https://nypost.com/2018/10/12/...d-remain-one-nation/

Can our modern ‘house divided’ remain one nation?

By Frank Buckley
October 12, 2018


Debating Stephen Douglas over slavery, Abraham Lincoln said a house divided cannot stand. In 2018, we also are a house divided and must ask whether the terrible biblical saying Lincoln quoted applies to us. Can we endure as a united country?

We thought our politics couldn’t get any crazier, but the political divide and the breakdown in trust became even deeper after the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. When Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, we were permitted to disagree about who was telling the truth. No longer. This time you’re “complicit with evil” if you don’t believe his accusers and oppose Kavanaugh, said Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ).

Moral outrage has become the basic currency of political debate, with Hillary Clinton telling her supporters, “You cannot be civil,” and former Attorney General Eric Holder advising, “When they go low, we kick them.” So have we, as a story in The Washington Post says, hit rock bottom with no clear path up?

After Kavanaugh was confirmed, liberal columnist E.J. Dionne wrote that the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is in tatters. Kavanaugh was nominated by the president, as the Constitution requires, but many liberals think Trump an illegitimate president because more people voted for Clinton. As for the Senate, which confirmed Kavanaugh, it’s undemocratic because little North Dakota has the same number of senators as California.

This amounts to a claim that all three branches of government are illegitimate. To those making such claims, it’s the Constitution itself that is illegitimate.

Before the 2016 election, Trump said he might not accept its results. Clinton said this was horrifying and cast doubt on the legitimacy of our institutions. But after Trump won, it was Clinton who joined the “Resistance,” and what has followed is nothing more than the working out of that movement’s grim logic.

As legislators, you’d think Democratic congressmen would understand what it means to question a government’s legitimacy. Apparently not. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has called Trump an illegitimate president, but if that’s the case the military would be excused from obeying his orders as commander-in-chief.

Perhaps that’s just what Markey thought. His colleague in the House, Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), tweeted that the military should mount a coup, as they do from time to time in South America.

When our political leaders tell us the Constitution is illegitimate, that we’re a hair’s breath from fascism, that’s how a civil war begins. Is it impossible to imagine? When polled, 31 percent of likely voters think that there will be a second Civil War within the next five years. That’s made secession look attractive, and nearly two-fifths of Americans tell pollsters they want to secede.

We’ve not seen anything like this since the 1850s. As for what happens next, who knows?

Were the GOP to hold its majorities in Congress next month, the Democrats might possibly come to terms with their defeat and abandon their infantile protests. I don’t expect that to happen, mind you. The party is so invested in its hatreds that it’ll not give them up.

If that’s where we are now, picture what it might be like in a future America, where Trump has won re-election and both houses of Congress remain in Republican hands.

Suppose further that Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer have left the Supreme Court, and Trump fills both seats with conservatives. From prominent Democrats, there are daily calls for resistance in the streets, and our restaurants and theaters have turned into no-go zones for people of the wrong political party.

Were that to happen, Lincoln’s “house divided” would have new meaning, and we’d begin to wonder whether we all belong in the same country. “Some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America,” said Clinton, about the millions of “deplorables.” Yet if they’re not Americans, they might reasonably ask themselves to what country they belong or should belong.

Maybe we should stare the possibility of a breakup in its face, if we’re ever to regain our old civility and affection for fellow Americans. Before criminalizing honest policy differences, before the online shaming, the Twitter mobs and the no-platforming, before doxing ideological enemies, let’s recall that those enemies just might have exit options.

This 12 minute podcast of an episode of John Bachelor's show with Michael Vlahos of Johns Hopkins is worth a listen to anyone concerned about what looks to be the coming civil war.

https://audioboom.com/posts/70...crisis-johns-hopkins

America will not divide to the extent we did before. The times are so different,and the reasons are now more political than monetary. We are not yet tired and complacent from all the winning! The brainwashing of America has ended with "US" electing Trump. We have thrown off the shackles of shame and socialism the Liberals of both parties fostered on us for so many years. America'S Patriots are "Woke" and we will not go back. There will be crying,plotting and outright belligerence from those sucking on the teat of Uncle Sam. But as long as we don't forget where we were, and where we are now we will not let a few radicals pull us down again. We were complacent and some even quit voting. We are not complacent anymore. "VOTE VOTE VOTE"!

Sure, and in a few or so years there will no doubt be a Democrat in the White House and/or a Majority in either house of Congress again. And so it goes, round and round, like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of a non-homogeneous free nation.

It's all cyclical, and some days the assholes and dumbasses are in charge.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by 46and2:
Sure, and in a few or so years there will no doubt be a Democrat in the White House and/or a Majority in either house of Congress again. And so it goes, round and round, like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of a non-homogeneous free nation.

It's all cyclical, and some days the assholes and dumbasses are in charge.[/QUOTE

Only if we get complacent again.....And not all socialist proponents were/are Democrats. If Trump had not arrived on the scene this lifelong (my first vote was for Nixon) Republican would now be an Independent.

Frankly, the best chance Liberty has, is division. The US is a nation, founded on a philosophy. While nations which attempt to maintain ideological purity by force, have an ugly history, we now have a large percentage of the population, opposed to individual freedom.

Let LA, Chicago, NYC, Boston and SF become independent city-states, and the rest of us will get along, probably.

But we will need strict border controls. Odds are good that they won't like their Socialist Utopias, after awhile. Maybe they will. In any case, we'd be free of them.

But, we'd also have to be willing to watch them burn. And be very careful of any alliance with them.

quote:

Frankly, the best chance Liberty has, is division. The US is a nation, founded on a philosophy.

Unfortunately, the blessings of liberty are not taught in our progressive/socialist public schools. At some point, we will have to fight for our liberty.

As posted in the SCOTUS thread:

quote:

"If American champions of civil liberty could all think in terms of economic freedom as the goal of their labors, they too would accept "workers' democracy" as far superior to what the capitalist world offers to any but a small minority. Yes, and they would accept — regretfully, of course — the necessity of dictatorship while the job of reorganizing society on a socialist basis is being done." --Roger N Baldwin, Founder of the ACLU

Progressive socialism communism must be defeated, it cannot be accommodated as those who profess it seek to deprive us of liberty through imposing a dictatorship upon us.

During the era of the Lincoln/Douglas debates, one group of people in this country claimed a right to the first fruits of the labor of others and wanted government to enforce that. And so today history repeats. I've heard many a GDC, in response to opposition to higher taxes, is that we should be glad they will "let us keep" what we've worked for. History repeats itself.

The liberals declared war on us some time ago.

It's becoming very difficult to ignore.

quote:

Originally posted by Some Shot:
The liberals declared war on us some time ago.

It's becoming very difficult to ignore.

And they've gotten a significant portion of the gummint to join them in that war.

Just out of curiosity, when the Weathermen were blowing up government offices back in the '60s and '70s, were we in a civil war? Or were we simply dealing with a handful of sanctimonious jerkoffs?

At some point it makes sense to dismiss the drama queens rather than accept the perceptions they wish to create in order to make themselves seem more important and powerful than they actually are.

Pretty much, when the heads of a major party agree w. them...

quote:

when the Weathermen were blowing up government offices back in the '60s and '70s, were we in a civil war? Or were we simply dealing with a handful of sanctimonious jerkoffs?

America should have blown the radical left out of the water when that happened.Years later Ayer's was having Barack Obama over to his house.Then Obama became President.

A battle will have to be fought one day to rid our country of this cancer,before the cancer consumes us. I think we will know the outcome in near future.

Hopefully the battle will be fought at the ballot box,but I don't think the radical left will let that stand in their way,even if they get slaughtered at the polls.

quote:

Originally posted by RogB:
This 12 minute podcast of an episode of John Bachelor's show with Michael Vlahos of Johns Hopkins is worth a listen to anyone concerned about what looks to be the coming civil war.

https://audioboom.com/posts/70...crisis-johns-hopkins

I'm a regular listener of Bachelor, his regular guests like Vlahos, Hansen, Chang and Crowley I find reassuring.

I cant help but wonder what the future may bring.
Civil war?
But I also think that other countries see us weak, indecisive and divided. If they move against us our divisions must disappear or the US dies.

Yes it is in tatters, some on the court refuse to uphold the constitution and the ammendments. Isn't that their job?

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:

quote:

Originally posted by RogB:
This 12 minute podcast of an episode of John Bachelor's show with Michael Vlahos of Johns Hopkins is worth a listen to anyone concerned about what looks to be the coming civil war.

https://audioboom.com/posts/70...crisis-johns-hopkins

I'm a regular listener of Bachelor, his regular guests like Vlahos, Hansen, Chang and Crowley I find reassuring.

Wonder what happened to the guys with the Long War Journal? They were excellent but haven't heard them in quite a while. Yes, Chang is always a treat. Bachelor is good radio.

Politics has always been really mean spirited and dirty. We've finally realized that we have to watch those "minding the store" and we are finding it distasteful.

There is nothing new under the sun.

V.

quote:

Originally posted by 46and2:

It's all cyclical, and some days the assholes and dumbasses are in charge.

Yes, but the "assholes and dumbasses" today are very, very different from yesteryear. Without exaggeration, it is a whole different ballgame.