UNDERSTANDING AMERICA'S COLD WAR # 2 OF 2

UNDERSTANDING AMERICA'S COLD WAR # 2 OF 2

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - BLOGGER. CINOPS BE GONE - MON. FEB.10, 2020

 

A PUBLICATION OF HILLSDALE COLLEGE, OCT.. 2018, v. 47, NO. 10, America's Cold Civil War, by Charles R. Kesler, Editor, Claremont Review of Books - Selected Excerpts.

 

"As a result, the gap between the liberal and conservative Constitutions became a gulf, to the extent that today we are two countries - or we are fast on the road to becoming two countries - each constituted differently. Consider a few of the contrasts:

 

The prevailing liberal doctrine of rights traces individual rights to membership in various groups - racial, ethnic, gender, class-based, etc.  ... Today the white race and European civilization are the enemy - "dead white males" is a favored pejorative on American campuses - and the races and groups that were oppressed in the past are the ones that today need compensation, privileges, and power.

 

Conservative, by contrast, regard the individual as the quintessential endangered minority. They trace human rights on human nature, which lacks a race. Human nature also lacks ethnicity, gender, and class. Conservatives trace the idea of rights to the essence of an individual as a human being. We have rights because we're human beings with souls, with reason, distinct from other animals and from God.  We're not beasts, but we're not God - we're in-between beings.

 

Conservatives seek to vindicate human equality and liberty - the basis for majority rule in politics - against the liberal Constitution's alternative, in which everything is increasingly based on group identity. ...

 

Liberals are interested in transforming free speech into what they call equal speech ensuring that no one gets more than his fair share. They favor a redistribution of speech rights via limits on campaign contribution of speech rights via limits on campaign contributions, repealing the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision, and narrowing the First Amendment for the sake of redistribution of speech rights from the rich to the poor. Not surprisingly, the Democratic Party's 2016 platform called for amendment the First Amendment.

 

There is, of course, also a big difference between the liberal Constitution's freedom from religion and the conservative Constitution's freedom of religion. And needless to say, the liberal Constitution has no Second Amendment...

 

If one thinks how America's cold civil war could be resolved, there seems to be only five possibilities.

1.) Ronald Reagan used to say that when the little green men arrive from outer space, all  of our political differences will be be transcended and humanity will unite for the first time in human history.

2.) ... we could change our minds. persuasion and moderation might allow us to end or endure our great political differences... FDR inspired a political realignment that last for a generation... Ronald
Reagan inspired a realignment of public policy...

 

3.) Since 1968, the norm in America has been divided government: the people have more often preferred to split control of national government between the Democrats and the Republicans... 

4.) Trump, of course, is new to this, and his party in Congress is basically pre-Trumpian....gradually  bring them around to his "America first" conservatism if he is to have any chance of achieving a political realignment. And the odds remain against him at this point. 

 

5.) Under present circumstances, the American constitutional future seems to be approaching some kind of crisis - a crisis of the two Constitutions. Let us pray that we and our countrymen will find a way to reason together and to compromise..

 

George H. Kubeck - There also could be religious revival!