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From Loyal Opposition to Sabotage
American Thinker ^ | 28 Feb, 2026 | Delise Tattum

Posted on 02/28/2026 4:35:31 AM PST by MtnClimber

When politics becomes scorched earth, it is the nation itself that burns.

I was raised to believe that democracy came with duties as well as rights. You voted. You accepted the outcome. You argued your case, made your peace with defeat when it came, and waited for the next election. Politics was competitive, sometimes bruising, but it was not meant to be an existential threat. The opposition’s role was to hold the government to account, not to weaken the country for political gain.

That older civic instinct now feels rather quaint.

In theory, the idea of the “loyal opposition” remains central to democratic life. But in practice, it is disappearing before our eyes. We still have opposition parties, of course. What we increasingly lack is: loyalty to anything beyond political allegiance.

Recent events have made this vividly clear. The State of the Union address, where political rivals once observed a shared civic ritual, has now descended into open contempt. Shouting from the chamber, orchestrated walkouts and the conspicuous absence of large numbers of opposition members were not acts of principled dissent, but of deliberate delegitimization. More telling still was the decision to stage a competing event at the same time as the address was being delivered—a symbolic rejection not just of the speaker, but of the institution itself. This is no longer opposition in any meaningful constitutional sense. It is a shift toward political sabotage, where the objective is not to challenge governance, but to undermine the framework in which governance occurs.

The phrase “His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” emerged in Britain for a reason. It captured a delicate balance: one could oppose the government vigorously while remaining loyal to the constitutional order, the nation, and the legitimacy of the democratic process itself. The opposition was not an enemy

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: bolsheviks; democrats; domesticenemies; insurgency; leftism; truefascists

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1 posted on 02/28/2026 4:35:31 AM PST by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

It should make for some good campaign commercials.


2 posted on 02/28/2026 4:35:42 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

Get rid of the filibuster


3 posted on 02/28/2026 4:54:36 AM PST by nikos1121
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To: MtnClimber

Our elections are rigged, if we didn’t have rigged elections, outcomes would be easy to accept. Here is a novel idea... Arrest all the people involved in the industrial scale voter fraud over the last 10 years. Problem solved. Oh... but that would take an @FBI and @DOJ that wasn’t actively involved in rigging elections.


4 posted on 02/28/2026 5:04:15 AM PST by WinstonSmith1984 (Make 1984 fiction again.)
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To: MtnClimber

Bkmk


5 posted on 02/28/2026 5:14:35 AM PST by sauropod
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To: MtnClimber

Good writing as usual
Bump


6 posted on 02/28/2026 5:55:30 AM PST by silverleaf (“Inside Every Progressive Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out” —David Horowitz)
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I think the first thing Denise needs to learn, and pronto, is America isn’t a democracy, has never been a democrayc, and in no way, shape or form does any rational, intelligent person want to us to be a democracy.


7 posted on 02/28/2026 6:08:21 AM PST by curious7
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To: WinstonSmith1984
"...if we didn’t have rigged elections, outcomes would be easy to accept..."

This is the elephant in the room the author missed.

Some of us noticed a generation ago when voting machines would "break down" in key locations and when an establishment candidate would pull out a miraculous win for the television after "misplaced ballots" were suddenly found.

So this has been going on for some time. What is dangerous / what has changed is the cabal knows we know they are dirty. Even the hard core useful idiots are slowly discovering there is no way Biden got 81 million legitimate ballots. The beast is cornered and wounded, but it is still dangerous. "They" are getting desperate.

8 posted on 02/28/2026 6:45:46 AM PST by BAN-ONE
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