Today he is particularly unhappy. It is his last day at Duke. He was terminated when only three students signed up for his seminar, “Hip Hop Music and American Racism: Voices of Funky Resistance”—and two dropped it before the first class.
Tenure used to protect scholars like me who perhaps did work that challenged the dominant paradigm. The conservatives invaded this safe space and eliminated it.
They ruined the university—they ruined the whole idea of a university as a place where intellectuals like myself were able to think about and write on important academic subjects without having to be “productive” [Professor Windbridge pauses to emphasize the word with air quotes] or to respond to the so-called “needs” of the students.
The conservatives started by cutting funding to academia. They said we weren’t preparing students for the real world. My work is not about getting some privileged white male a job. It’s about building consciousness to the racism, sexism, and homophobia that permeates every facet of society. When student loans were cut by these fascists, suddenly students had to pay more of their own expenses and they started forgoing classes like mine that focused on social justice for ones that could get them employed. Ridiculous!
Pretty soon I was being asked to do online courses, but that cut into my academic studies. I’d been working on my magnum opus, The Male Vagina: Poetry and Dance as a Counterpoint to Phallocentrism, for six years and I needed to devote my time to finishing it, not to teaching students. We had adjuncts for doing that.
Well, when the new dean—a damn conservative!—told us he was ending tenure and we’d have to demonstrate a positive costs/benefits ratio every year to stay on, well, we told him we would all quit.
And that bastard looked at us and said, “Great. Let me help you pack, because for every one of you there are ten other hacks with doctorates in bullshit studies who’d love to have your jobs at half the pay.” He called us “hacks”! Can you imagine?
Well, we stayed, but of course we made that sacrifice only for the students’ sake.
Chapter Twelve: The Conservative Alternative
“We Had Ideas, and the Liberals Hated That”
With the election of a conservative president and a conservative Congress in 2024, conservatives had achieved the goal of every guerrilla movement and assumed real power. Now they would act—sometimes ruthlessly—to not only transition the government back to one of small ends and limited means but to ensure that the left could not seize control again.
The insurgency succeeded because it didn’t limit itself to one narrow sliver of society. Certainly, actions like targeting academia and other liberal institutions were key over the long term, but those were tactics. The strategy, to the extent there was a strategy, was to change the culture, because if you changed the culture you prevented rollback in the institutions.
It was not merely about replacing constitutional conservatives in the top posts in the institutions. It was about creating a culture that defaulted to constitutional conservative values. But doing that meant operating under the radar until they were ready to strike. And then it meant retaking the institutions the Gramscians had overtaken a generation before.
* * *
Tony “Gator” McCoy (Chief Advisor to President Carrie Marlowe)
In the White House with President Marlowe, we intended from day one to make conservative change permanent. Marlowe had us aggressively move to consolidate conservative power by exploiting her legislative majorities both in Congress and the states. We had a lot of work to do undoing the damage—we had to literally revoke thousands of executive orders, fire thousands of bureaucrats, and remake the Supreme Court even as we faced down Iran.
But in the first term we pushed through constitutional amendments to expand gun rights, to eliminate racial distinctions, and to enshrine in law the principle that Americans are individually responsible for their own support—not the government. The Thirtieth, Thirty-First, and Thirty-Second Amendments are her real legacy.
We had come through two decades of hardball against us and we didn’t hesitate to play it ourselves. We could have pretended the prior 16 years didn’t happen—that the left had not eliminated the filibuster, tried to rule by decree, packed the courts, and ignored the Bill of Rights. Some folks wanted us to do that, to return to normal.
But “normal” was not just clearing the slate so as soon as some new liberal Caesar comes along they can do it all over again. No, they changed the rules, and they were going to pay for it. And they did.
I’d be happy to live in a world of handshakes and smiles and bipartisanship, but the liberals killed that unicorn. We drove its horn into their hearts.
* * *
David Chang (Conservative Media Host)
The Thirty-Second Amendment was very simple in its text but earthshaking in its implications for the country and society. It reads:
Each American shall be presumed to be responsible for the financial support of himself or herself, and for his or her dependents, and Congress shall make no law providing for such support for more than a minimal period of no more than three months during their lives, and in modest amounts necessary to preserve life, unless such person has paid into, and is eligible to participate in, a system of social insurance for such support, is truly and demonstrably physically or mentally unable to support himself or herself, or is injured in the service of this Nation.
Upon its ratification (with the final necessary state being Tennessee) on April 2, 2028, the Thirty-Second Amendment completely upended the progressives’ vision of the role of government. The effect of the Thirty-Second Amendment was dramatic. During the second term of the Obama administration, one American in every 6.5 was receiving food stamps. Now, the food stamps program is completely dismantled, as are all cash payments to able-bodied adults. Only Social Security was protected—that would be reformed separately later.
Repealing Obamacare was a big step, but the Thirty-Second Amendment was a true watershed. The Thirty-Second Amendment represented what I like to call a “core argument” because it was something all conservatives could rally around. You could be gay or be uncomfortable with gays, or be a believer or be an atheist, you could like abortion or hate it, but you could all get behind the Thirty-Second.
Now, we had a clear statement that the role of government was not to support its citizens except in the narrowest of circumstances—that this was an individual responsibility. We expect you to work. If you make stupid choices, we expect you to work harder
Progressives wanted to try to give you everything, but they could never give you dignity. That’s what we give you, and we do it by letting you stand on your own two feet. And, of course, we cut out of the budget most everything else that couldn’t be justified under one of the federal government’s enumerated powers in the Constitution.
We didn’t take power for power’s sake. We had ideas, and the liberals hated that.
The federal government today is a fraction of its old size, much cheaper, and since it does so much less there is significantly less opportunity for graft and rent-seeking. Most Americans think this is great. Liberals, of course, think we’re worse than the Nazis.
* * *
Jerome Timms (Republican Congressman)
One of the first things President Marlowe did was sign the minimum mandatory sentences repeal bill, but then she went further and ordered a mass review of all federal drug sentences. She pardoned thousands, including my mom. My mom finally came home after seven years in jail. Our family was back together, but for many other families it was too late. They were broken forever.
Until President Marlowe came along, presidents had rarely used their pardon power, and only after long, bureaucratic investigations. Why take a political risk if you pardon someone who goes and commits another crime? But President Marlowe didn’t care about the risk to her at the polls. She cared about doing what was right. She didn’t just release people willy-nilly—these were nonviolent offenders—but she took a risk no lib
eral ever would to try and put families and communities back together.
Then President Marlowe came to the community, but what I noticed was that she hardly said a thing. She sat in a school auditorium filled with local people and listened. It was supposed to go an hour. She stayed for three, just listening.
Hillary never listened to us. She, and all the liberals, talked at us, like she was our savior there to throw us some crumbs. President Marlowe was humble. Then President Marlowe signed off on school choice and I ended up at a magnet school. I worked my way into Harvard and Harvard Law with a scholarship for poor kids with good grades.
I remember how one day, my mom took the Obama photo off our wall and put up one of President Marlowe.
* * *
Becky O’Hara (Secretary of Education)
Becky O’Hara is cleaning out her office, but unlike her rival during her first school board election race nearly three decades ago, it is because O’Hara was victorious. She’s leaving as the Department of Education itself is closed down, its duties returning to the states where they always belonged.
She points to a framed photo still hanging on the wall of her and the group of parents who took over that suburban Maryland school district about 28 years ago and launched her career as a conservative education reformer.
We were just regular folks, normal Americans, taking an interest in their government. I was a housewife, but the people who ran things thought I was nothing. They thought I didn’t matter. They thought they could just ignore us. They thought we were nothing.
They thought wrong. In America, you’re only nothing if you let yourself be nothing.
* * *
Tamara Hayes Smith (Professor/Activist)
Decades ago there had been a kind of consensus, bipartisan status quo inside the Beltway. There were minor changes at the margins, but both sides generally resisted radical change that would kneecap the other side. Under Obama and Clinton, that changed.
Progressives did not seek to simply beat conservatives in a few elections but to utterly destroy them by using all of their political and cultural power. The constitutional conservatives came into power in the 2020s not knowing any other way to be besides ruthless, and they acted to alter the playing field permanently with aggressive lawmaking, appointing extremely conservative judges, punishing liberal institutions, and even amending the Constitution in dramatic ways.
Conservative were interested in destroying progressivism, and they largely succeeded. Liberals learned that if you try to kill the king, you better succeed.
* * *
Barry Sawyer (Radio Host/Political Prisoner)
One of the first things President Marlowe did after being sworn in was pardon Sawyer and everyone else convicted under the censorship laws. Then the president appointed him to the Fairness Commission—with orders to shut it down.
You should have seen their faces. I was public enemy number one to these bureaucrats one day and the next day I am their boss. There were over 1,000 federal employees at the Fairness Commission, and they would have added several thousand more in the next year if the Democrats had won the election.
I know. I read their planning memos. It was going to be an American Stasi.
They even had a SWAT team—I think pretty much every agency used to—and they carried the same weapons they tried to ban citizens from owning.
I gathered all of the employees together in the cafeteria that first morning after I was confirmed. They were really angry, which I found kind of funny since I was the one who had been in jail for 18 months because of them for saying things the government didn’t approve of.
Anyway, I walked to the front, and they are all looking at me, and I introduced myself. Silence. Then I said, “You’re fired. Pack your personal effects and be out of the building by noon.” Then I walked out.
Of course, I had security there to make sure they didn’t make off with anything incriminating—they tried, though. We found people with papers and files stuck in their clothes. And I had my tech guys turn off the computer system that morning—totally off—so no one could erase anything.
It was good that we took those precautions. The materials we found outlining how the Clinton administration had waged a war on people who exercised their First Amendment rights were some of the most important evidence we offered at the Political Repression Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings.
* * *
Rob Patel (President-Elect)
In changing American culture, conservatives found themselves changing as well. During our discussion, the president-elect was remarkably open about the fact that he has changed many of his views over time.
I didn’t like pot or gay marriage, but I chose not to make those my defining issues and to find common ground with people who felt differently. These let me build larger, stronger coalitions as a congressman and a senator. But it also caused some dissension within our coalition.
You can disagree with people on a few issues and still work with them. I was about 90 percent there with the people who we used to call the “social conservatives” during the Hillary years. I’d say I’m about 95 percent with them now, but that’s partly because they’ve moved my way. For example, the gay marriage fight was huge 30 years ago and it’s completely dead now—it’s irrelevant.
But it wasn’t the social issues that made up the big cultural changes we saw. It was, mostly, the fact that we moved from a society where the expectation was that you were entitled to something to a society where you were expected to earn it for yourself. That was the real central change—a move back toward individual autonomy balanced by individual responsibility. All the other stuff was really just superficial.
* * *
Sister Margaret Feeney (Nun/Religious Rights Activist)
The Catholic Church—and other nonliberal sects—rose up to become major centers of resistance to progressive tyranny. Initially, many Catholics were reluctant to sign on to constitutional conservatism, but then they saw that the alternative was for each group resisting the left to be defeated individually if they did not stand together.
I’d say I was about 65 percent in line with the constitutional conservatives, but the other side was 110 percent against me. I could reason with one and be able to worship God as I saw fit, or with the other I could submit to whatever small bit of religious freedom they deigned to grant me. It was an easy decision.
I still have some heartburn with how focused the constitutional conservatives are on individual action. I think that as a society, we do need to help the needy—I have been doing that for many years. But I began to see the price liberals exacted for doing so.
With them, government was not merely helping people. It was controlling them. Any aid we received at the food kitchen came with strings attached, and those strings always meant liberal government getting into our affairs.
I am much more open to the idea of individual responsibility today. You cannot be free if you are not standing on your own feet—even when someone comes to my food kitchen, they have to hear me preach, then help clean up. That’s the price, and I am not somehow wrong to charge it. Nothing is free.
But when government does it, it’s not something that brings people closer to God. It’s something that makes them bound to the government. It becomes about the power of the state, and we have seen that the state always grows to abuse its power. That’s why I’ve come to believe that government should be as small as possible.
Chapter Thirteen: Progressive Reactionaries
“They Didn’t Let a Little Thing Like the Constitution Stop Them from Trying to Shut Us Up”
They didn’t just surrender. The liberals fought back, using some of the classic techniques of counterinsurgents while making many of the classic mistakes of counterinsurgents that allowed their enemies to flourish.
Liberalism had grown complacent, convinced that the levers of power it controlled were the only levers of power in society. The liberals were wrong. The insurgents resisted.<
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There was occasional violence. Conservatives baited and teased the left, inviting overreaction that would create a moral crisis for both regular citizens and even some of the left’s less ideological members. Censorship, NSA surveillance, IRS harassment, and other un-American acts alienated many of the left’s own allies while encouraging the conservatives. The insurgency focused on the people. Liberalism forgot about the people, focusing only on the elites and their cronies, leaving a vacuum the conservatives eagerly filled.
The two Obama terms and the two Clinton terms were unmitigated disasters for America that the Democratic Party is still trying to live down. In many ways, the 16 years of liberal government tore the scales from the eyes of many Americans who had once believed themselves liberal. Liberal failure—both domestically and internationally—provided an invaluable opportunity for the insurgency.
The American people found their economy stagnant, their nation’s reputation and power abroad diminished, and their freedoms at home increasingly under attack. The bailout and the stimulus of the first Obama term started the fire; the lies about Obamacare and its slow disintegration fanned the flames. The conservatives always had an alternative to offer; it was liberal failure that gave the insurgents a chance to show that conservatism was the only alternative.
Conservative Insurgency: The Struggle to Take America Back 2009 - 2041 Page 20
