Anti-Trumpers still keep throwing conservatives under the bus to maintain the status quo, just as they’ve often done (remember the Tea Party).

We hoped they would go away after the election. We hoped they would stop their whining and grandstanding once Donald Trump took office. We hoped they would accept defeat and embrace our Republican president, that they would hold him accountable regarding policy and support any effort to right the ship that has been lurching toward the brink for decades.

But they didn’t go away. Their whining has grown shrill. Their opposition, not only to Trump, but to anyone who breathes a word in his favor, has swelled like a blistering boil. Our hopes were in vain, and now we’re reaching a breaking point.

I’m not talking about the liberal “resistance.” They’ll never go away. The Left never stops. I’m talking about NeverTrumpers—or Anti-Trumpers, as many prefer to be called now. Their relentless attacks on Trump echo the Left. They whine about his tweets, “faux masculinity,” vulgarity, personnel changes, unproven “collusion” with the Russians. They call him a racist, white nationalist, dictator, traitor, and a lunatic.

These paragons of virtue are also attacking fellow conservatives who call out the hypocrisy of the media, focus on the good Trump is doing while calling him to account for the bad, and refuse to jump on the bandwagon of conspiracy theories or get upset over every annoying tweet. For this, they’re called sell-outs, racists, failed conservatives, Trump whores, Putin lovers, media organizations that have lost all credibility.

Whose Side Are You On?

Worse, Anti-Trumpers are colluding with Democrats to oppose the president and attacking fellow Republicans in Congress for trying to get conservative policies passed. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has teamed up with Democrat Sen. Cory Booker to write bipartisan legislation that stops Trump from firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol roundly criticized conservatives and the president during the Obamacare repeal process and is now engaged in talks to create a “Committee Not to Renominate the President.”

Ruling-class Republicans pulled out the knives on Sen. Mike Lee and his efforts at a full Obamacare repeal. His Senate colleague and fellow Republican Orrin Hatch, who blocked Lee’s moves toward actual repeal, accused him of being “against everything.” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page piled on, labeling him an “Obamacare Republican.”

Anti-Trumpers are willing to throw conservatives under the bus to maintain the status quo, just as they’ve often done (remember the Tea Party). So much for principles. Never mind that conservatives fight for life, civil liberties, religious freedom, free speech, morality within the civil society, limited government, and strong national security—all of which are essential to conservatism.

Somehow this common ground they have with Anti-Trumpers goes out the window because they’re not firing up the stake and branding Trump evil incarnate. Instead, Anti-Trumpers side with those who oversee cultural decline, think girls can become boys, hate life, love centralized power and control, reject localism for globalism, play footsie with terrorists, and seek to silence free speech in every area of American society.

The GOP Enabled Big Government Long Before Trump

The problem with the Anti-Trumpers, however, is much larger—a point that’s captured by Sen. Jeff Flake’s transparent display of self-aggrandizement in publishing “Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle.” This pathetic work of hypocrisy is a shining example of everything that’s wrong with Anti-Trumpers.

“Never has a party so quickly or easily abandoned its core principles as my party did in the course of the 2016 campaign,” Flake writes. “And when you suddenly decide that you don’t believe what had recently been your most deeply held beliefs, then you open yourself to believing anything — or maybe nothing at all.”

What a joke. The GOP didn’t abandon its most deeply held beliefs in 2016. That’s been going on for decades. Where was Flake’s scorching pen during the reign of Barack Obama? Did any Republican senator or congressman write a manifesto about how Obama is ruining the country? No, of course not. Far be it from them to offend a Democrat. Instead, they—like Flake himself—propped up Obama’s leftist agenda by voting for policies and personnel that defy our deeply held beliefs.

Flake refused to join conservatives in their fight to defund Obamacare. He signed on to the Gang of Eight amnesty debacle. He confirmed one of the most dangerous attorney generals we’ve ever had—Loretta Lynch, justifying it in the name of “giving the president what he wants.” He has expanded centralized power by failing to cut spending while raising the debt ceiling. And he’s no friend to the Constitution with his support of gun control legislation.

Anti-Trumpers Accept the Left’s Premises

Hypocrisy, however, isn’t the real problem—and danger—of Anti-Trumpers. It’s their unwitting support of a leftist juggernaut that is bulldozing its way across our nation. Their unnecessary and childish attacks on conservatives who chose to vote for a Republican president rather than let a progressive criminal in the White House feeds the leftist beast. They’re writing themselves into a narrative that seeks to delegitimize conservatives, undermine their values of liberty, and eradicate their deeply held beliefs from a culture roiling in materialism, relativism, and subjectivism.

Is Trump the savior? No. Is Trump a conservative? No. But he’s not the threat these dictators of conscience think he is. Their histrionic reaction to his “populism” is rooted in prejudice, not insight. They resent that they’ve lost power, influence, and their own deluded sense of legitimacy. They don’t want to be associated with someone the Left labels a racist, and they want to run to the high ground instead of realizing that the fight is already underway—on the low road where leftists dwell.

It’s a fight that began years ago, but Republicans have been too ignorant and weak to truly engage. They haven’t even realized how the Left has been manipulating them, using them, and labeling them into irrelevancy—something I explained during the election, here and here.

This is the point Anti-Trumpers need to wrap their heads around. If they don’t, they’re going to end up giving the Left a hand in pushing us all over the cliff. Loudmouths like Flake and his conga line of preening purists need to wake up and see who the real enemy is.

Stabbing Your Own In the Back Is Imprudent

Anti-Trumpers are like the Night’s Watch who betrayed Jon Snow in “Game of Thrones.” They didn’t like how Snow joined forces with the wildlings beyond the wall (an enemy to the Night’s Watch and the people of Westeros) in order to defeat a greater enemy that threatened them all. Snow understood who the real enemy was—the cold totalitarians who make mindless drones of all they conquer. He was willing to work with people outside his own camp to defeat the greater threat. His brethren killed him for it.

The real enemy is the progressive Left and its cultural Marxism.

Those who repeatedly stabbed Snow under the sign of traitor thought they were noble, the only ones standing on principle, the righteous ones who wouldn’t betray their deeply held beliefs by aligning with an opposition group to defeat a greater threat. They considered it too risky, and they were so angered by Snow’s “betrayal” that they were willing to kill their own commander instead of taking the low road to defeat a common enemy. You see the irony. By attacking their own, they took the lowest road possible.

The Anti-Trumpers are no different. The real enemy is the progressive Left and its cultural Marxism. This is the enemy in our media, education system, scientific community, pop culture, entertainment, and politics. Its ideology is entrenched in our psychology. Trump’s “nationalism and populism” don’t hold a candle to this threat. Leftists are the White Walkers of the North with an ideology that doesn’t simply disagree with our deeply held beliefs on various points but wants to completely destroy them!

When Anti-Trumpers pile on about irrelevant issues (and there are many when it comes to criticisms of Trump), they are giving the Left legitimacy and delegitimizing those who are working to fight it.

When you say conservatives are discredited for writing pieces in support of Trump or critical of Anti-Trumpers or liberals, you’re strengthening the labeling that can lead to delegitimization. You’re joining the “in-group” of radical leftists and making a scapegoat of newly defined out-groups. You’re devaluing other conservatives and populists, who have legitimate gripes and agree with conservatives on many points. These people aren’t delegitimizing themselves by supporting Trump. Anti-Trumpers are doing it. They’re the ones guilty of promoting negative stereotypes and negative images that will weaken the very people fighting for this nation’s soul.

The Stakes Are Too High for Petty Infighting

Those who embrace a leftist ideology have been struggling and scheming for decades to transform our nation into their own vision of utopia. They’ve resorted to violence and destruction to achieve their twisted goals. They’re driven by a “better-world” ideal, enslaved to their own self-made worldly authorities who determine what is right, what is wrong, what words are acceptable, and what speech is allowed.

They see themselves as victims who have suffered in the past under the oppression of the brutal white male. They don’t seek healing; they seek retribution and dominance over people they perceive as dangerous because they’re looking at them through the lenses of the past. They no longer see fellow Americans as valued human beings—they see them as threats to their better-world dreams and to the unabated release of their self-destructive delusions on society.

This is the state of mind that plagues nearly half of our country, and Anti-Trumpers are feeding it by essentially agreeing that these liberal-defined out-groups (conservatives who support Trump, populists, anyone with a patriotic spirit or holders of traditional values) are a threat to a better-world ideology. Along with the Left, they’re creating the impression that we are a danger—a threat not only to America, but to the entire world. Yet they’re blind to the truth and fail to see the real danger to our nation.

Let’s Get Clear about the Real Enemy Here

Is it contradictory for me to assert the evils of labeling people while I’m doing the same? No, because there is right and wrong, evil and good, in this world. Some things are a true danger and should be called at for what they are—and defeated, not tolerated. Certainly, there are many shades of gray in the space between evil and good, but when it comes to totalitarian ideologies, we’re not dealing with shades of gray. We’re dealing with blackness.

What happens when a powerful in-group that holds to these evil beliefs becomes convinced that out-groups are a danger to their distorted ideology? What happens when you stop seeing people as fully integrated individuals and see them only as racists or lunatics or any other label that transforms a person from a human being into a monster? I’m not talking about general labels of distinctions about beliefs (liberals, conservatives, leftists, progressives, etc.). I’m talking about labels that carry stigma, that delegitimize and dehumanize.

The real danger is the ideology of leftism that is seeking to deconstruct our nation and destroy all who threaten its utopian ideals.

What happens is natural and logical—you want to destroy the danger, and that’s what Anti-Trumpers need to stop and consider. Really let that sink in. Trump supporters can be threatening and obnoxious, no doubt. There are many reasons for this, most of which are reactionary.

But they’re not the real threat. They’re not the ones physically attacking people in the streets. They’re not the ones who embody the elements of a genocidal mentality. They’re not the ones who embrace a philosophy that is, in essence, evil. The real danger is the ideology of leftism that is seeking to deconstruct our nation and destroy all who threaten its utopian ideals.

If Anti-Trumpers really care about our nation and not just the future of the party or their own political careers, then they will stop labeling fellow Republicans, stop demeaning them, stop attacking every little thing Trump does, and focus on what’s really important. They’ll oppose Trump when his policies don’t move our nation in the right direction, and they will wholeheartedly embrace him when they do. They’ll exercise some self-control and major on the majors instead of the minors.

They’ll stand up to Democrats before attacking fellow Republicans, and they’ll hold the media to account for spreading lies that support leftist ideology. They need to dig deep for the courage to risk their own reputations in the eyes of a culture that is blinded by leftist labels and fight the fight wherever it is—on the high road or the low.