A MODERN CIVIL WAR IN THE MAKING: TWO DISSIMILAR VISIONS FOR AMERICA

PART 2

“We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” ~ Anaïs Nin, French-American diarist, essayist, novelist, February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977“The clash between the two visions is not over the actual or desirable degree of freedom, justice, power, or equality—or over the fact that that there can only be degrees and not absolutes—but rather over what these things consist of, in whatever degree they occur.” ~ from A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, by Thomas Sowell, Economist and Social Theorist; Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.The Nation sits, today, at a crossroads, just as it did at the juncture of the American Civil War. With each passing day, trust between the two sides further diminishes. The feelings of the one toward the other becomes more corrosive; the differences between the two ever clearer, ever more stark; the convictions of each, ever more entrenched.In an atmosphere of strong animosity and deep suspicion, compromise and negotiation between the two sides is impossible. Each side holds faithfully to a different vision of America. Each is insistent that its vision come to fruition. But, the two visions for the Country, grounded, as each is, in different belief structures, in different value systems, in different presumptive notions of justice and fundamental fairness, the two are inherently incompatible; so, even if the two sides were willing to negotiate, to compromise, any negotiation, any compromise would not bear fruit; would, in fact, be sterile. Where a path diverges, one or the other can be taken, but not both. Only one vision for this Country is capable of realization.One side, one faction holds to a vision of America that proceeds from the view that the Nation, conceived and created as a sovereign, independent Nation State, must always remain so, and must remain so in fact, not merely in name. That faction holds also to a vision of the Nation, where: the American people are the supreme authority; Government is understood to be a construct created by the people for the benefit of the people; certain fundamental rights and liberties preexist in the people, bequeathed to the people by the Creator; and, as the Government does not create those fundamental, natural, preexistent rights and liberties, Government lacks lawful authority to eliminate those rights and liberties. That faction’s vision coheres clearly, cleanly, and categorically with the vision of the founders of the Nation, the framers of the Nation’s Constitution.The other faction’s vision of the Country is predicated on an entirely different set of precepts. It does not accept the view that the people are the supreme authority; rather, it is Government itself that is deemed the supreme authority. This faction also does not adhere to the idea that rights and liberties are to be perceived as fundamental, natural, forces, preexistent in the people. This faction doesn’t see some rights and liberties—or any rights and liberties, for that matter—as immutable forces endowed in man by the Creator at all; but, views rights and liberties as man-made artifices, no different than any law, rule, regulation, code, or ordinance. And, as such, this faction sees that rights and liberties may be lawfully modified or eliminated when Government deems it beneficial to do so for the good of the people as a whole, even as that “good” manifests as detrimental to the individual. This faction has, then, a vision of the Country completely at loggerheads with that of the founders of the Republic. But, this doesn’t faze the faction’s adherents. This faction has determined that the foundation of the Nation, its Constitution, the bedrock of a free Republic, along with the Nation’s most celebrated canons and cherished values, can and ought to be and must be altered or eliminated outright, consistent with what this faction perceives to be a new reality emerging in the world at large.The differences between the two factions cannot be reconciled for those differences rest upon mutually exclusive inferences—inferences that establish both the structure of government and society, and the relationship of man to those structures and to each other. And those inferences themselves follow from an entirely different set of axiomatic premises—premises at once basic and primordial.The two sides that fought each other in the American Civil War—the Union and the Confederacy—did not perceive their differences, profound as they were, as a vast existential divide between them, not to the extent seen today. The American Civil War was perceived as a confrontation between States’ rights advocates and advocates for a strong centralized Federal Government. Arguably, the nineteenth century conflict between the Union and Confederacy may be viewed as a continuation of a debate--a longstanding debate--commenced among the founders of the Republic. One side, the Federalists, espoused a strong central Government; the other side, the Antifederalists, suspicious of a strong central Government, espoused decentralization of authority. But, for all that, the South, in the American Civil War, still professed to hold to the relevance of the concept of the ‘Nation State.’ Its concerns were directed to the allocation of power within that Nation State; nor did either the Union or the Confederacy contest the inherent importance of and sanctity of the Bill of Rights. That is not the case today.Unlike the two sides that fought each other in the American Civil War, the Union and the Confederacy, one side, the leftist faction, has, in this present conflict, questioned the very meaning and meaningfulness of the concept of ‘Nation State,’ in this age of Globalization and massive movements of people across national boundaries. That helps to explain why that faction would question, and abhor, and mock, President Trump’s* campaign slogan, ‘America First;’ for that faction sees the slogan as an affront to their bedrock principles; an unacceptable return to an archaic world view in contrast to their “modern” world view; and an obstacle to fulfillment of their goals. That faction, too, believes that rights and liberties are subject to modification, or even elimination, when, their usefulness does not cohere with—as they see—changed circumstances in the world.The other faction holds to the vision of this Country that the founders of the Republic held. This faction believes in the continued relevance of the concept of ‘Nation State’ and, therefore, professes a strong need to preserve this Country as an independent Sovereign Nation; to preserve the supremacy of the Nation’s laws, and to preserve the integrity of the Nation’s physical borders. This faction also believes in the sanctity of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. Modification, much less, elimination of any of the rights and liberties set forth therein is an anathema. This faction, then, holds to a vision of and for the Country that has stood the test of time; a vision that has endured for over two hundred years. The other side seeks to undo that vision of the Country. The other side seeks to construct the Nation anew. Its “modern” vision for this Country distorts and contorts the foundation upon which this Nation rests, as articulated in the Nation’s Constitution, and questions the very meaningfulness of the concept ‘Nation State’ and of the concept of ‘citizen of the United States.’Congressional Democratic Party members, the proxies for the leaders of the leftist faction—secretive, amoral, extraordinarily wealthy, and abjectly ruthless transnationalist, Globalist financiers and entrepreneurs—are well aware the power they wielded in Government, on behalf of their secretive, ruthless benefactors, has eroded; their agenda contained; their desires and aims to reshape the Country all but frustrated. They cannot abide this. They and the secretive, ruthless, inordinately wealthy and powerful transnationalists who seek to thrust the United States, “kicking and screaming” if need be, into their new international world order, have mobilized legions of progressive Leftist elements: agents provocateurs, agitators, to stir up dissension in society; to breed confusion and unrest in the Nation; to deliberately create and to maximize disorder and chaos in the Country. This, then, is their response to Governmental power and influence that they have lost but which they refuse to relinquish.Democrats seek to recover their lost power on behalf of the faction they represent. They seek to regain control of Government, to continue to work toward completing the items on their agenda, as their efforts to remake the Country into the image they envision had been rudely interrupted and disrupted through loss of 2016 U.S. Presidential election to the populist, Donald Trump. Too regain control, Democrats have reprehensibly dispensed with adherence to our Nation's laws even as they claim to abide by them. They are masters of deception. They are cunning, dispassionate, hypocritical, ruthless. They have plowed ahead with their agenda, even though doing so skirts the law and extends well beyond the bounds of common decency. To assist them in their efforts they coopted the feminist #MeToo movement. They have formed alliances with left-wing progressive groups on and off university campuses, and with the far-left radical anarchist group, 'Antifa.' Their echo chamber, the mainstream media, works on their behalf, as do media moguls, actors, and directors in the entertainment business and in the technology sector; and, as do bureaucrats of the "Deep State" and left-wing jurists, sprinkled in federal courts across the Country by Obama.The police often stand at the sideline, forbidden by Leftist State Governments that control them, to interfere. But, police, and the military too, will need, eventually, to take a side, to take a stand in the conflict.Unless one side capitulates to the other—and that won’t happen—further and more severe clashes are inevitable.____________________________________*Trump, strictly speaking is not a Republican—certainly not in a conventional sense. And, while this leftist faction likely would have accepted a Republican Centrist as President--someone like Jeb Bush, albeit having preferred Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders as President, it does not see in the Bush clan, a mortal enemy, that it sees in President Trump, whom it attacks daily. The Bush clan, unlike Trump, shares the same neoliberal economic principles and much the same social, legal, political, and cultural precepts and interests that cohere with and complement those of the EU, that this faction emulates. Indeed, centrist Republicans, like the Bush clan, properly considered, belong to the faction that seeks this “new” vision for America. Trump and most Americans accept none of that. Trump's Presidency reflects a vision of the Country the founders intended for it. Americans, seeing that vision slipping away, elected Donald Trump to serve as U.S. President, to set the direction of the Nation aright. Many Americans recognized this Nation’s goals were off kilter; that the Nation had moved far afield from the core values and legal precepts of the Nation’s founding. But as Trump is now President, and not Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton, and as the faction that wanted Hillary Clinton to be U.S. President, and fully expected that she would be President, cannot and will not abide the election results. Thus, the tension that has festered between the two factions for decades, have now reached a “tipping point.” The battle over Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation is merely the most recent proof of and exemplification of that clash._________________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

10/3/18 10/3/18

THE UNITED STATES ON THE CUSP OF A MODERN-DAY CIVIL WAR

PART ONE

A WAKE-UP CALL FOR AMERICANS

“Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.” ~ from A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, by Thomas Sowell, Economist and Social Theorist; Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.Make no mistake about it: The United States is on the cusp of a civil war. It is a war fought not with swords, firearms, and artillery—at least not yet—but through throngs of people chanting and screaming in the streets; in buildings; on university campuses; and in the public square; even outside private residences. These throngs are threatening, ridiculing, harassing, and assaulting Americans who do not share their views, their sensibilities. And physical altercations and clashes have occurred. More of those are on the horizon; that is certain. No one should doubt it. The outcome of this modern conflict will have as deep and lasting effect on this Nation and on its citizenry as did the American Civil War.In the present conflict, there can be no negotiation with or compromise between the two factions, for the gulf dividing them is too vast, the chasm too deep. The outcome of the present civil war will be profound. This conflict’s outcome will determine the Nation’s social, political, economic, and legal contours for generations to come.Americans see the clash between the two factions playing out most aggressively, of late, through the Senate confirmation process of the President’s second nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Judge Brett Kavanaugh presently sits as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He is, by any estimate, a brilliant jurist with many years of judicial experience. No one should doubt that. No one can reasonably refute or rebut that. No matter. One faction intends to strike his nomination down.Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans, sitting on the Judiciary Committee, pose, essentially, as proxies for the two factions in conflict. One faction supports confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh to the high Court and is working to see it happen. The other intends to prevent it. Few Americans remain on the sidelines. Both factions in this modern civil conflict know that the Judiciary—more so than Congress, or the Chief Executive—has power, predicated on the jurisprudential and philosophical predispositions of the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, either to strengthen or weaken the bedrock of the Nation: its Constitution. In their individual approaches to case analysis, through the methodologies employed, one vision of the Country sees actualization.Democratic Party proxies, frantic and frenetic, fearing imminent confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh to the high Court, have lost all sense of decorum, all reason, all self-restraint. They have been unable to shoot holes in Brett Kavanaugh’s legal methodology; in his understanding of the law. That much is clear.Democrats, and the public at large that tuned to the Confirmation Hearing, know that Bret Kavanaugh has a keen analytical mind; that he is legally astute; that his years of experience as a lawyer and as a jurist make him eminently qualified to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Democrats and the public at large know that Judge Kavanaugh has a deep, abiding respect for the Nation’s system of laws; for its Constitution; and for the Nation’s massive body of jurisprudence, accumulated over two centuries.Democrats, and the lay public also know that Kavanaugh’s methodology for analyzing cases reflects respect for case law precedent; and for the plain meaning of statutes; and for adherence to “original intent,” when applying the U.S. Constitution to the facts of a case. And, as for the latter two points, there’s the rub. For, one faction seeks a jurist to sit on the high Court who has no qualms about legislating from the Bench: someone like Judge Merrick Garland,* a Judge, whose jurisprudential methodology and jurisprudential philosophy just happen to coincide with the political and social agenda championed by the previous U.S. President, Barack Obama, who nominated him to sit on the high Court—a jurist who would also be championed by the 2016 Democratic Party Presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton who failed to get elected. Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s jurisprudential approach to case analysis and jurisprudential and ethical philosophies are antithetical to those of Judge Merrick Garland.Knowing what is at stake, Democrats have become frantic, desperate. At the last minute, in a last ditch effort to delay, with the aim of ultimately derailing the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats have sought the last refuge of the hopeless: character assassination. As they could not successfully attack the man’s principles, his ability, his experience, they launched a vicious, audacious, reprehensible, despicable attack on the man himself.Each side, in this conflict, knows full well that the very soul and psyche of this Nation and its people is at stake. The outcome of the present conflict will, then, from that perspective, be far-reaching—conceivably more so than that of the previous conflict, devastating as that conflict was and as far-reaching in its consequences that it was for the Confederacy; and for the Nation; and for all Americans.Before we explain how the very soul and psyche of the Nation is at stake and what, precisely, we mean by that and why we say that the outcome of the present conflict may very well have consequences that are, potentially, more far-reaching than the consequences of the American Civil War, let us, for the moment, consider what resulted from the South’s defeat in that conflict. We see that:

The secession of the Confederate States from the Union was withdrawn, and the Nation reunited.
The Confederacy was placed under military rule.
The Federal Government gained supremacy over the States (all States) and State Governments (all State Governments), clearly and unequivocally. In that regard, the diminution of the power of the States has negatively impacted the “Union” States as much as it has the States of the Confederacy. This “Federalism” pervades to the present day.
Slavery was de facto eliminated. This led to de jure elimination of slavery with the passage of the 13^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The loss of State power to the Federal Government is, arguably, the most significant outcome of the American Civil War; and the Federal Government’s accumulation of power at the expense of the States has grown exponentially in the years and decades since the American Civil War ended.Now, suppose for a moment, that the Confederacy prevailed; this Nation would likely have formed a confederation of two sovereign independent Nation States, comprising States of their own. But, the concept of 'Sovereign Nation States'—the USA and CSA—not beholding to or subordinated to foreign Nations or to political entities of one sort or another, unlike those Nations comprising the EU, was never at stake. Secondly, preservation of the fundamental, unalienable, natural rights and liberties of the people, as codified in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, was never questioned during the American Civil War, either. With the conclusion of the American Civil War, the United States remained a Sovereign, independent Nation State, albeit as one Sovereign Nation State, rather than two.We, American citizens, must keep these two points uppermost in mind, because the notion of ‘Nation State’ and the notion of natural rights preexistent in the individual—will either be preserved and strengthened, or they will not, depending on which faction prevails in this modern civil war.While the stakes in the present conflict are emphatic, the lines between the two factions in the present conflict are not. With the American Civil War, a clear physical demarcation existed for the most part between the two sides: North and South, and the Civil War combatants, “Yankee” or “Rebel,” aligned with one side or the other, although among the border States—Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, West Virginia—the demarcation was not clear-cut, static, but more tenuous, more fluid. Close family members took one side or the other. Brother fought against brother; father against son; cousin against cousin; and uncle against nephew.As with the border States during the American Civil War, we see today, too, that physical demarcations do not predominately mark the boundaries between the two sides, between the two factions, although a preponderance of one faction lives in the Coastal States, and a preponderance of the other resides in the interior States. But, ultimately, for most people, it is the precepts and tenets that one holds to that determines which side one fights on, rather than where one lives.The precepts and tenets one holds to determines whom one considers his friend or his foe. And, as the precepts and tenets held by one faction are inconsistent with the precepts and tenets held by the other, any compromise between the two factions is sterile, impossible. The Country is, then, very clearly in the midst of an existential crisis. It is a crisis taking hold of people on a primordial level. Americans are lining up; taking sides in a major clash of competing visions for this Country. Each faction’s vision for this Country rests on distinct, incompatible social, political, economic, and ethical philosophies. Only one side, one faction will prevail in the unfolding conflict.We will see either massive upheaval, a cataclysmic sea change in the political, social, economic, and legal structure of our Nation, or we will see preserved those principles, those core values and mores upon which the political, social, economic, and legal structure and fabric of our Nation has stood and endured for over two centuries—principles and core values that so many Americans had fought, and for which so many had died, to preserve: principles and core values—unchanging and eternal.[We continue with this article in the next installment]._________________________________________________*Under Article 2, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution the President nominates a person to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. But, the President shall do so only with the "advice and consent" of the Senate. The "advice and consent" of the Senate operates as a condition precedent to actual appointment. But, there is nothing in the Constitution that requires the Senate to give its advice and consent. And the Senate has not done so, here, with Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to sit on the high Court. Those Democrats and Leftists, of all stripes, who wanted and had expected the Senate to provide a Hearing and Roll-Call vote on Merrick Garland were apoplectic. Merrick Garland, who would, have been Barack Obama's third appointment to the high Court, would have given the liberal-wing of the Court a clear majority, sufficient to move the left-wing agenda along. Leftists conclude that Republicans have stolen a seat on the high Court that belongs to them. That helps, in part, to explain, but certainly does not justify the outrageous, reprehensible smear campaign Senate Democrats launched against President Trump's nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, in their late hour effort to defeat Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation to the high Court._________________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.