On Sat, Apr 29, 2023 at 9:03 AM, John Dunn jddmdjd@web-access.net wrote:
This is a frighteningly accurate description of the weakness and the failures of traditional Western Civ morality and culture--Lippincott lays it at the feet of weakling churches, and church goers. I think there is a grain of truth in that--and the culture wars have been lost in extraordinary fashion by the people so he says we need to focus in politics on immigration, law and order, getting out of Ukraine, tariffs, existential issues for national survival. Good luck with that--the winners in the culture wars have their agenda on existential agendas and they play for keeps--they want to destroy America as it was founded and set up a totalitarian lefitst statist oligarchy run tyranny.
Lippincott doesn’t get the fact that Breitbart was right--politics is downstream from culture. Our cultural demise has set up our political/economic/existential demise. Statist socialism/fascism is a religion, a culture, but it is grafted onto a political civic agenda that is dominated by a true believer cult of leftists.
He says we are in an existential battle and the cultural disputes have been won by the left. I think he’s wrong a bit and right a bit--but can’t we fight cultural battles and existential battles too--aren’t they linked?
His most important point is that traditional civil America is weak kneed and can’t handle the aggressive left. Won’t call a spade a spade--tolerant--in other words FEMINIZED. Consider that. Lippincott is a marine. Maybe you knew that.
https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/27/conservatives-lost-the-culture-war-and-the-trump-agenda-is-the-only-path-forward/
John Dale Dunn MD JD

On Apr 29, 2023, at 11:25 AM, Joseph Bast JosephBast@protonmail.com wrote:
John,
Thanks for the link to Josiah Lippencott’s essay and your comments, below.
Steve Welcenbach, consider reprinting Lippencott’s article in Reality News?
I agree entirely with Lippincott, and contrary to what John writes, I think he definitely DOES understand that politics is downstream of culture.
Having lost the culture war, we will lose elections at every level of government UNLESS we choose a narrow set of issues, as did Donald Trump, and win DESPITE being counter-cultural. Even then, our victories will be small and short-lived, so we need to use our small windows of opportunity to win battles over what Lippincott correctly calls “existential” issues.
This line from Lippincott is especially good: “Political power doesn’t flow from scoring debate points in the “free marketplace of ideas.” It comes from the willingness to impose one’s beliefs on others and possessing the resources to do so.” Having spent my entire professional life in the “free marketplace of ideas,” I delivered a hundred speeches, at least, denying this. Now, I have seen all my little victories swept away in just two years of a senile Democrat presidency. My “theory of social change” was wrong. I may even have been a “useful idiot.”
I just finished reading a little booklet titled “This is the John Birch Society,” by G. Edward Griffin, published by the JBS in 1974. The booklet may have taken the place of “The Blue Book” as the outreach publication of the JBS at that time. Written nearly 50 years ago, it nonetheless reads as if it were written today. It stresses that while the commies = < 2% of the population, they were taking over institution after institution because they were tightly organized and perfectly willing to “impose their beliefs on others,” using secrecy, deceit, deadly force, and other unethical means when necessary.
Preserving liberty is just a hobby for most libertarians and conservatives, whereas socialism was a part-time job at least, and a form of warfare more often, for most communists. See who won
Polls tell us popular support for religion, patriotism, and capitalism are all in steep decline. The “march through the institutions” described by JBS and others at the time is complete now, and as a result the left has used its political power to brainwash the public and cast us into the minority. If we are to be effective advocates for liberty, we need to adopt the tactics of an unpopular minority and abandon those of a complacent and accommodationist majority.
So yeah, unless more of us copy some of the tactics of the left, I think we’re doomed.
Joe, Wisconsin Patriots Toolbox

On Mon, May 1, 2023 at 10:48:51 AM CDT To: Joseph Bast JosephBast@protonmail.com
BTW everyone,
I happen to agree with Lippencott’s core argument and also know that the culture war needs to be fought in families, neighborhoods and communities not in national capitols. He’s correct in that the church hierarchy waved the white flag long ago and in fact joined the enemy in many cases. That is changing and an earthquake within Christianity will be felt shortly across the world.
Great find and recommendation Joe!
Steve Welcenbach