If you really think about it, of all the social drivers in history the concept of freedom is the most powerful and fascinating. There are many observable objective truths in the world and it’s always important to recognize them, but the idea of freedom is rarer because it is a universal subjective truth. Meaning, it exists inherently in the majority of individuals. Most of us share this experience but there is no microscope or telescope in existence that can observe that experience. We just have to trust it, or perhaps, have faith.

We can only see the aftereffects of the human experience of freedom in the great upheavals that occur when our societies become too rigid, too controlled and too authoritarian. Some will argue that tyrants have no concept of freedom, and this debunks the notion that it’s an inherent psychological quality, but this is a misconception. Many tyrants love freedom, but only for themselves. Like any obsessive compulsive, when the average tyrant sees free movement within the rest of society all he sees is chaos that needs to be micro-managed. He is so mentally unhinged by the existence of independent activity that he is compelled to crush it and impose his brand of “order.”

If you want to understand the thinking process of the political left today, this is where you need to start. They believe only certain special people deserve to have freedom, and they are of course part of that group. The rest of us can’t be trusted with freedom because we “think the wrong way,” and so we need to be corralled and fenced in.

This is not to say that some structure within society is wrong, it can be a good thing, but not when it is imposed by an elitist minority of psychopathic people. There will never be any justice within such a system, no fairness and no true progress. Authoritarianism is the opposite of progress; it is the antithesis, and yet these people call themselves “progressives.”

Freedom requires boldness and courage because it demands personal responsibility. When you are free to make your own decisions, you are also free to fail, and only you can be blamed for your own failures. This is a terrifying notion for most leftists and collectivists because they believe that they are owed a positive outcome regardless of their actions or merit. They believe it is their “right” to be taken care of by others if they are incapable of taking care of themselves, but this is not equality, this is “equity.” This is stealing wealth and opportunity from more worthy people in order to artificially inflate others that put in little or no effort.

Meritocracy is the most equal system in existence because it is freedom based; equality of opportunity is the epitome of fairness, equity of outcome is the epitome of injustice.

Leftists hyperfocus on race, skin color and sexual identity for this very reason. They are desperately searching for a way to circumvent the obstacles of freedom and merit. If everything in society is based on race, then personal accomplishment and responsibility are no longer relevant. In the mind of the leftist, if certain people are inherently oppressed and others are inherently oppressive, then equality of opportunity is not enough, and equity of outcome must be enforced. Making everything about victim group status thereby erases freedom, and meritocracy cannot function. All a person needs to do is say “I am oppressed; therefore I am entitled,” and if they meet the leftist criteria then they are handed a livelihood or success simply because they exist.

I saw a commercial on YouTube yesterday for yet another social justice documentary about “white people” and our supposed reign of dominance over the world and I could not help but think this entire narrative is nothing more than a cowardly attempt to deflect responsibility. Yes, it’s also an attempt to divide and conquer western nations but how many people are actually watching these race hyped movies and TV shows un-ironically?  According to the stats and reviews, there aren’t very many.

Nearly every claim made in these productions is based on previously debunked social justice misrepresentations of history from books like White Fragility and movements like the 1619 Project. If you really want to get an accurate representation of U.S. history in particular and the limited role slavery played in terms of modern social outcomes, then I suggest reading the works of Thomas Sowell, a black American economist and historian with no bias in his analysis.

Slavery is a mere footnote in our past, not an all-encompassing determinant of our present and future as leftists like to argue. There is no legal slavery in America today, and there is no one alive today in America who has experienced race-based slavery or that has been affected by it. Slavery and racism were far more pervasive in nations of brown and black people in history. In fact, some of these countries still engage in various forms of slavery today. White people are not the problem, people who disrespect the benefits of freedom are the problem regardless of their skin color.

What we need to understand is that race and oppression propaganda are not really rooted in race and oppression. They appeal to a certain subset of our population because it offers them a way to rationalize their lack of merit and their fears of freedom and consequence. If you can blame white people for all your problems and have this be believed, then the temptation to fail is increased because there are no consequences. Why work hard to make something of yourself if you can do nothing and be rewarded for it?

By extension, the racism blame game is alluring to many in society because it can be used as a weapon to harm political enemies. When leftists complain about the evils of “white people” what they are really talking about are the “evils” of conservatives and others that do not conform to the leftist ideology. They rarely come right out and say it, but one day the documentaries will switch from Dear White People to Dear Conservatives. The fight has never been about race, it’s always been about ideals and principles and eliminating the ideals leftists do not like. This is why they are consistently hostile to anyone conservative, even more so if that person is black.

The leftist agenda is all about diminishing freedom and societal respect for freedom by whatever means necessary. Everything is about management, everything is about centralization, everything is about control. Conservatives and many moderates stand in direct opposition to this.

The most common and idiotic argument I hear among newbies in the liberty movement is when they try to explain away leftist actions by bringing up the “false left/right paradigm.” These people don’t understand what this actually means. The left/right paradigm exists at the top of the social and political pyramid; top political and corporate leaders pretend to be in one party or the other while in reality they are all working together and implementing the same policies. At the bottom of the pyramid among regular people, there is no false left/right paradigm. There is a very real left/right division.

This is undeniable now in the face of the COVID and vaccine mandates. For the longest time, I have heard people claim that when the push for authoritarianism in the U.S. arrived many conservatives would simply go along with it. Yet, today numerous conservative red states are fighting the mandates tooth and nail while leftist blue states are being suffocated by them. In fact, red states have acted as beacons of rebellion for the world. Without them, it is unlikely that the Supreme Court would have dropped Biden’s federal vax mandates. The threat of war is tangible if such mandates are ever instituted, and the Supreme Court knows this.

I have had people ask me in the past why there haven’t been any major actions on the part of conservatives in the U.S. against the mandates and I have to break it to them that there are no mandates in conservative places and there haven’t been for at least 18 months. None. Zero. Zip. We don’t need to protest because we stopped the mandates before they could take hold.

As I have said from the very beginning of the pandemic response, if even a handful of places can remain free from COVID controls they will inspire people around the world and act as proof that the mandates are pointless. Today, as America continues to beat back the COVID agenda there are mass protests in Canada and the UK has cut all COVID restrictions. Freedom spreads like wildfire once the flames are sparked.

Leftists hate this. COVID, like the fantasy of “institutional racism,” is a tempting vehicle to forward their agenda. If you can convince the public that they are a threat to themselves and each other, then it is a small matter to convince them that government needs to step in and protect society from itself and from notions of freedom that might put society at risk. Without COVID as a foil, the political left has nothing, and so they continue to perpetuate the lie that the virus is an imminent threat to the majority of people when the average Infection Fatality Rate is a tiny 0.27 percent.

The real question here is when a group of people hate freedom this much how is it possible to coexist with them? The answer is we can’t.

Anyone who defends merit and liberty will always be a target of those that despise merit and liberty. They will never stop. They will forever be looking for ways to undermine both. If COVID mandates and race-based propaganda don’t work then they will search for another tool to do the job. If one can say anything “good” about leftists, it’s that they do not give up even when they are clearly outmatched and beaten. The problem is that this dedication to their cause is not based on love or passion, but in zealotry. They are jihadists, and nothing, not logic, not facts, not reason nor moral principle will convince them of the error of their ways.

So, what is the solution? One could suggest that we make it easy for them to leave. After all, if they hate America as much as they say they do then why are they still living here? Probably because most other places in the world are abysmal in comparison. But if we keep them around, they will drag the country down to the same level. It’s a conundrum. Beyond that, what country would want them? Social justice is seen as a cancer in many countries and an injection of leftist migrants would be a disaster for them economically and socially, even in nations that claim to support leftist models.

Most leftists would also refuse to take the opportunity to leave because they believe they should decide the path of America’s future. As much as they hate this country, they see themselves as its saviors.

Then there is the option of internal separation, which I see as preferable. This is already happening in many forms as conservatives and moderates from blue states relocate by the millions to red states. In my home state of Montana, there has been an influx of migrants from blue states and every single new person I have talked to is a conservative/prepper whose family lived in a blue state for generations, and they finally got fed up. The vast majority of people moving are conservative-minded and they are congregating in the red states.

Why not carry this process forward to its natural conclusion? Red states break from blue states and red counties break from blue state control and we live our lives the way we see fit. Let the leftists continue with their draconian economic and political models and see how well that goes for them. I guarantee they will be in financial ruins within a decade (the list of most indebted places in the country is dominated by blue states) and they will be begging to return to a union with red states (except for the zealots, which would lose influence as they continue to fail).

But this will not happen peacefully because, again, leftists cannot tolerate free activity. Their OCD will not allow them to be content with living in a collectivist state of their own; all states must be collectivist before they are satisfied. People are property to them; property of the collective, and people who are property cannot be allowed to make decisions without oversight.

Unfortunately, the only path this leaves is one of violence. Leftists will have to be forced out of positions of power and influence and removed from our culture like a cancerous tumor is cut from the body to save the body. I don’t think this should be the obvious choice. I don’t want it to be. What I am saying is, leftists and their partners in government and the corporate world will force the issue because they cannot help it; like the story of the scorpion and the frog, it’s in their nature to destroy.

They will continue to push and steal and threaten and abuse until they get the inevitable response of a punch in the teeth. Then, they will play the victim like they always do. This crying and gaslighting will have to be ignored. In the end, these people cannot be tolerated in a free culture and their means of harming and enslaving others must be removed, one way or another.

Brandon Smith