March 19, 2023
The Null Hypothesis
They’ve convinced you that radical is normal
By: Brian Almon
I’ve noticed something strange since I came to Idaho nearly five years ago. Many Republicans whose families migrated to this region before Idaho was even a state are the most outspoken voices against what they call extremism. I have heard accusations that issues such as CRT and Queer Theory in public schools were never issues before the great migration from the West Coast, rather they are mirages created by activists to use for political gain.
This is strange to me because maintaining that belief requires an incredible amount of deliberate ignorance and cognitive dissonance. Imagine your neighbor rushing over to your house in the middle of the night and desperately warning you that the river had overrun its banks and a flood was headed your way. You might be able to dismiss him as a raving madman for a few minutes, but when the floodwaters began rising you would have to deal with the situation as it was.
On every political issue in Idaho, the right is identified as the aggressors, as the extremists. When a group of concerned parents raised the issue of obscene materials being made available to children in the Meridian Library, media cast them as the villains, while the groomers who publish such material and stock it in the library are considered to be the normal people.
Why is this?
In science there is something called the null hypothesis. That is the state of things if nothing changes – the state of being normal. Before you can do an experiment, you must define the null hypothesis, so that you can accurately describe what changes result from your experiment. In society, the null hypothesis is whatever most people believe is the normal state of things.
In the last decade or so, a radical left-wing zeitgeist has arisen in our society. Activists have successfully pushed their agenda to the point where extreme leftism is now the null hypothesis.
Isn’t that ironic? Leftism, which is by nature radical and progressive, has been established as normal in our society, while conservatism – ostensibly a movement devoted to maintaining the status quo – is tarred as being full of radical extremists.
What is normal today?
- School librarians stocking their shelves with outright pornography.
- Sexually explicit drag shows for children.
- Children being indoctrinated to believe they are transgender.
- Even mundane things like government funding college, healthcare, or the arts are considered so normal that any attempt to change it is called radical.
What else is radical today?
- Having the same views on marriage as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton 15 years ago.
- Saying children should not be allowed to take part in sexually explicit performances.
- Supporting laws against genital mutilation of children.
- Believing that there we should cut government spending, rather than expanding it.
We are frogs being boiled in water, not noticing how the things we consider normal have been turned on their heads. The reason for this is because we trust our national institutions. The older we are, the more we tend to trust assume that our government, our schools, our media, our law enforcement agencies, and our churches remain the trustworthy institutions they were in our youth.
Imagine you’re a fan of a fast food restaurant. You’ve been going there since childhood. You love the taste of their food, the way they serve you with a smile, the cleanliness of their restrooms. You go there regularly, so often that you don’t notice a decline in quality. One day a friend asks “Why do you still eat here? The food is awful, the staff are rude, and the restrooms are disgusting.” But in your mind the name is still associated with quality and happy memories, and it’s hard to accept how different it has become.
Thus it is with the institutions that made America.
David Burge put it succinctly on Twitter nearly a decade ago:
Over the last century or so, leftist activists have infiltrated and taken over nearly every institution that we consider part of the fabric of American life. It was a long and deliberate process to do by guile what they could never do by force.
- Our government is using every authority at its fingertips to persecute opponents of the regime, from pro-life pastors to Trump supporters, while abdicating their responsibility to the American people and selling out to supranational organizations and illegal migrants.
- Schools and universities have strayed from their mission of educating American citizens and are now working full time to create an army of Marxist activists for the never-ending revolution.
- Media generates 24/7 propaganda in favor of the new secular religion of diversity/equity/inclusion and the LGBTQ+ agenda.
- Even law enforcement, a pillar of American tradition and values, has been turned against the American people. Police enforced draconian mask mandates and lockdowns during the Covid era, the FBI persecutes law abiding Americans while running cover for the criminal oligarchs who run our country, and our justice system is heavily weighted against conservatives.
- Many churches have been infiltrated and repurposed, as they drift further and further away from a traditional understanding of theology and the gospel and closer to a philosophy based on social justice and socialism.
Right now the conservative movement is split between those who don’t think the problem is really that bad and those who think we’re on the verge of a second civil war. As usual, I take the boring middle path:
It’s not 1776, and we’re not going to be grabbing our muskets and shooting redcoats anytime soon. (Anyone who seriously urges you to do that is likely a fed who wants to put you in the same jail as the 1/6 protestors.)
On the other time, people need to wake up to the truth about what has happened to our society. America is not the same country it was in 1955, or even 1995. The names and logos of our institutions are still the same, but they are entirely different inside. Pretending that the FBI, Micron, or the Boy Scouts still uphold the same values they did half a century ago is whistling past the graveyard. The frog in the pot of boiling water really is a perfect descriptor of the American people.
The left has redefined normal slowly enough that many people have yet to catch on, but quickly enough so as to radically transform our country in just a few generations. We need to acquire a sober-minded historical perspective to understand how awry things have gone, and what it will take to fix them.
We need to reassess everything we currently take for granted. We have to stop assuming the institutions we remember from our youth still uphold the same values and exist for the same purposes they did then. If we are to take them back it requires specific actions, but unfortunately they are boring actions.
Unlike our Founding Fathers, our task is not to take our muskets and go to war. Our battle is much more mundane, which therefore makes it that much harder to sustain enthusiasm.
In some cases we can build parallel institutions. The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, for example, are pretty much lost. But there’s nothing stopping you from working with families in your community to create your own boys and girls clubs.
For the most part, however, taking back these institutions requires becoming the same infiltration that the left used over the last half century or more. Consider the story of Twitter. It was once a platform that exemplified the ideals of freedom of speech and open dialogue, but gradually morphed into an instrument of censorship and propaganda. Elon Musk bought the platform and is working to root out the infiltration that caused it to stray from its original mission in the first place.
That is exactly what we have to do with the institutions that have long served as the pillars of our society:
- Even if you homeschool your children, you should get involved with your local school board, because the students that graduate from your district will be your legislature and voters in another generation.
- Get on your library board, city council, or any other taxing district in your community. Each of these exerts authority over some factor of civic life, and if we are to save our communities we need people like you involved.
- Don’t be afraid to take a job in media or government. Right now, the outlets that deliver the news and the agencies that set the rules of our communities are staffed by leftists with agendas. Be the change you want to see.
- Get involved in party politics. Rather than just assuming that your local party agrees with your beliefs and principles, find out for yourself. Get to know your precinct committeeman, or run for PC yourself. Even if you’re not an elected PC, you can usually attend monthly meetings and see what your representatives are up to.
Most importantly, you must accept that it is no longer 1955, 1995, or any other period in the past when things were different, when things were better. The pillars of our society that you once thought were incorruptible have in fact been corrupted – how then shall you live? Understand that we exist in a revolutionary time, not unlike that of our Founding Fathers, or of our grandfathers who endured the Depression and fought the Second World War. The way we fight our battles is different, but the principles for which we fight are the same.
Don’t let our enemies define the null hypothesis. Recognize how radically our nation is being transformed before your eyes. Discard the rose-colored glasses and charge boldly into the future, soberly and clear-headed.
This is our time, and our battle. As Scripture says, who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?
Note: A descendant of American pioneers, Brian writes about the importance of culture and about current events in the context of history. His work can be found on Substack, here
