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What Is Legal, Moral, Beyond the Tipping Point?
A lot of debate on the political center and the right is driven by where respective individuals see the nation with regard to the “tipping point.” The tipping point is where the center of political gravity shifts from liberty to tyranny. At or slightly beyond the tipping point little effort is required to rebalance or shift toward increasing liberty. But as you move further beyond the tipping point the effort needed increases to where no amount of effort will stop the slide into tyranny. And tyranny can either be one strongman (think Germany, the Soviet Union, or China) or many (think Somalia). The jungle — under one fist, or many.
It is not without reason that John Adams said:
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
If we are at or near the tipping point, then regular order applied in a disciplined manner is enough to keep us from going over. If we are over the tipping point more extraordinary measures are called for to bring the nation back toward liberty. At some point, the system established in the Constitution fails — stalemate in Congress, insurrection within the Executive, and incoherence in the Judiciary — and it ceases to secure liberty for all. When it routinely and systematically fails to do so we have entered a “post-Constitutional” phase for our country.
It is beyond irony that current civil disturbances are “justified” by the assertion that the constitution has systematically failed. But the evidence is that our system has become more fair than at any time in history. We are (or were) closer to the ideals espoused in our Founding documents than ever. Accordingly these (designed?) disturbances challenge the very Constitution that is designed to contain them.
Where do we go from here? Our Constitution assumed a certain shared moral thinking. Not necessarily acting, but some agreement on what a fundamental civic moral code looked like. But in a “post-Constitutional” era, what actions are morally justified to restore liberty? Are we stuck with a morality that was inadequate to preserve liberty in the first place?
Published in General
The disturbances are Marxist inspired. They are being tolerated by Democrats who are not troubled by this alliance with Marxist BLM. Some of these cities have Soros-backed prosecutors who won’t prosecute all crimes. Soros favors one world government so when someone accepts his backing this is what we see. Selective enforcement of law.
Tyranny can be voted in, it takes guns to get back liberty. Never give up your gun voluntarily.
Great post.
I especially like your theory of a singular fist of tyranny, or a tyranny of many fists: But as you move further beyond the tipping point the effort needed increases to where no amount of effort will stop the slide into tyranny. And tyranny can either be one strongman (think Germany, the Soviet Union, or China) or many (think Somalia). The jungle — under one fist, or many.
This is so important, and the Leftists behind the present unrest know it. They’re using the groundwork laid by our liberals, who are their useful idiots, and their stupid replacing of the melting pot with the “salad bowl” of disparate elements that bump up against each other but never meld. That and their moral relativism (“You can’t push your morality onto ME! I make up my OWN”) has created the situation we’re in now. America is not one ethnic nationality like other countries. It’s an idea. And when that shared idea of patriotism and love of country and observing of the Judeo-Christian ethos is not only no longer shared, but has now been declared to be un-cool and even “hateful” by the Left, we are in grave danger.
Well, I would probably go back and do a re-reading of the first two hundred pages of The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixities (by Christopher Caldwell).
I agree with Caldwell’s assertion that CRA-64 (otherwise known as the Civil Rights Act of 1964) has become a “second Constitution” which may not be legitimate but is treated by our “elites” in the judiciary and higher education as the absolute gospel.
They’re not interested in what the Constitution says. They’re far more interested in the “feelings” (including their own) that they read into the Act. A lot of the mischief that we’re seeing today came out of the Act and the subsequent legislation that followed it.
Well, I’m re-reading James Webb’s Born Fighting just to put me in the right frame of mind for this pre-election period and its aftermath. It’s just in my DNA.
Thanks for the tip, @bobthompson. I just bought the audiobook!
Rodin, could you elaborate on the sentence I put in bold? Are/were we closer to the ideals than ever, before this craziness started?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea that order is a prerequisite for liberty.
The Adams quote implies that if the people are immoral, the constitution as it was written is insufficient. It’s one of David French’s favorite quotations, but right now it pulls me toward Sohrab Ahmari.
There’s also that famous Ben Franklin line about people who are willing to give up liberty to gain security deserving neither. I imagine leftists may reach for this as the right calls for order. But there is no such thing as the liberty to burn down and destroy someone else’s business, to trespass on their property, to assault random people in the street, or to use threats of violence to achieve political ends.
Our Founding documents set out natural rights extant in all human beings and yet we had slavery, women without property or voting rights, children regarded as chattel, anti-sodomy laws, etc. None of these elements remain. I am sure I could come up with some additional examples, but these jump out at me as making the status in law more fair for everyone regardless of their race, sex, age, sexual orientation. Of course we have also gone overboard in creating rights, but that doesn’t erase the facts that legal disabilities have been removed for which, from our current perspective, were inconsistent with natural rights.
RA – Your statement nails it: “the “salad bowl” of disparate elements that bump up against each other but never meld. That and their moral relativism (“You can’t push your morality onto ME! I make up my OWN”) has created the situation we’re in now.” There is no post-Constitution, because if there were, there would be no more America. The Founders created our documents and laws for this moment. The O administration began the dismantling of these lessons, and replacing it everywhere – Common Core for example. Immigrants didn’t have to assimilate. This is Europe’s problem too, may be on a bigger scale. We have more visible mayhem, but their mayhem is there too. Sticking to the original battle plan that our Founders laid out, and has worked for 200 plus years, is the only way forward, and that is what the Trump administration has been trying to restore.
I see where you’re going with those examples. And you are absolutely (wrong choice of words?) right. Thank you!
I agree with what you have listed that these positive achievements over two and a half centuries have eliminated most all of the significant deficiencies (wrongs) existing at the founding. On the other hand, we have progressively centralized control of functions that should be handled at the discretion of the people in the states and local communities into the federal government. This was not the consensus intention of the founders and it has two major negative effects. Many Americans consider their liberty to have been infringed and the effectiveness of the federal government in the execution of its appropriate functions is diminished. I venture if the founding debates were occurring today, how to prevent any inroads by communism and fascism would displace the focus that was then on the Monarchy.
Spot on, @bobthompson. Monarchy has receded as the greatest threat to liberty. I am put in mind of the Old Testament story when the Israelites rejected a theocracy and sought a king. I am no advocate for theocracy as they are always moderated by man. But at a deeper level it speaks to man inserting authority in competition to the authority of G-d in our lives. For millennia monarchy served that function. The competition was “resolved” by agreement of church and state in the West that monarchs had G-d’s blessing. The American experiment disentangled that belief and reasserted the direct relationship with G-d to His Creation and subordinated government to the will of the People. But mankind cannot resist building edifices of power and authority. And so ideologies arise in competition, again, with G-d and His People.
True, and assimilation used to be the goal of immigrants. Now they proactively and aggressively eschew it, and our idiot liberals encourage them. I swear our American liberals are like a guy being eaten by a lion and handing him the salt and pepper. And it’s been going on for far too long.
In the mid-90s when we lived in Michigan for a time, our local Sunday paper’s Lifestyle section had a cover feature on a Mexican girl who was a student at our local university. The half-page photo had her in traditional Mexican garb. Throughout the article, she spoke of “my people” and “my culture” etc. It wasn’t till the end that we learn she was a 9th generation American, did not even speak Spanish and neither did anyone she knew. I couldn’t tell if that kid had ever even been to Mexico. People are actually reaching back in the mists of time to claim a culture that was never theirs (News Flash: “Culture” is not on your DNA you idiots), thereby purposefully separating themselves from fellow Americans and undoing the conscious efforts of their forebears to become American in every way. How the proponents of this stupidity thought it would end well is beyond me.
And we have done them a terrible disservice by building in a kind of alienation from those of us who identify as Americans. No one seems to be able to find the balance of incorporating aspects of a culture, yet making sure that it is second to the American culture. Too bad.
I eschew the term “liberal”. It gives them credit for beliefs they no longer hold. “Progressive” is my preferred term. Not for its accuracy but for its irony. They seek to enslave and return to the feudal societies that were extant for millennia.
Her family has deeper roots here than most Americans with European ancestry, I would venture.
Hmm, I am thinking of adopting the term “Pregressive”. It incorporates the concept of regressive but retains the general formulation of what they call themselves. And it hints of “aggressive”.
Ancestry.com should come with a warning: “Results are for entertainment purposes only. Our advertising with people adopting dress and customs is designed to highlight our service and not as an encouragement to migrate, invade other lands, rob, pillage or otherwise act like your ancestors.”
The same could be said of African Americans – they may be of African origin or not, because many are not. So constantly bringing up slavery and identifying with it, is not where our culture is today, anymore than someone who is Asian, but has been in this country for generations and taken advantage of the opportunities that it offers. Racism can be found everywhere in the world, but repression is different.
Yes they have truly perverted the term. And the term “Progressive” is no more accurate, since they actually hate real progress. That’s why Obama set race relations back 40 years, purposely stirring up old troubles. They do this every time when things are going pretty well. Because real progress isn’t what they want. What they want is a) a reason to be irate and block traffic and post pictures of themselves on Facebook getting arrested (the rank-and-file useful idiots) and b) issues they can use to foment unrest and destabilize this country (the Globalist Open-Borders Leftists who are the puppet masters of the useful idiots).
I’ve been saying for years that we ought to reclaim the term “Liberal” and be the Classical Liberal Party. Imagine all the votes we’d get from clueless lefties who don’t know what words mean.
Here in California, surrounded on the one hand by liberals who spent the first 2 years of the Trump Administration focusing on that poor woman at the border with the crying baby, and then secondly, people who have conservative beliefs, and finally immigrants themselves, the entire discussion is quite interesting.
Last spring I was approached three different times by someone I knew vaguely who asked me to tell them what I thought about the libs and their attitudes supporting an open border. I could tell from how the question was posed they really wanted my real answer, even if I were to indicate I was not all in for supporting the open border.
After my telling them how there is a need to keep the border laws enforced, all three women breathed sighs of relief. Then they began on rants of how when their parents came across that border in the late 1980’s or 1990’s, their parents stressed the need to learn English. Occasionally the parents used this or that Fed or state program to get the family through a tough time, but the parents were honest and never worked under the counter in order to receive the major benefits.
They were all incredulous that the Governor and state legislature were giving the newly arrived immigrants free college tuition – even through the expensive U of C programs. “We look at higher rents every time massive numbers of new immigrants enter our society. We worry how we will get our kids into college when tuition is so high. We are told again and again it is the new immigrants who deserve everything handed to them on a silver platter. Why can’t they work for everything as we did?”
The one answer that came to me off the top of my head was that with a full 58% of all Californians being wary of where the state is headed, the DNC needs new names for new voters come November.
It’s by no means certain the the Constitution of 1789 is still operative. It’s been under steady attack since Woodrow Wilson and Roosevelt did substantial damage.
Martin Luther King shamed and inspired the USA into striving to live up to the Constitution and its ideals, and it’s increasingly looking as though that was its high water mark. Or last gasp.
The Civil Rights Acts resulted in:
• Years of enabling legislation
• Years of litigation and consequent precedents
• The followon legislation after the litigation
• A resultant administrative apparatus at all levels of government, all levels of academia, and in every virtually every business. The academic division of this apparatus enabled the Long March through academe and gave rise to Woke, the national religon of post Christian America.
Christopher Caldwell argues that all this has created a de facto new constitution which has in the process of supplanting the one we of 1789. A
BidenHarris victory would be, as a Clinton victory in 2016 would have been, the tipping point.It was one of the great Progressive projects.
The Pledge of Allegiance was the work of Christian socialist Francis Bellamy. The salute to the flag prescribed by its author’s colleague when the Pledge was promulgated in 1892. The salute acquired some unfortunate resonances due to the work of later Italian and German socialists and was replaced in the US by the hand over the heart. Below we have the assimilationist movement at full throttle
Huh. So they got one thing right.
So in the final Analysis Obama may have succeeded in fundamentally transforming America. We could be living in a post American world. We just haven’t fully realized it yet or its implications. After all Rome didn’t fall in a day.