Never Surrender!

From Ace of Spades:

I never read this article before the election, though I was aware of it, and saw it quoted: The Flight 93 Election. It's now revealed to have been written by Michael Anton, now serving on Trump's NSC. 

Basically it posits that after eight years of Obama and a culture becoming increasingly comfortable with rule by progressives (and rule by progressive fiat as well), and with the prospect of another eight years of President Hillary Clinton on the horizon, there was no other choice for the country but to storm the cockpit and take the controls and take a chance on either saving itself or crashing -- hence, The Flight 93 Election. 

Either we do something dramatic, or it's all over, and we just give up. 

I didn't really read this article before the election -- and still haven't finished it, to be honest -- for a simple reason: I already believed it. It was nice to see someone saying what I already knew to be true, but I didn't really feel I had to spend too much time confirming my own bias. 

This is why I said I'd become a Democrat if Hillary won -- I thought it was over. I still think it's over, if I'm being honest. But if the Democrats continue 16 straight years in office, with no chance of punishment for any transgression and thus the perfect freedom to transgress on whim, then I'm damn sure not going to continue wearing the uniform of the army that's surrendering. I'm going to change uniforms -- I have to meet the second need, freedom from government harassment, before I bother thinking about the third, fourth, and fifth level needs. 

Either we're fighting to win or I, personally, am not fighting at all. It's one thing to fight in vain for a lost cause; but to make yourself an enemy of a state for a cause no one is really fighting for? 

Now that's crazy. 

So thus the importance of the question: How far along the decline do you think we are? How close do you think we are to the point of no return? 

How menacing do you think the left's ever-more brazen mobs are? 

How insulated do you personally feel from the violence that is happening more and more, and with less and less condemnation of the Political-Media Establishment?And in pondering that question, read this account from Charles Murray about the mob that assaulted him and put a female professor in the hospital, and then ask yourself:Do you really think there will be any legal consequences for the mob? 

Or do you think the Political-Media state will tacitly bless their assaults as "understandable" and hence not punishable?'' 

Does it not seem to be an inside-outside game going on? Community-organized violent demonstrators who are then protected, if not outright blessed, by official government institutions and all of the media to go even further than they've gone already? 

A mob that gets cracked down on by government agents is a one-day crime story.A mob that gets protected by government agents is a serious political story. 

That there is political violence is not itself alarming. That government actors, rich institutions, and the putative Fourth Branch of Government support political violence is gravely alarming. 

Do you think there will be more of this, or less of this, in the year to come? And if you say less -- well, what would cause there to be less of it?

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.