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Democrats No Longer See Republicans as Fellow Citizens
One difficulty that Abraham Lincoln had in fighting the Civil War was that he understood that if the Union won, they would then be fellow citizens with the newly defeated Confederates. He was fighting a war against people with whom he had a great deal in common, and with whom he would have to cooperate to govern their unified country in the future. This somewhat limited his ability to ruthlessly destroy his opponent, and made his battle planning more complex.
Yesterday’s hearings with Attorney General Barr looked to me like the Democrats don’t feel similarly constrained. In fact, the last few decades of leftist behavior suggests that American leftists no longer feel that they have enough in common with American conservatives to make an effort to cooperate with them on, well, on nearly anything. I find this extremely concerning.
Many Democrats openly disdain Republicans and avoid associating with them. If a college student is outed as a closet conservative, even if it’s not true, the social stigmatizing of that student is absolutely vicious. A girl who is set to start as a freshman at Marquette this fall nearly lost her admission to Marquette because she openly admitted that she was a Republican. These are not isolated incidents, and they are no longer limited to academia. Cancel culture is now mainstream.
When you add the vicious social stigma to the literally vicious new militant wings of the Democrat party, like Black Lives Matter, Antifa, NFA, and so on, you end up with an extremely hostile environment for Republicans. Republicans no longer feel welcome in their own country.
In yesterday’s hearing, Attorney General Barr asked the assembled Democrats,
“This is the first time in my memory that the leaders of one of our two great political parties, the Democratic Party, are not coming out and condemning mob violence,” he said. “Can’t we just say the violence against the federal courts has to stop? Could we hear something like that?”
The room was silent. The attorney general challenged their loyalty, and not a single Democrat objected. For them, it was just another day at the office.
This trend did not start with President Trump. This sort of thing was starting when I was in college in the late ’80s; it’s much, much worse now. Democrats and Republicans used to be friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens, but over the past few decades, Democrats appear to have reached the conclusion that they don’t have enough in common with Republicans to make any effort to cooperate with them in any way.
The Civil War appears almost civil by comparison. That’s an exaggeration, but not by as much as I’d like.
So imagine what happens if the Democrats win this next election. Heck, imagine what happens if they lose.
I don’t see how this can end well.
Published in General
I trust that you would want those standing up for the Republicans with a consistency comparable to the Democrats to be standing up for the truth and not lies like with saw yesterday and in the Kavanaugh, Thomas, or Bork.
I wish you hadn’t included the House Un-American Activities. I used to think one way on that but these last few years have caused a reconsideration.
I am like minded. If I say in lockstep, some lefties will think we like goosestepping together.
I do. I’m right of center, hence my affinity for Ricochet and its members.
You’ve got two things going on in this statement.
One, the Left does support the Constitution, just ask them. But they sure do interpret things differently. I usually vehemently disagree with the Left’s interpretation of the Constitution. Some elements want a new constitution, but that’s an idea that’s also thrown around on the right, with vastly different aims.
Two, the left’s support of China, and I’m thinking Krugman’s pining for the CCP pragmatic efficiency, is certainly strong evidence of a very different approach to life than we on the right support.
We’ve always said that our politicians were incompetent in that regard, RINO squishes and such.
I suppose innocent by incompetence is virtuous, in a way.
Does the Left support individual liberty and the Bill of Rights? We can see that they support Communism.
Drew,
On top of everything you’ve said can you imagine pitting one lone old guy on AM Radio against ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, 99 out of 100 Entertainment media types, and 9 out of 10 recent Ivy League graduates with top jobs in corporations and government.
Of course, every so often the old guy gets a good zinger in there. No foul language, no obscene sexual references, and no actual physical threats of violence, all of which the left continuously participates in on a daily basis. Damn that old guy. If this one old guy would just be nicer then everything would be just like it was under Ike. Bad Rush.
BTW, I haven’t listened to him in years. Is he still alive or did he die already?
Regards,
Jim
Of course.
FWIW, there’s probably some other website where some liberals are saying, “Wasn’t it great how our guys told Barr the truth yesterday?”
But that’s a whole ‘nother problem.
Of course, just ask them! They prioritize things a lot differently than we do.
You raise an interesting philosophical question, could a Communist government be legislated under the Constitution?
It’d take months just to work out the definition of terms of that analysis.
And I bet we could find a few who say that we’ve got one now.
The Left’s behavior towards free expression does not demonstrate support for individual liberty. And they don’t want me to have guns so they don’t support the Bill of Rights. I don’t know why you keep referring to what they say when it is what a person does that shows their character and beliefs. They can try to amend the Constitution to better fit their priorities.
Arvo,
You wouldn’t have months if a real Communist government took over. They’d put you in a dungeon. After interrogation, the secret police officer would put his pistol to your head and pull the trigger. Thus all interesting philosophical questions would be at an end.
Regards,
Jim
I think you would like to read the book, Age of Entitlement.
Remember when working class white dudes who went to church voted Democrat? Remember when Democrats actually liked working class white people? The past is truly a foreign country.
Exactly what happened to my grandfather.
I am interested in this. What color is she? My guess is white because if she was a black-American lady, she would have thought about this stuff before BLM became fashionable.
Isn’t it odd that they agree with everything on the left? Historically, there have been so many different kinds of leftism. Some were liberal, some were deeply religious, some were even skeptical of some manifestations of state power. Yet now, all the leftists agree on everything from transgender bathrooms to taxation to reparations from slavery.
Well, not with Big Tech censoring everything. No. And with Republicans in congress stepping in to defend Big Tech from charges of censorship . . . nope.
We have alternative media . . . for now. Google has done its best to throttle it. See recent reports from Breitbart about how Google has systematically diminished their reach since 2017.
We crossed the Rubicon some time back. Now we need fighters. And we seem to have appeasers instead.
Sorry for your loss.
Can you provide examples of this? I’ve heard of (and support) efforts to amend the Constitution to repeal the 17th Amendment, clarify the Commerce Clause, and a few other things. There’s also an effort to have Congress do its duty and call an Article V amendment convention, since more than 2/3 of the states have applied for one.
But I’m not aware of any effort on the right to draw up a whole new Constitution.
Right, that’s the vastly different aims.
“Appeasers”? Did I hear Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s names mentioned?
Nor am I.
And I would prefer we move back toward the Constitution we have — which is one of the most remarkable documents in the history of the world — than letting this generation of idiots come up with something new.
IMHO, wanting to amend the Constitution in accordance with the procedures under Article V is a completely different thing than wanting “a new constitution.”
Unless you think that each amendment creates a “new constitution.” Which is not a thing.
i.e. The literal definition of the word “hate”. “To treat as an enemy.”
Republicans have not always been “conservative.” In fact, conservative, like progressive or even fascist, is a term that has changed over the past fifty years. I would suggest that the word conservative is becoming more succinct and now has returned more to its ideological roots, that is preservative of what is customary and good. In America that means a conservative is protective of the constitution and the governance our founders attempted to create. The problem is, Republicans have not been conservative in the past. They have acquiesced to their opposition and allowed our principles to drift, our constitution to be corrupted, our treasury to be serially bankrupted, our government to be abbrogated to unaccountable bureacrats, our congress to be infiltrated by entrenched grifters and our nation to be nearly lost. The Democrats were always spineless and feckless, ready to join whatever empathy fest for groups the hard left determined were the victims of the hour. Now the Left has their mob and they are posed to force a reckoning; to purge the opposition. The Democrats are quick to appease, but they are simply the modern Jacobins and they will face their own guillotine. Trump has reinvigorated conservatism, vain, impetuous and petty as he can sometimes be. His policies, which are a return to our founding and thus inherently conservative, have proven successful. Old victims are succeeding, rising, and this has them wondering. Were those who claimed represent them, who promised “justice” that never came, just false prophets and carpet baggers reaping rewards from their misery? Trump showed them that they were Americans entitled to opportunity, not reparations or vengence. The Left had to make its move before the success of America diminished its constituency of victims and empaths. The Marxist mob has lit this flame. The election in November will determine what, whom and how much it will consume.
I could see the East Coast and West Coast uniting as one country . . .
At least half a million people died during the Civil War. It was anything but a “clean war.” The worst hatreds are often between people who are similar to each other.
Yeah, ask Trotsky.
That’s certainly true, of course. But if you view your opponent as evil or subhuman, that often doesn’t work out well, either.
I think I must live in a completely different world from @arvo.
A Bernie supporter nearly took out half the GOP representation in Congress who were playing baseball in a park.
What does this even mean ?