The Roots of Our Partisan Divide

Imprimis, Hillsdale College ^ | 2/23/20 | Christopher Caldwell

[joma89]

The “fairness” word is exactly what the article is referring to. People who demand fairness (i.e. The homosexual coup!e with 2 adopted kids) will use government and its monopoly on force to guarantee this fairness. It is the underlying reason why there is such a divide.

To translate, see my earlier post 15 in this discussion.

JoMa

[bankwalker]

The divide began with the end of the Bush Jr. era.

The seeds of the divide were planted a century ago by the folks of the Frankfurt School.

[IronJack]

The Founders’ vision vs. Karl Marx’s.

The slow creep toward totalitarianism ... rule by bureaucrats and the unelected.

[nathanbedford]

Article V isn’t going to fix that divide.

I think we have to carefully consider what Article V, like any part of the Constitution, can do and cannot do. The Democrats have recently become fond of quoting Dr. Franklin since they thought it might aid their unconstitutional quest for impeachment, when he said about the new constitutional government if ratified, "a Republic madam if you can keep it."

There are some things constitutional provisions can and do regularly. For example, since the 13th amendment we've had virtually no slavery (some of Chinese workers held in bondage in the Rocky Mountains states building railroads and digging mines and some white slavery today) and no slavery overtly sanctioned by government. The 13th amendment worked.

Such an amendment, or a procedural amendment that for example that requires a balanced budget is enforceable and likely would have profound changes just as we have seen by the 13th amendment and by the amendment providing for popular election of Senators.

Your personal story illustrates how fickle political opinion can be from generation to generation. I think we have to draw the distinction between the power of constitutional amendments to alter certain behaviors or to curb partisanship or, finally, to change human nature.

Our founders were wise enough to know that the Constitution could not change human nature, that is why they undertook to work with human nature rather than against it but to control it with enumerated powers, balance of powers, checks and balances and, later, a Bill of Rights. But the limitations of the Constitution to change human nature were recognized by the framers as illustrated by Benjamin Franklin in his admonition to the woman as he an exited the constitutional convention.

I think we have to be careful about the kinds of constitutional amendments we seek and that should come from an understanding of what we can expect from ourselves.

[HighSierra5]

Our Declaration of Independence demands that if our country falls back into tyranny we revolt again. And the next constitution will have Amendments and rights that will not leave any question about preserving our liberties. That is my desire and hope short of the second coming of Christ.

[joma89]

The next Constitution must limit who gets voting rights. I would argue the society defined in the book “Starship Troopers” (i.e. The book describes the society much more completely than the movie, in fact the movies gets much of it wrong) is the most likely kind of society to rise from the “everyone gets to vote” society we have now.

If you have and hour and a half, Sargon of Akkad, a british blogger, youtubers, has a good overall description of the Starship Troopers society and why that society came about.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kVpYvV0O7uI

JoMa

[BDParrish]

"...And it will be read by a dozen people."

Imprimis has an excellent and wide circulation, and a healthy reputation earned over many years. Though in a very real sense we are, as they are, all guilty of "preachin' to the choir", there is another aspect namely the clarification of talking points,teaching principles which are taken by the faithful and spread to others. While the progressive goddesses get worshipped on the college campuses and Twitter, in other places, people are turning their backs on these dead idols!

[BDParrish]

I have challenged Gen’l Forrest along these same lines before and I confess myself persuaded at least somewhat. I think that an important insight for me is this. Our side will not fight! They would or they might if they could be convinced that they were in the right. Sadly people on our side accept at the deepest level the current view of the constitution so my tired old idea of “enforcing the constitution we have” is simply impractical. There is no way to get there from here.

The second amendment for example, could not be more clear, yet it was the National Rifle Association that opposed any efforts to defend Bernie Goetz against a NYC gun charge. The NRA also did all they could to stop Heller from filing his lawsuit. Thankfully he didn’t listen to them. And yet the NRA is the best we have defending the 2ndA!

I cannot see how the good general will bring about the Article V convention, but I can accept that it would be a good thing and the fight surrounding it would be won by our side. As central_va (or was it wastoute?) mentions on this thread, there is a fight coming.

I think he is right.

I think we will win.

[TnTnTn]

It seems to me the deep political polarization began in the Clinton era with their dirty deals, his sexual perversion, his lying under oath with no repercussions ....it was made worse by Obammy and his racist hatred and then the aoc squad and their ilk...the winds are gathering...

[blueunicorn6]

Yes.

The Great Commission.

You can’t argue the success.

But, just yesterday, I had two people on FR arguing with me that Christianity was not good.

American Christians had slaves!

So sad.

I could have spent the next year preparing a thoroughly researched and documented reply to them.

And a years worth of effort would have reached two closed hearts.

I personally believe that you cannot separate your religious life from your political life.

Not everyone agrees with me.

And though they disagree with me, they still are a soul worth saving.

I see the leaders of the Democrat party as just implementers of The Great Lie.

They must be defeated.

I have not received “The Call”.

Yet, I would have all come to God.

Anyway.....

I am tired of the success of the lying Democrat leaders.

I am impatient.

I want them to be utterly defeated.....now.

[nathanbedford]

For years while I have arguing here in support of an Article V convention for selected proposed amendments, I have always stipulated that the very numbers which guarantee against a runaway convention also make it difficult to secure good amendments.

Our natural apathy alluded to in your reply is one of the reasons why we conservatives remain so passive as though we were frogs in a warming pot of water. Therefore I have always stipulated that it will require some sort of a "black swan" event in order to push the country into a moment of national consciousness, such as we had after Pearl Harbor and to some degree after 9/11, of such magnitude that we will resort to Article V.

We might just be looking at such a black swan on the horizon flying at us from China. The coronavirus can bring, civil dislocation, loss of liberty and severe economic devastation. If that should occur, we will be a society that must dig deep, as deep as our ancestors did in 1776 and in 1860. A black swan of some sort, I have always believed will be needed to galvanize the nation. There is no guarantee that we will do the right thing, in fact, the likelihood is that we will resort to tyranny in a time of desperation. That is what people almost always do.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to." - Theodore Dalrymple

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

Nope. This dude is well intentioned, but wrong. The roots of our political and social divides go back to the 1750’s. What happened in the Civil Rights movement was just one side getting the upper hand for the first time in a long time.

The roots are based in two incompatible sets of assumptions. For most of human history, we have assumed that man was born flawed (or, as religions would assert, sinful). This flawed nature required man to be educated (or constrained) by his upbringing and society so as not to be a danger to himself and others. And the best way to determine such constraints was that which came before (call this the “traditionalist” world-view). It is worth noting that our Founding Fathers were ardent proponents of this world-view, even building their fears about the nature of man and the misuse of power into the Constitution.

In the mid-eighteenth century, a competing world-view arose that we will call the “romantic” world view. It asserted that man was born “tabula rasa” (a “blank slate”) and that all of his flaws and social ills were learned behaviors imposed upon him. Under this world-view, tradition and reason were not the saviors of society; they were the perpetrators and originators of all of mankind’s ills. Instead, the Romantics believed that humanity’s natural drives and urges (following emotions, childlike innocence) were the only path to happiness. We should also note that the French Revolution was founded on the ideals of the Romantics (and the romantic ideas formed some of the basis of communism), and we know how that has turned out.

In many ways, it is the argument of nature versus nurture, but because it is an epistemological ideal, it forms the assumptions you start with and not a position you argue to. Every modern liberal idea (whether on crime and punishment, abortion, gay marriage, transgenderism, etc.) is founded on the romantic ideal that following your “ture nature” and emotions is more valuable that the wisdom embodied in traditions and public institutions. It is, as Thomas Sowell put it in the title of his book, a conflict of visions that has persisted for 200+ years which is the cause of our social divide. The Civil Rights movement was just the first modern case where a large portion of the population was convinced that the emotion (while valid) felt towards those discriminated against was more important than preserving the traditional institutional structures of our government...

[aquila48]

When you have severe culture (values) clashes there are only these possible alternatives...

1. One culture knuckles under to the other

2. Neither culture submits to the other and you have a running cold culture war but it’s not a stable situation...

3. You have a hot bloody Civil war where one culture is destroyed (Spanish Civil War and many others)

4. You find a way to peacefully separate (north/south Korea, Taiwan/china)

The US has been between 1 and 2, with conservatives doing all the knuckling under, but there still is enough of a faction resisting the onslaught and fighting the cold war, though not looking good.

[Vision]

The Roots of Our Partisan Divide: Godlessness

[aquila48]

“When gay marriage was being advanced over the past 20 years, one of the common sayings of activists was: “The sky didn’t fall.” People would say: “Look, we’ve had gay marriage in Massachusetts for three weeks, and I’ve got news for you! The sky didn’t fall!” They were right in the short term. But I think they forgot how delicate a system a democratic constitutional republic is, how difficult it is to get the formula right, and how hard it is to see when a government begins—slowly, very slowly—to veer off course in a way that can take decades to become evident.

Then one day we discover that, although we still deny the sky is falling, we do so with a lot less confidence.”

What we’re going through can be encapsulated as follows:

Any deviancy from the normal will eventually be “normalized” if it is perceived to not cause individual or societal harm.

Problem is, it may take decades for such harm to become apparent to the majority of people.

Such is the case with homo marriage, transgenderism and other deviancies being normalized today.

[Bratch]

[DeweyCA]

It’s the law of unintended consequences.

[gnickgnack2]

bookmark

[Chickensoup]

this has been going on a lot longer than Obama, 70s