Commenting on Rush Limbaugh’s passionate denunciation of the spirit of anti-American leftism that is destroying the country, Lloyd Marcus, who blogs at The Unhyphenated American, agrees that the time has come to say “No!” He concludes, with Limbaugh, “It is time that we take action to take back our country. It is time that we say no to anti-American traitors and anti-biblical cultural assassins.”

This is a sentiment that cannot honorably be refuted. The problem is trying to decide what saying “No!” actually means. Merely saying “No!” is obviously a futile gesture and will produce little to nothing in the way of results. The question is how to translate “No!” into action. Debate and discussion with any of the manifestations of the left is a non-starter since the left does not debate or discuss. It adheres to a rigid orthodoxy that will allow no reconsideration or reflection on the putative axioms it regards as sacred. It is, in essence, the contemporary version of Bolshevism. The left will lie, slander, cheat and commit violence to further its goals. Its mind is deadbolted shut.

How, then, to say “No!” such that it realistically leads to discernible and effective consequences? Rhetoric won’t do it. The expression of noble sentiment won’t do it. Hand-wringing won’t do it. Prayer may, or may not, be a powerful factor; Lincoln is reputed to have said: “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.” But one recalls the Frank Loesser song, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.” Remaining content with radio talk, podcasts, interviews, essays and articles that alert the public to the impending disaster, though not to be scanted, is only a necessary first step. Delivering an angry vote may stave off the brunt of the calamity for an interval, but will not significantly alter the dynamics. The answer is that a meaningful response requires material and demonstrable presidential action, as Lincoln knew in a time of national disintegration. Nothing less will do. Whether we like it or not, restitution now rests with Donald Trump.

In the present situation, the trouble is that Trump’s greatest virtue—arbitration, diplomacy, compromise, carrot-and-stick—is also his critical vice. He may be excellent on trade and the economy, but does not seem to understand that on the home front in today’s political and cultural climate, the art of the deal does not work. The Democrats in their current disposition are not interested in dealing. Antifa is not interested in negotiating. A totalitarian plutocrat like George Soros, who as a youth collaborated with the Nazis and is proud of it, is not interested in consultation. The media are not interested in reporting the truth.

The Democrats, for example, are no longer an established political party but a revolutionary organism bent on scrapping the Constitution. Antifa is a guerilla outfit reminiscent of Hitler’s Brown Shirts, the Red Brigade and Baader-Meinhof. The media have become outright propaganda bullhorns for the left. None of these are trading partners. They are not economic rivals. They are not foreign nations that have to take American military power and punishing tariffs into account. They are fifth columns that are irremediably corrupt, extremist by nature, and absolutely relentless.

Trump may be a hard-headed businessman and a successful entrepreneur, but he is also a sentimentalist who often seems to believe his assailants are still susceptible to reason. They are not. He believes in win-win, unaware that as things now stand the equation reads lose-win. There is no art of the deal even remotely imaginable.

Indeed, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is far more pertinent. Like Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, it is followed almost to the letter by the left in its use of guile and pretense (“All warfare is based on deception”). But there is a crucial distinction to be made, namely, that the left respects no overriding Moral Law, the first of the five “constant factors” the Chinese general insists on. As Sun Tzu writes, another of the five principles that govern the art of war is “The Commander,” who seeks victory on behalf of the nation in the name of the Moral Law. Abraham Lincoln was such a Commander. He must serve as the model for Donald Trump in a time of national crisis.

I have argued that Trump must bring anti-trust legislation to bear on the major internet platforms and search engines now practicing overt censorship on users they oppose and to redefine them as public utilities. He must go further. His initiative on the census citizenship question is laudable but insufficient. He must use the means at his disposal, as did Lincoln, to confront the domestic enemies of the republic with uncompromising force: to declare Antifa an enemy of the state and arrest its financial backers on grounds either of sedition or treason, to be determined by a military tribunal; to bring Democrat politicians who have betrayed the nation (selling 20% of Uranium One to the Russian firm Rosatom, promoting the Benghazi scandal that cost four Americans their lives, weaponizing official agencies like the IRS and FBI, spying on its political opponents, streaming illegals and Third World immigrants to camber the demographics in their favor, subsidizing Iran with pallets of cash, accepting donations and colluding with foreign nationals) before the courts; and to de-license journalists and their media organizations that are in clear violation of the SPJ Code of Ethics.

To put it bluntly, the time for “fooling around” is now over. Before the Union begins to materially crumble, as Charles Murray warns in Falling Apart, and before certain states consider the option of secession, the president must act with all the legitimate force that he commands.

For the real and imminent threat to the republic comes not from Russia, China, Iran or North Korea. It comes from within: from the gatekeeper dot-coms, from the legacy media, from the Democrat Party, from billionaire tycoons laboring to dismantle the nation, from the social justice consortium, from political actors in the municipal and jurisprudential realms who support insurgency and do everything they can to thwart the president’s initiatives, from educators who have turned schools and universities into indoctrination camps, and from Guevara-like cadres growing bloodier and more frenzied by the day. If this is not a clear and present danger that portends the death of a nation and the eventual birth of a Marxist-like dictatorship, then nothing is.

As for the Democrats, they are not as suicidal in the many harebrained and socialist policies they advance as assorted commentators appear to believe. The Party is gambling on the imbecile vote, the parasite vote, the illegal vote, the indebted student vote, the felon vote, the cemetery vote, the LBGT+ vote, the Jewish vote, the Muslim vote, the black vote, the Hispanic vote, the corporate vote and the broad liberal vote—lumped together a possible majority—to put them over the electoral top and ensure their future hegemony. At which point it will be game over—another reason for Trump to act before the two-party system becomes a relic of the past.

If I could speak to the president, I would say: Mr. Trump, do not negotiate. Do not deal. Do not tweet. Do not regard your adversaries as loyal Americans with the wrong ideas. That is a losing proposition. Do not fear what the press, the talking heads, the NeverTrumpers, the internet platforms, the Democrat moguls, the deluded moiety of the electorate and some of your own Republican colleagues will claim. You are not an autocrat, you are a patriot, as was Lincoln in his day. Executive Orders are now indispensable. Mr. Trump, act!