In the days leading up to the 11th Republican debate, the voice of panic and fear over the rise of Trump grew to a deafening pitch. The grim reality has finally set in: this guy could be the world’s most powerful man, with his finger on the nuclear bomb, the lord of the surveillance state, the ruler of the world’s largest regulatory regime, the head of the largest apparatus ever constructed for controlling the largest number of people in the history of the world.

Elected by the people!

The escape routes for avoiding his rule — a man who cannot bring himself to utter the words freedom or liberty and whose every authoritarian utterance elicits cheers from the hoi polloi — are dwindling to a precious few.

For whatever reason of historical accident, it was all on Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich. At some point, the moral burden falls not just on the would-be tyrant but also on those whom history has called to oppose him. And in this task, this trio completely failed. Their arguments against Trump were tepid, vapid, pointless, unpersuasiveness, ineffective.

Their tactic was to proclaim their own devotion to Trump’s own principles and attempt to expose Trump as an inconsistent and hypocritical expositor of the fascist outlook he represents. It’s preposterous. He invented the immigration/trade/demographic/greatness crisis. Of course he now controls the narrative. If you enter into it, you are forever relegated to the role of being a member of the supporting cast.

To shift the metaphor, Trump was playing the tune and his opponents were dancing to it, all the way complaining that the beat could be clearer and better. They purported to be more pro-greatness, pro-protectionist, pro-nativist, pro-military, pro-crackdown on everyone, than Trump himself.

And why? Here is where matters become spooky. In the end, they actually agree with most of Trump’s policies, although in not such a crystallized and infantile form.

In taking this route, they disgraced themselves.

I’m pretty well through cursing this thrift-store Hitler doll, at least for the primary season. There are many more where he came from. The current problem is the unwillingness of the opposition to say what’s true.

What might they have said? They could have faced the camera and said clearly:

As an American, you value your freedom, your human rights, your life, and your community, family, and ability to make a good life for yourself. This is the theme of America as a nation. In this, your chief enemy is the invasive state, which is completely out of control in every realm. This man, Trump, aspires to rule you. He is big government’s best friend. He says that he wants to make America great. But actually he wants to end the freedom you love. Notice that “liberty” is not a word that crosses his lips. What’s more, he is the sworn enemy of property, freedom, and peace. This is the one theme that links all of his statements and actions. He is manipulating you with fascist rhetoric in hopes that you will vote for him to be a new dictator over every aspect of your life. We cannot allow this happen. It’s true that America is in crisis but electing a Mussolini or Hitler is not the way out. Freedom is the way out. To be sure, I’m not the best or most ideal embodiment of true American values. I’ve not always defended freedom as the fundamental moral postulate of American life, as I should have. But the rise of Trump has prompted me to rethink many things. I’m newly enlightened. I stand before you as a man who, if nothing else, promises to spare you the catastrophic fate of making this man your dictator. You don’t have to love me or have confidence in me in any other sense. But I promise you this: I will do my damndest to protect this country from what this man represents, which is an end to all the things you love. America, do not take this path. This way lies ruin. Save your country from the strongman who will make all things right. Let’s work together for the one value that is more important than anything, your own freedom.

To say something like this was their opportunity and their obligation. They utterly failed to do this. That they didn’t even think of it is their own failing. That their advisers didn’t think of it is their professional loss. At a moment in history when they were called to do the right thing for the country, they couldn’t muster the moral courage or the policy rhetoric to push back on his belligerent fascism.

Honestly, did Cruz or Rubio or Kasich say even one thing all night that would have caused a Trump supporter to reflect just a bit? I don’t think so. They pettifogged his budget numbers. They carped about the scammy Trump University. They complained about his donations to Hillary Clinton and about his various about faces on policy issues through the years, and so on. They didn’t lay a glove on him.

They topped off their pathetic performance by swearing fealty to the party and its nominee, whomever it might be, including Trump. Game over.

And why? The only way to defeat Trump intellectually and strategically is through the language of human liberty. You can’t argue with a central planner about the details of his plans and expect to win. You can’t argue with a despot about the precise form that despotism ought to take or about his level of commitment to impose it. You have to take on despotism itself through the lens of a genuine commitment to libertarian ideals.

And this is precisely what these guys cannot do. Rubio is a convinced democratic imperialist and nation-state builder, and, in this, he has been bested by Trump. Cruz is a quasi-theocratic statist who thinks Islam is the greatest threat we face — he has his own litany of greatness-based tasks for the state — and here he too has been bested by Trump. And Kasich’s pious presentations of his 1980s-style good-government meanderings are starting to sound like a moving GIF file, and are just dreadfully boring at this point. If he is not alarmed at what is happening, why should anyone else be?

In a strange sense, they all deserve to lose very badly to Trump, but, as soon as I type those words, I wince, because no people anywhere deserve a repeat of a history that most of humanity has sworn to never repeat.