You ask great questions and people smarter than me can probably answer them. One thing about libs: they play a long game. They can wait 30-50 years to take over a state, a university, a town, etc. They don’t mind waiting. I think we conservatives don’t play that way. We bowed out of the culture (films, theater, tv, art) when the going got tough for us. We certainly allowed the libs to take over a lot of the churches and the communists to take over my own church (Catholic)! Why did we? As someone else said here, maybe we don’t love freedom as much as we think we do?
That was kind of in the back of my mind as well...is it really true that Leftists have an advantage because we as conservatives play the role of the man with his fingers plugging holes in a dike and his friends always on the watch for new leaks, while the liberals play the role of...water.
They don’t have to be on watch 24 x 7, they just have to...be. They don’t have to man the ramparts all the time, watching and fighting.
They just have to exist, and wait.
Eventually there will be a weakening, and they flood through it.
Or, do they have an advantage over us in that respect because conservatives, almost by definition alone, are individualists, not inclined to act in large groups, while leftists, by definition, are collectivists, and exist to act in groups. Because of that, leftists are more than willing to work with people whose views and beliefs they find odious or objectionable, and ally with them to achieve their goals. (Then they kill or enslave all those impure people who helped them achieve victory...it is just their way.)
Personally, I feel that in the end, a group of individuals can withstand the collective. But it feels like it is harder to withstand the collective than it is for them to achieve victory over individuals. But they are so damned stupid and arrogant they screw it up all the time, which is good for us...
As long as we can oppose them and keep our necks out of their yoke. Or their guillotine.
I think about that very concept quite often, and hope that isn't the case.