The Case Against Surrender

Regardless of the “narrative,” America is eminently viable, and the Republican Party is the vehicle to ensure its survival. Preemptive surrender is not the answer.

Allan J. Feifer | September 20, 2026

Most of us see our political affiliations (or lack of one) as validation of our beliefs. In reality, many people choose their politics long before they have seriously thought much about them. They inherit their parents’ party, absorb their friends’ likely specious views, or emerge from college with a political identity that feels more akin to a sorority than reasoned conviction. Once that identity takes hold, few people ever stop to question it seriously.

That has always bothered me.

So why am I still a Republican? It isn’t because I believe Republicans are always right. They aren’t. Nor is it because I am nostalgic for an America that’s not coming back. And it isn’t simply because I dislike Democrats, although there is plenty about today’s Democratic Party that repulses me.

It is because I believe in something more fundamental: Americans still have, must have, agency. Each day, it becomes more apparent that Americans are losing their essential individualism in favor of a belief in a collective destiny or a nihilistic end.

That belief in individual agency is also why I reject the growing argument that America’s political future is already determined.

Many conservatives I know have become convinced that America’s political trajectory is inevitable. They point to demographics, universities, the media, social media, changing cultural attitudes, and declining institutions. They look at elections and conclude that the country they knew is disappearing and that nothing can stop it.

Some have already thrown in the towel.

I understand the temptation. I read every comment on my pieces, hear from friends, and encounter people who speak about America’s future as though the outcome has already been decided. They point to the systems........

© American Thinker