A year after the protests at the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, and nothing much seems to have changed. Ashli Babbitt’s killer remains free, hundreds of Americans have been prosecuted, and dozens remain imprisoned, subjected to treatment that could well be described as torture.
The Biden administration and the mainstream media still cling to their narrative that the protests were an insurrection, an assertion that is laughable on its face. And the battle lines have hardened, as the left has become more strident and emboldened in its efforts to subvert the US political system, while many on the right have woken up to finally realize that a left-wing coup is occurring right under our very noses.
The left’s shrill rhetoric of a coming civil war continues to try to blame the right for everything that his happening, while anyone with half a brain understands that the right is merely reacting to the left’s offensive against American society. We’re still too close to the events of January 6th to be able to look back at them with a historical eye. But there’s still a case to be made that last year’s protests were the Boston Massacre of our time.
The main problem we’re facing on the right is that we’re in a time of crisis, and most people understand the crisis that is occurring. The left is going on the offensive, using the police, the courts, and the media to demonize anyone who doesn’t kowtow to leftist orthodoxy. But while we can see through it, who are our leaders? The left’s actions are coordinated, but who is coordinating the response from the right?
President Trump has been silenced on social media, and his recent comments on vaccines have rubbed many of his supporters the wrong way. Right-wing organizations such as the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and Oathkeepers already gave many conservatives the willies. And now that we’ve found out that some of their leaders were police informants, may have been on the government’s payroll, and may have instigated the melees on January 6th, their credibility is largely shot.
Many right-wing media figures both in the mainstream and on the internet often seem like grifters only out to grow their fan base and their income streams. They talk the talk, but are they willing to walk the walk? In short, we have a massive base of frustrated conservatives who realize that our country is in jeopardy and realize that we need to act if we want to protect our freedoms and preserve our way of life. But we’re leaderless and rudderless, and that could be dangerous.
Over the next few years, we’ll have a decision to make. Will we throw in our hats with the second coming of George Mason, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson, or will we succumb to the siren songs of the next Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Ernst Röhm?
The next few years conservatives will have to be cautious about who they pick as their leaders. Too many grandstanding politicians have sold us out, including many so-called conservatives, Tea Partiers, and Trumpers. We’ll have to be cautious and discerning with whom we trust to lead us or to be the public face of conservatism, as we’re increasingly facing situations in which our very livelihoods are at stake.
But the cost of doing nothing and just standing by as our country deteriorates is also too great. We have to act, but we have to do so responsibly and not just reflexively. We have to articulate what we stand for, what we want to achieve, and we have to hold our leaders responsible for achieving those goals. If we don’t, we can expect the end of the greatest experiment in personal liberty the world has ever known.
Image: Tyler Merbler