I have seen the enemy, and they is us: the Daily Caller, an establishment conservative publication, just hired Milo Yiannopoulos to write a weekly column. When they started getting heat for doing so, they fired him immediately -- and then claimed that they had never hired him in the first place. You can read all about it here.

Milo was not the only casualty: the Daily Caller also fired their opinion editor, Rob Mariani, who had agreed to give Milo the weekly column. CNN noted: “The Daily Caller came under immediate fire on social media for giving platform to Yiannopoulos, a controversial figure associated with white nationalism who resigned from the right-wing Breitbart website earlier this year over comments he made about pederasty. Robert Mercer, the billionaire conservative donor, said earlier this week that he was ‘mistaken’ to have supported Yiannopoulos and that he was severing ties.”

This follows a horrible, self-destructive pattern on the right. While the left always circles the wagons and protects their own, whenever the left starts to pick off people on the right, conservatives form a circular firing squad. It’s the right that has targeted Milo. This is all their doing. The recent BuzzFeed hit piece targeting Milo’s donor Robert Mercer was clearly by a right-wing insider. We expect the left to target our most effective, charismatic leaders -- it’s what they do. But the right doing their bidding is unforgivable. The right, not the left, is making Milo more toxic than… even me, and I’ve been smeared, defamed and vilified for years. But it won’t work.

Milo is a phenomenon, hugely popular with millennials -- something the right sorely lacks. Milo was the only one who would publish my book, FATWA: Hunted in America, and it’s a bestseller. He is, for all the wonderful drama and theater, an important voice for us. But the right is too cowed and intimidated by the vicious left-wing primitives than stand with intellectual leaders who are true to our political philosophy of individual rights and equality for all before the law.

The most vicious attacks on him come from the right. The left doesn't have to do anything. We are doing a fine job destroying ourselves. Part jealousy (at his success), part fear (of attacks from the cultural elites), the right was wicked quick to throw Milo under the bus. And it’s not just Milo. The best (or should I say worst) example of the right’s war on the right is that they destroy Trump right-wing elites.

Conservative leaders and flagship publications readily acquiesce to the left’s demonization of the right’s most effective politicians, spokesmen, and activists. Most people today still assume that America has a thriving two-party system, representing two mainstream and opposing visions for America and together embodying the views of the overwhelming majority of Americans. In reality, the Republican Party and the American conservative movement are deeply damaged, vastly diminished in size and scope, and increasingly unrepresentative of any genuine or effective opposition to the Left and the Democrats.

Even now, when the Republicans have majorities in Congress, they allow the left to dictate the political agenda. For decades, the “loyal opposition” that the establishment right has offered has not been a defense of American freedom and exceptionalism, but merely been a slower, weaker march toward the left’s socialist goal and their politics of personal destruction of those who refuse to submit.

The establishment right is an embarrassment to patriotic Americans who value freedom and individual rights. It is second only to the left in the harm it has done to Constitutional rule and the freedoms that citizens of the “Land of the Free” actually enjoy. The establishment right is as complicit as the left in having destroyed the standing, respect, and reverence that the United States of America held at the end of World War II.

We see many come out in a burst of light, political supernovas like Allen West, Sarah Palin, and Ted Cruz who have been systematically destroyed by the left and their lapdogs on the right. The right abandons the same people when the left goes after them like the jackals and the vultures they are. The leaders of the conservative establishment are clearly more comfortable with the weakest and most liberal figures on the right than they are with genuine conservatives. And then they abandon their flavor of the month as soon as the leftist sharks start circling.

This is how the establishment right makes its bones: on the bones of the principled right. This is how the establishment right gets legitimacy: by pandering to the left and selling out the clear, uncompromised voices on the right. Instead of destroying our philosophical enemies in the war of individualism vs. statism, the establishment right trims its message, then trims it some more, desperately hoping to appease leftists and their media lapdogs.

Is it any wonder that establishment right candidates lose elections? McCain? Romney? Jeb Bush? It’s why Trump won. Anytime someone takes a bold or brave stance against statism or collectivism, or against jihad and Sharia, they suffer withering attacks from both outside the movement and inside the movement.

The leadership on the right does not understand its own philosophy. They do not understand free markets, capitalism, and individual rights. If they did, they would be more ferocious, fiercer and more courageous in the fight for freedom and equality of rights before the law against the second-handers, moochers, and looters on the left. Like Milo.

The establishment right is on life support at a time when it should be standing with our most effective leaders chosen by the people. This most certainly should be our issue, our moment. There have been these moments in American history when right and wrong, good and evil were very clearly defined. The Republican Party was born at such a moment. We elected Lincoln at such a moment, and we took the country back from the slave party, the Democrats, at such a moment. Lincoln would be appalled at today’s Republican Party.

Pamela Geller's book FATWA: Hunted in America, is the shocking tale of the war on the individual American standing in defense of freedom. It’s not just the story of what happened to me, it’s the story of what happens to every American, in large and small was, that fights in defines of individual rights. It’s a must read:  FATWA: Hunted in America. Get the book, buy it for friends. Educate those around you.

Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of the Geller Report  and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.