Posted on 06/03/2018 6:29:14 PM PDT by huckfillary
If America is badly divided today, then what once united it?
The Constitution. The Constitution is not just an abstraction. It’s a real, living commitment by the actual citizens of a country to a democratic form of government with an absolute commitment to individual rights. The most important rights are the top two in the Bill of Rights — the First and Second Amendments. It’s no accident they’re the top two. America’s founders understood that without these two, we’re all sunk.
Democracy is meaningless without individual rights. If we did not have a Bill of Rights, and uphold it, then mob rule would be the order of the day. America’s founders knew this, but millions of Americans today do not grasp it.
I know of no time in our nation’s history when satisfaction with an electoral outcome, as in 2016, called into question the entire system of government for a sizable portion of the population.
The only time I can think of where such division existed was during the years leading up to the Civil War.
The country was badly divided in the Vietnam War era of the 1960s and early 1970s. But the division consisted of one side who wanted to protect the Constitution and Bill of Rights by fighting and finishing the Vietnam War, and the other side who also cherished the Constitution and Bill of Rights and thought we should get the hell out of the war. Matters were complicated by the fact that the federal government drafted young men — literally enslaved them — to send them off to their deaths in a nation where our own government didn’t even care to try and win the war.
Today is different. It’s not about two sides who want the same thing fighting over how best to get there. It seems that mass numbers of American citizens don’t care about the Second Amendment, so long as they get their gun bans, and don’t even care about the First Amendment so long as they get to criminalize “hate speech”. They’ve lost sight of the fact that it was “hate speech” — that is, controversial, often unpopular speech — that the First Amendment was most importantly designed to protect!
It also seems that mass numbers of people — not necessarily a majority, but mass numbers — do not care what it takes to bring down Donald Trump. They want him taken down. Nobody disputes the electoral outcome of 2016. In fact, the more you start to investigate voter fraud, the more votes pop up for Trump throughout the country. Why do you think the recounts in Michigan and Wisconsin stopped so soon after the 2016 election, when the more they recounted the more Trump came out ahead?
The disturbing thing about today is that mass numbers of citizens seem to be saying, “Donald Trump is not my president. I don’t care if he won fair and square. I don’t like him. And I should not have to wait until the next presidential election to defeat him. I shouldn’t even have to wait until the midterms. Robert Mueller and others — take him down … now!”
President Trump understates it all in his tweets. It’s a war on facts, truth and justice so beneath the legacy of America’s founders that one hardly knows what to say. It’s shocking and disturbing in the extreme. Even if they don’t succeed in taking down President Trump, the fact we’re living in a country where so many support this “get-what-I-want-at-any-cost” is frankly unsustainable, no matter who’s in office.
With Obama loyalist holdovers and even Republican anti-Trump forces throughout the federal government, not to mention a media 95 percent in bed with all things anti-Trump, Mueller and his phony investigations have proceeded (at taxpayer expense) unimpeded other than for President Trump’s tweets of dissension. The more Mueller uncovers, the more aware we become of how the prior Obama administration was the one colluding to generate an election outcome, not Trump and the Russians, something for which there is virtually no evidence.
It’s an awful time to be an American, despite the fact there is no great war, natural disaster or economic crisis. It’s awful because the country is so divided. It has gone to the grass roots where friends and members of the same community no longer wish each other the best. But it’s not a spirited debate. It’s not a debate among people who want the same things, in the end. Some of us want the First and Second Amendments stronger than ever. Some of us are willing to accept election outcomes even when we detest them — as those of us who now support President Trump managed to do for eight long years when Obama held office and waged daily war on the Constitution.
Some divisions are too deep to heal. Some differences are irreconcilable. When you want fundamentally different goals, and you’re going in fundamentally different directions, how are you supposed to wage a compromise? How are you supposed to compromise between freedom of speech for everyone, or freedom of speech only for those whom the Democrats and the media approve of? How are you supposed to compromise with people who say, “Look, it doesn’t really matter what Mueller finds out. Trump has to go. We know he’s not a real President. Let him go, and find someone else.” Do Republicans get to do that with Democratic candidates, particularly after they win?
It’s unsustainable.
Prove me wrong, America. I’d love to be wrong. I’m an optimist, at heart. Prove to me that in the end, deep down, we all want the same things: liberty, freedom and equal protection under the law for all of us. Prove we are grown-ups. Prove we can and will take responsibility for making a better case when we lose elections. Prove we want to respect each other’s individual rights under the law and the Constitution. Prove that free speech cannot and will not be tampered with, no matter how much we detest (and therefore tune out) the particular speech we’re hearing. Prove that in crucial ways, we’re all the same, and that even where we’re different, we can live under the same system of government.
The only way to “un-divide” a country is to discover, or rediscover, the most important things you have in common.
We are permanently divided because the left has managed to do so. That being said, I hate liberals and I will never unite with them. They are pure scum and the root cause of the failings of the world and the rotting of America as founded.
Typically you ‘un-divide” a nation by rallying it against an external enemy.
But we don’t have a real foe.
Easy-prays...get rid of every.single.socialist.
Gentleman, While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence. But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays I have received from Major-General Hull and Brigadier, General Walker your unanimous address from Lexington, animated with a martial spirit, and expressed with a military dignity becoming your character and the memorable plains on which it was adopted. in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world; because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, • would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Sure we do and the President is throwing them a dinner on Wednesday.
I have a few Leftist in my family, and I despise them.
The divison in this nation has recenty affected my own life as I have recwntly ended a 40 year friendship that goes back 1st grade.
We were best friends since the 1977-78 school year. As we grew into adults he became very liberal, me very conservative and over the years had many spirited, but good natured political debates. We always had fun, good naturely making fun of each others stands. It was never bitter, insulting or hostile. 10 years ago I even became Godfather to his firstborn baby daughter.
But things changed when 0bama came around. He became more brash about his liberalism. Very hostile towards my conservative views.
It got to the point where I said politics were now off limits. I would not discuss it with him as henlost his civilty. But he consistantly bring it up, but would eventually shut up as I would refuse to engage. Towards the end of 0bamas second term, he twice subtly suggested my dislike for 0bama was driven by racism (I am white, he is of hispanic decent).
Once Trump took office his facebook rants have been daily, many subtly directed at me. The final straw for came when I foolishly engaged with him in one of his stupid facebook rants. He ultimately said I would be just fine with Trump sending ICE to deport him, his wife and my Goddaughter, an asinine comment because all three are natural born citizens. Even more perplexing is he and his wife are of Central and South American decent and over the years both have made jokes and derrougatory comments about Mexicans.
But I couldn’t take it anymore and told him I can non
longer have anything to do with him anymore. He has been a nasty, hateful, bitter condencending asshole ever since 0bama reared his ugly head.
I ended the friendship nearly two months ago now, I have not spoken to him or seen my Goddaughter since. Two weeks ago he left me a voice mail and sent me a text that he needed to urgently speak to me. I did not respond.
Yesterday I learned from a mutual friend, his wife took the kid and left him. Apparently he was cheating on her.
I almost wanted to call him to rub it his face that liberalism (which means having nor moral compass) has consequences. But I know that would not be a good thingb
to do.
See and visit with him. It will be a salve for you and him.
One way, perhaps the only way, to un-divide a nation is a civil war and then wait five generations. From 1861 to 1865, 620,000 Americans died before democrats tolerated the idea that they could not have slaves. I wonder how many deaths and generations it will take the next time around before they are willing to tolerate their lack of slaves again.
Stop catering to the snowflakes and other emotionally crippled misfits - it will happen all by itself.
United in the Body of Christ.
Your mission was completed over 200 years ago when America's founders guaranteed ever state a Republican form of government.
It’s not going to happen. This country is more divided than before the civil war. As soon as I realize someone is a Democrat I don’t want anything to do with them. Friends of mine have told me they feel the same way.
You prove through logic, facts and reason why people should NOT side with those who seek to divide it for their own gains.
Let the dividing begin. Peacfully or in a brutal war. I am good either way.
That was a war of southern Independence and most fought for states rights and to free themselves from Federal tyranny. Plus thought of killing Yankees by the gross is to alluring to pass up.
True, but the way I phrased it is the way the big government thug class sees history. There is a better chance of them understanding - in the unlikely event that a leftist reads my words and actually thinks.
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