Bring back HUAC
Republicans should promise to fight in the culture war if they want to win Congress
Republicans assume they will win at least the House of Representatives in next year’s elections, and possibly the Senate. And why not? The Democrats have no real mandate and actually lost House seats in the 2016. Rather than govern moderately, however, they have embarked on a suicide mission of inflationary spending, tax hikes (coming this fall), making cities unlivable again, and apologizing abroad for our country. And then there is the matter of their “get whitey” cultural agenda that seeks to replace historical American meritocracy with a society ordered by race and politics—an effort that has never passed muster with voters.
Many Republicans see this disaster unfolding and presume victory without much effort. But this view is misguided. As should have been made clear in the last election, the Left controls all of the commanding heights of our culture. The media, the tech monopolies, academia, unions, woke corporations, foreign opponents who prefer American decline, and Wall Street will be pulling for the Democrats. If you doubt this because it would mean some of these organizations would be voting against their self-interests or those of their constituents, you haven’t met the jellyfish running our corporations, schools, and media companies. Whether or not they are woke doesn’t matter, because they take cues from subordinates who are. They are saturated by a never-ending mist of wokeism from our culture.
Against this machine, some safe talking points about taxes and high gas prices from the Chamber of Commerce or free trade glee club will not suffice. Republicans need to engage in the culture war in a serious manner. They need to make themselves relevant to this key fight for the survival of America or watch voters, especially those who switched parties or came off the sidelines to support Donald Trump, slip away to reclusion.
Stepping back, conservatives and Republicans must realize they have no cultural power whatsoever—a serious problem since culture drives politics in the long run. Conservatives used to complain that Hollywood leaned left, along with elite northeastern private colleges and the inner sanctums of Wall Street and the legal field. But that Hollywood still produced occasional movies like “Red Dawn” or “Naked Gun.” Students who wanted to avoid politics could do so at many institutions. And no one really cared about your politics on Wall Street or in corporate America if you could do your job.
All of that is over. Hollywood and corporate media cannot countenance any message that isn’t leftwing and racialist. Even the military academies are teaching critical race theory. Corporate advertising budgets are being used not to maximize sales and shareholder value but to stuff an inaccurate, race-obsessed version of America down our throats. Comedians sound like commissars and aren’t even funny. Satire is mostly dead. Corporations allow no conservative or even just traditionally patriotic voices in their top ranks or on their boards of directors. This problem will persist until conservatives stop wasting money on the schools they attended, the ballet, or politicians who talk tough at election time but who fail to fight in office—and divert those resources to funding relevant culture that is conservative.
No, we have no cultural power today. But we do occasionally have political power. We should use it to attack the Left.
An example of what not to do occurred when Republicans last held the House under Speaker Paul Ryan, which included two years at the beginning of the Trump administration when the GOP had both houses of Congress and the White House. Did congressional Republicans act to secure the border, deport illegal aliens, cut federal funding of universities, ban government unions, replace government schools, break up the tech monopolies, or raise taxes on Hollywood and Wall Street? No, instead they cut taxes on corporations and gave a huge payday to the incompetent military-industrial complex.
How can Republicans convince voters they will not return to this largely pointless existence in which decay toward the progressives’ vision for America continues, just at a slightly slower pace than under Democrats? What can Republicans do not to lose all of the Trump voters that many of their leaders seem to disdain?
One small way to start is to promise to bring back the House Un-American Activities Committee. Commonly known as “HUAC,” the committee existed from 1938-1975, but did its best and most important work in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The committee exposed deep communist and Soviet penetration of Hollywood, the wartime Manhattan Project, and other high offices of government. Liberals and progressives like to conflate the committee’s achievements with McCarthyism (whose namesake, Joseph McCarthy, never served on the committee) and whine about the blacklisting of Hollywood communists who failed to testify honestly. But the committee’s careful work stood in contrast to the later sloppiness and grandstanding of McCarthy in the Senate.
Ronald Reagan, then president of the Screen Actors Guild, testifies before HUAC on October 23, 1947.
A revived HUAC could act on behalf of the silent majority of the American people at least to expose the woke forces working to undermine America. For example, when companies like Amazon censor mainstream conservatives, HUAC could require testimony from the employees involved as well as corporate officers. When the foreigner running Coca-Cola uses corporate resources to oppose voter-integrity laws like the one Georgia enacted, he could be called for an explanation, and his board of directors, with their legal obligations to shareholders, could be required to disclose their support or opposition. The committee could expose the many tentacles of Chinese government money in the United States. It could explore the increase in anti-Americanism among university administrators at the same time they fail to educate students adequately. When major news organizations badly fail the public, as nearly all did with false allegations of Trump Campaign collusion with Russian agents, their editors and executives could be required to explain what went wrong. The committee should target the entire un-American woke enterprise and the Left’s hold on our culture.
Of course progressives will explode in fury. Let them. In fact, that would be a key benefit of restoring HUAC. Whereas the mid-century committee featured Democrats and Republicans cooperating to expose communist agents in a methodical, calm, bipartisan manner, a hunt for wokeistas today could never have much Democrat support. As long as Republicans keep their cool, irrational progressives would put Democrats deeper in the hole with voters. That is why, for example, I hope radical Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is never expelled from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She has put on prominent display the previously concealed radicalism of today’s progressives. A rolling Democrat meltdown on HUAC, combined with shilling for corporations and universities, would expose it more.
What do Republicans have to lose? Even if they win both houses of Congress next year, they will be hard pressed to enact serious legislation with Biden or Harris in the White House through 2024. At least use Congress’s constitutional power to investigate to expose un-American activities pouring from the heights of our culture.