Opinion

Does Savage’s Partisan Retrovirus Analogy Serve The Twin-Party Sham?

Alan Keyes Former Assistant Secretary of State
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Once you clearly grasp the deceptive nature of the elitist faction’s two-party sham, you’re bound to recognize anything that fails to take account of it as deceit or distraction.

Michael Savage’s reported use of the virus analogy is a case in point. “There’s a retrovirus in the White House,” he said. Retroviruses reprogram the cells they infect so that they use their resources to replicate the virus’s DNA. Mr. Savage used the virus analogy in the context of discussing the America’s precipitous decline, painfully expedited since Obama occupied the Oval Office. When discussing the causes of that decline, he took on a straw man argument that sees the hippie movement of the 1960’s as the phenomenon that turned America onto the path of self-destruction.

Hippies, he contends, were “free spirits.” Because they rejected the identity prescribed for them by the society’s prevalent code, they were more susceptible than others to being reprogrammed by leftist ideologues. He applied the retrovirus analogy to the Communists, socialists, liberals, leftists, Democrats, etc., whom he identified as the ones exploiting this vulnerability.

But does this explanation of the metaphor take accurate account of the phenomenon on which it is based? “Retrovirus” is a general category that includes several species of viruses, some acting more insidiously than others. In political terms, the “retrovirus” category would be comparable to what I call the “elitist faction”, including both Democrats and Republicans. Within that category, the Democrats are like the more open and aggressive viruses that the body is programmed to recognize as harmful. But another species in that same category focuses on attacking the very cells within the body that are supposed to be its guardians, the ones who are supposed to recognize and deal with damaging aggressors.  

Savage’s viral analogy is apt. My readers know that I have used it for a long time. But Savage states it in terms that leave the more insidious form of retrovirus out of the picture. This is the Lentivirus subgroup of retroviruses, the best known of which is HIV — the human immunodeficiency virus. (Lentivirus, from lente — Latin for slow — so-called because they ravage the body more slowly. In this respect Lentiviruses are like the GOP quislings, whose feigned opposition to leftist Democrats ends up taking the nation to the same dead end, but more slowly.)

In the context of America’s constitutional republic, the socialism-minded Democrats openly appear as elements that do not conform to our republic’s constitutional program. They openly work toward its radical transformation. Pitted against them are conservative elements of our body politic that, when they function properly, react against specific attacks. They seek to conserve the normal health of our body politic, and its political constitution (using that word in its more general sense). That’s why they are aptly called conservatives (though in recent years many have, ever more mistakenly, conflated that term with the Republican Party label).

Note that this definition of conservative focuses on preserving normal health, i.e., a positive state of affairs consistent with perpetuating the natural existence of the body. This is obviously not the same thing perpetuating the “status quo,” as implicitly hostile definitions of the term “conservative” often imply. By focusing on the “status quo” these hostile definitions cast conservatism as a negative mentality, in contrast with openness to “change,” which they (also falsely) assume to be positive. Rather than deceitfully assuming that “change” is necessarily a good thing, the allusion to normal health reminds us of the need to consult a standard for judgment, in light of which change can have positive or negative implications.

Contrary to the implicit assumption of Mr. Savage’s formulation of the viral analogy, our way of life did not simply succumb to communists and communism, on account of the “free spirits” of the hippies. Some such free spirits did indeed become the fodder for opportunistic infections of America’s body politic. But these opportunistic infections now run rampant in the body because, since the end of the Reagan era, the conservative, Republican forces that should have neutralized them have not just failed in that task, they have refused it.

So the fatal threat to the republic’s constitution has less to do with “hippies” and “free spirits” than with the supposedly conservative Republicans who pose as guardians of the constitution’s health, but refuse to act like it. They consume the resources intended to preserve that constitution (the money, energy and votes of the sincere constitutional conservatives in the party’s political base) to sustain their own existence in power. To that end, they either neglect to oppose or actually connive with other retroviruses that are similarly abusing and reprogramming the body’s resources for their own ends.

As I said above, I have often made use of the virus analogy in the effort to help people understand the fatal deception that is now the sole purpose of the GOP’s existence, precisely because I long ago thought through and applied that analogy to the GOP, what strikes me as particularly significant about Mr. Savage’s reported use of it is his failure to do so. He invites people to see “hippies,” “free spirits,” and others susceptible to leftist brainwashing as agents of our constitutional decline. But by directing attention only to their leftist re-programmers he turns it away from elements in our politics more analogous to HIV; those whose self-serving dereliction wastes resources that would otherwise be sufficient to curtail the opportunistic infections leftist reprogramming produces.

The immune system of America’s body politic worked in the 1950’s and again in the 1980’s. It would be working again now if the authentically conservative grassroots’ uprising, the media labeled “tea party,” had not been traduced by the machinations of the quisling GOP.

I found it telling that, as reported, Mr. Savage several times reiterated that the “free spirits” of the 1960’s did not cause the declining constitution of America’s body politic. This report concludes:

Bringing it all home, Savage said the reason the ’60s were not all bad is because there’s nothing wrong with being a free spirit: “I would say I’m still a free spirit and I don’t want the government telling me what to do, and I don’t want you telling me what to do, and I don’t want ‘Black Lives’ telling me what to do, and I don’t want anyone [emphasis mine] telling me what to do. How’s that?”

To this I would reply: That false idea of freedom is exactly how the insanity Mr. Savage decries manifests itself. Some so-called conservatives delude themselves with the assumption that such freedom is what America is all about. But that assumption contradicts the self-evident truths set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Those truths constituted, as it were, the DNA of the American body. As written in that DNA, the healthy constitution of America’s body politic is energized by the exercise of unalienable rights. Though unalienable rights give rise to a certain freedom, they are rooted in obligation. They are woven into the fabric of human life as people follow instructions communicated to all human beings by their Creator.

On account of these instructions human beings can distinguish right from wrong. Thanks to the intention of their Creator, they have the capacity self-consciously to choose between right and wrong. But they also partake of the Creator’s disposition to make that choice in favor of doing what’s right for the existence, preservation and well-being of humanity, the disposition He clearly demonstrated in the act of creation itself.

The constitution of America’s body politic depends on this disposition to do right as God gives us to see the right. It depends, therefore, on our willingness to do what God has instructed us to do. In human terms, this is the manifestation of free spirit. It is not about the freedom to do as one pleases. It’s about doing what pleases the One whose spirit informs the very possibility of our being; the one whose goodwill sets frees our existence free, the way a sculptor frees his creation from the stone that substantiates, but also shrouds and imprisons it.

I don’t know if Mr. Savage accepts or rejects the premise of God-endowed unalienable right that is the primordial basis for the identity of the American people. If he does not, then he furnishes new evidence that the self-styled “free spirits” among whom he counts himself do more than contribute to America’s decline. For America’s self-government does not just decline, it must utterly fail, if and when we give in to the notion that God’s rule no longer applies to our self-government. We must be willing to submit to the government of God, else we lose the character without which the tyranny of nature replaces the unalienable right of liberty (i.e., freedom rightly used) that allows us to distinguish our nature as human beings.