No, they woke up bitter and furious...spreading out among the intelligentsia of western Europe; Great Britain; and, to a lesser extent, the United States. They were welcomed by their fellow travelers: first and foremost, the misfit toys inhabiting the islands of academia – who were already busily nurturing bitterness and envy among their charges with the care of a master gardener.

When the Soviet Union fell, all the little commies didn't wake up the next morning and say, "You know, those wacky Americans were right all along! Let's go do some freedom and liberty stuff!"

They threw themselves into plotting and agitating, insinuating themselves into every possible position of influence they could manage – all to keep the flame of statist oppression lit, though necessarily hidden.

They found suitable vehicles in the international environmentalist movement and newly created issues that could be weaponized for use against that evil hegemon of economic and individual liberty, the dreaded victor of the Cold War, the United States.

The "crisis creation" machine went into high gear, fueled by alarmist junk science and billions of federal research dollars.

Eisenhower's famous warning about the military-industrial complex was soon greatly overshadowed by his lesser known warning from the same speech about the potential of a "scientific-technological elite" dominating policy, creating a "rule of experts" who derive both their funding and their marching orders from government.

Case in point: "climate change," née "global warming," née "global cooling," etc. When a nation's institutions of higher learning derive upwards of 75% of their total research budgets from government, it is an impossible task to prevent the creation of a vast echo chamber, crafted to suit the whims of the funders.

This is precisely the danger of which Eisenhower spoke.

After years of pruning, fertilizing, and watering their post-secondary gardens, the left has reaped a bountiful harvest of indoctrinated political automatons, gleefully tightening its hold on the generations destined to govern our future with each passing graduation ceremony.

These first fruits of statist insinuation naturally gravitated toward public employment, in agencies where their misbegotten fantasies of a static climate and unspoilt wilderness could be realized. They have risen through the ranks, hiring like-minded graduates in their wake – until today, the left lies resplendent in the glory of dominance in both the social and natural sciences, waving wands made of tax dollars in furtherance of their transformative ideas of how we all ought to live.

They felt their oats fully with the election of one of their own in 2008. They abandoned all pretense and threw open the doors to their diseased inner sanctum...baring their storehouse of wilted values and stunted virtues.

The insults came more rapidly then. Men became women, or even little girls, merely by saying so, and those of us who dared to reproach the deviant for wishing to toilet with our children were derided as bigots and threatened with the full force of government if we didn't acquiesce.

Foreign enemies of all we believe were imported to our cities under the flag of tolerance and rescue, and those who stood against this suicidal tide were soon awash in recriminations from our well-meaning but ill-informed neighbors, who hammered their narrative in our churches and our schools.

When we finally turned away in disgust, they unleashed their most potent weapon – our own children – whom they had taught to worship at the altar of a gray, formless morality, where rights are derived from acceptance into the collective, and justice is a relative concept subject to the whim of government.

We sent our offspring to them for an education, and they sent them back to us, spitting with hatred for the way of life that enabled their ease. "You dare defy us? Our soldiers are your own flesh and blood!"

They threw them at us like grenades – warped, misguided and misinformed, filled with explosive fury and lit by an impossibly short fuse. Wave after wave, they sent them into the streets to burn, to riot, and to cloak their debauchery of liberty with the fresh face of a new generation.

And we backed down, knowing we had been gravely molested but unwilling to challenge the perpetrators for fear of ensnaring our own children in the fray.

We held elections. We elected majorities who then refused to fight. We listened to our "leaders," who told us to appease the gnashing beast because the world was changing and we had to remain "relevant."

Now, after a great while and innumerable offenses, we have elected someone who sees no value in the bureaucrat's mantra of "that's the way we've always done it." We explored unfamiliar electoral terrain and found someone who respects the origin of our ideals as embodied in our founding documents. A man who brusquely (and entertainingly!) dismissed the circus-mirror image of America peddled by the left and their fawning, complicit media. Tired of being beaten about the head and shoulders while those we elected to defend us stood by holding the coats of our abusers, we elected a brawler of our own.

Those repudiated on November 8, 2016 have not yet fully realized that voters hadn't failed to understand what we saw when they revealed their inmost desires to us. Rather, we understood all too well, and we turned away, revolted by the sight.

When they fully comprehend the enormousness of their rejection, we had better be prepared, because these are people who would see the whole nation brought to ruin before permitting it to succeed despite them.

This election was a modern-day Fort Sumter – the first shots of a long and brutal struggle to come.

The left will stop at nothing. They will riot at the slightest provocation. They will use our children as suicide bombers, blowing families apart over made up differences. They will abuse the court system, the regulatory agencies, and every damn little ordinance in the tiniest of backwater towns to harass and beleaguer our efforts.

We must fight for our children as we fight for our future.

There are those who will counsel appeasement, as they always have. Reject their advice without hesitation. Compromise is possible only when both parties agree on an outcome, merely debating the best method to achieve it. Despite what the quisling class tells you, traveling together is an impossibility when you are going in opposite directions.

The last eight years have been a dumpster fire, with the foundational timbers of our republic as fuel. You can't leave glowing embers behind. By debating the demonstrable fantasies of the left, we grant them legitimacy, leaving them as glowing embers in the minds of successive generations.

It won't be easy, and the left will ensure that it won't be bloodless, but it's as necessary as food and water to the health of the body. Prime the fire hoses and disperse the rioters. There can never be such a thing as "space to destroy."

I tell you this not to depress you, but to alert you, so you aren't caught off guard by the ferocity of the coming counter-attack. History teaches that the leftist leviathan of November 9 is the same leftist leviathan of November 7.

The author writes from Omaha, Nebraska and welcomes visitors to his site, www.readmorejoe.com.