Posted on 04/23/2018 6:27:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
In a piece for The Federalist entitled, “It’s Time For The United States To Divorce Before Things Get Dangerous,” writer and former Marine corp combat veteran Jesse Kelly ruffled more than a few feathers with his contention that the time for the United States as a united nation may be nearing an inevitable end.
Comparing the Left and Right in America to “the couple screaming at each other all night, every night as the kids hide in their room,” Kelly cites a congenial divorce as the best option for a country that’s “hopelessly divided” on seemingly every important issue. He even tweeted a helpful accompanying map with a hand-drawn red line ceding the Left coast and the northern states to the liberal governance they deserve.
In his piece, Kelly cites issues from gun control to border security, issues that, while both sides hopelessly disagree, will soon prompt increasingly intolerant Leftists to “start coming for the careers (and lives) of any normal American who sees things differently.”
“We both now agree that living under the other side’s value system is wholly unacceptable,” writes Kelly. “The most peaceful solution we Americans can hope for now is to go our separate ways. So let us come together one last time and agree on one thing: Irreconcilable differences.”
Naturally, Kelly’s idea drew quite a lot of criticism. HotAir’s Jazz Shaw pondered the legality, logistics and workability of such a proposal, but didn’t seem to take a lot of issue with the underlying inevitability.
CNN commentator Sally Kohn took him on when Kelly’s controversial piece earned him an appearance on HLN’s S.E. Cupp Unfiltered. “I’m sure we could find plenty to disagree about, but I actually think there’s quite a lot we could agree on,” said Kohn, citing values like “unity, but also free speech, free assembly, freedom of religion” as well as “the idea that we should all be able to live up to our God-given full potential.”
Except, liberals don’t believe in free speech, much less free assembly. And they don’t really believe in freedom of religion either, at least if you’re a Christian. And that “God” in “God-given?” Are you serious, Kohn?
California State Controller candidate Konstantinos Roditis penned a rebuttal of Kelly’s argument from the right, arguing for a return to real federalism instead of creating more countries. “Jesse, it’s not time for a divorce,” writes Roditis. “It’s time we rise up and take our country back and finally break the shackles of overbearing centralized government and go back to our roots of self-government and self-determination.”
Sounds great, in theory. Let’s ‘take our country back’ and establish REAL small government! Problem is, on what planet will liberals with an already burgeoning near-supermajority possibly allow something like this? After all, Big Government is how these people get stuff done.
While the non-legal arguments against Kelly’s hypothesis seem pretty weak, they say little about what would be best for all parties involved. To a kid who grew up in the 80’s, before unadulterated political correctness infested America’s schools, “Manifest Destiny,” the idea that our settlers were destined to spread all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific, seemed more common sense and a source of pride to me than controversial and worthy of shame. And even now, the idea of America splitting up pulls at the heartstrings just a little.
But let’s face it, America will never again be the America we grew up in. Progressivism has ruined it, and likely beyond repair. Beyond the idea of a nation spreading its wings and conquering the wilderness is that of self-governance, of people being free to live in the kind of place, and under the kind of government, of their choosing, whether what they choose is limited, Constitutional government or utter liberal lunacy.
To Roditis’ point, the states were supposed to be the vehicle for that, under a limited federal government, but we all know how THAT turned out. If we aren’t going to do federalism right, perhaps divorce is the only way forward.
Interestingly, Bill Hammond tweeted a link to both Kelly’s Federalist piece and a Medium article entitled “The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War” from the Left under the caption “These two articles should be hate-read in tandem.” In the Medium piece, Peter Leyden cites California’s example as the way forward for a divisive America. Except, rather than let conservatives pave their own way as Kelly would, Leyden wants to establish “Democratic, progressive supermajorities” in the rest of America.
In other words - tyranny. And make no mistake, if liberals seize control via supermajorities, and they aren’t all that far off, tyranny is how they enact their insane, unworkable policies on the rest of us. Because from Soviet Russia to Communist China and socialist Venezuela, that’s what always happens when Leftists have unadulterated power.
Granted, the idea of bringing up an issue that was seemingly settled over 150 years ago might be quick to dismiss, but in an era when people can’t even agree on whether Donald Trump is a real person or the actual, physical spawn of Satan, how can we possibly reach a consensus on anything? Which means that whatever we do, half the country isn’t just going to be unhappy, they’ll be apoplectic.
And these days, the idea isn’t just coming from the Right. The Calexit movement would secede California from the United States entirely, and it’s more financed and organized than you might think. Perhaps it’s time to give them what they want.
“[Conservatives’ reasons for splitting] would be a major cultural shift toward the left and half the country refusing to go along with tyranny,” writes Kelly. Liberals’ reasons might be a desire to run things their own way without the adults in the room interfering. But either way, the way I see it there are three possibilities for America’s future - unrest, tyranny, or divorce.
We’re already seeing the unrest, and it’s happening on a massive scale as liberals #Resist literally every move President Trump makes.
Should these jackals eventually get their “permanent Democratic majority,” we’ll certainly see the tyranny.
Which leaves the one other option, that put forward in Kelly’s controversial piece. Sure, it won’t be this year, or this decade, or probably even in my lifetime, but its eventual inevitability seems as ‘destined’ as America’s historic expansion to the Pacific.
That’s the most likely. Get rich and prepare to abandon ship.
I don’t even care how it looks in the end. I just want to hurt them. Deeply.
In all likelihood, America will suffer all of the above, in stages. In fact, I would posit that we're already well into the first phase, which is Tyranny.
Yes, President Trump is our 'great hope', to roll back and bring the burgeoning tyranny of the federal government to a halt, but let's face it, he's just one man, and may not succeed in righting our course during his eight years in office. If he (and we) cannot stop the juggernaut of tyranny, it will lead to Unrest.
I don't think any of us can predict with accuracy, what the Unrest will really look like, or what its full scope will be, but we all know that it's going to be messy and violent. The Tree of Liberty will surely be refreshed.
Only at the end of that violence, do I foresee a Divorce, when all will agree that it's a better solution than continuing the mayhem and destruction.
I don't think the left has much stomach for ACTUAL "mayhem and destruction." They're perfectly willing to see it visited on their constituents and their opponents, so long as they can rest secure in their little enclaves.
What makes Bill Buckley great? I think "God and Man at Yale" was excellent, he wrote that at age 25. What did he do in the next 50 years that made him great?
There is a line of argument that he spent most of his capital repeatedly "purifying" Conservatism of influences he thought disruptive, and ultimately this harmed conservatism.
Initially he used his "purge power" to write the John Birch Society out of the Conservative movement. He did this because he disliked their claim that Eisenhower's administration was packed full of Communists. He felt it distracted from the war against Russian Communism.
Ok, fair enough, perhaps that was a reasonable judgement call, but 50 years on the infiltration of the executive branch my Leftists certainly seems like a central issue, one that we needed to win a while ago, but didn't.
Maybe the power intoxicated him, but the purge became his favorite response to criticism, especially from his right. He went on to purge those he considered "anti-semites", then "paleo-conservatives", then former comrades like Pat Buchanan, and even his long time friends, like his best man from his wedding, the writer Revilo Oliver.
The essence of the cuckservative insult, of recent vintage, is that the Buckley-era Conservative Movement , while supposedly fighting for the conservative cause, when push comes to shove - always folded.
The evidence supporting this is the steamroller of leftist causes is matched by the flattened conservative opposition on issue after issue. The civil rights act, forced integration, school busing, legal abortion, legalization of homosexuality, homosexuals in the military, homosexual adoption, homosexual marriage.
It's instructive to look at the institution Buckley founded, the National Review. It's not against his wishes that Rich Lowry is the editor, he appointed him.
Many of the writers they publish are associated with the Heritage Foundation or American Enterprise Institute.
So, we are left with Buckley's legacy as the institutionalization of Big Business Conservatism, or as critics sometimes call it "Conservatism, Inc.".
Buckley's formula allowed him to continue to be welcome in the salons of the Upper West Side, despite his conservative leanings, he was house-trained.
Where this all ended was with the entire institutional Conservative movement created and nurtured by Buckley agreeing with the importance of preventing Trump from winning the Presidency, despite his being arguably the most Conservative GOP candidate since Reagan.
I no longer view Buckley as great. He was good, and he was amusing, and he did fight some important battles, but in the end he cucked and failed.
We would have been much better off with someone more like Pat Buchanan leading the Conservative movement, than Buckley and his disciples.
I've left out some of the deeper questions about Buckley's personality that a close look at his life inevitably leads to, but to really make the call on whether he was "great" I think you'd need to look into them.
This image leads to a review of a book that presented this criticism in the most detail:
Which is why conservatives never achieve a majority
Erring sisters, depart in peace.
Well then, I guess it's all settled. The Prophet Q has Spoken.
There has to a be a physical split so the two sides can occupy their own turf so to speak. You cannot vote with your feet now because the over arching Fedzilla now controls every aspect of life and states rights/power is a joke. This “divorce” is way overdue. Sorry but it has to happen.
I agree with you.
You divide the USA up so people cam emigrate to the area where the feel politically welcomed. There has to be a division. Get it? What’s so hard to understand?
Oh it’s totally simple. The legislature votes to secede and the governor signs it and boom your state is now a country!
So what? they can move can't they?
Given the state of blackmail in this country you first item on the list is your weakest point.
I don’t see how a piece of paper with three names on it could lead to blackmail.......and I’m somewhat of an expert in this field.
“So what? they can move can’t they?”
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Why the hell should they? It’s their home. Many families have ties in these states going back two or three centuries.
This talk about breaking up the country and California seceding is just a bunch of inane bull$hit.
I hate seeing that map. It portrays the Pacific states as all blue when it is, in fact, only the extreme coastal areas that are blue. There are north-south mountain ranges, and bexyond that, red as far as the eye can see. Farming, rural.
“You divide the USA up so people cam emigrate to the area where the feel politically welcomed”
Yeah, sure. So when those of us conservatives in eastern WA/OR migrate east, who is going to grow and harvest potatoes, apples, wheat, and cherries, run Grand Coulee dam and ten other power-producing dams, a nuclear plant, secure DOE and DOD facilities, and the rest? Lefties from Seattle? Right.
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