Guest Post by Pat Buchanan
Again, the American right is today routinely compared to Nazis, fascists and Klansmen. Why would good liberal Democrats accept an electoral victory and future rule by Nazis and fascists rather than seek to overturn it, by whatever means necessary?
“What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people.”
What did John Adams mean when he wrote this to Thomas Jefferson in 1815, after both had served as president?
Adams was saying that America, the country that took up arms and fought for its independence from the British, was already a nation — before 1775.
America preexisted the Constitution, Adams is saying. America had been conceived and born before he and Jefferson began to write its Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776. America had come into being even before Lexington and Concord in 1775.
A corollary of what Adams wrote is that America, and the republic created by the Constitution, are not the same thing.
While America is a country, a republic is the form of government created for that country in Philadelphia in 1787.
“A republic if you can keep it,” said Ben Franklin to the lady who had asked what kind of government they had created for the already existing nation, when he emerged from that constitutional convention.
What, then, are our elites bewailing when they say that populists, rightists and Trumpists have put “our democracy” at risk?
Answer: It is not America the country or America the nation they are referring to, but our political system as it has evolved.
And what is the nature of the threat they see?
A precondition of democracy is that the results of elections be recognized and respected, and if repeatedly challenged, this is a mortal threat. And this is the present peril.
Yet, there are other preconditions, not only for democracies but for countries, that were enumerated in The Federalist Papers:
“Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs … ”
“This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.”
John Jay was describing the preconditions of a nation, a country, a people. Do these preconditions still exist in America?
“One united people”? “A band of brethren”? A common ancestry, common religion, common language, common customs and manners?
That may describe the America of 1789. Does it describe the America of 2022? Or does Jay’s phrase, “a number of unsocial, jealous and alien sovereignties,” better describe the America of today?
Hillary Clinton once wrote off half of Trump’s supporters, nearly one-fourth of the nation, as “a basket of deplorables … racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic … bigots,” who are “irredeemable.”
Assume that our elites, who often echo what Hillary Clinton said of the populist Trumpist right, agree with her.
Why would virtuous liberals wish to continue in political association with people like this? Why would they not declare that, if an election again delivers rule to such people, we want no part of the system or polity that produced so intolerable an outcome?
Why would the capture of all three branches of government by people such as Hillary Clinton describes not be cause for dissolving the Union?
How could democracy be a superior form of government, if it could deliver the republic to people such as these, and perhaps twice?
If the progressives’ enemies are “Nazis” and “fascists,” why would progressives not rise in resistance and reject their rule, rather than cooperate with them in the governance of the country?
Why would good people not battle to overturn an election that produced a majority for such “deplorables”?
Do the commands of democracy take precedence over the demands of decency? Rather than govern in concert with people like this, why not get as far removed from them as possible?
The point here: Not only may the preconditions of democracy be disappearing, but the preconditions of nationhood may be disintegrating.
Again, the American right is today routinely compared to Nazis, fascists and Klansmen. Why would good liberal Democrats accept an electoral victory and future rule by Nazis and fascists rather than seek to overturn it, by whatever means necessary?
And how do you hold up American democracy as a model to mankind if, after two centuries, it has produced scores of millions of citizens like those described by Hillary Clinton?
And, again, if the preconditions of democracy are vanishing, and the preconditions of nationhood are disappearing, is not secession of some kind inevitable and even desirable?
Ultimately, the logic of our situation must lead us to consider something like this. Western Maryland’s attempt to secede and join West Virginia, and Eastern Oregon’s attempt to secede and join Idaho, may be harbingers of what is to come.
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Article is a little one sided, I consider the hard core left to be Socialists (some say one step away from Communism). They talk and opine in polls of placing the unvaxxed in ‘covid’ camps.
I now consider Socialists the enemy , along with the MSM. I also believe the ‘war’ has already started, its not ‘cold’ but is ‘simmering’ at this point. Don’t know if or when it goes ‘hot’.
Ya think people are not going to fight back at some point?
The flip side of the socialist coin is muh capitalism wherein all muh profits are private and muh losses public.
That seductive border region where politics grease the wheels of business and polite society smiles hopefully on both.
R. H. Tawney
You don’t. Democracy is a curse, the Enlightenment was a mistake, and monarchy will rise again once this unfortunate experiment reaches its inevitable, bloody end.
Secession is a nice daydream but we are dealing with people who imposed baby murder, anti-White racism and trannies upon the decent and upright by Judicial fiat. They aren’t going to just allow peaceful separation.
Buchanan poses this hypothetical with the assumption that Commie filth are motivated by ideological zealotry. Its all moot when you accept that you are at war with an alien religion.
When the USD dissolves, our society will follow and the only thing that will matter is what is local to each individual.
And that day will soon be upon us, given the current trajectory of our economy and the out-of-control government spending ….. “unsustainable” doesn’t even begin to describe our current situation. Hello Venezuela!
Both. Protestantism ( i.e. Judaized Christianity) killed the golden goose.
To take usury is contrary to Scripture; it is contrary to Aristotle; it is contrary to nature, for it is to live without labour; it is to sell time, which belongs to God, for the advantage of wicked men.
R. H. Tawney
What in Calvin had been a qualified concession to practical exigencies appeared in some of his later followers as a frank idealization of the life of the trader, as the service of God and the training-ground of the soul. Discarding the suspicion of economic motives, which had been as characteristic of the reformers as of medieval theologians, Puritanism in its later phases added a halo of ethical sanctification to the appeal of economic expediency, and offered a moral creed, in which the duties of religion and the calls of business ended their long estrangement in an unanticipated reconciliation.
R. H. Tawney
To countless generations of religious thinkers, the fundamental maxim of Christian social ethics had seemed to be expressed in the words of St. Paul to Timothy: “Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. For the love of money is the root of all evil.” Now, while, as always, the world battered at the gate, a new standard was raised within the citadel by its own defenders. The garrison had discovered that the invading host of economic appetites was, not an enemy, but an ally. Not sufficiency to the needs of daily life, but limitless increase and expansion, became the goal of the Christian’s efforts.
Too often, contemning the external order as unspiritual, [the Puritan] has made it, and ultimately himself, less spiritual by reason of his contempt.
R. H. Tawney
It’s happening. Wealthy people who make large sums through Capital gains are moving to no income tax states.
It just shows how dumb people and politicians are in Red States that have an income tax where Capital Gains are taxed as income.
Blue States are hopeless.
Virginia Republican Goes Off On Democrats In EPIC Rant: ‘Enough!’
NICK FREITAS: I was asked by a colleague of mine on the other side of the aisle, someone I actually deeply respect, and she asked me, was I going to be ‘nice’ this session?
And I thought it was an interesting question. I don’t particularly think of myself as an un-nice person, but I can see how sometimes people would see that differently.
You know what I’ve never done, Mr. Speaker? I’ve never gone on this floor and challenged the faith of an elected official because I disagreed with them on policy. I’ve never gone on this floor and suggested that the other side of the aisle were racists because they didn’t agree with my particular policy positions. I’ve never suggested they were sexists because they disagreed with a particular policy position.
But I’m keeping a running tally of this session, we’re not very far into it, and almost every day someone on the other side of the aisle gets up and either subtly, or comes right out and suggests that if you don’t agree with them on policy, well then you’re not a Christian, you’re a sexist, you’re a bigot, you’re a racist….
There have been a lot of times we sat here politely and just took it. Mr. Speaker, not this time. I’m tired of it, my constituents are tired of it.