Here in these United States, most of us take for granted that our individual rights, our natural rights, including the rights to liberty and property, will always be in place. Most of us expect that these rights are ours at birth and that our Constitution prevents any government or, for that matter, anyone else, from interfering with those rights. We also take it as a matter of fact that these rights are not granted by government; but rather that government is forbidden to infringe upon them.
But there's no guarantee that things will stay this way. The United States has, for 250 years, operated with these principles, and the Constitution, for 239 years, has described specific rights that the government may not touch. But through most of history, things haven't been like that.
Which brings me to Europe - specifically, right now, France, Spain, and Italy, most notably, where major cities have literally been on fire. The rioting and looting, as we have covered here at RedState, are led by far-left agitators, mostly youths, and supported by the waves of third-world "migrants" that the governments of those countries have allowed in. There have, very likely, been millions in damage done, historic buildings burned, public monuments defaced.
Which begs the question: Could this happen here? Could the United States explode, the way France has? Could the same witch's brew of third-world "migrants" and the far left arise here? It's happening in France. It's happening in Spain. What about the United States?
There's only one possible answer: Of course it could.
Our upcoming midterm elections will be, as I have been saying and writing for months, the most consequential and the most hotly contested elections in living memory. The left is going into this expecting to win the House of Representatives and the Senate. Fueled by Trump Derangement Syndrome, the left is fired up to vote, to overturn everything that has happened in the last two and a half years, to throw open the borders, stack the Supreme Court, and start the greatest nation in human history on a slide to socialism.
But what if they lose? What if the Republicans manage to hang on to Congress, and thus thwart the left's plans, at least for now?
It would be surprising to not see a repeat of the 2020 "Summer of Love" riots, and in our urban areas, things may devolve to what we are seeing now in Europe.
Nobody should be surprised by this. To some extent, in increasingly permissive Europe, it was inevitable. The vast majority of human history has been one of brutality, oppression and violence. That continued until fairly recently; the late 18th century saw, in Western Europe and the New World, the Enlightenment that led to one small group of people in North America proclaiming the blessings of liberty.
But it’s also true that you can see the endings in the beginnings; just as you can listen to Wagner and hear the roots of modern German death metal, just as you can look at Mozart and Freddie Mercury and see uncanny similarities, you can see a return to elitist brutality in the shouted goals of modern communist agitators:
“Liberty? You’ll have as much liberty as we allow you. Property? It’s only yours after we take what we want to redistribute it to others who haven’t earned it, after skimming off… well, a lot. Individual rights? You have the right to labor on other men’s behalf; the right to submit to the rule of your ‘betters’ for your own d*** ‘good.”
Here's where they go wrong. They forget what kind of people set up those institutions that protect and defend liberty, property, and individual rights. They forget how many people still value them today. They forget to what lengths people who decide they have nothing left to lose will go. Strength, true strength, does not arise from outrage; it arises from work and achievement. Confidence, real confidence, arises from the knowledge you can do things no matter what obstacles others try to put in your way.
They, quite simply, forget what kind of people we are — they forget who they are dealing with: A nation of veterans, of workers, of people who build and create and innovate and, when necessary, fight. We are people whose ancestors walked across a continent, leading a wagon drawn by oxen, with no more than a few sacks of beans, a few flitches of bacon, and a couple of men with muskets to guard their families. Our ancestors stormed Normandy and liberated France. They took Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. We're not about to be deterred or forced into irrelevance by a bunch of gender studies majors.
Here's what should trouble all of us: How much longer will it be before people have had enough, before the counter-protests become counter-attacks? How much longer before the perpetually outraged suddenly, horribly, realize what wages their outrage has wrought? I suspect it won't be too much longer.
The message to those who would tear down those institutions that define civilization – liberty, property, individual rights – I can only offer this warning:
We’re not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with us.
