Few people vote on the basis of deep analysis of issues or candidates. Few have deep ideological perceptions, much less commitments. Most people vote according to the patterns of subjective personal identification. The success of the Left in the Twentieth Century may be largely explained by a ruthless application of this reality.
Thus every form of Socialism seeks to rally those within whom they can instill a sense of grievance, into group identifications based upon such negative emotions as resentment, envy and greed. At the same time, there has been a studied Leftwing campaign to confuse understanding of positive human motivations for so long as there has been an organized Left. Thus, in many of their manifestations, they have been trying since well before World War II, to suggest that people who have strong identification with their own race, tribe, state, nation, community or faith, must be motivated by fear or hatred. In this, propagandists hasten to seize upon any vile act committed against a member of an identifiable minority by a rooted citizen of a Nation, being infested by Socialists, as proof that all who would defend their heritage--a cause ordinarily motivated by love--are really acting out of suppressed hatred or fear.
There were a number of news items early this month (May, 2002), which illustrated both the malaise of the West and, in a rather compelling fashion, exactly why Conservatives, in many lands, have been losing the battle to preserve their respective ways of life. While the problem has been discussed in earlier essays, it is clear that our foes are growing bolder; hence their urgency and ours is now greater.
Hell, I was listening to BBC news reports this weekend on NPR (don't shoot me, I was bored! Besides, I pay for it...), and everything that ran counter to their orthodoxy was venomously labeled "right wing". They even called the recently cobbled together French government "Chirac's interim right wing government".
Yep, they're in trouble and they know it.