With the election just a month away, it’s easy to forget an important story. One such story underlies all the others. It’s the story of radicals waging real attempts at subverting America. It’s the story of cultural marxism in action on our streets. And of the attorney general’s attempt to stop it.

I am talking about Attorney General William Barr telling “the nation’s federal prosecutors to be aggressive when charging violent demonstrators with crimes, including potentially prosecuting them for plotting to overthrow the U.S. government.” Plotting to overthrow the U.S. government — indeed, the nation as we have known it — is exactly what is happening in our streets right now.

This is a Revolution

The prosecutors would use “a rarely used sedition law … one addressing conspiracies or plots to overthrow the government.” The Associated Press reports that a “memo cited as a hypothetical example ‘a group has conspired to take a federal courthouse or other federal property by force.” It’s not hypothetical. That happened in Portland.

And not just as a protest. These aren’t people who are just angry and destroying whatever they can destroy. Barr told NBC News: “No question, Antifa is a movement. They have websites. They are organized.” He pointed out that “Anyone who has spent a moment at these things and heard their chants and what they’re calling for can see right away that they are, they say they are, revolutionaries, that this is a revolution.”

The radicals are not exactly hiding it. They could not tell us any more clearly that they want the end of America.

This is What’s Happening

That is what is happening when the Columbus statue in front of City Hall in Waterbury, CT is decapitated on the 4^th of July. And a note is left on it by the vandal, instructing people as to the statue’s alleged racist origins.

That is what is happening when the New York Times popularizes “the 1619 project,” which claims that our nation’s real founding was the arrival of the first slave in 1619. Not the Declaration of Independence in 1776. That is what is happening when the false claims of the 1619 project will now be taught as history in the public schools.

That is what is happening when Colin Kaepernick shames Nike into removing the Betsy Ross flag from its sneakers. Our first flag is a symbol of pride in all that is best in our nation. The rioters tell us they want the end of America when they smash statues of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Grant and Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass! And when they demand the removal of a statue of Teddy Roosevelt.

These are our heroes. America was built on their accomplishments. The radicals are saying that their only lasting legacy are their sins. They are unworthy to be in the public square. Those statues say “This is who we are.” Destroying them isn’t just a protest against racism. It’s an attack on the nation itself.

And the Democratic party? They say nothing. Their candidate and other party leaders might condemn the riots — eventually. They say not a word against the radicals destroying the statues. They don’t defend America.

Looking at Regime Change

This is why Barr is right. We face something way beyond the normal tug and pull of democracy. We are looking at the beginnings of a potential regime change. A change of the kind that occurs when Marxists or Islamists take over. Erasing history and heritage, changing the names of entire cities, rewriting the laws, imposing their will on people who disagree with them, preaching freedom while they ruthlessly suppress dissent.

History has seen it before. When the communists took over Russia, St. Petersburg became Leningrad. The new rulers desecrated churches and turned them into barns and warehouses. They made the clergy submit to their authority and tortured and killed the ones who didn’t. They forced every child into schools that taught them marxist materialism, and urged children to turn in their “counter-revolutionary” parents. The communists tried to erase the old Russia to build the new Soviet Union.

Fans of The Man in the High Castle — a dystopian show about an alternative reality in which America lost World War II — will recall scenes in which our Nazi occupiers smash the Lincoln Memorial and melt down the Liberty Bell. Something like this is already happening in real life. And not by Nazis. By a different kind of fascist, who call themselves anti-fascists.

Of course America isn’t perfect. Our heroes weren’t perfect. But our nation has changed, repented, corrected itself. It’s a nation that weaves our different stories into the larger patriotic story of the nation herself. Some don’t feel they have a place in this story. We should find a way to convince those who think they have no stake in a common American identity that they, in fact, do. And that the alternatives will be far worse.

The Vandals of 2020

The vandals of 2020 seek to overthrow the nation. That’s what they’re saying when they destroy the statues of our national heroes. They reject the foundations upon which the nation was built. In urging prosecutors to charge the seditious with sedition, Attorney General Barr is fighting to preserve American freedom and democracy.

He is right to do so. We must fight the Cultural Marxists now. While we still can. 

 

Peter Wolfgang is president of Family Institute of Connecticut Action. He lives in Waterbury, Connecticut, with his wife and their seven children. The views expressed on The Stream are solely his own.