For those of us who truly wish to preserve some semblance of traditional Western civilization, there’s no Benedict option. There’s no riding the tiger. The modernists’ knives are out and they’re coming for us all.

A common occurrence is to hear or read “conservative” commentators discussing the notion that the left and right are engaged in some sort of grand kulturkampf for the soul of the West.

If only.

The left throws at us wave after wave of panzer battalions and we respond with water balloons.

To call the pantomimic resistance proffered by the pundits of the so-called “conservative” movement a war is a ludicrous overstatement. The left throws at us wave after wave of panzer battalions and we respond with water balloons.

Sure, every now and then an intellectually honest and professionally brave culture warrior sticks his head above the parapet and returns some decent fire, but these brave voices are few and far between and do little to repel the relentless onslaught of “progressive” modernity.

Moreover, both discouragingly and damningly, those happy few who dare resist the left’s cultural revolutions with anything more aggressive than a shrug are often felled by not-so-friendly fire. It seems whenever we get a warrior, there are already voices on our side ready to defenestrate them. This is of course hardly surprising, given that the Mainstream Conservative Movement is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Globalism Inc.

But if weak-kneed responses to the left from the wets who comprise the majority of the so-called “conservative” movement were disappointing a decade or two ago, they are at present positively alarming.

Conservative timidness was bad enough in the 90s and early 2000s, when the left was promoting things like affirmative action and civil partnerships, and invasions of migrant masses were but a distant nightmare confined to the pages of The Camp of the Saints.



Now we have blatant anti-white bigots like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar in Congress and self-obsessed LGBT mayors running for office lecturing us on the true meaning of Christianity. Meanwhile, crossdressers are brought into children’s libraries for story-time, and white kids are picked up from school in tears because their curriculum is so virulently racist against them.

We are living in the age of thoughtcrime, and it is clear beyond doubt that those who question either progressive or globalist orthodoxy will be reprogrammed or ruined.

The sour cherry on top of this dystopian progressive cake is that anyone that dares to resist the madness is deplatformed, depersoned, and dehumanized. We are living in the age of thoughtcrime, and it is clear beyond doubt that those who question either progressive or globalist orthodoxy will be reprogrammed or ruined.

What were once basic, foundational Western conservative principles — the belief in the Christian God and the teachings of the Christian faith, social and political anti-egalitarianism, illiberalism, the defense of tradition and custom, patriotism — have been recast as extremist and racist. We are all “White Nationalists” now, according to our moral assailants.

The refusal of many in the so-called “conservative movement” to engage fully in any sort of cultural war is a sign that they are not really on our side.

Writing in the Daily Wire in August following Big Tech’s coordinated, cross-platform purge of InfoWars content, Ben Shapiro, America’s foremost conservative facsimile, noted, “[t]hese [anti-hate speech, anti-violent speech] policies aren’t merely designed to crack down on speech openly advocating or threatening violence, or containing obscenity. These policies are deliberately unclear as well as political.”

This is undoubtedly true, which is why the refusal of so many like Shapiro to defend “extremists” on the dissident right will undoubtedly be judged as unforgivable. Shapiro’s August op-ed continues:

Is it “using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender” to state that transgender people suffer from a mental disorder? Or that they are not in fact members of the gender to which they claim membership? What constitutes “hate speech” when discussing the relationship between radical Islam and terrorism? None of this has been made clear.

But it has been made clear. To anyone paying attention, it has been made clear over and over again as right-winger after right-winger has had their life or livelihood ruined by epithets and accusations.

To anyone paying attention, it has been made clear over and over again as right-winger after right-winger has had their life or livelihood ruined by epithets and accusations.

And as Shapiro himself notes, it’s not just right-wing opinion which is now verboten in the public square. Any objective fact that challenges the progressive magisterium is now actively suppressed.

Think transgender people suffer from mental illness? They’ll call you a bigot.

Think Islam promotes violence against non-believers and breeds terror? They’ll call you a bigot.

Think European countries founded on European principles by European peoples can’t sustain mass migration? They’ll call you a bigot.

The time for tepid resistance to the left’s corrosive manipulation of words and emotions is over. Those on the right must take every opportunity to remind the left that it does not have exclusive rights to being offended. We must not be afraid to roll up our sleeves and publicly and proudly shake the very ideological foundations of the left. We must engage them in the game while refusing to play by their rules. Indeed for those of us who truly wish to preserve some semblance of traditional Western civilization, there’s no Benedict option. There’s no riding the tiger. The modernists’ knives are out and they’re coming for us all.

Edmund Kozak is a writer, commentator, and polemicist based in Virginia.