What If It Turns Out You Were Important?

Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he could do only a little. — Edmund Burke

There are points in any effort when the marginal becomes the binary.

The proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back” aka “the last straw” refers to the tiniest marginal addition resulting in a binary outcome — the last straw being just that much too much for the camel to support the aggregated weight.

Likewise, the children’s rhyme “for want of a nail the kingdom was lost,” etc., refers to an unmended shoe encumbering a soldier whose absence, in turn, lost a crucial battle, and in turn a war.

In the course of events, very often it is a small thing, the marginal effort on the part of a relative few, that alters a significant outcome.

The 2018 Florida Gubernatorial Election

Few elections in recent times have offered two candidates further apart on the political spectrum than that of the 2018 Florida Governor’s race. The Democrats had nominated Andrew Gillum, a Soros-backed leftist progressive. Republicans had nominated Ron DeSantis, a conservative Trump ally.

DeSantis won by just 0.4% of the vote, a difference of just 33,000 votes cast.

But it was a closer call for the state than anyone realized. After losing the election, Gillum was later found in a hotel room drunk out of his mind and in the company of prostitute who just had overdosed on crystal meth. Politics aside, that’s not exactly the idea type anyone would want to be leading their state.

Ron DeSantis, on the other hand, turned out to be one of the best governors in the country, a supremely competent manager, sympathetic to liberty and with the courage to do the right thing (he had one of the lightest-touch COVID responses, despite being blasted for it). Under DeSantis’ leadership, Florida has turned from a purple state into a red state and is now one of the freest states in the US (as ranked by Cato), partly because of in-migration of Republicans and partly due to election integrity reforms initiated by DeSantis that limited the ability of Democrats to cheat.

The decision by just those 33,000 voters in a state of 23 million people, to set aside work and pleasure for a moment and to go out and vote, saved not just the state but probably the country, as a Gillum win might well have solidified the state blue, locking in the electoral college for Democrats indefinitely.

It was only a matter of going out to vote, but those 33,000 made a big difference.

Twelve Who Stood Their Ground

By the time Kyle Rittenhouse first entered the courtroom, he had already been convicted in the court of public opinion.

During the 2020 BLM riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Kyle had volunteered to defend local businesses, which were being set on fire by left-wing activists. He was attacked in the street by three different activists and defended himself against all three, with enviable precision, killing two of his attackers and wounding the third. This wasn’t suppose to happen, according to the BLM/Antifa playbook — the middle class was just supposed to take the mayhem and suffer through it quietly. The liberal press was outraged, and went into overdrive to convince the public that Kyle was a violent criminal killing innocents in the street. Kyle was charged with two counts of murder.

All the apparatus of the State, with all its resources, and the press with all its powers of persuasion were arrayed against Kyle. So when twelve jurors were chosen to judge this case, they knew they were expected to convict.

Who were these twelve? Just local citizens who had taken the time to answer their jury summons, who had not skipped out but who showed up willingly day after day during the trial.

As evidence was presented, it became clear that there was more to the story, and Kyle’s innocence gradually emerged. The possibility arose that Kyle might not be convicted. So leftists began intimidating the jurors. MSNBC was caught trying to dox them and was ejected from the courthouse by the judge. Someone else was caught recording images of the jury as they arrived at the pick-up point where police transported jurors to the Kenosha County Courthouse. It was just the left’s little way of saying we know who you are.

But these twelve jurors ignored the intimidation, stood their ground, and cleared Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges. He was free.

It was only jury duty to them, but it saved the life of a young hero, and in the larger story moved public opinion against the riots.

The One and Only Actual Journalist

In 2019, a viral video was released showing Nicholas Sandmann, a Covington Catholic High School student visiting Washington, DC, smiling while Native American Nathan Phillips banged a drum up close to him. A leftist narrative emerged, that Sandmann was a smug MAGA white kid who was mocking an innocent Native American. Social media ran with the story, and talking heads everywhere competed to condemn Sandmann, even inciting violence against him. His mother received threatening phone calls at home and his own school administration quickly condemned his actions. All this happened over a few hours.

I happened to be on Twitter that morning, and was reading in real time the angry tweets of the leftist mob when I witnessed something very interesting — the explosive destruction of a false narrative hit by one devastating torpedo.

Just when the left was reaching a self-congratulatory crescendo of anti-MAGA hate directed against Sandmann, Reason journalist Robby Soave tweeted that just maybe the people making these charges should watch the full video, as he had done. The longer video, as he calmly explained, and which apparently only he had bothered to watch — told a very different story, in which Sandmann was innocent.

Yes, out of the hundreds of professional “journalists” eagerly screeching on the subject, only one had done the actual work of a journalist and he alone turned the tide. One by one other journalists began backpedaling. But many had already gone too far. There are laws against maligning someone’s reputation, as they had done to then sixteen-year-old Sandmann. The media’s moment of left-wing mob justice turned out to be very costly. (1,2,3).

Robby Soave was only doing his journalistic homework, but he destroyed in a stroke the reputations of many leftist journalists, and saved the reputation and possibly even the life of one innocent young man.

Don’t Be the Weak Link

Will your small efforts turn the tide in some important way? There is no way of knowing beforehand. But it doesn’t matter. The thing to remember is that you are one link in a chain, and your link, just like all the other links, is essential to the chain holding together. Any effort each of us makes in the cause of liberty is in answer to a pact with those who have done so in the past and those currently, whether the efforts are large or small.

I bother to vote only because I am counting on like-minded people to do the same. I write this Substack — which alone would be useless — as part of the aggregated effort I see around me of other people trying to move public opinion and private action in the direction of a freer world. Whatever effort you make for liberty enters you into a loyal and patriotic brotherhood of those doing likewise today and those who made even greater efforts in the past.

What You Can Do

As I write this, we are only days away from a rather pivotal election, pitting Donald Trump and an array of pro-liberty allies — Elon Musk, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswamy, etc. — against Kamala Harris, a teleprompter-reading marionette whose strings are pulled by persons unknown within the DC borg. You do not need to be a Republican to know which side to vote on this time.

So at a dead minimum, please take the time to vote. Take nothing for granted.

Beyond that, and whatever the outcome of the election, there are many things you can do to promote liberty. This Substack is all about just that. Take a look at the posts so far for ideas, and share them where you think it will help.

You say you can only do a little? The obligations of family and work leave you little time and resources? Same here. It’s fine. Just do what you can. In aggregate, each of us doing what we can adds up to something big.