Remember that schoolyard game we used to play as children, where one person turns their back and everyone else runs toward them, until they turn around and you have to stop in your tracks? Then they turn their back again, and you see how close you can get before they spin back around?
Note that, if you’re one of the runners, you never have to go backward. You just stop and remain in place until they’re not looking, then move forward again.
That is essentially the story of Marxist leftism over the past 100 years or so, in the United States and throughout the West: Whenever conservatives notice what the Marxists are doing and call it out, they stop -- but only for a little while, until once gain we’re not paying attention. Then they move their agenda another few steps forward. They never go back, nor do conservatives really succeed in undoing anything they’ve done. We may at times think we have done so and thus become a little complacent --only to find that, while our backs were turned, the Left advanced their agenda far beyond where we last saw it.
This dynamic is evident in almost every aspect of public policy, from taxpayer-funded social programs to illegal immigration to the definition of marriage. But all you really have to do, to see the truthfulness of what I’m saying, is ask yourself one simple question: Are our mainstream political views, as a nation, further Left of where they were, say, 50 or 60 years ago? And the obvious answer is yes, of course. Someone from 1964, transported in time to 2024, would hardly recognize a country where half the population receives some form of government assistance, men can “marry” each other, and third-graders check out pornographic books from their school libraries.
Sure, the pendulum has occasionally swung over the decades. America was more conservative overall in the 80s and 2000s, under Reagan and Bush, than it was in the 70s and 90s, under Carter and Clinton. But one thing I’ve noticed about the pendulum is that, with each sweep, it seems to stop further to the Left before swinging back not quite as far to the Right.
We see this scenario playing out today in two key areas: DEI and “transgenderism.” Lately, the right appears to be gaining ground on these issues. You might even say we’re ascendant -- or at least, from what I’m seeing on social media, many conservatives feel like we are. And no doubt there have been some important victories: the apparent dismantling of the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” infrastructure at some of our universities and private corporations; the passing of laws in several states banning men from women’s sports; and the Cass Report in Great Britain, which led that nation to halt “gender-affirming” hormone treatments and surgeries for minors.
But leftism is like some creature of nightmare that seems to disappear only to reform later, perhaps in another place, perhaps under another guise, but always, always closer to its ultimate goal. So a state like Texas passes a law banning DEI in its public universities. Conservatives rejoice, thinking they have defeated DEI. But they haven’t. The leftists in the universities may pretend to comply, but they’re really just biding their time until they can go back to pushing the same destructive ideology under another label -- like “belonging.” And so we look around a few years after this great “victory” and realize the university system has migrated even further Left than it was before.
The same thing happens in government. I truly hope Donald Trump wins the presidency in November, and I hope that if he does, he actually cleans house this time. But I also know that, even if he does to some extent “drain the swamp,” it probably won’t matter all that much in the long run. The leftists in the federal government will just go underground, plotting all the while how to continue advancing their anti-American agenda, and then reappear even stronger and with their policies more firmly in place during the next administration, or the one after that, or the one after that.
Leftists call this “playing the long game,” and it is what they excel at. Indeed, it is their entire game plan. Gramsci gave that away many years ago. They learned the hard way that people in the free and prosperous West don’t respond well to being hit with their Marxist ideas all at once. So they take a little ground whenever they can, when the climate is favorable -- notably, in this country, during Democratic administrations -- stop or slow down (but never retreat) when they have to, perhaps during a Reagan or Trump presidency, wait until a more opportune moment, and then move forward again.
The Left can employ this strategy because their objective, as Barack Obama freely admitted, is fundamental change -- in Marx’s words, “the ruthless criticism of all that exists.” Fundamental change is by its very nature incremental. It takes time. And leftists can wait. As far as they’re concerned, they have all the time in the world. They’ve waited over a hundred years; why not four more? (This, by the way, is why we now hear politicians on the Left saying they’re “resigned” to a Trump presidency. They would prefer otherwise, but they don’t believe that, in the long run, it will prevent them from doing what they want.)Conservatives, meanwhile, cannot play this game, though we’re often told by right-wing pundits that we should. But while it’s true that we should always have an eye toward the future, not least to avoid the dangers of unintended consequences, the long game just doesn’t work for conservatives, for the simple reason that our objective is not change but preservation. The purpose of conservatism is to… well, conserve, to hold fast to those elements of our western tradition that are most conducive to human flourishing: free speech, God-centered religion, human dignity, the nuclear family. It’s the Left that is trying to change all those things, to advance their anti-freedom, anti-God, anti-human, anti-family agenda. We’re just trying to hold our ground.
I don’t say this in a spirit of defeatism. Far from it. I just think it’s important that we understand what we’re up against. The bottom line is that, while it’s terribly important for us to get Trump back in the White House and temporarily arrest the Left’s agenda, one presidency will not make all the difference. Conservatives must govern well enough that Americans will entrust them -- perhaps in the person of J.D. Vance or Ron DeSantis -- with another four years, and another four years after that.
Most important of all, conservatives must remain ever vigilant. While it’s fine to celebrate our victories, we can never relax. We must never think that the battle is over, that we’ve finally won. Because, for the Left, it’s never over, and they haven’t lost.