When They Go Low, We Go Low

Taking the high road may often by the best strategy, but refusing anything but the high road is a fool's errand and will lead to assured defeat. Let's take a look at why we should always be willing to "sink to their level".

You must defend the fronts on which you are attacked.

Not fighting is just a highly efficient method of losing. It is tempting to say, "We won't be drawn in to such a petty fight." Abstaining by virtue of a moral high-road is practically indistinguishable from surrender. Allowing the adversary to push on a front without response is the same as retreat. Retreat can be a powerful strategic tool, but it can't be the only strategic tool. 

Liberals understand this. They always fight, even when it doesn't make sense to. Conservatives don't, because they are afraid of the liberal media. If doing the right thing was easy everyone would do it, but since it is such a rare trait, doing the right thing must in fact be dangerous and difficult. 

In no domain is this more apparent than in education and the media. Conservatives have given all control of the the most important propaganda assets to their opponents. The only conservatives that seem to have dug in are the religious right, who demand that Creationism and other religious topics be taught in the schools. The more reasonable conservatives don't have the same conviction. And they've allowed the education sector to be totally dominated by the left, to the point where some pursuits, such as social sciences, have no conservative faction at all. See where being reasonable gets us? 

The left pushes back on instinct. In fact, as I described in an earlier post, it is their defining quality. If the right stands against Roe V. Wade out of legal reasoning they push back with women's rights. Doesn't make sense does it? Nope, not at all. They're not even having the same discussion we are. Being reasonable is less important than having a casus belli. The left has had great success even though objectively their arguments suck.

The left fights back even when they contradict themselves. After years of calling the lack of federally mandated maternal leave another example of oppression against women, they actually attacked Trump when he made the proposal in his campaign. Insane? Yes. Effective? Considering their grip on the vital institutions like education and the media, yes, they are doing something right. Perhaps they are modern day Berserkers, but so what?

The right must adopt this mentality. They must instinctively defend any front unless there is some good reason not to. Who cares if they call us hypocrites? They call us hypocrites anyway. Who cares if they employ their SJW weaponery against us, calling us racist, sexist, etc? They do those things anyway. They will attack you whether or not you choose to defend yourself. The issue here is not one if intellectual or moral superiority, but a simple lack of courage and conviction. 

You must employ the tactics that are used against you.

If your opponent deploys a previously shunned tactic that gives them an advantage, you must respond in kind. At the least, you must consider that the tactic is a viable weapon in your arsenal. If you're in a fist fight, you will like keep some level of civility to it. But if they go below the belt, you absolutely must return the tactic. If they are allowed to kick you where it counts but you don't allow yourself to use the same tactic, you will be at a marked disadvantage. And if your opponent knows they can fight dirty and you won't respond in kind, then you only encourage them to disregard all decorum.

Right now the left is winning the dirty deeds fights. The DNC has funded and organized highly illegal activities intended to damage the other side. And they've faced no legal repercussions for doing so. It would be foolish at this point for the right not to respond in kind. Why should they not have paid protesters show up to liberal events? Why should they not work to shut down rallies of their opponents? Because we're better than that?

This shouldn't imply that we blindly react. Of course restraint is its own virtue. Donald Trump could have responded to Hillary's insults of his base by insulting her base, but he "looked past the sale" and chose not to do so. Maybe he should have, but he came out on top of things. Today they are doing everything they can to provoke us into violence, but using violence against us. We are wisest to resist, because we know how they are using the media to in their favor. (Note if they didn't control the media then this would not be to their advantage. That's what we get for giving up that battlespace to begin with.) At this time it behooves us not to respond in kind, but we have specific reasons to disobey the general rule: always respond in kind.

Wars are never battles of ideas.

Ideas may fuel wars. Belligerents use ideas to underpin moral justifications. But ideas are just one front of the war. You can quite easily win the battle of ideas and lose the war. I see a lot of people complaining about meme warfare. It's low-brow and childish. Yes and it's highly effective. Trump may be the first man deliberately memed in to office. Memes are most effective when you have your logical arguments in place, which can guide the memer to make pithy laconic statements that efficiently convey powerful statements. But they don't have to be. The left's most viral meme right now is just ridicule of Kellyanne Conway. Memes don't have to convert; they can simply serve to boost morale for the embattled soldiers.

To win the battle of ideas but lose the fronts of emotion, self-interest, information, logistics, strategy & tactics, organization, communication, etc is to be utterly crushed in the war. When they go low, that is outside the realm of ideas or civil discourse, we must be able to defeat them in that domain as well. In fact the only thing ultimately to keep an opponent from "going low" is the fear they will suffer greatly for doing so. In face of defeat they will always resort to "low" tactics. This is perfectly natural and we should never be surprised at them.

Conclusion

Political wars will tend to spiral towards the bottom if no mutual or societal pressures exist to prevent it. We have a society built on rule of law meant to prevent this. But the inhibiting effect is only as strong as the enforcement. And if the rewards of violating convention exceed the punishment, then someone will violate. We can't control society, we can only operate within it. And if society is willing to permit uncouth behavior, we must use it so the other side cannot gain an unfair advantage over us, while at the same time working to build a society the effectively clamps down on the same behavior. It is not hypocritical to do so, and in fact is the only reasonable approach to these things.

Update

These ideas may be somewhat more mainstream than I though. They are largely influenced by Vox Day. He has a fairly large following, but that doesn't make him mainstream. I was surprised that when I caught the Mark Levin on my commute after writing this, the guest host Dan Bongino spent the beginning part of the show on this (2/6/17 podcast). He points out that the left reflexively fight on every issue, and the right doesn't. Very similar to what I wrote on the same day. Maybe he reads the blog? (traffic stats indicate not likely)

Another thing I didn't mention though is the the left is heavily Marxist these days, and in Marxism everything is politics. Art, literature, education, science, you name it: it is all just a front in oppression politics. So naturally they fight us everywhere, and we're slow to respond because they don't seem like political battles. They are.