The Case Against, “Let Them Have It”

Hi Bill,

Obviously, I got you riled up in last night’s TSL with my rejection of your recent “let them have it” comments. Unfortunately, I’m not as quick thinking on my feet as you and it being 11:00 PM after a long day that began at 4:30 AM, I wasn’t able to answer to your, “what’s your plan?” challenge in that forum, so here’s my response.

First, let me repeat that I know you’ve fought long and hard for our principles and I’ve supported and admired you since the early Tea Party days. My comment was not meant as an attack on you (although you obviously took it as such).

That said, I meant what I wrote, and view “let them have it” to be demoralizing words of surrender, which I will never accept. 

I also find it ironic that you would go down that road on the very day your podcast aired supporting “the Great Man Theory” and lauding Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain as a man of such unique courage in the face of impossible odds at Round Top. Instead of “let them have it,” he said, “fix Bayonets” and, according to your own writings, in doing so saved his country.

My late father was a member of Menachim Begin’s Irgun who repeatedly put his life on the line in the 40’s to help birth the State of Israel. The stories he told of the dangerous missions their organization carried out to help forge a new nation in the wake of the Holocaust would leave you breathless. No matter how many defeats they suffered or men they lost (and there were many), they never said, “let them have it.” Their motto was “Never Again!” They had no choice.

My “plan”, such as it is, is to do the same. We have no choice. The consequences for future generations are too dire. If we let them have their way, there’s no coming back from it.

John Adams to Abigail Adams – July 7, 1775:

Your Description of the Distresses of the worthy Inhabitants of Boston, and the other Sea Port Towns, is enough to melt an Heart of Stone. Our Consolation must be this, my dear, that Cities may be rebuilt, and a People reduced to Poverty, may acquire fresh Property: But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrender their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it…

I may not have a plan other than to continue fighting these bastards at every turn, and the odds sure seem long, but I will never say, “let them have it.” Not when “them” includes my kids and grandkids.

As the Strauss–Howe classic The Fourth Turning and my friends’ new book, “The Seventh Crisis – Why Millennials Must Re-Establish Ordered Liberty,” (which I had them send you), convincingly illustrate, we are in the midst of a predictable, cyclical, multi-generational crisis. We’re up against human nature, itself. Hard Times, Strong Men, Good Times, Weak Men, Hard Times…etc. But as America’s heroes from Washington in Valley Forge, to Chamberlain at Round Top, to Evans at Leyte Gulf proved, the only way to successfully navigate such crises is to never give up, regardless of the odds. Think these great men ever said, “let them have it?” Me neither. 

And my comment – which you vehemently attacked – about if, God forbid, we lose this battle for the soul of America, at least being able to tell my grandkids that we fought like hell for them, was not defeatist. Quite the opposite. As I and my fellow patriots used it, it was more a call to honor, and it harkens back to Reagan’s brilliant quote from his A Time for Choosing speech: 

Ronald Reagan Oct. 27, 1964

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

We may not win this battle for our once great Republic, but I will never surrender it willingly. “Let them have it” only makes sense if “they” are the only people suffering the horrific consequences of their own twisted ideology.

As a man who wrote extensively about Stalin’s atrocities, with a wife who lived under Communism, you of all people, know that won’t be the case. Plenty of innocent people are having their lives destroyed in Portland right now from their madness, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg should we let these Marxists “have it.”

I’m a year older than you and have lived a good life, which I’m not planning on giving up any time soon, but I’d do so in a heartbeat to protect my kids and grandkids.

I may not have “a better plan” than to just keep fighting, but I’ll never say, “let them have it.”

If I go down, I’m going down swinging.