Fearless in 2024

Have you noticed? We live in a time of competing fearlessness. On one side are those fearlessly abandoning rule of law, upending society, acting out for ideology, ends justifying means. On the other are those fearless in doing the reverse, preserving rule of law, institutions – history, biology, Supreme Court rulings – determined to think for themselves and keep their rights. So, who wins?

This is a battle for all the marbles, but who wins this life-defining, titanic battle? Those resolved to centralize us, force conformity on us, shade truth for ideology’s sake, control others and replace individual liberty with mandates, political punishment, new election distortions – or the rest of us?

The question is open still, but 2024 will decide it. At work are overlapping, interrelated social forces – and we should see them for what they are, think about them, and understand how to beat them.

At work are unusual economic, legal, and social conditions, reinforcing each other. At work, too, are those sowing doubt – within and without  – about our institutions, way of life, history of respect for each other, and the very legitimacy of promises made in our Constitution.

On the left, well-funded political forces are arrayed to push power concentration, suppress rights, assert greater control. In Biden’s White House, US Senate, parts of the House and federal bench, in one-party, and Democrat states – the left sees opportunity, a chance to “divide and conquer.”

Why? Why now? Why is the ideological left – from naïve and gullible to operational and avowed Marxists, all anti-individual, anti-freedom, and anti-American Dream  – suddenly rising?

Part of it is the new media, an unhealthy alliance between how people get information and those on the left who see a chance to suppress information and advance their radical ideological aims.

Part of it is use of technology to suppress First Amendment rights, ironically claiming the First Amendment for protection. The Supreme Court will soon rule on that, likely restoring balance.

Part of it is the extended social disruptions of the past 25 years, endless wars, public unease back to 9-11, elections filled with anger, then COVID, shutdowns, cross recriminations, lies to cover, long-term effects on life, kids, jobs, businesses, the family, the community…collective exhaustion.

Into this uneasy moment, “power concentrators” have poured their vision, control over America under the banner of leftist ideology, reinvigorating class warfare, disparagement of the American Dream. They want to remake our nation, and call half “enemies of the People,” a Bolshevik term.

In practical terms, after demonizing half the nation, they subtly and not-so-subtly threaten, rhetorically aim to dehumanize, and try to “scarlet letter” their opponents. They invent facts, collusion to impeachment, use coercive powers to harass and arrest opponents, from parents and anti-abortion protestors to lawyers defending candidates in the 2020 election process.

We now know from congressional investigators, that the Biden White House and Merrick Garland’s Justice Department hatched a plan. Meeting partisan prosecutors from New York, Georgia, and the anti-Republican federal prosecutor Jack Smith, censured (9-0 by the Supreme Court), they appear to have coordinated a strategy to demean, bankrupt, and jail their top political opponent.

If all this sounds extreme, contrary to America’s longstanding political and legal traditions, a patent misuse of high office, of prosecutorial discretion (in three jurisdictions), judicial authority (state and federal), and an overt interference with a free and fair election, it is. You are not crazy.

For fearless zealots, there are no limits. For those on the left who tore up DC, New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and 200 hundred cities in 2020, politicians who encouraged violence after the Supreme Court returned abortion to the states (almost getting a Justice killed), groups that put bricks on street corners, freed dangerous drug traffickers, excused illegals killing and raping, and who ignore morality to attack those of faith, there are no limits.

Their endgame, preventing a return to normal, spurring a modern French Revolution, destroying churches, synagogues, even mosques, damaging America beyond repair, then taking control, bringing down the communist, fascist, or “democratic socialist” hammer, justifies anything.

When radical disruptors, anti-liberty, anti-constitutional, anti-order, anti-American Dream activists get started – and they are started – where does it end? What is NOT justified? That is the question.

Will they not seek violence against those trying to return America to normal, Supreme Court justices, political candidates, a candidate for president? What happened in the 1960s? We lost a president, presidential candidate, top civil rights leader, and federal buildings were bombed. 

At the polls, infiltrating poll watchers, vote counters, vote reporters, vote certifiers, what makes you think that – in the name of ideology – they will not tear up, destroy, throw out, and miscount ballots? Americans need to watch those who think ends justify means. This time it matters.

What is the answer? Simple. Fearless defense of the nation, our norms, traditions, moral fiber, history, legal precedents, Constitution, civil liberties, due process, parental rights, free speech. We must be as fearless in defending the right as those who despise it. No, more fearless.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.