The rules for the Cold Civil War

They're the same as the rules for the Cold War.  Kevin brings a neat turn of phrase:

You see, there are three groups involved in this Cold Civil War: the political Left, which is heavily engaged; the political Right, which hasn't recognized it as a war for the soul of the nation, and (I would hazard to guess) the Tea Party people who finally have. This isn't a blanket statement, there are surely people on the political Left (the useful idiots) who don't understand what "fundamentally transforming" the nation really means. There are those few on the political Right who do understand what it is, and there are Tea Party members who are completely clueless other than understanding that something is very, very wrong.

I think his analogy is perfect.  The Cold War - and make no mistake, a war it was; the graveyards a full of the casualties of that strange, twilight conflict - saw a similar mix: true revolutionaries, their fellow travelers, those who recognized the peril (Churchill, and later Reagan) and who were excoriated by all Right Thinking People™ and the go-along-to-get-along types.

I first really payed attention to politics with Watergate.  I was about the same age as #2 Son is now (16).  I remember Detente, and how the Other Side abused our flexibility.  I remember the hysterical reaction to Reagan's we're going to win, and they're going to lose goal.  I remember Carl Sagan pushing Nuclear Winter.  I remember The Day After Tomorrow.  I remember "smart" people making jokes about "Ronald Ray Gun" after the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

I remember "smart" people saying that there were people just like us in the USSR, it's just the tactical differences in careers that separated us.  I remember hearing that the Germans, at least could "make Communism work", and that its failures were the result of wreckers and the CIA.  I remember Solidarity, and how trade unions stood up to government bullies.  I remember the speech at the Brandenburg Gate: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.  I remember sitting in a sunny piazza in Florence in 1989, reading the International Herald Tribune and being dumbstruck that the Commies were letting their people flee to the West, rather than shooting them all down.

I remember the Usual Suspects™ saying that none of it had been a big deal, that everyone knew that it was all going to end peacefully.  I remember the "end of history".

I remember how the Soviet archives, briefly opened to western scholars, showed without doubt that the Rosenbergs were guilty as sin.  I remember a TV show Angels In America which had Ethel Rosenberg as an angel from heaven, based on a play written only two years after the fall of International Communism.

I remember understanding that some people - maybe most people - will never change their minds, even when shown conclusive proof that they're wrong.  I remember learning that even despite this, that something beats nothing.

But dig this: we won the Cold War.  We won despite the Fifth Column.  We won despite the Media propaganda.  We won because when all the hyperventilating about how senile old Ronnie Reagan is going to get your kids blown up, the American people were still a practical folk.  The lure of being leashed and led by an intellectual elite never sat well, no matter how many times the New York Times editorial board ran a more in sorrow than anger chin tugging Op Ed.

The rules of this new Cold Civil War are exactly the same as the old, unlamented Cold War:

Keep speaking the truth, which is that after taking away the pretty wrappings of the other side, they are about control, not about making anyone better off.

Keep speaking the truth, which is that after taking away the pretty wrappings of the other side, their "Intellectual Elite" is incompetent to a casual viewing and could not implement an actually intelligent policy if it bit them on the hind quarters.

Keep speaking the truth, which is that all these so-called "Smart" types are telling us to do is be more like Europe.  Europe is a mess, with a collapsing economy and explicitly fascist political parties winning seats in legislatures. Keep speaking the truth, which is that each person should be free to choose their own path, to pursue happiness in their own way.  That an Ivy League degree doesn't give someone the moral authority to force someone else to obey.

Keep speaking the truth, which is that the other side's vision is hollow, and a disaster every place it has been tried.  That they aren't smarter than elites in Europe, that they won't avoid the same mistakes that causes the UK's bumbling National Health Service to kill hundreds of thousands of people a year.

Keep speaking the truth, which is that we will wait them out, just like we did the Commies.  The truth is that once the inevitable collapse comes, everyone will have agreed with us that this was inevitable.

Keep speaking the truth, which is that thirty years from now, their ideology which they hold so close will be a whisper of history, forgotten to all but obscure scholars, and interesting only as a footnote.  There's nothing profound here.

The only thing that is inevitable is that this ideology of control - like the many before it - will wither under the weight of the incompetence and hypocrisy of its adherents, and will suddenly be gone as if it had never been.

I've seen this.  I've lived this.  And Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I'll live to see this latest collapse, too.

The only trick, is that we don't give up.  We may only have two pair, but they keep trying - using the dieing, biased media who try to cover up their lies - trying to draw into a busted flush.

Me, I raise Individual Freedom.  I'm all in.