Politics is no country for old men.
The left likes to lampoon the GOP as a party of grumpy old men. Wrong.
A new generation is rising. The most striking display at the recent CPAC was a barrage balloon emblazoned with the words War On Youth. It was lofted over one of the most popular booths there Young Americans for Liberty.
A new generation is rising fast. It is not grumpy. It is however militant for liberty and justice for all.
The left is caught unawares. As usual the left … mesmerized by MSNBC (by far the smallest cable news" network) … follows only its own propaganda. It is caught in its own house of mirrors. The world is better off letting the left reside in its solipsistic Selfieland. Annoying as they can be leaving them marooned there we better can contain the damage they would visit upon the nave and the innocent.
Back here in America the kids are fast rising on the right. High time. One of the best of the enfantes terrible is rising multimedia star Steve Deace. Deace now has set forth a new dispensation to guide the new generation: Rules for Patriots: How Conservatives Can Win Again.
Therein Deace recurrently presents the theme of Never Trust Republicrats." Hello Urban Dictionary? Deace defines Republicrat a word he may have coined as that…
segment of the American ruling class pretending to be conservatives by paying lip service to conservative principles and camouflaging themselves in patriotic imagery. Often confused with RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) but Republicrats are far more dangerous because theyve learned to campaign on conservative talking points. … Once in office the record of the Republicrat is virtually indistinguishable from the Democrats regardless of the rhetoric either because of cowardice deception or a combination of both.Deaces young militant spunk exemplifies the new generation of conservative (and Republican) leaders. That spunk is revitalizing both the conservative movement and the GOP. The Constitution declares one of its leading purposes to be to secure the Blessings of Liberty for ourselves and our Posterity." Finally after extracting themselves from Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto our Posterity is showing up. High time kids. Glad to have you responding to a real call of duty. Youll find ample Bouncing Betties in politics. Trust me. Will we soon be seeing the kids wearing sweatshirts of Deace in a beret? Guerrillero Heroico anyone? The kids are a little too respectful of their elderly elders to go handing gold watches to us or checking us into assisted living facilities. Still we Reaganites (and the few surviving antediluvian Goldwaterians) are receding into History our job mostly done. A new generation is rising and taking charge on various fronts from political to tactical to policy. Deace is playing To Arms for the new generation not Taps for us geezers. (If the rising generation is paying attention though Deace sure enough will be playing Taps for the already decaying MoveOn.org.) Deace based in the Hawkeye State is something of a legend in presidential politics. He has been called a kingmaker. It would be more accurate to call him a Pretender-breaker." He has proven to be a kind of electoral Chuck Norris lying dressed in camo and heavily armed in the corn fields to teach Republicrat presidential aspirants a harsh lesson. It is unclear whether Deace has counted to infinity (twice) as science tells us has Chuck Norris. Yet Deaces demonstrated power to incite Iowa caucus-goers to expel from the field the odd Republicrat presidential aspirant earns him high regard. Now Deace goes national. We are hearing more from him. He quickly has expanded his AM radio empire to tens of millions of potential listeners. (This columnist has appeared as his guest once or twice.) He recently began writing a weekly op-ed for the Washington Times. And now he has written an important book. Deace presents his call to arms in a powerful playbook Rules for Patriots. It is not for the faint of heart. Clearly (and ambitiously) Rules for Patriots is styled after the great anti-Big-Government radical Saul Alinskys iconic Rules for Radicals. Deaces ten commandments:
Never Trust Republicrats; Never Attack What Youre Not Willing To Kill; Never Accept the Premise Of Your Opponents Argument; Never Surrender The Moral High Ground; Reverse the Premise Of Your Opponents Argument And Use It Against Him; Never Abandon Your Base (Unless They Are Morally Wrong); Define Your Opponents Before They Define Themselves And Define Yourself Before Your Opponent Defines You; Always Make Your Opponents Defend Their Record/ Belief System; Stay On Message; Play Offense.Whether or not these rules will prove as influential as Alinskys 13 tactics and ethic remains to be seen. No question though Deaces Rules are potent. The new generation of leaders inspired by the power of the idea of liberty and justice will be immensely more powerful if they learn these precepts. How fast is the new generation rising? Young Americans for Liberty claims over 160000 young members. And as Jeff Frazee the head of YAL recently wrote to his faithful (including this columnist too old to belong but keeping a finger on the pulse) YAL has hosted 10 State Conventions and trained more than 1300 activists in the last two months! Were building stronger statewide networks and teaching more young people than ever before. Check out the size of the crowds were witnessing in each state!" So much for the leftish caricature of conservatives as grumpy old men. Frazee would do his recruits a great service by getting Rules for Patriots into their hands. The Leadership Institute which touches millions of young people has a ready-made field manual here. Maybe FreedomWorks should pair Rules for Patriots with the thousands of copies of Rules for Radicals it is said to distribute. And hello free-thinking liberty-loving GenerationOpportunity.org! The generational turnover of leadership is not limited to the conservative movement. Leading GOP prospective Republican 2016 presidential candidates Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) are respectively age 51 43 and 42. Rand Paul a relatively elder statesman of this cohort routinely gets standing ovations on college campuses. Scott Walker Chris Christie and Paul Ryan also are comparably youthful. And practically every conservatives first choice for 2016 vice presidential candidate Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) is a youthful 45. Deace at his radical best concludes his Rules with the most existentially important insight behind political transformation. It is this: we the people have the power. It is up to us to exercise it. As Alinsky before Deace once captured it in Rules for Radicals: Even freedom as a gift is deficient in dignity…." Dignity means the quality of being worthy of respect." Deace in Rules for Patriots nails it:
Barack Obama is correct about one thing. We are the people weve been waiting for. Change for the better is not going to come from the top-down beginning in Washington D.C. Change is only going to come from the bottom up when we in the grassroots get mad enough to make it happen. … The system is counting on our complacency. And if were being honest we have to admit to ourselves it has every reason to. But weve always been the ones in charge. Weve always out-numbered them. Weve just been unwilling to act like it. Now is the time for that action.Liberty does not grow on trellises. Liberty proceeds from dignity. Since we value liberty we must take a stand to create liberty. In the War on Youth" the youth are striking back. Welcome our Posterity to the unending crusade to secure the Blessings of Liberty.