Redstate

Posted at 9:56am on May 30, 2008 Yonder stands your orphan,with his gun.

By Paul J Cella

Men who have forgotten more about the earthy rough-n-tumble of politics than I shall ever know assure me that the device of “email blasts” — occasional notifications, sent out to a self-selected list, of the need for action on specific issues of consequence — is a highly useful one. “We're already having an impact with our Redstate Action Emails,” one of these political savants tells me. “But the bigger the list, the more impact we have.”

It has long been a lament of political operatives that Conservatives, traditionalists, libertarians, reactionaries, populists — all the raucous panoply of the American Right — are peculiarly resistant to the kind of organization that lends itself to success in democratic politics. Some of the reasons for this are plain enough: Conservatives are more likely than Liberals to be busy with private life — families, businesses, churches — and to hold public life in a certain disdain. They are much better at stopping bad things, than they are at organizing to achieve good things. But all this is only true as a generality. In specific cases it does not apply; and I venture to speculate that there are quite a few Conservatives out there who, though busy indeed, would not be averse to occasional activism which is focused and effective. Even the rough-n-tumble of politics, and all its frustrations and indignities, may now and then be necessary to vindicate a just cause.

The fact is — whatever we may think of the GOP’s failings — we face the real possibility of a party winning control of both the Legislative and the Executive branches, which, to saying nothing more, does not inspire confidence as to its judgment, its patriotism, its fortitude in the face of the Republic’s enemies. Very likely Conservatives are going to be called on again to do what they are genuinely good at: stopping bad things— resisting folly, fraud and utopian delusion.

Take heart, friend: this we can do. Contemplate the noble work that a disparate coalition of Conservatives has accomplished, in the teeth of the zealous craving of the elites of virtually every sector of our society, against the project to dispossess America by another massive, disingenuously promoted immigration amnesty. We have triumphed, many times. But the other side is regrouping, and shall hurl themselves against our ramparts again soon enough.

With all that in mind, I invite you to sign up for the Redstate Action Email list. There is no cause for despair, but there is cause for alarm. My language may be extravagant and antiquated, even comical; but the future of the Republic is no laughing matter. If by this small effort of organization we can do our part to secure that future from Socialism, from Degeneracy, from Jihad and Sharia, and a dozen other menaces, we shall have done well.

We shall have avoided the taunt that the Left is preparing for us — a taunt which, though it misuses the material, would heap scorn upon us with the famous lines of Bob Dylan:

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