My basic assessment of authoritarians like Pinochet, Franco and Salazar is that, unlike “Constitutional Conservatives” they were able to protect their people and their countries from communists, anarchists and leftists.
Any credibility of “Constitutional Conservatism” collapsed with the 2020 Pandemic response, with the non-prosecution of Antifa/BLM rioters, validating a stolen election, the unequal treatment of the J6 people, and 100+ bogus criminal indictments against the leading opposition candidate.
If this was the record of a Third World country, it would be marked down as authoritarian with major deficiencies in the rule of law, and protection of individual rights.
I wish it wasn’t the case. Until ~2020 I thought that the US Constitution would be a good model to replace the deficient document that Canadians live under. (Although I was always slightly un-nerved by the underlying Enlightment and Deist hoo-haw, but I thought US Constitution had proved its functionality.)
Well no longer. In 2020, the US Constitution didn’t protect anyone from anything.
Not only that. My brother has been watching the criminal trials of some of the leadership of the Canadian truckers. What is clear is that their trials and the conduct of prosecutors is much more legally just than what we see for the J6 people.
The fact that the Trudeaupia Judiciary provides more fair treatment to political dissidents than the current US legal system is a massive indictmentof the entire Constitutional and legal system of the United States.
Conservatives will eventually be kicked off of all Corporate social media as the Regime consolidates its power. I appreciate the fact that we have Free Republic and I am happy to support it. At best I’m a former Constitutional Conservative but I’m glad I am still allowed on here.
I think that as time goes on, eventually everyone will see that what once was, is not coming back.
Even the most diehard Royalist Ultra eventually had to admit that the Bourbon Restoration was never going to happen.
For Constitutions to function, the basic premises have to be broadly shared by the people. And the principles of the Constitution have to be consistent with the “folk ways” and “folk beliefs” of the people.
That isn’t true for 2023 “diversity” America. And it hasn’t been true for a long time. There is no Constitution that can bridge the diametrically opposed views. Not in the USA. And not in any other Western country.
First of all, I thank you for a full throated defense of your views and for not hiding them behind a smoke-screen of obfuscations.
At least we can know for certain who you are and what you believe, unlike so many others here.
And I understand that you are Canadian and therefore not born into the US Constitutional government and the centuries-long debates over what exactly is or is not appropriate constitutionally.
So, for you, US "constitution-speak" is a little like learning a second language as an adult -- no matter how hard you train, you can never really speak it without an accent.
Right now I'm out of time, so must summarize my responses.
The US Constitution has been under constant attack since Day One in 1787, with its most serious single challenge being the 1860s crisis of secession and Civil War.
Since roughly 1932 our Constitution has been bent, twisted and molded into conformity with modern Democratic Socialist ideals and globalists aspirations.
In all this time conservative Republicans are nearly always minorities, sometimes minorities within the Republican minority.
But on rare occasions Democrats have so mislead and abused Americans that we've elected Republican majorities to make things right again.
Ronald Reagan in the 1980s was one time, the 2024 reelection of Pres. Trump may be another.
As the Sardinian philosopher de Maistre famously observed in 1811: