THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

The movie The Sound of Music performed a very useful function for the political left. The whole plot revolved around the "fact" that the von Trapp family couldn't get official permission to leave Nazi Austria. The drama was that they had to escape from Nazi Austria over the mountains.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the von Trapp family just got on a train and rode to Italy.

They never had the slightest problem leaving Nazi Austria.

But in the post-World War II world, when The Sound of Music was produced, every single Communist country had walls and mines at its borders. Anyone who tried to leave a COMMUNIST dictatorship -- and I am talking about CUBA TODAY - was and is shot down in cold blood!

So The Sound of Music said that ALL dictatorships did that. In the real world, not even totalitarian governments like Hitler's had ever done such a thing before in all of history! The absolutely insane idea of constructing a major military defense along all of your OWN borders to keep your people IN was something that began with Communism. Only the left has to kill its people to keep millions of them from running away as soon as they possibly can.

When the left actually puts all its silly cliches into force, the entire population tries to escape. It is critical to the let that this profound historical truth be ignored, because they are still trying to sell those SAME silly cliches today. *

One of the major functions of the respectable right is to help the left keep people from repeating historical truths like this. So when The Sound of Music assigned this completely leftist crime to the Nazis, no one dared say a word.

In fact, as far as I know, I am the only person who has EVER dared to say a word about this. Any rightist who points this out will be called anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.

If being called anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews - for the millionth time - doesn't stop the rightist, this will: liberals will just tell him he is being a bore.

He will usually stop immediately.

If that doesn't work, liberals will get another conservative to insist that this one stop repeating himself. Nobody is more desperate to do the liberals' will than a conservative who is trying to prove to liberals that he is being reasonable. Conservatives trying to look good in public are the best friends the left has in the world. ** To be accepted as part of the "cool" crowd, conservatives will cut ANYBODY'S throat. So conservatives never repeat anything that hurts liberals.

What happens if a conservative breaks that rule?

When I worked on Capitol Hill in Washington, Congressman John Ashbrook used to do it. We were up against a huge Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress, and the Democratic Carter Administration in the White House, but we stopped them cold time after time.

In the late 1970's, the BATF under President Carter tried to sneak in complete gun control. They put through a rule which registered, not guns, but ammunition.

When we got BATF representatives in front of the Subcommittee on Crime, of which Ashbrook was ranking Republican member, he asked them, "Is this a first step toward registering all weapons?"

The BATF reps gave the usual long, rambling answer they gave to all conservatives. In every other case, once they finished this ramble, the conservatives would go on to another topic.

But John Ashbrook was different. After they had finished their usual evasion, he asked, "Is this a first step toward registering all weapons?"

They gave another long answer, so John Ashbrook asked, "Is this a first step toward registering all weapons?"

Another long, rambling reply.

Other Republicans on the committee, of course, now began to attack Ashbrook for being such a bore. As I said, the people liberals can always depend on to crush needed repetition are good old conservative coward-morons.

Fortunately, John didn't give a damn what they thought.

So he asked, "Is this a first step toward registering all weapons?"

After six or seven repetitions, he finally got a clear "No" out of them.

Then he put them UNDER OATH!

And, despite the hateful glares of his conservative colleagues, he asked them the following question

"Is this a first step toward registering all private weapons?

And they said Yes!

And that particular Carter scheme began to die that day.

The tactic worked. And one thing you can depend on with respectable conservatives: they will never repeat a tactic that works.

Here, in short, we have a major reason why the modern right loses. Here we have the reason that the right will lose EVERYTHING. It boils down to this simple point

The left repeats whatever hurts the right. The right never repeats anything that hurts the left.

Liberals are always talking about how evil Hitler was. If any rightist says anything even vaguely good about the white race, leftists tear them to pieces by comparing them to Nazis. But when a leftist talks about how "idealistic" the New Left of the 1960s was, no rightist dares say a bad word about it. But, this wonderful, "idealistic" New Left carried around Communist flags all the time!

No rightist ever says a single word.

Now, what if a single rightist group carried a single SWASTIKA anywhere in one of ITS parades?

The left would tear its guts out. And respectable conservatives would demand the right to lead the lynch mob. You see, the left takes hold of something evil the right does, and it hangs on mercilessly.

The left keeps the right in a permanent state of terror.

Just how many times have you heard the phrase, "Hitler killed Six Million Jews?" I have heard the left repeat it about a thousand times, at least.

Now, why do you think the left repeats that phrase so many times?

Stalin killed fifty million people. In peacetime.

Mao killed more. Also in peacetime.

Nobody cares.

But we have all heard Six Million Jews just about six million times. Why? Because it keeps the right in a permanent state of terror. "Six Million Jews" underlies every public political discussion in this country. In every conversation, all a liberal has to do is mention the word "racist," or even hint at it, and every conservative goes into a state of terror and apologizes for absolutely anything the leftist wants him to apologize for.

Why?

Because Hitler was a racist, and Hitler killed Six Million Jews.

Does it work? It's working right now!

We have just watched the Republican Party denounce thousands of its most loyal and active potential supporters, the Council of Conservative Citizens, because of that one phrase: Six Million Jews.

The process went this way

1) Spokesmen who belonged to The Council of Conservative Citizens announced they believed the book The Bell Curve, which says that there is a large hereditary IQ gap between the average American black and the average American white. As a matter of fact, there is not a single literate person in America, black or white, who does NOT believe The Bell Curve is right about innate IQ differences. It was the fact that the authors of The Bell Curve actually dared SAY what everybody knows that infuriated liberals.

Liberals had said that anyone who published this evidence was anaziwhowantedtokillsixmillionjews. They assumed that they had everybody too terrified to do it again.

Liberals had assumed that ALL conservatives had been terrified out of ever printing the vast array of proof of innate racial IQ differences. So they exploded in fury when The Bell Curve came out.

So, when someone dared to say it again, they concentrated on prohibiting anyone from endorsing it.

2) When the CCC endorsed the book, the ADL screamed that the CCC was a bunch of naziswhowanttokillsixmillionjews. So the Republican Party denounced them. Liberals use the naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews tactic for a very good reason: It always works!

So the left knows how to use the sins of the far right.

What does the right do with the sins of the far left?

Communists, and ONLY Communists, built a vast defensive work around EVERY ONE of their countries, and they shot anyone down in cold blood who tried to escape from them.

The New Left praised by today's liberals routinely carried Communist flags in its marches. Have you ever heard ANY conservative even MENTION that fact?

Me neither.

Please note I just said MENTION. I didn't say REPEAT that fact, the way the left would repeat and repeat and REPEAT the use of a swastika by any rightist. I just said have you ever heard a conservative MENTION this when a leftist praises the New Left of the 1960s?

Don't hold your breath.

Conservatives are too busy denouncing the Council of Conservative Citizens to mention Communists shooting people down in cold blood for trying to escape them.

You can say what you want to about Hysterical Bill Press on Crossfire, but you can never accuse him of letting any conservative get away with anything the left chooses to call Heresy.

What happens when Pat Buchanan or some other accepted conservative spokesman gets hold of a point? He mentions it once or twice, and then, once it starts to bother the liberal, he moves to something else.

I am not saying Pat won't repeat things. He simply doesn't repeat anything that makes liberals uncomfortable. When it comes to sounding like a religious nutcase, Pat will repeat himself endlessly. It is only when he is making a point that makes liberals uncomfortable that he wants to seem reasonable.

What happens if a conservative does repeat something that bothers liberals?

The other conservative will be the first to tell him he is becoming a bore. If this sounds unrealistic, I challenge you to observe closely when such debates take place.

Stalin killed over FIFTY MILLION PEOPLE.

And Stalin killed most of his people IN PEACETIME!

Of course nobody ever says that. That's my point.

The perfect time to bring up these sins of the left would be when liberals repeat Six Million Jews.

How often do conservatives ever do that?

The bottom line is that the left never misses an opportunity to make its point against the extreme right, and to use it to keep everybody on the right crawling.

Instead of making our even stronger case against the far left at every opportunity, we crawl.

That's why they win, and we lose.

And that is why, if we keep doing what we are doing, we will lose EVERYTHING.

*Please see November 21 article, "It Doesn't Work"

**Please See October 3 article "Respectable Conservatives, they're Just Bureaucrats"