Epidemic of Hopelessness

 

We have been trapped for years by a minority in our society that thinks that we live in a despicable country. Recently they are also making clear that the only solution to this “fact” is the destruction of our country. I believe that the deluded people who profess this worldview experience nothing but hopelessness in their lives. Unfortunately, those of us who don’t agree with them are slowly becoming infused with this sick approach to life. If we don’t wake up, we risk succumbing to this life-threatening disease.

The Federalist, in an article by Nathanael Blake, helped me diagnose the sickness of hopelessness of the Left. Many people have tried to understand the viciousness and destructiveness of Progressives by pointing to the draw of Marxist theory, the corruption of education, and the immaturity of many young people, to name a few. But these reasons only answer the “what” questions—what they are doing; they don’t answer the “why.”

I believe that living in an increasingly secular and prosperous country, people are desperate to find meaning and purpose. When you have no belief in G-d or in man, and you can’t identify what you can contribute to the world, there is only one mindset to embrace: hopelessness.

Hopelessness does provide a path out of confusion and frustration. You give yourself permission to relinquish any semblance of self-worth; if you have nothing to offer to society, you have no obligations to your community or to your fellow man. And if there is no loving G-d to serve, you are completely alone.

You are hopeless.

But as people have given up hope, they have been lured with a “cure”: Progressive thought. The Progressives tell them that they can be “saved” by the ideals of Progressive thought; that the world is a wretched place, but they can start all over again. They can envision wearing the mantle of “Creator” in this revolutionary approach. They will return the earth to the void and darkness and re-create a new world. Paradoxically, the path of hopelessness creates the New Hope.

 

* * * * *

 

For many of us on the Right, this life view is anathema to everything we hold dear: life, liberty, faith, responsibility, creativity, values, morals, family—our list is inspiring and life-affirming. Yes, meeting our goals and obligations can be difficult, but our belief that many people are good, generous, and responsible inspires us to strive to become our best selves.

Living in a bombastic, persistent, and continual time of hopelessness is becoming very challenging. We aren’t lured by the Leftist agenda itself. We are, however, feeling discouraged, frustrated, bewildered and desperate at one time or another, as we watch our values and institutions being torn apart. In other words, in a different manner, we are doomed to watch the country destroyed, if we don’t find ways to fight these life-ending movements. We are subject to the disease of hopelessness. If we give in to hopelessness, they have won, and we are lost. If we aren’t creative enough to stymie them in their efforts, we lose more than our own wellbeing. We stand to lose much that gives life meaning.

We must fight to replace hopelessness with faith: faith in a divine presence, faith in this country and faith in each other.

We must. Or we are lost.

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  1. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    We religious types don’t mind you seculars sponging off of our morals, values, political and legal framework, societal structures, or any of the rest. Just stop burning stuff down, will ya?

    • #1
  2. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Are you concluding that there is no room for both on this earth?

    • #2
  3. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    I have an atheist friend who says he does not trust most atheists as far as he can throw them. His take is that most people put something else in their spiritual hole that is twisted.

    I find many atheists are mad at God for not being the God they think he should be.

    For myself, my sense of dread is from a different sort. My whole life I have been taught that people are people and not to judge the color of someone’s skin. Don’t prejudge. Don’t discriminate based on skin color. People are all children of God.

    50 years. We have elected a black President. There are strong laws against discrimination. We have made so much progress in my lifetime.

    And none of it matters. The calls that white people are the problem have increased as the actual issues decrease. Hate Crimes keep turning up as hoaxes. Blacks rate of illegitimacy (indeed all groups but Asians) goes up and up. The war on poverty, aimed mostly at blacks has not changed poverty levels. Black crime continues to be higher than proportional to their part of the population. All of this is blamed on white racism. Structural racism. Institutional racism. White Fragility. Microaggressions. Unconscious Racism.  Calls for reparations. The list goes on.

    It is clear to me, after 50 years, that no level of progress will ever be enough. America is a least racist as it can ever be, and there are riots in the streets. I am not sure I believe that we can improve relations. The minority does not seem to be willing to do so.

    • #3
  4. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    Are you concluding that there is no room for both on this earth?

    As the Left operates, the answer is yes. There is no room for their efforts to destroy the earth. But you knew that. ;-)

    • #4
  5. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):
    I am not sure I believe that we can improve relations. The minority does not seem to be willing to do so. 

    You have good reasons for feeling that way, @briangstephens. But if we give up hope, we have nothing. And I don’t have answers. But I am compelled to keep seeking answers. They are not gods as they’d like to believe.

    • #5
  6. PHenry Inactive
    PHenry
    @PHenry

    They got a great, empty hole right thru em.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqF7ZD64bwY

     

     

    • #6
  7. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    PHenry (View Comment):

    They got a great, empty hole right thru em.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqF7ZD64bwY

    So very sad, isn’t it? 

    • #7
  8. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    I truly don’t have a sense of the numbers around the various categories. How many are involved actively in the criminal looting and vandalism in these riots? How many stand there and act supportive? How do these numbers relate to the voting numbers we can expect in November? What is the breakdown within the Democrat Party between so-called center-left, if there is such, and far left? The reason I qualify that is the monolithic lockstep adherence to far-left ideology of the Democrat Party makes it questionable if such diversity even exist.

     

    • #8
  9. Old Buckeye Inactive
    Old Buckeye
    @OldBuckeye

    Probably why Obama’s “hope” theme resonated with many. They thought they’d found their savior. And he no doubt thinks he was/is. 

     

    • #9
  10. Doug Kimball Thatcher
    Doug Kimball
    @DougKimball

    Like all belief systems, embrace of G-d, while it can provide comfort and guidance, it is not a perfect answer.  Which G-d to choose, which religion, which denomination?  We can never know.  I am a strong advocate of the moral imperatives of the J-C ethic, but I am not ready to claim one or another as the exclusive answer to hopelessness.  I think it is far more complicated than that.  But I do think that it is important that people, regardless of race or situation, understand that the great majority of their fellow citizens, especially their conservative ones, want nothing for them but success, opportunity and happiness.  And this wish bears not on their race, creed, national origin or sexual preference.  That is the exact opposite of racism.  The problem with this “systemic racism” label is the underlying insistance that behind this irredeemable, ill-defined, slippery racism are racists.  Are we all closet racists so long as there are self-identified groups who can collectively claim poor education outcomes, disparately higher arrest and incarceration statistics or nominal economic circumstances?  If the answer is “yes” then G-d help us!

    What is actually happening here is a lawless outburst incented by hard core, organized marxist-anarchist groups fomenting hatred.  Alienation and dehumanization are the first steps to relegating “the enemy” to the status of non-persons.  If they are allowed to continue down this path, G-d help them.

    These organizations must be stopped and their leaders jailed for instigating looting, assault, arson, property destruction, sedition and mayhem.  We have to strip them of their resources, confiscate their assets and prosecute their benefactors under RICO.  They should all be forced to pay restitution to anyone (including government entities) who has suffered harm or economic loss at the hand of these seditionists.

    There is no other answer.  G-d bless us and them.

    • #10
  11. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Good post.  I think that resentment is part of the problem, as well, and perhaps also personal insecurity (i.e. lack of confidence in one’s own ability to achieve).  This does make the response tricky.  I think that someone wallowing in resentment needs to be rebuked, while someone insecure needs to be encouraged.

    I think that there’s been a devaluation of modest achievements that used to result in the respect of the community, such as holding together a marriage, providing a stable home for your children, and diligent employment at an ordinary job (meaning a job that does not deliver high wealth or status).  Charles Murray wrote about this at length in Coming Apart.

    I have a question for you, Susan.  Does your insight into the source of the current moral and political crises cause you to reconsider any of your own moral or political positions?

    • #11
  12. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    Good post. I think that resentment is part of the problem, as well, and perhaps also personal insecurity (i.e. lack of confidence in one’s own ability to achieve). This does make the response tricky. I think that someone wallowing in resentment needs to be rebuked, while someone insecure needs to be encouraged.

    I think that there’s been a devaluation of modest achievements that used to result in the respect of the community, such as holding together a marriage, providing a stable home for your children, and diligent employment at an ordinary job (meaning a job that does not deliver high wealth or status). Charles Murray wrote about this at length in Coming Apart.

    I have a question for you, Susan. Does your insight into the source of the current moral and political crises cause you to reconsider any of your own moral or political positions?

    That’s a great question, Jerry. I’m not sure I can answer it? I don’t know if the current situation is responsible, but I’ve tried very hard to clarify my own positions. I also try not to have knee-jerk reactions to events until I have the facts. And strangely enough, I’m getting better at handling paradox, in that I sometimes find myself feeling compassion for certain people who do hurtful things; I guess I try to figure out what kind of life leads a person to do something cruel and selfish. Sometimes it’s just depravity.

    Did you have particular positions in mind in those areas?

    • #12
  13. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    Good post. I think that resentment is part of the problem, as well, and perhaps also personal insecurity (i.e. lack of confidence in one’s own ability to achieve). This does make the response tricky. I think that someone wallowing in resentment needs to be rebuked, while someone insecure needs to be encouraged.

    I think that there’s been a devaluation of modest achievements that used to result in the respect of the community, such as holding together a marriage, providing a stable home for your children, and diligent employment at an ordinary job (meaning a job that does not deliver high wealth or status). Charles Murray wrote about this at length in Coming Apart.

    I have a question for you, Susan. Does your insight into the source of the current moral and political crises cause you to reconsider any of your own moral or political positions?

    That’s a great question, Jerry. I’m not sure I can answer it? I don’t know if the current situation is responsible, but I’ve tried very hard to clarify my own positions. I also try not to have knee-jerk reactions to events until I have the facts. And strangely enough, I’m getting better at handling paradox, in that I sometimes find myself feeling compassion for certain people who do hurtful things; I guess I try to figure out what kind of life leads a person to do something cruel and selfish. Sometimes it’s just depravity.

    Did you have particular positions in mind in those areas?

    Anything that I might specify would be speculation and probably projection.

    I’ve noticed some Ricochetti who seem to have been shifting to the political Right recently, including you and GrannyDude.  It’s interesting to observe.

    I started tracking this about 2 1/2 years ago, using a 5-point scale to evaluate positions taken by various people on Ricochet, and entering the results into an Excel spreadsheet.  It may be time to do a separate post with graphs showing these changes, for selected individuals.  Kidding!  I kid!  I’ve been a bit of a graph fanatic about coronavirus, but that would be just creepy.

    Seriously, there seems to be a “red pill” effect going on.  Several recent posts and comments have been along the same line as yours.  I often responded with something like “this has been going on for a long time” or “this was apparent in the 1990s,” and it occurs to me that this may be interpreted as a bit obnoxious, as if I said: “Yeah, thanks for finally coming around, you dullard.”  Which is not my intent.  My intent is to point out connections, and to track the progression of ideas.

    [Cont’d]

     

    • #13
  14. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    My own political views haven’t changed much since the mid-1990s, when I transitioned from youthful libertarianism to conservatism.  I have noticed three changes in the past 20 years or so:

    (1) I used to be pro-immigration, and pretty supportive of amnesty for illegal immigrants.  This really changed, for me, during the early Obama years.  It was not Trump-related.  I think that this change came from an extension of sympathy for the American working class, of all races, who are the most likely to face competition from immigrants and, as a consequence, lower wages.

    (2) I used to be pro-free-trade, in a very strong way.  This did change because of Trump.  This was one of my principal objections to Trump during the primaries, and I’ve come to believe that he was right about this.  I’m not a huge fan of protectionism, but the “fair trade” argument is more persuasive to me, coupled with the geopolitical threat posed by China and increased sympathy for the working class.

    (3) I was a strong supporter of the Iraq War and the neocon “nation-building” effort.  This simply failed.  I am now more pessimistic about the prospects of effectively changing the culture or politics of other countries.

    I don’t know whether your new insights might prompt a reconsideration of your positions, either political or moral.

    • #14
  15. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Percival (View Comment):
    Percival Ricochet Charter Member

    We religious types don’t mind you seculars sponging off of our morals, values, political and legal framework, societal structures, or any of the rest. Just stop burning stuff down, will ya?

    As secular type, may I assure that you I am your side of this argument. I fear for my nieces lack of moral and religious education. I don’t want the left to engulf them the way it has subdued the minds of so many of generation. 

    • #15
  16. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Old Buckeye (View Comment):
    Old Buckeye

    Probably why Obama’s “hope” theme resonated with many. They thought they’d found their savior. And he no doubt thinks he was/is. 

    The bible says to, “put not your trust in princes.” This can be interpreted as both, put not your trust in man and put not your trust in governments. One can be a stone-cold materialist and still appreciate that line and the civilization that it helped found. 

    • #16
  17. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):

    Structural racism. Institutional racism. White Fragility. Microaggressions. Unconscious Racism. Calls for reparations. The list goes on.

    It is clear to me, after 50 years, that no level of progress will ever be enough. America is a least racist as it can ever be, and there are riots in the streets. I am not sure I believe that we can improve relations. The minority does not seem to be willing to do so.

    I propose that this is the fault of the elite and not the average NAM (non-Asian minority.) There is a great podcast about that with Dave Rubin interviewing Burgess Owens

    • #17
  18. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):

    50 years. We have elected a black President. There are strong laws against discrimination. We have made so much progress in my lifetime.

    And none of it matters. The calls that white people are the problem have increased as the actual issues decrease. Hate Crimes keep turning up as hoaxes

    This reminds me of the reason that academic infighting is so vicious:  the stakes are so small.

    • #18
  19. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    My own political views haven’t changed much since the mid-1990s, when I transitioned from youthful libertarianism to conservatism. I have noticed three changes in the past 20 years or so:

    (1) I used to be pro-immigration, and pretty supportive of amnesty for illegal immigrants. This really changed, for me, during the early Obama years. It was not Trump-related. I think that this change came from an extension of sympathy for the American working class, of all races, who are the most likely to face competition from immigrants and, as a consequence, lower wages.

    (2) I used to be pro-free-trade, in a very strong way. This did change because of Trump. This was one of my principal objections to Trump during the primaries, and I’ve come to believe that he was right about this. I’m not a huge fan of protectionism, but the “fair trade” argument is more persuasive to me, coupled with the geopolitical threat posed by China and increased sympathy for the working class.

    (3) I was a strong supporter of the Iraq War and the neocon “nation-building” effort. This simply failed. I am now more pessimistic about the prospects of effectively changing the culture or politics of other countries.

    I don’t know whether your new insights might prompt a reconsideration of your positions, either political or moral.

    Jerry, I don’t know what gave you the impression that I was anything but Right for the last 20 years! Being from CA, I have been against illegal immigration for a long time; I have mixed feelings about DACA. I didn’t have strong ideas about trade; haven’t followed that issue until recently. I, too, was for the Iraq War, but I’m opposed to intervening in the politics or governance of other countries. I also don’t believe that everyone wants to live in a democracy. I have always been pro-Israel, anti-Iran (and against the nuclear deal). I never trusted Russia or China.

    • #19
  20. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    The Federalist, in an article by Nathanael Blake, helped me diagnose the sickness of hopelessness of the Left. 

    One good article deserves another. This one deals with the origin of all the nonsense. 

    • #20
  21. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):

    Structural racism. Institutional racism. White Fragility. Microaggressions. Unconscious Racism. Calls for reparations. The list goes on.

    It is clear to me, after 50 years, that no level of progress will ever be enough. America is a least racist as it can ever be, and there are riots in the streets. I am not sure I believe that we can improve relations. The minority does not seem to be willing to do so.

    I propose that this is the fault of the elite and not the average NAM (non-Asian minority.) There is a great podcast about that with Dave Rubin interviewing Burgess Owens.

    It does not matter. The Republic is over. 

    I’d love someone to give me a pathway out, but the fact is, we are going to let a small minority destroy us. 

    • #21
  22. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):
    It does not matter. The Republic is over. 

    • #22
  23. Maguffin Inactive
    Maguffin
    @Maguffin

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    I started tracking this about 2 1/2 years ago, using a 5-point scale to evaluate positions taken by various people on Ricochet, and entering the results into an Excel spreadsheet. It may be time to do a separate post with graphs showing these changes, for selected individuals. Kidding! I kid! I’ve been a bit of a graph fanatic about coronavirus, but that would be just creepy.

    Darn.  I was going to ask what my rating was.

    • #23
  24. Michael Brehm Lincoln
    Michael Brehm
    @MichaelBrehm

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    I truly don’t have a sense of the numbers around the various categories. How many are involved actively in the criminal looting and vandalism in these riots? How many stand there and act supportive? How do these numbers relate to the voting numbers we can expect in November? What is the breakdown within the Democrat Party between so-called center-left, if there is such, and far left? The reason I qualify that is the monolithic lockstep adherence to far-left ideology of the Democrat Party makes it questionable if such diversity even exist.

     

    Hi Bob! See if you can track down the “Political Tribes” report that was published about a year ago. I think it will answer some of your questions. One of the conclusions was that the far left comprises about 8% of the population. (Rioters would presumably be a fraction of this). I will try to find it later if I can…

    • #24
  25. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    To be revised

    • #25
  26. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    I find it relatively easy to understand the motivation of those Progs who are unsuccessful and bitter; also those who are desperately searching for a sense of meaning in their lives.  Sebastian Haffner, who grew up in Germany between the wars, observed some of the second type, when the political/economic situation started to stabilize:

    The last ten years were forgotten like a bad dream. The Day of Judgment was remote again, and there was no demand for saviors or revolutionaries…There was an ample measure of freedom, peace, and order, everywhere the most well-meaning liberal-mindedness, good wages, good food and a little political boredom. everyone was cordially invited to concentrate on their personal lives, to arrange their affairs according to their own taste and to find their own paths to happiness.

    But…A generation of young Germans had become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions…Now that these deliveries suddently ceased, people were left helpless, impoverished, robbed, and disappointed. They had never learned how to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful and worth while, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded the end of political tension and the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk.

    and

    To be precise (the occasion demands precision, because in my opinion it provides the key to the contemporary period of history): it was not the entire generation of young Germans. Not every single individual reacted in this fashion. There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. they began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.

    This need to have the entire content of lives delivered gratis, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions…is very much a thing in America today.

    But there is another type: Progs who may not themselves be involved in violent protests, but make excuses for and encourage those who are.  Quite a few in this category are economically well-off, successful in their careers, happy marriages, many interests in life, appear satisfied…what is driving their Prog-ism?

    • #26
  27. PHenry Inactive
    PHenry
    @PHenry

    David Foster (View Comment):
    what is driving their Prog-ism

    self hate, guilt, peer pressure and utopianism. 

    • #27
  28. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):
    And none of it matters. The calls that white people are the problem have increased as the actual issues decrease

    That’s one reason the Left needs Apocalyptic Global Warming. The evil white man is killing the Earth and must be removed from any power whatsoever. 

    It’s a strange coincidence that the number of abortions in the USA since Roe v Wade is within a few million of estimates of the number of legal and illegal immigrants to the US in the same time period. The legal apparatus for restricting immigration to the US by national origin was abolished in 1965. In hindsight, the following decade was probably the turning point; Gramscian Marxism and its deconstructionist allies firmly established themselves in the academy, and the modern radical environmental movement began, except the worry then was anthropogenic global cooling. The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 set in motion, according to Christopher Caldwell, the overturning of the Constitution ratified in 1789:

    [T]he United States now has two constitutions. The first is the one on the books. The second arose in the 1960s and replaced the old liberties with new, incompatible ones based on group identities. “Much of what we have called ‘polarization’ or ‘incivility’ in recent years is something more grave,” [Caldwell] writes. “[I]t is the disagreement over which of the two constitutions shall prevail.” More bracing still, he puts the blame for this crisis on the most sacred totem in American politics: our civil rights legislation. . . .

    Just as assuming that two parallel lines can meet overturns the whole of Euclidean geometry, eliminating freedom of association from the U.S. Constitution changed everything,” . . . The Civil Rights Act passed under President Lyndon Johnson was meant to address an emergency situation that most Americans, even most white Americans, recognized as a national disgrace. Over the following decades, those emergency measures would be revealed as a permanent apparatus combining “surveillance by volunteers, litigation by lawyers, and enforcement by bureaucrats.” Civil rights offered “new grounds for overruling and overriding legislatures and voters on any question that could be cast as a matter of discrimination. That was coming to mean all questions.”

    * * *

    The invasion and population replacement are well under way. The destruction of freedom of association also destroyed civic nationalism; this has led the way for increased racial polarization after a few decades of dialing it back. 

    ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — For the generation of Americans not yet old enough to drive, the demographic future has arrived.

    For the first time, nonwhites and Hispanics were a majority of people under age 16 in 2019, an expected demographic shift that will grow over the coming decades, according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday.

    “We are browning from bottom up in our age structure,” said William Frey, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. “This is going to be a diversified century for the United States, and it’s beginning with this youngest generation.”

     

    • #28
  29. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    I cannot shake the deep conviction that it all boils down to a conflict or competition between individualistic and collectivist approaches to societal living. My own personal sense has been and is that America is the last bastion of individualism. For more than half a century we have taught about individual motivation and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Family and religion are important components of an individualistic society. Most of the rest of the globe does not favor this approach but endorses a collective and immigration is undoubtedly a factor in bringing collective views to America’s shores. Collectives have many requirements involving loyalty to groups that many individualists shun. The U.S. Constitution is a document produced as a follow-on to the concepts of individual liberty outlined in the Declaration of Independence and fought for in the War for Independence.

    I sense this conflict is a very big deal within our nation at this moment. The religious and family structures relied upon to fortify our individualistic society have been under constant attack for a century. The Constitution has been a more formidable opponent for the collectivists so the efforts to subvert it have been through means other than the amendment process provided.

    There is no question in my mind that the Democrat Party is collectivist, opposed to the very essence of our constitutional founding, and will join with Communists from around the world to subvert our historical freedoms. 

    Hopelessness will be exploited to serve this end.

    • #29
  30. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    David Foster (View Comment):
    But there is another type: Progs who may not themselves be involved in violent protests, but make excuses for and encourage those who are. Quite a few in this category are economically well-off, successful in their careers, happy marriages, many interests in life, appear satisfied…what is driving their Prog-ism?

    Excellent question, @davidfoster. Virtue signaling? 

    Thanks you for Haffner’s quote, too. So applicable to our times!

    • #30
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