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America’s Cold Civil War
Imprimis ^ | Oct, 2018 | Charles R. Kesler

Posted on 11/21/2018 5:08:00 AM PST by Politically Correct

In the Claremont Review of Books, we have described our current political scene as a cold civil war. A cold civil war is better than a hot civil war, but it is not a good situation for a country to be in. Underlying our cold civil war is the fact that America is torn increasingly between two rival constitutions, two cultures, two ways of life.

One vision is based on the original Constitution as amended. This is the Constitution grounded in the natural rights of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution written in 1787 and ratified in 1788. It has been transmitted to us with significant Amendments—some improvements and some not—but it is recognizable still as the original Constitution. To simplify matters we may call this “the conservative Constitution”—with the caveat that conservatives have never agreed perfectly on its meaning and that many non-conservatives remain loyal to it.

The other vision is based on what Progressives and liberals, for 100 years now, have called “the living Constitution.” This term implies that the original Constitution is dead—or at least on life support—and that in order to remain relevant to our national life, the original Constitution must be infused with new meaning and new ends and therefore with new duties, rights, and powers. To cite an important example, new administrative agencies must be created to circumvent the structural limitations that the original Constitution imposed on government.

That leaves two possibilities. One, alas, is secession, which is a danger to any federal system—something about which James Madison wrote at great length in The Federalist Papers. With any federal system, there is the possibility that some states will try to leave it. The Czech Republic and Slovakia have gone their separate ways peacefully, just within the last generation. But America is much better at expansion than contraction. And George Washington’s admonitions to preserve the Union, I think, still miraculously somehow linger in our ears. So secession would be extremely difficult for many reasons, not the least of which is that it could lead, as we Americans know from experience, to the fifth and worst possibility: hot civil war.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: civilwar; constitution; leftism; leftists; liberalism; progressives; progressivism
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I only copied the highlights.

Much more for your reading pleasure at the link.

1 posted on 11/21/2018 5:08:00 AM PST by Politically Correct
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To: Politically Correct
The LBJ Legacy - Identity Politics, Suspicion, Distrust, Hate and Racism.


2 posted on 11/21/2018 5:11:37 AM PST by Vlad The Inhaler (I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it.)
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To: Politically Correct

There is the American constitution and there is europe

The leftist goal is Europe in North America

A living constitution is a ruse to cover Euroization


3 posted on 11/21/2018 5:12:05 AM PST by bert ((KE. N.P. N.C. +12) Invade Honduras. Provide a military government)
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To: Politically Correct

When you have a huge proportion of our young who have been sufficiently indoctrinated to accept “Healthcare is a Right” we have pretty much failed in reproducing our own legacy.


4 posted on 11/21/2018 5:12:32 AM PST by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: Politically Correct

Our side is going to have to do something Big in response to The Steal in California - or we’re done in 2020.


5 posted on 11/21/2018 5:12:39 AM PST by kiryandil (Never pick a fight with an angry beehive)
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To: Politically Correct
How is a "living" constitution any different from no constitution?

THAT is the goal of the Left.

6 posted on 11/21/2018 5:15:26 AM PST by Oratam
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To: Politically Correct

A “living constitution” is a euphemism for no Constitution. Because if you accept that viewpoint then the Constitution means whatever you want it to mean at that point. It no longer carries any weight, it is a virtual spokes-model for the fad du-jour.


7 posted on 11/21/2018 5:18:44 AM PST by ThunderSleeps ( Be ready!)
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To: Oratam

Bullseye for you this morning!!!

Coffee must be hot!


8 posted on 11/21/2018 5:20:10 AM PST by Cen-Tejas
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To: Cen-Tejas
Coffee must be hot!

Thanks for the kind words. My thoughts on the living Constitution have been percolating for some time.

9 posted on 11/21/2018 5:26:53 AM PST by Oratam
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To: Politically Correct
The problem is having abandoned so much of traditional federalism, it is hard to see how federalism could be revived at this late juncture.

It's actually easy to see .It's called Article V and it's there in the Constitution because they knew power would get centralized in Washington. It's our escape clause from the left.

10 posted on 11/21/2018 5:30:54 AM PST by Nateman (If the left is not screaming, you are doing it wrong.)
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To: kiryandil

What is “The Steal in California” that you’re talking about? Are you referring to the way they have rigged elections so that two Democrats can be on the ballot, instead of a Democrat and a Republican?


11 posted on 11/21/2018 5:49:40 AM PST by Berosus (I wish I had as much faith in God as liberals have in government.)
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To: Politically Correct
"“the living Constitution."

There is no such thing. Like any contract it is written clearly with the weight of that clarity. Granted, if the FF's could have known how there brilliance would be parsed, distorted, spun, and mis-contrued as in today's legal definitions, the Constitution and Amendments would have been at least 2000 pages long. Unfortunately, they didn't have a crystal ball and wrote and passed what they thought would work.

I blame the whole mess on lawyers/career politicians, indoctrinated students, the biased MSM, and parents who no longer try. Buy your child a smart phone and don't bother to raise them with solid workable society substaining ideals or virtues.

12 posted on 11/21/2018 5:51:49 AM PST by A Navy Vet (I'm not Islamophobic - I'm Islamonauseous. Plus LGBTQxyz nauseous.)
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To: Politically Correct

America hasn't been a free nation since Woodrow Wilson.



Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was an American statesman and academic who served as the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and as Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913, before winning the 1912 presidential election. As president, he oversaw the passage of progressive legislative policies unparalleled until the New Deal in 1933/

Upon taking office, Wilson called a special session of Congress, whose work culminated in the Revenue Act of 1913, introducing a federal income tax which provided revenue lost when tariffs were sharply lowered. He also presided over the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, which created a central banking system in the form of the Federal Reserve System. Other major elements of Wilson's New Freedom agenda included the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and the Adamson Act, all of which established new economic regulations enforced by the federal government. Wilson staffed his cabinet and administration with numerous Southern Democrats.
13 posted on 11/21/2018 5:54:05 AM PST by vannrox (The Preamble to the Bill of Rights - without it, our Bill of Rights is meaningless!)
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To: Politically Correct
When two groups of people of one nation are so far apart that they not only cannot agree on anything, but actively hate one another, it is time to go their separate ways.

We did it once before: see the Declaration of Independence...

14 posted on 11/21/2018 5:54:33 AM PST by jeffc (The U.S. media are our enemy)
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To: Politically Correct

an excellent read. great for those who arent ‘there yet’ or ‘woke’ on the Right. to the educated its another restatement not only of what we have learned or what we believe, but what we have SEEN WITH OUR OWN EYES over the last 50 years.


15 posted on 11/21/2018 5:55:06 AM PST by TonytheTiger7777
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To: Berosus
Electoral Three-Card Monte: How The Democrats Stole Orange County
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3707357/posts

Dems Flipped Over Half of Orange County House Seats After Election Night
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3707347/posts

Orange County Numbers DON’T ADD UP – Dems Had 300K More Votes for Congressional Seats than for Gov
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3707142/posts

Here's an anecdote from Rush Limbaugh's show:

CALLER: I am probably the last Republican in California, and because I got so fed up with the RINOs that I reregistered as an independent, and before the election, because I’m somewhat disabled, I requested online an absentee ballot as an independent.

Immediately, I received two emails with absentee ballots and an invitation and welcome from Taylor Swift, and would I be able to help other voters to the polls?

The following day I received four more ballots in the mail. So here I am with six ballots, and there’s nobody to report it to because nobody in the state would do anything about it.

16 posted on 11/21/2018 6:02:25 AM PST by kiryandil (Never pick a fight with an angry beehive)
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To: Politically Correct

Kesler points to a conflict of the two constitutions. But the Left doesn’t want pluralism (a condition or system in which two or more states, groups or principles, sources of authority, co-exist). They want Monism, not Pluralism, meaning they want totalitarian control (as the Left has always sought). They have it in California, New York and soon elsewhere. And they will persecute those who oppose them. In California, 20% of the voters are “Decline to State” and are fearful of declaring their party affiliation for fear of retaliation. How such a system can co-exist with the original American system is doubtful. However, a civil war is to be feared when the Left has its own militia. But the Left is so against guns, and their base is in the Intellectual Knowledge Class, not in the military. So, for now, I don’t see civil war. But Obama was on his way to transform the US military into race, gender, social justice warriors for globalism. So we shall see.


17 posted on 11/21/2018 6:18:54 AM PST by WayneLusvardi (It's more complex than it might seem)
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To: kiryandil
"Our side is going to have to do something Big in response to The Steal in California"

I don't know if anything was stolen in California this election. I've lived here all my 68 years, other than 3 in Rota, Spain during Navy.

The simple fact is like many States, California's education system has been indoctrinating its students with socialism/communism for many many years. Being the most populated State, it's understandable it would be one of the first to go down the toilet. I'm a Boomer from the hippie generation and watched so many values and virtues incrementally flushed away.

As I said before: I blame the sad state of our nation on lawyers/career politicians, indoctrination centers we call schools/colleges, biased MSM, and parents who no longer try ... that is if the kid has parents in the inner cities. Baby mamas don't count as parents. Oops, big dog whistle there. To f*cking bad on me for stating reality.

18 posted on 11/21/2018 6:19:33 AM PST by A Navy Vet (I'm not Islamophobic - I'm Islamonauseous. Plus LGBTQxyz nauseous.)
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To: A Navy Vet
See my post #16.

Your points are all valid observations, and I agree with all of them.

19 posted on 11/21/2018 6:32:19 AM PST by kiryandil (Never pick a fight with an angry beehive)
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To: Politically Correct

The best parts, clearly defining the issues at hand, were the paragraph of how natural rights makes us all equally entitled by our creator to equitable treatment and rights, and how the Right/conservative mindset still revolves around means to the stated end ( as described in the founding documents, DOI, Preamble of,and Constitution) and how until the 60s the dems and repubs actually worked the same lane- how to achieve the ends by using means, and now how the left has rather focused on changing the ends and thereby disrupting the means...”Change we can believe in” etc.

The ends of the left is the destruction of the constitution roper, to be replaced with the rule of man in lieu of the extant rule of law.

The left has won the ideological war so far- from preschool to post grad, no one even knows what natural rights are, let how they apply to life within our society.

It is my personal belief that the only thing preventing all out physical attack on anyone not “onboard” with their agenda is the fact that there is a RTKBA....

A quick look at history shows easily how the first step in the plunge to horror is the government restriction on the RTKBA, then the gloves come off.

“An Armed man may be persuaded, an unarmed man can be forced”... I forget who said that.

Are you armed as we speak? If not, why not? It is your “insurance” against tyranny and terror.


20 posted on 11/21/2018 7:32:45 AM PST by Manly Warrior (US ARMY (Ret), "No Free Lunches for the Dogs of War")
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