OPINION:
With scenes of Jan. 6 predictably flashing on the screen, President Biden announced his run for reelection, labeling those who disagree with him as extremists who fuel hatred and threaten American democracy.
We don’t live in a democracy, of course. We live in a republic if we can keep it, as Benjamin Franklin admonished. One of the central tactics of the left is using phony threats to a fictitious American democracy as a way to slowly persuade Americans to accept authoritarianism. It’s a move right out of the Communist Party playbook.
Mr. Biden’s campaign will advance that strategy through a relentless war on civility that defines our politics today.
Mr. Biden has repeatedly demonstrated that he cares little about the unity he professes to want for America. The only way to continue to remake this country in the image the left envisions is to divide us further, whatever the cost.
Civility, however, is a salve for a wounded nation. It is kryptonite to the left. Conservatives and all Americans who care about this country should use it as a shield and a sword.
For nearly a century, authoritarians in this country, either Americans or foreign agitators, have attempted to destroy the basic unity and civility that have made this nation strong.
They have attempted to justify violence and create speech codes. They’ve intentionally stoked racial and economic division while establishing an elite corporate and government class that controls the levers of money and information. They’ve sought to make more middle-class Americans dependent or financially unstable.
Remember, the left wants as many people as miserable as possible. Miserable people are more malleable.
Republicans have allowed leftists to get away with being the self-appointed guardians of the “soul of America” and the true defenders of our so-called democracy. The intentions of one party and the ignorance of the other have slowly heightened an overall sense of tension among the American population.
Perhaps you feel it. Perhaps for the first time in your lifetime, you believe the country is careening radically off course. You watch the news and get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach that a tipping point has been reached from which there is no return.
The left’s war on civility is emboldening Marxism. It is also depressing the spirit of those who know this direction for America is destructive. That feeling of being overwhelmed by the bad news, the violence and the hostility is intended to elicit a sense of powerlessness and acquiescence.
It’s also intended to make more people on the right lash out. Remember the grave mistake of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Pro-freedom Americans are being pulled into unfamiliar territory. They’re feeling more anxious about the future of the country. They barely recognize President Biden’s America.
But those feelings cannot be allowed to lead to an abandoning of the civility that is under attack precisely because it is so vital to our strength.
Civility works. Recently, a student at Yale University penned an op-ed that sums up how resisting the left’s “scream culture” can at once be an effective counter and expose their authoritarian viewpoints.
The student complained that a group of pro-life students had set up a table to invite what she lamented were polite, logical debates about the rights of the unborn. She wrote: “Their smug civility was infuriating; their invitations for debate, inflammatory. I could barely seethe out my opinion. … The discussion never should have been entertained, because simply opening space for this ‘logical, respectful’ debate itself is a threat to human rights. … Some arguments … are dangerous for even existing.”
Tucker Carlson said last week, before he was unceremoniously jettisoned from Fox News, that we should take a few minutes each day to pray for America. He’s right.
Those who care about the future of American freedom should pray for the strength to counter those in our midst with fidelity to the grace and civility that is poison to the leftists who seek to transform the country.
President Abraham Lincoln’s quote “Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it” has a whole new meaning today.
Staying true to that American civility exhibited by our Founders is a key ideological weapon against authoritarians who seek to divide and conquer.
We cannot lose sight of who we really are. If conservatives become unrecognizable, our nation most certainly will as well — and there will be no turning back.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV, an author and a former Bush administration official.
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