This Post is Not About Rush…
This is not a post about Rush…or how I feel about his choice of words when describing sex activist Sandra Fluke. It’s not even a post about Sandra Fluke. It’s not about birth control, or sex, or dirty Democrat tricks or hypocrisy.
This is a post about narrative and freedom. This is a post about how important each of those concepts is to the other, and how the left-wing extremists in this country use one to usurp the other.
A couple of weeks ago the movement toward common sense got a big boost from the revelation that the Obama regime wanted to force Catholic charities to provide birth control (in all it’s forms, including abortive medications) even though it flies directly in the face of their religious preferences and freedoms. Americans were rightfully outraged. The President announced a “compromise” that was even more insulting than the original premise, as it was based on the assumption that Americans are too stupid to notice that it really was not a “compromise” at all, but simply a shifting of balance. We were fired up.
Enter the Democrat spin machine. They knew what they were doing. They’ve been setting this up since George Stephanopolous asked Mitt Romney about banning contraceptives. They know they cannot win on the issues, so they had to return to the first page in their worn, tattered playbook Republicans hate women (gays, Blacks, minorities, clean air, clean water, puppies, etc). They sent in a 30 yr old activist to shift the debate from religious freedom to women’s “health”. Republicans fell for the tactic hook, line and sinker, getting sucked into a debate about sluts and sex while abandoning the real issue of freedom and government intrusion.
The Democrats have had decades to master the tactics of controlling the narrative. While Conservatives have tried to remain above the fray and pettiness the Democrats have continued to lie and misrepresent, manipulate the media. We haven’t been able to bring ourselves to get our hands dirty once in a while in order to defend what we know to be right. You see, the Democrats know what we have been so very slow to learn – the freedoms that Americans fight so hard to protect are directly related to the narrative used to describe those freedoms. If they can change the tone of the conversation, they can convince Americans to acquiesce the things that are most precious to them-coincidentally those things also happen to stand in the way of the extreme left-wing having control over our lives; things like individual choices, accountability, freedom to earn and spend as we see fit, etc. If the extremists can convince the public that Republicans hate women and want to control their bodies, they will eventually become the ones who “control” citizens and the choices they can or cannot make. If the extremists can convince the public that Republicans are racists, they can “control” the citizenry by persuading them to enact/enforce hate crime laws that become overwhelmingly oppressive and controlling. See where I’m going with this?
The narrative is key. The looney left knows that. Andrew Breitbart knew that, and it is what made him such terrifying force on the right to be reckoned with. We’ve allowed the Democrat spin machine to win the narrative on this issue. With the tragic, devastating loss of Andrew Breitbart this past week, it’s been difficult to wrestle it back. But fight we must.
Today Rush Limbaugh made a second apology to activist Sandra Fluke. I’m not naive enough to believe that it will be enough to call off the media dogs, but I hope it will be enough to help conservatives move on from this pointless argument and refocus their attention. Breitbart.com is rolling out a new campaign and new site design this week. Breitbart’s parting shot was the promise of video from Obama’s college days that would help in framing the picture we have been offered so far of our Commander-in-Chief. That should go a long way to changing the focus in this fight. But we can’t stop there. We have to continue to pull back focus to what is really important. The extremists on the left win if they continue to lead us into fights about sex and women. It’s the wrong battleground and we will get pummeled every time. We need to remind people about what religious liberty means and how it affects every American, even if you aren’t religious at all. We need to remind people that the price of gas is higher than it’s ever been and how that affects every aspect of American life. We need to keep sounding the alarm on the outrageous spending that has left us at the precipice of a total collapse as a nation. This has been a strong distraction, but not devasting…if we turn course right now.
Stay on message. Stay focused. Lead the charge in truth, be it on your blog, your YouTube channel, in your home, your church, your Facebook page..anywhere that you engage others in debate in conversation. When we get sucked into defending against the lies of left-wing extremists we will lose that game nearly every time. If we stand for truth, if we stand for justice, if we stand for conviction we win. We win. We win. Let’s win.
crossposted at kiradavis.net
Applause, applause! Standing ovation! Can you here the applause, Kira?! This op-ed won’t win the Pulitzer or Nobel, (they only give those to liberal wackos these days) but I love it any way! Good job!