Yarvin is too nihilistic and lacks hope and conviction. How do you eat a brontosaurus? One bite at a time!!! Same with what is occurring at NCF right now. University of North Carolina just dropped it's DEI initiatives, more dominoes will follow. The vocal minority has never been forcefully challenged and simply by doing so has shown their sheer terror and will light the path for others to fight.
What you've done at NCF is a beacon of hope and serves as a rallying cry to the others out there to fight back. There is no resignation to the "inevitable" failure of fighting the woke Borg, as with any bully, stand up and you will quickly find out how weak they truly are.
For too long we silent citizens have felt defeated, as if waiting for the leadership to rally behind and come to our defense. Please continue fighting the good fight and giving us hope!
“I still believe in the American Republic. I still believe that our democratic power as a people is meaningful. I still believe that our legislature has the capacity to govern our states and our country in the best interests of the American people.”
We only need to look back a few decades to see universities that were the way they should be, and still can be.
The public hugely opposes racialism. Here in California, which formally banned affirmative action in university admission in the 90s, restoring it was a ballot proposition in the 2020 presidential election. Biden beat Trump 2 to 1, but affirmative action failed, with 55% voting no. This means that 1/3 of Biden voters voted against affirmative action (assuming all Trump voters did).
Republicans need to make a campaign issue out of getting rid of DEI bureaucracies in public institutions, as well as make an issue out of gender self-ID (which all Democrats support).
Excellent! It’s time to put the most left-wing universities on notice. Their evil indoctrination of students is over. It’s time for the universities to become the facilitators of all ideas----including conservative ideas.
In the future Governor D will probably be seen as a revolutionary leader who broke the strangle hold on the Education system. The general public just went along thinking that there was nothing to be done about the crazyness passing for a rational system. It was obvious to anyone who looked closely that a major scam was underway. People acting like Communist commissars and gatekeepers to the system. Yet when confronted they seem to fade away like snow on the water. I wish you great success in your endeavors regarding the higher education system in Florida and hope it spreads to other States. These little men and woman behind the curtain are of little substance and all bluster and their media allies will soon be ignored by rational thinking people. After disassembling these horrid bureaucracies it would be good if a guide to slaying the dragon could be put together to allow others to follow suit. This had to stop somewhere and it seems Florida is the place.
The Cathedral is composed of mediocraties. The only thing that makes them formidable is their single-minded lust for power. Throw lots of different things at them and see what makes them crack. When you find a crack jump in and widen it. Keep doing what you do Mr. Rufo.
Change starts with a very small minority of elites or leaders blazing the way for change. The majority will follow. The unorganized masses follow; they don’t lead. Courageous leaders like Rufo and DiSantis will lead the way for others to follow. Don’t be afraid to use power: the left never is and that’s why they have captured the cultural institutions. It’s time
Mar 4, 2023·edited Mar 4, 2023Liked by Christopher F. Rufo
Your piece is an inspiring call to arms, Mr. Rufo, and I am committed to action!
As for Mr. Yarvin, his article mostly made me want to offer him moral support. I thought about subscribing to his Substack, just so I could leave him some encouraging words, but I found his writing quite boring. As you said, his conceptualizations are very abstract. You also describe him as arguing for us to take a "prey animal position," and I certainly agree that posture doesn't work well for humans, who are apex predators.
Yarvin's metaphor about the acorns is obviously reminiscent about the old fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant. Both the fable and Yarvin's article present us with a forced choice between the two styles of providing for a livable future. But why do we have to choose? Some people can work on change through incremental steps over a long period of time while others try to make big changes now. Both strategies work, as evidenced by the continuing survival of both grasshoppers and ants.
What I have learned from the woke cult is that the most powerful force for change is the teaching of values in families and schools over generations. The successful transformation of our culture towards the left began with a very small group of youthful radicals, who grew up and joined the Democratic Party (which they said in the Sixties they would never do), got married (which many of them also said they wouldn't do), had kids, and socialized them to embrace the original radical leftist agenda. The next generation did the same, and here we are.
Slow change over generations and fast change through violent revolutions have thus both been achieved by small groups of committed activists. A much larger percentage of the population adapts to what the activists get enacted, probably because most people don't care to be bothered with political transformations. Many Americans probably won't notice when we recapture our institutions, anymore than they noticed when the institutions were originally captured. I bet, however, that most will breathe a big sigh of relief when the DEI racket implodes!
Well said! Those who value free speech, equality, and merit based institutions must resist this racist, socialist ideology. So wonderful to read this article. I so enjoyed discovering Christopher Rufo a few years ago.
It is a simple truth - evil happens when good people do nothing.
Well, you may both be right and both be wrong, Chris. You may be right in that the wave of woke, so to speak, may be one of those political waves of near hysteria which seems part of our American heritage going back to the Salem witch trials...like McCarthyism was. In the early to mid 1950s nobody could have looked at the political landscape, the cancel culture of McCarthyism and thought, oh, we can end this. No one would have foreseen the 60s and 70s countercultural movements. And, in fact, a good deal of the change which did come about was prompted from Supreme Court decisions of the Warren Court, and individual action in making change happen in what seemed hopeless situations like Selma, Alabama. In other words, what seemed a blanketing right wing anti-communist environment gave way in time. Who is to say that the same swinging of the political pendulum cannot happen in our time? But Yarvin may be right in another sense. Aside from the politics of the moment, there has been a steady and almost constant growth, regardless of which party is in office or which politics rules, of the imperial administration and the national security state. That growth may be historic, not political, in the sense that it results from a social dynamic which itself is fueled by causes which politics cannot undo. Regardless of whether an American "caesar" is on the way, the imperial administration is already here and is here to stay. The industry which supports it is massive, and is constantly hungry for more military adventures abroad. So if you end the war in Ukraine, you don't end that industry or its hunger or its hold on a political system where the elected representatives are dependent on money which the defense industry supplies in great amounts. That industry is also constantly hungry for more influence over the civil and domestic society. It began with the militarization of local police forces by generous Pentagond donations of material to local police forces. It continues with the plans to build a new FBI headquarters TWICE the size of the Pentagon. And the marginalization of any control over this sector by elected officials has just about been accomplished now through the security clearance and classification system. Personnel is policy, and no one can get a job in the White House or many other agencies without a security clearance issues by the intelligence community. Information is power, and a massive extensive classification system is now in place under which nationwide witch hunts deny our highest elected officials, presidents and former presidents, their LEGAL authority to handle and declassify any documents they choose, while the media and the general public look on breathlessly and completely support the right of the intelligence community to control the president's access to information rather than vice versa. I am told that only about 15% of the federal budget is discretionary. The rest is national security and/or entitlements. So, tell me, how does Congress having control of that 15% give it the power to make a dent in this imperial administration, not virtual but literal armies and industries devoted to achieving the ends of the imperial administration without regard to such niceties as how the people vote or who they vote for...? You don't need a caesar to have an imperial administration more powerful and pervasive than one. And who can deny that the American administration now is far more powerful than Caesar's empire ever was, at home and abroad?
They're already organizing fast, lying to you and legislators to buy time, and updating tactics. FOIA requests are not going to turn up as much in the future without insiders to provide context. Lots more will be verbal. Not going to get insiders w/o good protection because career is over if it's a faculty or staff member who gets doxxed. Also have to shut down the anti-tenure nutjobs if you want faculty cooperation. If your efforts get framed as anti-tenure, the only hope is the political top-down approach. And that approach is being used at exactly one university so far, which tells you the governors are hesitant about this approach and uncertain of its success.
One potential next step is building an insider network at the universities to tell the stories that FOIA do not. Students may be the best option there especially because enhancing student protections for 'student journalists exposing university corruption' is an easier frame to sell to policy makers than helping faculty. Also key for changing the climate at the university, which top down approaches often fail to do.
Thank you for your efforts and for this video. You probably already know them, but your courage and the position you are taking reminds me of Will Swaim (California Policy Center) and David Bahnsen (The Bahnsen Group) who together run the RADIO FREE CALIFORNIA podcast - they have been at the thankless job of trying to reform California for decades and they aren't giving up either! They also speak about personal action and comitment to first principles - winning the hearts and minds of the people rather than simply changing the marketing message. You are lighting the way with NCF - and inspiring me to get more involved in my local community however I can. Thank you for your excellent work!
Yarvin is too nihilistic and lacks hope and conviction. How do you eat a brontosaurus? One bite at a time!!! Same with what is occurring at NCF right now. University of North Carolina just dropped it's DEI initiatives, more dominoes will follow. The vocal minority has never been forcefully challenged and simply by doing so has shown their sheer terror and will light the path for others to fight.
What you've done at NCF is a beacon of hope and serves as a rallying cry to the others out there to fight back. There is no resignation to the "inevitable" failure of fighting the woke Borg, as with any bully, stand up and you will quickly find out how weak they truly are.
Chris beautifully written and right on the mark.
For too long we silent citizens have felt defeated, as if waiting for the leadership to rally behind and come to our defense. Please continue fighting the good fight and giving us hope!
“I still believe in the American Republic. I still believe that our democratic power as a people is meaningful. I still believe that our legislature has the capacity to govern our states and our country in the best interests of the American people.”
The rallying cry of the new-right.
We only need to look back a few decades to see universities that were the way they should be, and still can be.
The public hugely opposes racialism. Here in California, which formally banned affirmative action in university admission in the 90s, restoring it was a ballot proposition in the 2020 presidential election. Biden beat Trump 2 to 1, but affirmative action failed, with 55% voting no. This means that 1/3 of Biden voters voted against affirmative action (assuming all Trump voters did).
Republicans need to make a campaign issue out of getting rid of DEI bureaucracies in public institutions, as well as make an issue out of gender self-ID (which all Democrats support).
Thank you for your courage and commitment to being a part of the change.
Excellent! It’s time to put the most left-wing universities on notice. Their evil indoctrination of students is over. It’s time for the universities to become the facilitators of all ideas----including conservative ideas.
In the future Governor D will probably be seen as a revolutionary leader who broke the strangle hold on the Education system. The general public just went along thinking that there was nothing to be done about the crazyness passing for a rational system. It was obvious to anyone who looked closely that a major scam was underway. People acting like Communist commissars and gatekeepers to the system. Yet when confronted they seem to fade away like snow on the water. I wish you great success in your endeavors regarding the higher education system in Florida and hope it spreads to other States. These little men and woman behind the curtain are of little substance and all bluster and their media allies will soon be ignored by rational thinking people. After disassembling these horrid bureaucracies it would be good if a guide to slaying the dragon could be put together to allow others to follow suit. This had to stop somewhere and it seems Florida is the place.
The Cathedral is composed of mediocraties. The only thing that makes them formidable is their single-minded lust for power. Throw lots of different things at them and see what makes them crack. When you find a crack jump in and widen it. Keep doing what you do Mr. Rufo.
Change starts with a very small minority of elites or leaders blazing the way for change. The majority will follow. The unorganized masses follow; they don’t lead. Courageous leaders like Rufo and DiSantis will lead the way for others to follow. Don’t be afraid to use power: the left never is and that’s why they have captured the cultural institutions. It’s time
the Right uses power to take them back.
Your piece is an inspiring call to arms, Mr. Rufo, and I am committed to action!
As for Mr. Yarvin, his article mostly made me want to offer him moral support. I thought about subscribing to his Substack, just so I could leave him some encouraging words, but I found his writing quite boring. As you said, his conceptualizations are very abstract. You also describe him as arguing for us to take a "prey animal position," and I certainly agree that posture doesn't work well for humans, who are apex predators.
Yarvin's metaphor about the acorns is obviously reminiscent about the old fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant. Both the fable and Yarvin's article present us with a forced choice between the two styles of providing for a livable future. But why do we have to choose? Some people can work on change through incremental steps over a long period of time while others try to make big changes now. Both strategies work, as evidenced by the continuing survival of both grasshoppers and ants.
What I have learned from the woke cult is that the most powerful force for change is the teaching of values in families and schools over generations. The successful transformation of our culture towards the left began with a very small group of youthful radicals, who grew up and joined the Democratic Party (which they said in the Sixties they would never do), got married (which many of them also said they wouldn't do), had kids, and socialized them to embrace the original radical leftist agenda. The next generation did the same, and here we are.
Slow change over generations and fast change through violent revolutions have thus both been achieved by small groups of committed activists. A much larger percentage of the population adapts to what the activists get enacted, probably because most people don't care to be bothered with political transformations. Many Americans probably won't notice when we recapture our institutions, anymore than they noticed when the institutions were originally captured. I bet, however, that most will breathe a big sigh of relief when the DEI racket implodes!
"The Cathedral" has something in common with "The Patriarchy."
Count this disillusioned liberal as a supporter of your project.
Well said! Those who value free speech, equality, and merit based institutions must resist this racist, socialist ideology. So wonderful to read this article. I so enjoyed discovering Christopher Rufo a few years ago.
It is a simple truth - evil happens when good people do nothing.
Well, you may both be right and both be wrong, Chris. You may be right in that the wave of woke, so to speak, may be one of those political waves of near hysteria which seems part of our American heritage going back to the Salem witch trials...like McCarthyism was. In the early to mid 1950s nobody could have looked at the political landscape, the cancel culture of McCarthyism and thought, oh, we can end this. No one would have foreseen the 60s and 70s countercultural movements. And, in fact, a good deal of the change which did come about was prompted from Supreme Court decisions of the Warren Court, and individual action in making change happen in what seemed hopeless situations like Selma, Alabama. In other words, what seemed a blanketing right wing anti-communist environment gave way in time. Who is to say that the same swinging of the political pendulum cannot happen in our time? But Yarvin may be right in another sense. Aside from the politics of the moment, there has been a steady and almost constant growth, regardless of which party is in office or which politics rules, of the imperial administration and the national security state. That growth may be historic, not political, in the sense that it results from a social dynamic which itself is fueled by causes which politics cannot undo. Regardless of whether an American "caesar" is on the way, the imperial administration is already here and is here to stay. The industry which supports it is massive, and is constantly hungry for more military adventures abroad. So if you end the war in Ukraine, you don't end that industry or its hunger or its hold on a political system where the elected representatives are dependent on money which the defense industry supplies in great amounts. That industry is also constantly hungry for more influence over the civil and domestic society. It began with the militarization of local police forces by generous Pentagond donations of material to local police forces. It continues with the plans to build a new FBI headquarters TWICE the size of the Pentagon. And the marginalization of any control over this sector by elected officials has just about been accomplished now through the security clearance and classification system. Personnel is policy, and no one can get a job in the White House or many other agencies without a security clearance issues by the intelligence community. Information is power, and a massive extensive classification system is now in place under which nationwide witch hunts deny our highest elected officials, presidents and former presidents, their LEGAL authority to handle and declassify any documents they choose, while the media and the general public look on breathlessly and completely support the right of the intelligence community to control the president's access to information rather than vice versa. I am told that only about 15% of the federal budget is discretionary. The rest is national security and/or entitlements. So, tell me, how does Congress having control of that 15% give it the power to make a dent in this imperial administration, not virtual but literal armies and industries devoted to achieving the ends of the imperial administration without regard to such niceties as how the people vote or who they vote for...? You don't need a caesar to have an imperial administration more powerful and pervasive than one. And who can deny that the American administration now is far more powerful than Caesar's empire ever was, at home and abroad?
You caught them by surprise.
They're already organizing fast, lying to you and legislators to buy time, and updating tactics. FOIA requests are not going to turn up as much in the future without insiders to provide context. Lots more will be verbal. Not going to get insiders w/o good protection because career is over if it's a faculty or staff member who gets doxxed. Also have to shut down the anti-tenure nutjobs if you want faculty cooperation. If your efforts get framed as anti-tenure, the only hope is the political top-down approach. And that approach is being used at exactly one university so far, which tells you the governors are hesitant about this approach and uncertain of its success.
One potential next step is building an insider network at the universities to tell the stories that FOIA do not. Students may be the best option there especially because enhancing student protections for 'student journalists exposing university corruption' is an easier frame to sell to policy makers than helping faculty. Also key for changing the climate at the university, which top down approaches often fail to do.
Thank you for your efforts and for this video. You probably already know them, but your courage and the position you are taking reminds me of Will Swaim (California Policy Center) and David Bahnsen (The Bahnsen Group) who together run the RADIO FREE CALIFORNIA podcast - they have been at the thankless job of trying to reform California for decades and they aren't giving up either! They also speak about personal action and comitment to first principles - winning the hearts and minds of the people rather than simply changing the marketing message. You are lighting the way with NCF - and inspiring me to get more involved in my local community however I can. Thank you for your excellent work!
Thank you for being on the frontlines of the fight, and fighting quite well!