‘Welcome to Oceania, Judge Kavanaugh; please exit America to the left’

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, and most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was right! They were wrong and he was right.” — George Orwell, “1984”

Roll call!

Aldous Huxley, Ayn Rand, George Orwell, Friedrich von Hayek, all those who foresaw this in their own times and ways.

Pray for us.

This is the moment they were trying to warn us about.

For anyone who thinks that the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh is about his fitness to serve on the Supreme Court, I have news for you. The battle over this seat, the battle over the presidency of Donald Trump, the concerns about midterm elections, are overshadowed by what this really is: An all-out offensive against the founding ideas upon which the United States of America was built and an attempt to extinguish reason, liberty and the primacy of Western civilization.

Anyone can see the stormy seas of disagreement between Americans over this issue and many others. Whether in the streets or on Twitter feeds, people are hurling hand grenades of diatribe at one another.

That’s what is visible on the surface.

But underneath, hidden from common sight, is a rip current so wide and so strong it is pulling us away from the shores of individual freedom.

If the people who are behind the coordinated attack on Judge Kavanaugh prevail in stopping his confirmation, they will have succeeded in creating a precedent that says we no longer have to be troubled by process, fairness, law, decency or facts when making decisions about governance. We need be concerned only with conformance.

I have a few general thoughts on human history. The first is that it is sequential and cause-effect driven, not cyclical. The second is that its highest and best use is not in seeing how it may repeat, but in using past events the same way that we might to help determine the path of a missile. In that sense, we can predict where things might be going based upon where they have been.

The path we are on appears to be an emblazoned road to serfdom.

The #MeToo movement, the Hollywood-style production of the sexual predator campaign against Judge Kavanaugh, the Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Women’s March organizations and various open-borders groups have a unifying theme: “America, as designed, is flawed. America, as practiced, always has been oppressive. Don’t reform America — remodel it.”

To these people, America needs to become Orwell’s Oceania.

The Party in his “1984” had a slogan: “Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past.”

The thread that runs through the Kavanaugh proceedings and the other groups mentioned is taking present-day power to redefine America’s past (or Kavanaugh’s past) and then using that to shape a new America. It would be an America that does not tolerate dissent, that punishes non-conformance, and one in which small groups of people determine every aspect of the lives of larger groups of people.

Or, as they ultimately came to revise the First Commandment in Orwell’s “Animal Farm”: “All animals are equal — but some are more equal than others.”

I’m telling you with 100 percent certainty that the prime movers behind the Kavanaugh attacks know that their protestations are not legitimate. They simply cannot be troubled by tired, dated notions of justice.

History moves along a pathway that can be altered momentarily with gyrations, what we often confuse as a “pendulum effect,” but which moves in a general direction until impacted by major events. In mathematics, we call these inflection points.

We have had many inflection points in American history — some good (the rise of Martin Luther King Jr.), some tragic (the death of Dr. King), some fundamentally divisive (Roe v. Wade), and some incredibly unifying (Dec. 7, 1941). This attack on Judge Kavanaugh, if victorious, will mark a different type of inflection point, one I see leading to a “boot stamping on a human face forever,” to quote Orwell once again.

Much has changed since the dramatics of the Supreme Court nomination hearings for Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. We’ve seen an increasing number of power grabs by those who use the sheer force of intimidation to silence and control others. If they can successfully manufacture stories to force a change in public decisions, then they may be unstoppable.

It is up to every animal on the farm to demand a stop to this madness. This isn’t about the votes of three or four senators; it’s about the voices of 325 million.

If you are not a supporter of Judge Kavanaugh for perceived reasons of his jurisprudence, then I’m sorry. When your party wins the White House, that president can appoint the next Supreme Court justice. But I beg you, don’t give in to this.

This is the moment we were warned about. No pendulum to wait for, no cycle to repeat. Huxley warned that most humans have an infinite capacity for taking things for granted. I pray the Senate will do the correct thing and confirm an honorable man, Brett Kavanaugh, before our culture slips deeper into a dangerous abyss.

Charlie Kirk is the founder and president of Turning Point USA, a conservative nonprofit that aims to educate students on free-market values. You can follow him on Twitter @CharlieKirk11.