Fabian normalism
By Bruce Walker
web posted September 26, 2005
As the principal critic of Leftism in the world has written, its antithesis is simply normality. This is why conservatives and other normal people have difficulty, at times, defending themselves against Socialism or Leftism in its many guises. We who are serious Christians, Jews, libertarian agnostics, Orientals with reverence for tradition, parents who love their children, scholars who are about truth – all of us have only our common wish to be left alone with our consciences to unite us.
That is why it also seems like we are losing, even when we are winning. What do we hear from Iraq? Bad news, killings. What do we hear from Afghanistan: little, but what little is said is bad. Germans have not elected a conservative government – more bad news. President Bush is not as popular as he was – a year more of bad news. Forget all of that.
Socialism and other forms of Leftism, like Nazism, Bolshevism and Fascism, progressed slowly toward their aberrant goals. Fabian tactics, after the Roman consul who declined to fight Hannibal, but chose rather to wear the Carthaginian general down with delaying and harassment, were chosen by the Left a century ago. What the Left would gain, it would gain in small bites.
This tactic looked like it would win, until Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. Since then, Fabian Normalism has prevailed. The Gipper and the Pope wore down the Evil Empire until it crumbled. American military power was tested and proven in Desert Storm, and then retested convincing in campaigns after that. The "correlation of forces" or military-political strength of nations since then has been decidedly in favor of America.
Normal people are replacing pagan demigods on the Supreme Court, and the process will continue for the foreseeable future. Normal people who are black or female or Hispanic are rising to the top of American government, replacing self-appointed advocates addicted to self-aggrandizement and incurable victimhood. Normal people are reclaiming, bit by bit, the system of communication, entertainment and education in our nations, as established kookiness masquerading as seriousness holds increasingly less pomp and power to divide among increasingly absurd nabobs.
The cup, once almost empty, and now at least halfway full. Afghanistan, lynchpin of much of Asia, is evolving into a true democracy. Iraq will soon be a democracy as well. Germany will have a more pro-American government, even if President Koehler has to appoint a minority government, than the Schroeder-led government.
The shrill cries of "global warming" look shriller as scientists ponder "solar system warming" and how that can connect to the miniscule actions of humans on the third planet from the sun. The Gender War holds decreasing cachet for woman who have sons, fathers and husbands hurt by tar brush indictments, and as men simply ignore women who hate them. The overreaching of anti-Christianity has produced a quiet revolution by the tolerant, huge majority of Americans who are beginning to see this particular toxin of hate for what it is.
The victories of normality are almost never as clear as Iraqis pulling down a statute of Saddam Hussein or President Bush winning a victory that stunned the Left, but the victories of normality, of decency, or commonsense are never intended to overwhelm or swallow people whole into some mass movement: that is the goal of the Left, not of normal people.
Like the free market, like the decisions of conscience by individuals of faith, like the unfettered migration of people from states and from nations less free to those more free, the triumphant of normality is the natural consequence of tens of millions of small victories, the effect of which is not so much pushing mankind in the same direction as it is pulling mankind out of the Orwellian darkness of Leftism.
The destination of humanity is not dictated by dialectics or pseudo-academic theories, but by the blossoming of liberty and the billions of good guesses and right decisions, as well as the equally vital correction of billions of bad guesses and wrong decisions by the lessons of life.
Fabian Normalists must look at the big picture and ignore the incomprehensible minutia of human existence. There is nothing new under the Sun, whose temperature has fluctuated naturally for eons. The cumulative effect of work, study, faith, honor and fidelity is improvement in the human condition. Fabian Normalists do not need to worry about how a better world will come, but only about opening the vast prison doors of Leftism and letting mankind out. 
Bruce Walker is a senior writer with Enter Stage Right. He is also a frequent contributor to The Pragmatist and The Common Conservative.
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