“With slight shades of difference,” wrote
George Washington in 1796,
Americans “have the same religion, manners, habits and political principles.”
That is no longer true.
The inauguration of Donald Trump sparked
national protests – obscene,
vulgar, and crude -- by the
Left. Over sixty congressional Democrats
boycotted his inauguration. Plans to impeach
him were in the works –
before he had even done anything. And when Trump fulfilled a campaign promise
by cracking down on immigration from Muslim countries – for the purpose of
preventing jihadist terror attacks – the Left took
to the streets once again.
And that was just Trump’s first week in
office.
What do Americans of the Left and the
Right have in common? Nothing -- except hate for each other.
Washington was the chairman of the
Constitutional Convention in 1787, where Americans met to hammer out a new
social contract to replace the ill-fated Articles of Confederation. The
Constitution was not only a work of pure genius, it was also a document of
practical compromise. Severe differences existed between Federalists and
Anti-Federalists, North and South, slaveowners and non-slaveowners. Yet the
Americans of the Founding generation were able to agree upon a basic set of
principles agreeable to all: limited government, separation of powers,
enumerated powers of the Congress and the executive, limits on the powers of
states, and a method for amending the document. In 1791, a Bill of Rights was
added. The Constitution made the U.S. a “creedal”
nation: agree with its principles, and anyone could become an American.
But the Constitution of 1787 no longer
articulates a set of shared principles. For practical purposes, today there are
two separate and unrelated constitutions – a constitution of the Left, and a
constitution of the Right. The Leftist constitution includes the rights to
abortion, anal intercourse, and gay marriage. The Right, reading the “supreme
law of the land” as it was actually written, sees no such rights anywhere in
the U.S. Constitution.
For the Right, “the right of the people to
keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. The Left
believes that government has complete authority to ban any and all guns and
ammunition from anyone not a member of
the military or the National Guard.
The Right believes that the Equal Protection
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was written to extend civil rights to freed
blacks after the Civil War. The Left believes that the Fourteenth Amendment
allows discrimination against white men and preferential treatment for women,
blacks, and Hispanics, and that it requires that 50-year old male-to-female “transgenders”
share public bathrooms with
third-grade girls.
The constitution of the Right says that
the candidate with a majority of the electoral vote becomes president. The
constitution of the Left says that unless a candidate wins the “popular vote,”
he is “illegitimate”
and is “not
my president.”
The constitution of the Right grants
Congress the authority to “regulate Commerce with foreign nations,” “establish
a uniform Rule of Naturalization” and “repel Invasions;” therefore, the
government has the power to secure the border and halt illegal entry. The constitution
of the Left, articulated by Emma Lazarus, insists that the U.S. must accept “the
wretched refuse” and the “homeless” of the world.
These two constitutions reflect two
distinct and unassimilable cultures. The culture of the Left is urban,
agnostic, socialist, gay and queer. It fancies itself intellectually and
morally superior to the culture of the Right, which is rural, traditionalist,
Christian and heterosexual.
The Right regards America’s Founders as
men of achievement, morality, and virtue. They see our European heritage as
praiseworthy, for it gave us the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution,
electricity, medicine, clean water, automobiles, powered flight, and landed men
on the moon.
The Left sees the Founders as wicked,
greedy men who cheated innocent Indians and enslaved innocent blacks. Whites of
European descent raped and destroyed the pristine environment with global
warming, imposed monogamy and heterosexuality upon women, and subordinated the
“peaceful” cultures (like Islam) of black and brown people.
Leftists regard conservative, rural
America as the land of snake-handling, gun-toting Klansmen,
lying in wait to lynch innocent blacks for infractions as innocuous as
jaywalking. Conservatives cannot fathom how any sane person could attend the Folsom Street Fair,
the orgy
tent at Burning Man, or promote late-term abortion. Some liberal
Jews believe that the U.S.
has actually elected a neo-Hitler; they fear
hiring conservative, Southern plumbers to
fix their pipes. Pro-life Christians were elated to have Vice-President Pence
address their annual march on
Washington, D.C.
There is not, and cannot be, any dialogue
between these two groups.
The Founders at the Constitutional
Convention of 1787 established the federal system, under which a narrow set of
national powers would be agreed to by everybody, and state governments would
have wide discretion to create policies suited to their local cultures. It was
a “live and let live” philosophy.
Unfortunately, federalism failed – first
over slavery, and later over abortion, busing, affirmative action, gay rights,
and so on. The Left insisted on nationalizing as many policies as possible. It
destroyed the government of limited and enumerated powers, and replaced it with
a Leviathan, powerful enough to force its perceived moral superiority down the
throats of its opponents. Now that Trump is in office and the Left no longer
controls Leviathan, they are in a panic – and in the streets.
This cannot end well. Every campaign
promise fulfilled by President Trump will be enthusiastically received by the
Right, but will only serve to further enrage the left-wing freaks, dressed
as giant labia, shrieking obscenities, smashing windows, and burning
cars in the streets. Violence
and lawlessness will increasingly be seen as a badge of honor.
These tens of millions of leftists will
not go away. The next time their side wins, empowered by their rage, they will
redouble their efforts to persecute the Right, and put conservatives out of
business for good, so that no one like Trump can ever win again.
It seems that we will be left with three
options in the near future: the Right under Trump utterly destroys the Left;
the Left regains power and proceeds to exact revenge and utterly destroy the
Right; or separate into three nations, West Coast, East Coast, and Heartland.
The first option is unlikely. It would
require actions unpalatable to the Right, and probably could not be achieved
without violating the principles of the Constitution of 1787. The second option
is very likely. The Left has no constitutional scruples restraining it, and
regards itself as so morally superior that its ends justify its means. And it
has embraced the use of street violence to achieve its objectives ever since
the 1960s.
Perhaps the best option is the third. Why
waste time and effort trying to persuade people who cannot and will not be
persuaded? If Californians want to ban guns, parade around in bondage leather,
and allow illiterates and criminals to cross the border to receive government
benefits, let
them. Ohioans and
Michiganders ought not be forced to go along with it.
But the present situation is untenable.
The nation is like a car careening down the road, with two people fighting over
the wheel. One pulls the car left, the other swerves back to the right.
Sooner or later, a crash is inevitable.
