4est_4est_Gump
Run Forrest! RUN!
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2011
- Posts
- 89,007
E.M. Cadwaladr
"For a republic to be worthy of the name, it must have certain features. Most obviously, political power must, in some meaningful sense, reside with the people and be expressed through their elected officials. Even at this most basic level, our country has a problem. To the extent that we are governed by an unelected bureaucracy we are no longer a republic. Unfortunately, the political disease that afflicts America runs far deeper than that. For power to reside with “the people” there must be a single, generally unified nation which can be identified as “the people.” This nation need not be racially, ethnically, or even religiously homogenous, but the overwhelming majority of its members do need to agree on some common set of interests and values. They need a common identity. That is what a nation is. American now contains at least two nations, and arguably many more. Democratic institutions like elections, intended to settle differences between fellow countrymen, of people who simply disagree on means or minor matters of policy -- cannot settle differences of national identity. This is why organizations like the European Union and the United Nations are only superficially democratic. More to the point, elections staged between competing nations trapped under the authority of a single state -- nations so different in their ideals that each seeks the other’s subjugation or destruction -- such elections settle nothing. Any election that takes place under such conditions will inevitably be seen as illegitimate by the losing side. Trump, progressives say, is not their president -- and neither would Hillary ever have been ours.
"When elections and legislatures attempt to assert the dominance of one nation of people over another they are, in effect, engaging in a kind of warfare. It is a civil war with a bit less bloodshed -- or, perhaps, it is a civil war in its initial shouting and shoving phase. Our daily outrage at the dishonest press, the usurpation of power by minor federal judges, and the predictable shrieking lunacy of our opponents only shows that most of us have not yet come to terms with the reality of our situation. We are in an existential conflict between competing nations -- we are not debating the merits of particular policies. Our differences will not be resolved by orderly procedural means. Reason no longer persuades. Hallowed traditions are despised. The law has become unworthy of respect, because it is so often merely the convenient weapon of people who are willing to cause us real and tangible harm. Indeed, as progressives and conservatives have diverged, we have seen the federal authorities selectively disregard the laws made by their opponents and favor governing by the fiat of executive orders. “I have a phone and I have a pen,” Obama famously declared. He might just as well have added: “…and I don’t care what happens to those hicks in Kentucky and Kansas.”
"A federal government attempting to preside over separate nations bent on one another’s destruction can be neither legitimate nor effective. Our federal government has become little more than a hideous game of ideological badminton between opposing camps of corrupt officials -- smacking enraged and increasingly divided peons back and forth across the political net. Winning national elections no longer means anything, not merely because the individual officials themselves are crooked, but because the institutions they head are now unfit to govern a republic.
"It is no longer possible for conservatives and progressives to coexist within a single state. Sooner or later, the emerging blood feud between our separate nations will overwhelm the superficial political game. It must. We are nationalistic; they are globalists. We are the inheritors of Western civilization; they are its detractors. We are the voice of stability; they are the voice of chaos. We are the battered remnants of Christendom; they are the unholy and improbable alliance of militant atheism and Islam."
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/06/a_cause_for_war.html#ixzz4jJQ1rQkU
We've already seen the fringes of the violence vested in the Antifa movement who think that their violence is "justified" because they are battling the forces of pure evil, not just people with political viewpoints with whom they disagree.
We see it in the rhetoric of the #BlackLiversMatter movement when it calls for dead cops now and in the deification of an NFL quarterback who possesses all of the skills of a Tim Tebow but who also has the blessing of being of an approved skin color and is clearly not a devout Christian.
We see a Reality Winner who thinks that it is not treason to take down the administration by any means possible but, (just because she was a Sanders supporter) in fact, a patriotic duty. I'll bet that like Snowden and Manning that she sees herself not a a traitor, but as a national treasure.
"For a republic to be worthy of the name, it must have certain features. Most obviously, political power must, in some meaningful sense, reside with the people and be expressed through their elected officials. Even at this most basic level, our country has a problem. To the extent that we are governed by an unelected bureaucracy we are no longer a republic. Unfortunately, the political disease that afflicts America runs far deeper than that. For power to reside with “the people” there must be a single, generally unified nation which can be identified as “the people.” This nation need not be racially, ethnically, or even religiously homogenous, but the overwhelming majority of its members do need to agree on some common set of interests and values. They need a common identity. That is what a nation is. American now contains at least two nations, and arguably many more. Democratic institutions like elections, intended to settle differences between fellow countrymen, of people who simply disagree on means or minor matters of policy -- cannot settle differences of national identity. This is why organizations like the European Union and the United Nations are only superficially democratic. More to the point, elections staged between competing nations trapped under the authority of a single state -- nations so different in their ideals that each seeks the other’s subjugation or destruction -- such elections settle nothing. Any election that takes place under such conditions will inevitably be seen as illegitimate by the losing side. Trump, progressives say, is not their president -- and neither would Hillary ever have been ours.
"When elections and legislatures attempt to assert the dominance of one nation of people over another they are, in effect, engaging in a kind of warfare. It is a civil war with a bit less bloodshed -- or, perhaps, it is a civil war in its initial shouting and shoving phase. Our daily outrage at the dishonest press, the usurpation of power by minor federal judges, and the predictable shrieking lunacy of our opponents only shows that most of us have not yet come to terms with the reality of our situation. We are in an existential conflict between competing nations -- we are not debating the merits of particular policies. Our differences will not be resolved by orderly procedural means. Reason no longer persuades. Hallowed traditions are despised. The law has become unworthy of respect, because it is so often merely the convenient weapon of people who are willing to cause us real and tangible harm. Indeed, as progressives and conservatives have diverged, we have seen the federal authorities selectively disregard the laws made by their opponents and favor governing by the fiat of executive orders. “I have a phone and I have a pen,” Obama famously declared. He might just as well have added: “…and I don’t care what happens to those hicks in Kentucky and Kansas.”
"A federal government attempting to preside over separate nations bent on one another’s destruction can be neither legitimate nor effective. Our federal government has become little more than a hideous game of ideological badminton between opposing camps of corrupt officials -- smacking enraged and increasingly divided peons back and forth across the political net. Winning national elections no longer means anything, not merely because the individual officials themselves are crooked, but because the institutions they head are now unfit to govern a republic.
"It is no longer possible for conservatives and progressives to coexist within a single state. Sooner or later, the emerging blood feud between our separate nations will overwhelm the superficial political game. It must. We are nationalistic; they are globalists. We are the inheritors of Western civilization; they are its detractors. We are the voice of stability; they are the voice of chaos. We are the battered remnants of Christendom; they are the unholy and improbable alliance of militant atheism and Islam."
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/06/a_cause_for_war.html#ixzz4jJQ1rQkU
We've already seen the fringes of the violence vested in the Antifa movement who think that their violence is "justified" because they are battling the forces of pure evil, not just people with political viewpoints with whom they disagree.
We see it in the rhetoric of the #BlackLiversMatter movement when it calls for dead cops now and in the deification of an NFL quarterback who possesses all of the skills of a Tim Tebow but who also has the blessing of being of an approved skin color and is clearly not a devout Christian.
We see a Reality Winner who thinks that it is not treason to take down the administration by any means possible but, (just because she was a Sanders supporter) in fact, a patriotic duty. I'll bet that like Snowden and Manning that she sees herself not a a traitor, but as a national treasure.
