My Opinion Piece By Teresa Beem
I have always been an activist. When my parents took us out of church school and placed us in public school when I was in fifth grade, I organized a protest outside of my home. We picketed my house with signs on which were written bad words and I got my brothers and sisters and the neighbor kids to walk in circles chanting, "This is what we learn in public school." I didn't win that campaign. I also remember getting a spanking.
When I was the student association president of the Seventh-day Adventist elementary school, Dallas Junior Academy, I staged my second protest against the idea of forced school uniforms. All I had to do was mention in my address to the school board that uniforms would make us look Catholic and that was it. Which I regret now that I am a thinking adult. But anyway, I was like thirteen. My campaign was successful,
though. So generations after me were allowed to wear mini skirts and saggy pants. (I will probably spend some time in purgatory for that one.)
My most extensive trek into community organizing lasted for more than a decade and that is when I started the first Seventh-day Adventist pro-life group in 1985. At its height we had three states chapters, we helped run a pregnancy center in California, we made videos, went around to elementary schools, high schools, universities and churches teaching about abortion and attempting to get the SDA church to change its hospital and doctrinal policies from pro-choice to pro-life. Outcome: unsuccessful.
At the same time, I got involved with the general Right to Life movement in America and volunteered to work for pro-life candidates. Which I still am active in. I have and my kids also, have been in the trenches and have seen a lot more than most people about how the process of political change takes place in the US.
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| The largest protests in history..... |
I have organized and been in so many marches and protests in my life that I can't even begin to count them--lots. I have stood alone for days on the steps of several state capital buildings and legislative branches calling out for action. I have gone door-to-door many times passing out literature, talking to the populous about a particular idea, candidate, bill being introduced in Congress. I have stood in front of grocery stores gathering signature for petitions, spent hundreds of hours calling citizens asking them to vote for a certain candidate and calling and writing congress. Writing op-eds.... you know, the whole spiel....with more passion and energy and heart and tenaciousness and hope and .....nothing has changed. In fact, things have gotten a whole lot worse.
And so, when I write, I have some general knowledge I can share.
HOW WE WILL WIN? We won't.... because:
Conservatives do not want to get involved. Conservatives want to be seen as nice and non-confrontational. Conservatism by its nature is law abiding and actually have a more "live and let live" attitude than the progressives. The law of physics does not bode well for the conservatives to ever get anything done. They simply are not wired with the inertia of political success. They will not react until reacted upon.
William F. Buckley, Jr. is the prime example of a passionate, worked-up conservative. If one is really on fire for change, a conservative will sit down and talk rationally with the enemy, lobbing witty sarcasms at them. But the most you can expect of the lay-conservative is that they get so up-in-arms about something that they will go down and register to vote. Or go practice at a shooting range.
And so, when the good guys, the guys that keep the rules and support democracy are defeated in every battle by the bad guys who cheat and sabotage the game, the good guys simply cannot fathom that rule of law doesn't work. They huddle in a group that breaks off into warring factions about whether the referees have been paid off. Meanwhile the monolithic brotherhood of thieves laugh at us.
Progressives' nature use inertia to get their own way. They do not care if they are nice and many of the leaders thrive on confrontation. They have a determination to force their beliefs on others, because they think the are smarter and better than conservatives. They are willing to sacrifice for their cause which they believe to be based upon "rights." They use brilliant strategies to manipulate and propagandize the public. They know how to bring about change and are constantly reinforced that they are correct in their assumption that conservatives are dumb, because we don't do anything. We fall for it each and every time.
The progressives have been so successful in our nation that they don't even try and hide their agenda and their manipulation anymore.
They just label conservatives who disagree with their policies as "bigoted" or "racist" and conservatives recoil in horror and apologize for wanting rational policies. We are too polite and hate confrontation.
We are a nation that is bullied. And many conservatives are now waking up to the fact that unless we conservatives actually start acting like progressives as far as action (hence the Trump movement) and get past our self-identification as the nice, law-abiding passivity-mongers and actually sacrifice our time and efforts to wrestle things back to the way they should be--our nation has no, zero chance of being the great nation we remember ourselves being.
God is not going to come in and save us. No, if anything, we should be praying that God does not get involved because we deserve punishment, not mercy. (Christians, you know what I am saying here... don't get offended.)
From my experience, there are three things that secure the baby-boomer generation of conservatives as going down in history as the worst, most uncourageous, spoiled, ungrateful, lazy and stupid citizens that ever walked the face of the earth.
1. Our naiveté and laziness--Let's face it, we don't want to fight, or sacrifice. We want to be left alone. And so, conservatives will die out and no one will ever even notice. The USA will be like the extinction of the dodo bird
because we conservatives went gently into that good night, we did not burn nor rave at the close of our day, we did not rage, rage against the dying of the light.
2. Conservatives are now outnumbered. While America slept, the last two generations have been successfully brainwashed with disinformation. Most people under fifty do not see America as great nor see any reason to keep it as it was. They have willingly, in fact, gleefully placed themselves on the Joseph Mengele school of social experimentation. They don't mind the idea of a trans-human super species. So that idea that most
Americans are going to rise up at some point and take the nation back? You are in la-la land. Conservatives are now outnumbered. We lose.
3. For the conservatives who are left, who absolutely see the problem and will sacrifice and fight for their country, there is still one more and I believe insurmountable problem. There is no structure set up for the conservatives to change things. Our progressive counterparts learned this decades ago. There is only one ladder for change in politics. Once you have overtaken it, you can keep it and kick anyone off who attempts to rise on the ladder.
Once you have the universities, once you have the congress and presidency... I don't give a flying flip about the second amendment and the militia, because he who has control of the nuclear bomb button is he who controls the country. Once conservatives have gotten to the point that we are angry enough to start a war, we will also realize that we have no ability to win a war. There is no structure in place that we can unite under. And conservatives will never fight a war they don't think they can win. Liberals will.
And that is why I do not think we will ever get our country back.
And there we are folks. Please explain to me, why I am wrong. I am hoping there is someone out there who will prove me wrong.
DO it!!
And a conservative will rather be upset by
what I just wrote and its "negative" tone and that we just need to keep trying...and forget it, turn on the television and zone out rather than see my piece as a challenge to do something.
