Guest Editorial

The Battle Is Local

by Jeff Norwitz,
Richmond, Kentucky

As a former Fremont County resident, I became sad and angry when the “defund police” movements started and Antifa and BLM (anarchists) ran unchecked through big cities including
Denver. Analysis of what’s behind these shocking fissures in civilized behavior is complex and suggests many reasons. In my opinion, the seeds of this transformation go back to the early 1960s when Communists, Marxists, and self-hating Americans seized public education, academia, rewrote history, and removed God from the public square. In her book, “The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development is Bringing down Western Civilization” (2008), nationally syndicated conservative columnist and author Diana West brilliantly explains that since the 1960s, we’ve become a nation of perpetual adolescents without the maturity, discipline, or courage to make painful decisions. West was prescient in what I hold is the most powerful book about the decline of America ever written.
Since then, three generations of child-like adults have become parents, teachers, leaders, judges, politicians, and election officials.
I fear this last election demonstrated we will never again have a mature voting public. Rather, we have puerile, selfish, uneducated, internationally ignorant, and propagandized voters who believe America is abhorrent, reject
opposing thought, and embrace alternate history. Moreover, the coming wave of undocumented voters whose self-interest will be tied to the nanny-state, further threatens conservative principles of limited government and self-reliance; antithetical to West’s
juvenile adults.
In my opinion, how conservatives reorganize will determine if we can ever unify to win Congress or the White House. So, what needs restructuring? The late Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Speaker of the House of Representatives, coined the phrase, “All Politics is Local” and wrote a book so titled. In my opinion, conservatives need to focus on winning municipal, county, and state elections. In doing so, we claw back control of local legislative power that suffocates tax payers and threatens cherished life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness – at the local level – which O’Neill advanced is where fundamentals of political action start. Every revolution starts in your political backyard.