The Tragic Shooting of Steve Scalise Must Usher in a New Era of Political Discourse

You can’t reason with a postmodernist who believes logic doesn’t exist. You can try outwitting them in a war of words and hope a rational audience will be swayed by your superior intellect, or you can ignore them and appeal to the good nature of your fellow man by improving your own life in the hopes that others will emulate your example. You can be a better person tomorrow than you were today, and improve the world by bettering yourself through your deeds. The recent shooting of House Majority Whip Steven Scalise proves how desperately this change is needed.

What sense does it make to continue the battle of ideas with the Left? Politically, they’ve been defeated for the time being. Culturally, they’re bankrupt with the violence of their deeds and the depravity of their words demonstrating it daily. They’re a pathetic lot–trampled under foot by the power of the ballot box–who are spiraling toward an ignoble demise brought about by their own self-destructive behaviors and rhetoric.

For liberty-minded conservatives and even libertarians who aren’t in the throes of full-blown meltdown, we have done an incredible amount of damage to the faltering Democratic Party and the Left in general. We have superior ideas such as school choice and right to work. We have free market capitalism and the Constitution. At this point in the struggle against the pernicious forces of postmodernism, any further forays into the realm of doing head-to-head mental combat with the Left is not much more than kicking them while they’re down.

Of course, they claim that they’re the resistance, and in their deluded minds, they see themselves as righteous paragons of the highest virtue. They see people as members of groups instead of individuals, and it is their virtuous duty to defend the marginal and disenfranchised. To the postmodernist, there is no such thing as an individual. There are only categories and subcategories used to cluster together broad and narrow swaths of arbitrary demographics.

To the Left, “resistance” doesn’t mean winning hearts and minds because they would need a morally and intellectually preferable position to their opponents. However, the Left makes no case for their beliefs. They merely presuppose the validity of their delusions and shout down or violently assault anyone who dares to differ with them in public. You cannot reason someone out of an unreasonable presupposition, so conservatives and libertarians would be wise to not even waste their time.

Another trap would be to follow their lead and exchange violence for violence. This is perfectly acceptable if a leftist violates the non-aggression principle and initiates force against you, but only as a last resort. The first instinct of any liberty-minded individual should always be to cherish the right to be wrong, for ourselves and for those whose perspective on the world is perverse. When violence is the first resort, it looks like a deranged lunatic attempting a mass assassination of his political opponents at a baseball practice.

Don’t be that guy.

The best thing we can do is to just ignore them, as difficult as that may be sometimes. They are in the process of relegating themselves to irrelevancy, and they certainly don’t need any more publicity from the Right. The violence of ANTIFA and other militant organizations will continue to discredit the entirety of the Left in the eyes of ordinary Americans, who may have voted Democrat in the past, but will likely reconsider after witnessing the fiendish brutality of these leftist cowards in the streets.

When working class citizens look to Washington, D.C. for a respite from the psychotic economic cruelty of our interventionist government, they will see two things: On the Left, they’ll see a party obsessed with identity politics and conspiracy theories about Russia; on the Right, they’ll see a president who loves America and is seeking out new opportunities for the forgotten men and women of the United States everyday. You may not agree with Trump on everything. Hell, you may not agree with him on anything, but the Right is talking the talk and walking the walk that won huge electoral gains in 2010, 2014, and 2016. It is what will most likely keep them in power after the 2018 midterm elections.

So this is what the Right needs to do: Keep smiling, keep winning, keep talking about the economy, jobs, fair trade, improving education, fixing immigration, and protecting the borders. Be happy warriors and ignore the enemy. If they aren’t defeated already, they will find a way to do it to themselves. Maintain your optimism. Maintain your hope. Hearts weary of our nation’s disgraceful political discourse will be lifted by our successes, and those will come if we remain righteous and focused intently upon what is important.

Fix your mind daily on courage, confidence, and success. Believe in America and believe in your fellow Americans. Be better than the postmodern Left. In the wake of the shooting at the congressional baseball practice, even Ted Nugent rejected previous remarks he made regarding Obama that were unacceptable in a civil society. It was a stunning about-face for someone so strident in his beliefs, most of which are pure and laudable. By doing so, Nugent demonstrated that he reserves for himself the right to be smarter and more compassionate today than he was yesterday. If he can learn this lesson and apply it in his life, perhaps even the postmodernists, ANTIFA communists, and other violent extremists can learn as well.

Ignore the hate, and focus on optimism. Lead by example. For myself and for all of us affiliated with the conservative and libertarian brands, we must re-write the rules of our national political discourse. The horrific attempt on the life of Congressman Scalise is a wake-up call. It’s an opportunity, paid for at great cost, for everyone on all sides of the political aisle to rise above the worst impulses of our shared humanity.

There’s hope to be found for all of us.