The Overton Window
A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding the Subtle Art of Radicalizing American Culture
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Ideas are under attack. They are being suppressed making true discourse impossible. Those who propped up the “love everyone” and “say your truth” culture are the very people muzzling dissenting thoughts, framing them as violence and “threats to our democracy.” From the countless suspensions of Steven Crowder, including one from Twitter for providing verified evidence of voter fraud, to the elimination of Parler from off the internet in a single weekend back in the beginning of 2021.
“The main tenets of liberalism are political democracy, limitations on the powers of government, the development of universal human rights, legal equality for all adult citizens, freedom of expression, respect for evidence and reason, the separation of church and state, and freedom of religion.”
I’d like to make a distinction between what Liberals (with a capital “L”) have lost with liberal values (with a lowercase “l”). It shouldn’t be a mystery that capital “L” Liberals have adopted radical ideas and tactics, and more pointedly from Saul Alinsky, in order to capture and maintain their Marxist power. I’m not excusing the fallacies of Republicans and “right-wingers” from this conversation by any means, however, there is a fundamental principle that Liberals understand that they have doubled down on, and that is: politics is downstream from culture.
It’s for this reason that we need to understand the culture war Leftist Radicals are waging in America that if not handled, will become a self-fulfilling prophesy through Right-Winged Extremist backlash, something I’m willing to bet capital “L” Liberals want.
January 6th ring a bell?
We have to ask ourselves, if Leftists are willing to ignore the violent, coordinated antics of Antifa, calling it an idea, while with “scant evidence”* there was no Right-Winged Insurrection, the question must be posed: who is purporting Big Lies?
There has grown a great divide that is leading to a national divorce, and while Liberals take the culture one direction and Conservatives become fed up, refusing to budge on anything, the void continues to grow, and like any marital dispute, one asks “How did we get here?”
*By definition, scant means “barely or scarcely sufficient and lacking in amplitude or quantity” for those pulling water for activists rather than accepting evidence.
The Overton Window
“It’s in compromising the appendages of one’s core beliefs that an adversary is able to obliterate values altogether.”
What is the Overton Window Theory?
Developed in the mid-1990's by Joseph P. Overton, the Overton Window is a model for understanding how ideas, policies, and culture change over time to influence politics, policies, and law.
Generally speaking, culturally accepted ideas and policies lie within the Window, while more radical ones remain outside its purview on both the left and right. Mostly politicians and their platforms are found inside the Overton Window, or the realm of what is culturally accepted while their agendas and future plans may not. This Window can be shifted and expanded over time, and the effective extremist leaders understand that it is through compromises that this is accomplished.
Politicians do have the ability to move the Overton Window themselves by “courageously endorsing” a policy that lies outside of the Window, but more often than not, the shift and expansion is based on a much more complex and dynamic phenomenon within society, slowly evolving values and cultural norms.
Take for example the radical idea to kill a baby.
On its face, this is a horrendous idea, let alone act—“baby murder” is not a marketable slogan. What is a more palatable term however, are “woman’s rights” which rest on the foundation that Woman’s Suffrage and the Nineteenth Amendment. Desensitizing murder with terms like “zygote” or “my body, my choice” or even “in the sole cases of rape and incest” has shifted the Overton Window to ignore the fact that potential life ends when someone follows through with an abortion. It’s created outrage over objective standards like Texas’ heartbeat bill in order to discourage any future discourse—much like a child tantrum is for parent’s establishing rules for their household.
On a more positive front we have Black American rights.
In the founding of this nation, key leaders and figures such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Mason faced opposition to their desires to abolish slavery, but they also understood that certain measures had to first be taken in order radically change the culture around slaves and Blacks in general. The first step was Article 1, Section 9 of the United States Constitution which prohibited the importation of slaves after 1808. This in turn led to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and Martin Luther King’s actions within the Civil Rights, none of which could have happened in 1776 as they were radical concepts outside of the Overton Window at the time.
The Overton Window is limited in what it tells us about the way politics work. What is clear though is twofold. One, by understanding this concept we can see how politicians will not support policy on a whim, but rather will only espouse ideas that they believe will aid in their chances inside the voting booth. And secondly, the range of policy decision and options available are “shaped by ideas, social movements and shared norms and values within society.”
This explains why radicals like Saul Alinsky do not shift the Overton to benefit overall society, but rather to implement constrictive, tyrannical agendas through gradual cultural change.
Rules for Radicals*
“This country’s leading hell-raiser...has set down some of the rules of the game. No one has had more experience or has been more successful at it than Alinsky.”
“Alinsky’s techniques and teachings influenced generations of community and labor organizers, including the church-based group hiring a young Barack Obama to work on Chicago’s South Side in the 1980’s...Alinsky impressed a young Hillary Clinton, who was growing up in Park Ridge at the time Alinsky was the director of the Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago.”
Who is Saul Alinsky?
Well before the Overton Window was comprehensive and articulated, American community activist and political theorist Saul Alinsky found a way to stimulate the activist citizenry through his work with community groups, carrying these techniques throughout the country. In California, he provided organizational help for Cesar Chavez and who later founded the United Farm Workers of America. In Chicago, Alinsky's hometown, he was able to organize black inner-city residents through The Woodlawn Organization.
His accomplishments aren’t as important to the conversation as are his means articulated in Rules for Radicals which has become the playbook and war manual for modern-day Liberals**.
*See Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals for a more comprehensive understanding.
**Again, capital “L” Liberal, not free thinking, reasonable individuals who agree that individual freedom is more important than collectivism.
Weaponizing Language
This is a brilliant tactic utilized on a mass scale and is an understood theme by Post-Modernists.
It’s two-fold really.
Take for example the agreeable statement “Black Lives Matter”. This has created a racial divide which radicals blame on systemic racism, turning a blind eye to the fact that the organization BLM Inc. wants to “disrupt the nuclear family” and its founders are trained Marxists (both of which are grossly Anti-American). It’s a title/phrase, which is a rather agreeable statement, that has been weaponized in order to create contention or start a one-sided dialogue.
Second, when organizations like dicitonary.com change definitions of basic concepts like “court-packing”, it shows that they have activist motivations geared towards silencing ideas and conversations they deem “harmful”, allowing for subjective language to take control of the objective nature these policies are aimed at achieving.
Rules four and five in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals state:
“Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules... Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
— Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
Turn the other cheek.
This is the standard and rule that Conservatives are being held up against in this culture war.
Be charitable and look after one another.
Now that we’ve identified this tactic, does White Guilt and Critical Race Theory sound familiar? Postcolonial Theory? Cancel culture? All of these standards have been allowed to metastasize merely out of ridicule, guilt, and the charitable nature Conservatives have over their Liberal counterparts*.
*Again, before someone loses their shit and is triggered, I’m talking about capital “L” Liberals (see above discussion...) It‘s absolutely ridiculous that I have to be this in depth with my conversation and this is the last time I make this clarification. If you see Liberal capitalized in the middle of a sentence from here on out, I’m talking about radical Leftists. If it’s at the beginning, use some critical thinking for once.
Weaponizing Education
“Never go outside the experience of your people... Wherever possible go outside the experience of your enemy.”
— Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
This here is a two-edged sword with Liberals, because in their attempts of moving outside the experiences of their enemies through identity politics (race and sex through Critical Race and Queer studies), they often shoot themselves in the foot by overstepping their own experience, which is in direct violation to Rule Two in their radical bible. In all honesty, shows you how feeble their foundational principles are to begin with.
They often forget that there is this cognitive bias that takes place when wearing education and accolades on their sleeves.
Another fun concept to ponder is the The Dunning-Kruger Effect—how certain people of expertise overestimate their authority in a particular field, resulting in the climbing of “mount stupid”.
For example, doctors and surgeons are intelligent. Very intelligent in fact. However, their intellect in the medical field does not translate to economics, politics, mathematics, statistics, or any other field for that matter. A prime example of this is Bill Nye “the engineering” guy who has made an attempt to create a career out of activism these past few years.
The years 2020 and 2021 have put people on guard with terms like “expert” and “science”, with figure heads like Fauci* bastardizing basic scientific principles for time in the spotlight, ever fearful of losing the influence they have failed upward to attain.
*Here’s another link just in case that one magically becomes a broken 404!
Weaponizing Emotion
Orange man, mean.
If you’ve ever broken down any criticism of and argument against President Trump, down to its core, it always seems to be about his personality. Ignore the fact that Black unemployment went to record lows under his watch, he was mean. Disregard that the United States became a net natural gas exporter for the first time since 1957 and U.S. oil production reached an all-time high, he had a potty mouth. President Biden signed away thousands of jobs because Trump was “rude”.
Does anyone have buyer’s remorse for 2020?
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
— Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
The Left has done a phenomenal job at covering up every Trump victory solely on this emotional approach, making him one of the most polarizing figures in American history. They are not only unable to separate emotion from results, but they also use this tactic to get radical policies like “common sense” gun reform rammed through the American process, raping our founding ideals while simultaneously throwing any logic and principle out the window.
The ends justify the means in their eyes.
Holding Feet to the Fire
“Keep the pressure on... The major premise for tactics is the development of operations, that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition... If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.”
— Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
If anyone has seen The Dark Knight Rises, there is a hilarious scene where a weasel character tries to coerce Bane, the man who took out the Batman. The weasel’s mistake was assuming that Bane was playing by the same set of rules.
This is the biggest mistake anyone pushing back against Liberals makes.
Don’t play by their rules! Now before this gets misconstrued and taken way out of context, in no way am I proposing a violent collapse of the system in a Bane-like approach, however, when Left-Winged Radicals are able to implement Rules Eight, Ten, and Eleven, they are able to incorporate a weaponization of language, education, and emotion in very powerful ways, and if we want lowercase liberal values to thrive, their radical activist bible must be understood and addressed.
“A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.”
— Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
Look at what happened to Parler in a single weekend and the cancelling of Gina Carano for making a reasonable historical reference. Imagine that! It’s almost like she understands the Overton Window...
The entire foundation of cancel culture hinges on this constant mob judicial system that weaponizes language and emotion in a viral spread, and frankly is a tactic they thoroughly enjoy and thrive off.
It’s masochistic peer pressure plain and simple.
The good news—if you call it good news—is this approach in particular always burns out, because terror always needs something to consume, and when there’s nothing to consume, it consumes itself.
Disguising their True Intent
Simple misdirection is all Liberals need in order to make the “threat more terrifying than the thing itself.” Charged Pathos is one of the best ways to disguise any agenda and push any policy through the vote. It happened with The Patriot Act, and it’s happening with The Patriot Act 2.0. The “mostly peaceful” riots were condoned while the solitary incident on January 6th, calls for radical measures on one political group.
Think about how the Andrew Cuomo stories were handled. Now whether they properly implemented misdirection and its effectiveness can be another discussion, however, when the nursing home scandal originally broke, the news of his sexual scandal (which eventually led to his resignation) was not far behind. Maybe it's a fact that when it rains, it pours, but entertain me for a second and ask yourself: what was the focus from the media? Which was the bigger issue? What was the story being told? Hundreds of nursing home deaths or sexual harassment accusations?
Now this may just be my “male privilege” talking here, and don’t get me wrong, former* Governor Andrew Cuomo is a disgusting piece of shit, but I rank death and negligent manslaughter higher on the offense hierarchy than groping and perverted comments. It could be that I’m old fashion, but it seems that we need to get some priorities sorted out and shift the Overton Window towards more conservative values.
*I smiled when I wrote this word.
How We Respond
There is this concept going around that has gotten some legs, and if we’re being honest, has the potential to be quite effective.
“Combative Conservatism”, metaphorically speaking that is, is correlated to what James Lindsay references as the rhetorical strategy of the “motte and bailey” which is essentially a more formalized, in-depth version of our above discussion, he being more of an authority on that matter.
In short, do not play their games!
Ignore their blatant attempts at evoking an emotion, and then counter with strength and reason. Daily Wire working with Gina Carano, Catalina Lauf challenging “Fake Republican Adam Kinzinger”, Florida Governor DeSantis putting the pressure on big tech with fines and penalties, Steven Crowder suing Facebook, are all examples of people refusing to play the games of the Liberals and doing so through Combative Conservatism. President Trump unveiled the mask of the political, bureaucratic games that infect our system, and revolutionized the political arena for the Republican Party.
It’s now our choice where we go from here. Do we let the Window continue to move towards Far Left Politics, or do we stop the trampling of American values?
