What we can learn from the American Revolution in South Carolina
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Bookworm: Reason to hope in the war for America’s soul
…[B]e of good cheer. It’s precisely because things look so bad that I’m pretty sure they’re going to get better.
In 1776, the British attempted to take Charleston, the richest city in the colonies, but without success. After that, they focused on the northern colonies. During this time, when the battles were fought elsewhere, South Carolina’s loyalties were split in roughly three ways — Patriots, Loyalists, and the “I don’t care; just leave me alone” people.
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To simplify: What turned the tide of war in the Patriots’ favor was that, with the war on South Carolina soil and the British making unreasonable demands on South Carolinians, the “I don’t care” people suddenly realized that they did care. While the British had hoped to push neutral people into the loyalist camp, their extremist actions had the opposite effect, causing people to abandon their neutrality (or lukewarm loyalty to Britain) and, instead, to become ardent patriots. It was the ordinary people’s change of heart that destroyed the British Army, leading to Cornwallis’s surrender.
I think we’re at that same point in America in 2022. For a long time, politically aware people have been split roughly 50-50, with an increasingly hard left (politically, socially, and economically) on one side and conservative constitutionalists on the other side. However, for decades now, there has also been a huge cohort of Americans who don’t care. They just want to be left alone. They don’t pay attention to issues, they don’t get politically involved, and they don’t vote. Many of them hew slightly conservative but, for that very reason, just want to keep their heads down and get on with their lives.
Meanwhile, for the last 16 months, leftists have seen themselves in the catbird seat. They own Congress, the White House, the administrative state, the news media, social media, search engines, and Hollywood. They no longer feel the need either to hide their teeth or to be persuasive. Instead, they’re letting it all hang out: Economic chaos, rising crime, an open border, totalitarian health edicts, raging energy costs, censorship, empty shelves, billions for Ukraine and none for America, ugly racial obsessions and, most of all, a full-court press against America’s children in the name of the LGBTQ++ movement.
Americans are noticing. For example, thanks to Taylor Lorenz at the Washington Post, who tried to dox Libs of Tik Tok into oblivion, Libs of Tik Tok has now doubled her reach, giving growing numbers of Americans a front-row seat on the gender madness in America’s classrooms and other American institutions.
For the leftists to push these things on America — to double down on pushing these things — is the equivalent of the British in South Carolina trying to force backcountry people to take oaths of loyalty to England and then be prepared to enter battle on the side of the British. And here’s where my optimism comes in: When the “I don’t care” crowd finally takes a side, that group is what tips the balance in a fight.
