is the time to do this. To secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for ourselves and for future generations, we will accept life’s struggles with grace and dignity and remind ourselves and others that we have the inborn right to the pursuit, not to a life free from discomfort and adversity. We will challenge each other and our foes so that all may come out stronger. And we will endure whatever vitriol and hatred they cast at us.

“Today, my friends, my fellow true Americans, today we become the founding members, shareholders, and employees of Independence, Incorporated. Our product is freedom, our profit is our way of life, our labor is compulsory and well-invested, our competition is stiff but ripe for defeat.”

Lady Liberty paused for a beat before she concluded: “As of this very moment, we are aggressively and proactively open for business.”

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