By S.A. McCarthy

Democrats in Virginia just approved what is broadly recognized as an unfair, unjust, hyper-partisan redistricting measure, stripping Republican voters in the state of representation and handing their own party a super-majority of slots on Old Dominion’s congressional delegation.

Governor Abigail Spanberger (D) endorsed the radical redistricting bid earlier this year, despite having pledged her opposition to gerrymandering when campaigning for her current office. In fact, while Spanberger campaigned as a moderate, she has governed as a radical, pushing extreme pro-abortion and gun control legislation in tandem with her party both in the state’s General Assembly and on the national stage. Of course, her hard shift to the hard left was predictable: when fellow Democrat Jay Jones, then running for the state office of attorney general, was exposed for sending vile text messages fantasizing about violence against political opponents and their children, Spanberger refused to condemn or distance herself from Jones.

Then-Speaker of the House in Virginia’s General Assembly Todd “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” Jones wrote in a text message to a legislative colleague about the Republican official. When Jones’s colleague, Republican Carrie Coyne, confronted the Democrat over his use of such violent rhetoric, Jones did not retreat. Instead, he suggested that Gilbert’s children should also be shot and killed in the presence of their mother, Jennifer Gilbert. “You were talking about hopping [sic] jennifer [sic] Gilbert’s children would die,” Coyne texted. “Yes,” Jones replied. “I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they’re breeding little fascists? Yes.” This man is now the Attorney General of Virginia, and, like Spanberger, supported the extremist redistricting measure, even intervening in court in order to ensure that the measure made it to the referendum stage.

Virginia stands as a microcosm for the nation as a whole. Democrats lied through their teeth and refused to retreat from their reprehensible conduct in a bid to take power. It worked. Once in power, they relentlessly pushed their extreme agenda and attempted to remove conservatives from power. Once again, it worked. Some may consider this a “playbook,” a series of political ploys and manipulations. In fact, it is a war strategy, and conservatives would be wise to recognize it as such.

Recall that when Turning Point USA Founder and prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk was murdered — shot through the throat while speaking at a university campus event — leftists celebrated and even mocked the 31-year-old husband’s and father’s death. Just the year prior, President Donald Trump was targeted by a multi-pronged Democrat-run lawfare campaign intended not just to bar him from running for office again but to put him in prison for what would likely be the rest of his life. When that didn’t pan out, Trump was shot in the side of the head at a campaign rally.

Since Trump’s return to office, it has been revealed that former President Joe Biden collaborated with left-wing pro-abortion groups to target pro-life Americans for aggressive prosecution, while ignoring crimes committed against pro-life organizations, and that the Democrat-aligned Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been charged with illegally “manufacturing extremism” to target, while lumping conservative-aligned groups like Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, the Center for Immigration Studies, Focus on the Family, and others in with the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

None of this is the behavior of a political party that respects and functions within the established legal and political order. It is the behavior of an insurgent army, bent on capturing every institution of significance it can get its hands on — and toppling or crushing those that are beyond its grasp.

The hour is far later than many self-described conservatives are seemingly prepared to admit. While Democrats in Virginia have gutted four GOP-held congressional seats, Republicans in Indiana refused to redistrict in their state, instead insisting on adherence to some vague set of “principles” that have rarely succeeded against the present enemy. Trump won a historic election in 2024, capturing both the Electoral College and popular vote and securing a Republican majority in both chambers of Congress, largely on the strength of his immigration agenda, including mass deportations. In the succeeding year, Republicans have signaled a willingness to abandon mass deportations and have even introduced a sweeping, insidious amnesty bill to reward illegal immigrants for violating American laws. While election integrity measures such as proof of U.S. citizenship and photo identification remain broadly popular across political lines, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) doesn’t have the votes to pass the SAVE America Act through the U.S. Senate.

The Left does not “play to win.” They do not treat politics as a game or a debate club. To the Democratic Party of the present day, the American political system is an obstacle, a series of levers and pulleys to be manipulated, rigged, and, when necessary, simply steamrolled through lies and lawfare in order to obtain as much power as possible. Once secured, that power is then wielded with ruthless efficiency. Political opponents and dissidents are not only stripped of power but are actively targeted for prosecution and persecution. What power leftists have taken is expanded, no matter the legal challenges the power-grab presents.

The insatiable appetite of the Left for power poses an existential threat to conservatives and to the American nation. Should leftist Democrats continue to take and expand power, they will, as history demonstrates, mercilessly target political opponents and political dissidents. Christians will find that their biblical views on life, marriage, and sexuality are now criminal acts carrying lengthy prison sentences. Those who wish to shield children from the horrific mutilations of the gender transition industry will find themselves raided by armed police officers and charged with crimes of cruelty. Any who dare complain that unfettered mass immigration has introduced murderers and rapists into their neighborhoods in droves will likewise find themselves facing a judge and a jury — a jury not of their peers but of the very foreigners who have invaded their towns and communities.

It is not difficult — looking again at the example of “progressive” regimes such as the Soviet Union or communist China — to realize that mass arrests and incarcerations will quickly devolve to mass executions, even extrajudicial executions. None of this is any longer a conspiracy theory or hyperbole: Democrats have brazenly demonstrated, particularly over the past decade, how they do and how they will govern.

William F. Buckley, Jr. once defined a conservative as “someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” It is no longer enough for conservatives to simply “stand athwart history, yelling Stop.” The time has come for conservatives to stop yelling and start doing, and to intervene in history and stop the onslaught of progressivism which threatens the future of the United States of America. While 250 years is certainly a good run, it need not be the end, if only those with the power to act would have the will to do so.

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

This piece originally appeared here.