John- I recently gave a speech to a group of Texans about wokeism. This isn’t your typical speech. We all have a general understanding of what “woke” means. We see it every day in America’s schools, in the mainstream media, in Congress, and in the White House. But few understand the *why* behind the woke. Why does the left pursue these radical cultural fights? Why is nothing - not even our children - off-limits? Why is it so important that we win this fight? I explore all of these questions in the speech below. It’s long, but I hope you’ll read it. And if you agree with me, I hope you’ll consider donating to my campaign here. This is a fight we cannot lose. And we can’t win this fight without patriots like you. Thank you for reading and for your support. In Service, Dan Crenshaw The Why Behind the Woke By Dan Crenshaw Delivered Friday, May 6 in Texas We know wokeism is a problem. I think we all know what it refers to; we all have a basic understanding of the trend the word “woke” describes. But let's not confuse that knowledge with an actual understanding of the problem. Many know what woke is, and they know they don’t like it, but few understand the why behind the woke. So I want to focus today on understanding the problem, because there can be no call to action without first examining the battlefield. Let me tell you a story about a fascinating woman, Nancy Green. She was born a slave in 1834 Montgomery County, KY. and became a wealthy superstar in the advertising world, as its first living trademark. Green was 56 years old when she was selected as spokesperson for a new ready-mixed, self-rising pancake flour and made her debut in 1893 at a fair and exposition in Chicago. She demonstrated the pancake mix and served thousands of pancakes, and became an immediate star. She was a good storyteller, her personality was warm and appealing, and her showmanship was exceptional. Her newfound financial freedom and stature as a national spokesperson enabled her to become a leading advocate on issues like poverty and equal rights for all Americans. This was a remarkable woman, and sadly she has been ERASED by woke politics. Now of course I am talking about Aunt Jemimah. This plays out time and time again. Sometimes it's Columbus, sometimes it’s a Founding Father, sometimes it’s a kids show, sometimes it’s a marketing icon. Cancel culture seems to know no bounds, but what exactly are the woke trying to erase? What is the common thread of cancellations? The common thread I see is the desire to erase our collection of heroes and happy myths. For any nation to survive, there has to be a set of collective values we share, a set of shared stories that we tell. America is not a tribe, and we are not ethnically connected to each other in any real way, we have a seemingly infinite number of micro-cultures around the country from surf bums to rednecks – and so with all this diversity, sharing the same stories is incredibly important for a nation like ours. We share the same stories of our founding, and of our struggle through history. We celebrate together on the 4th of July, we take time off for Christmas, as we are a nation founded under a Judeo-Christian moral framework. We share American past times like baseball and football and March Madness. We tell stories of our proud achievements, like defeating the Soviet Union, defeating the Nazis, or landing on the moon. And we perpetuate our shared values – hard work, kindness, the use of reason, charity. The list goes on and pretty soon you have a picture of what it is to be an American. The woke want to rip up that picture, and they do so by attacking and discrediting every element of that shared story, little by little. To be woke is to be resentful for resentment’s sake. It is to hold a belief that our foundations are corrupt to the core, and must be destroyed. It is revolution for revolution’s sake, with nothing on the other side except chaos. So why on earth would anyone want this? Let’s examine some defining features of wokeism and perhaps come up with an answer to that question. The first feature is that wokeism is a religion. It bears all the hallmarks of a religion. It must mimic religion because religion gives people purpose and meaning, and that’s what the wokes are after. Wokeism has gods: the god of climate change, the god of anti-racism, the god of diversity. Wokeism promises redemption. It promises to cleanse its followers of their participation in the sins of systemic racism, whiteness, toxic masculinity, or transphobia. Wokeism has religious texts, written by Ibram X. Kendi and Nicole Hannah Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates, and a whole slew of radical academics that have successfully manufactured a new doublespeak language that simultaneously indicates membership in the cult, while also obfuscating their meaning or intent. A key element of woke literature is that it can never be pinned down, never falsified, and ultimately you can never understand what the hell they are talking about. Wokeism has religious symbols to indicate membership; they come in the form of preferred pronouns on a Twitter bio, or lawn signs that explain your household believes “science is real,” “black lives matter,” and “no human being is illegal.” And of course Wokeism has sacred rituals and sacrifices, like repenting of one’s white privilege, self-flagellation, or canceling the heretics that do not adhere to the woke religion. The second feature of wokeism worth noting is its obsession with identity - mostly race, but others as well. Gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic. It is a doctrine of anti-individualism and completely opposite to western values that place the uniqueness and divine nature of the individual front and center. I suppose they do this for a variety of reasons. For one thing, playing off group resentment is a more efficient means of manipulation. It's harder for me to gin up outrage and gather followers by speaking to each person’s individual concerns. Far easier to label whole groups as good or evil and establish the requisite hierarchies. Third - It is about victimhood. This is closely related to their obsession with group politics. Again, instead of attempting to identify victimhood individually and within the scope of commonly held standards of justice, they simply label entire groups as victims, oppressors, or champions of the oppressed. The woke are of course the self-described champions, the good guys. This is yet another effective strategy for manipulation because it plays to a very human desire – which is to feel as though others are more responsible for your lot in life than you are. This sentiment is in direct contradiction to the traditional American value of self-reliance, and that is exactly the point. Deconstruct the foundations. The fourth element is revolution. And let's be honest there's a very natural human draw to the romanticism of revolution. You rebel against authority and against your parents because it just feels kind of good. You combine that natural tendency with an unnatural lack of purpose felt by many young students, and you get a dangerous combination in which they seek to fill their purpose through the destruction of the foundations they stand upon. Revolution is a necessary step for the woke activist because they must deconstruct foundations and destroy norms in order to usher in their version of utopia. Nevermind that their utopia looks like Portland or the autonomous zone in Seattle from 2020. Key to this feature is the necessary creation of crisis. Crises all around you, in the form of systemic racism, widespread police brutality, climate related natural disasters. It is no wonder that young people have abnormally high levels of anxiety. They are being told the world is ending, or it's inherently evil and SHOULD end. You need to persuade people the system is broken for anyone to want radical change, and the woke revolutionaries attempt to do exactly that. But in the end, it is ultimately about power. This is the last feature of wokeism. When I say power I mean it in two senses. First, wokeism asserts that all social dynamics are predicated upon power dynamics. Life is a zero sum game to the woke, in that any success must have been achieved by way of oppression. If you're doing better than I am, it is because your group asserts power over my group…..and it is unjust power, at that. And so if this is true, then it’s no wonder that the woke’s strategy is to shift around those power dynamics, which gets to the second part. Ultimately their goal is to gain power for themselves and their movement. They do this by preying on our better nature, our sense of empathy and compassion, to induce submission. They do it subtly at first, then with more aggressive tactics. It reminds me of my training in the intelligence community. When you're training to be a case officer – meaning your job is to recruit and handle assets, or spies - you are taught to establish a subtle dominance over the person you are recruiting. The common example, the subtle but meaningful step, is practically undetectable. Ask them to pass you a glass of water from across the table, even though it's clearly within your reach. Politely direct them to sit in the seat you want them to sit in. Show them through the door. Subconsciously they start to understand who is boss. The woke strategy is hardly different, but focuses more on language and rituals. To give but one quick example : the American Medical Association recently published its “Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts,” which includes such recommendations as replacing the term “disadvantaged” with “historically and intentionally excluded,” replacing “vulnerable” with “oppressed,” and “blacklist” and “blackmail” with words that don’t use the word “black.” These are all different words with different meanings but the wokes want you to say things you know are not true, as a test of your loyalty to the doctrine. You will eventually believe the sky is green and the grass is blue, if you repeat it enough times. So that’s a brief description of the battlefield, now how do we fight it? I can tell you one thing. You don’t fight woke with woke. If wokeism is the tearing up of foundations, the mindless pursuit of heretics in our midst, and an obsession with victimhood, then I can certainly think of some examples on the right as well, especially amongst the self-labeled populist camp of the right. Let me lay out some political tactics for you and you tell me who you think it applies to: Step 1 – Provoke the opposition with some stupid or insidious comment or action Step 2 – Feign disbelief that anyone would react at all to your behavior. “Why are you guys so obsessed with me? Are you trying to date me or something?” Step 3 – Claim victimhood. It's them who are being unreasonable, not you. The establishment is trying to keep you down! Step 4 – Use your newfound victimhood as a self-righteous club to wield back against your enemies. Maybe do it with a fundraising email too. Sound familiar? The left may have dreamed up this nonsense but there’s plenty on the right who - lacking in the sophistication to do otherwise - have sought to fight “fire with fire!” But here's the thing. You don’t actually fight fire with fire. That is a stupid thing to do. You fight fire with water. You fight wokeism not with more angry wokeism but with conservatism. So if I have a call to action for you, it’s this: we need to re-establish what it means to be a conservative. For civilization to prosper, for it to advance, we must simultaneously allow creative destruction while also preserving the foundations that got us here in the first place. Fundamentally this is what conservatism offers – a protection of those foundations, and a responsible path for creative progress and innovation. On the right, we get so wrapped up in the latest controversy about some woke corporation that we forget to talk about the very foundations we fight for and why they matter. We can’t just repeat a familiar phrase like “Faith, Family, and Freedom” or broadly The Constitution, and think people will understand us. We need to search a little deeper. Our foundations are political, economic, and cultural. The woke movement targets each one of these. Let me briefly describe all three: Our political foundations are republican, small “r.” We have a republic, not a majoritarian democracy. Look, 51% of you in this room could vote to confiscate the wealth of the other 49% and call it democracy. See how that turns out. There's a reason our Founders designed a system of checks and balances that protects the rights of minorities, and the inalienable rights of the individual. When the left says they want to democratize everything from your business to your wealth, they mean it quite literally. Our economic foundations are of the Adam Smith tradition. Wealth creation is not a zero sum game. Free exchange, property rights, freedom of association – these things are ingredients for prosperity. If there is a more perfect economic system that creates more wealth for more people, no one has discovered it yet. Our cultural foundations began in Jerusalem. The Judeo-Christian moral framework underwrites our political and economic foundations and ultimately our prosperity. Because it was this tradition that gave birth to the concept of the divine individual. Created in God’s image, any man or woman of any class or creed can be one with God. That was mankind’s first introduction to true equality and America was born because of it. Our culture is also deeply Western. We value a strong work ethic, a meritocracy, politeness, humor, charity, and rules based notion of liberty. We believe that self-reliance and personal responsibility are a keystone of a free society, because you cannot possibly be free if you are afraid to fail. If you believe others should be responsible for you, then you must, necessarily, take their freedoms from them. Or ask some politician to do it for you. The next step is delivering this philosophy in a way people can understand. The key to persuading the public is to apply these foundations to the average American’s daily life. Here's a quick example: A new biomedical device doesn’t become widely available and save lives because a bunch of well-intentioned politicians created a new government program. It happened because our culture believes in hard work and competition and isn’t afraid of failure. It happened because our economy is free to allow investments and profits and therefore incentivizes constant improvement. And it happened because 51% of the population couldn’t just vote to confiscate the technology for themselves once it was created. It is the conservative philosophy that protects the things we care about, the things that work. So your call to action is to go out and tell that story, without reservation, and without fear of reprisal. No one should be timid in the fight for what is right, for what works, or for the country that has delivered more prosperity for more people than any other nation in history. All the hard work has been done for us already, the blood has already been shed. All we have to do is protect it. CHIP IN HERE Whether you donate $5, $10, $25, $50, $75, or more, your gift won't just sit in a "war chest". It will be put to immediate use to unseat Democrats in swing districts across the country, exposing the truth about the Biden-Pelosi radical agenda to millions of voters, and building the next generation of the conservative movement with events like Dan Crenshaw's annual youth summit. 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