For a republic to be worthy of the name, it must have
certain features. Most obviously, political power must, in some meaningful
sense, reside with the people and be expressed through their elected officials.
Even at this most basic level, our country has a problem. To the extent that we
are governed by an unelected bureaucracy we are no longer a republic.
Unfortunately, the political disease that afflicts America runs far deeper than
that. For power to reside with “the people” there must be a single, generally
unified nation which can be identified as “the people.” This nation need
not be racially, ethnically, or even religiously homogenous, but the
overwhelming majority of its members do need to agree on some common set of interests
and values. They need a common identity. That is what a nation is. American now
contains at least two nations, and arguably many more. Democratic institutions
like elections, intended to settle differences between fellow countrymen, of
people who simply disagree on means or minor matters of policy -- cannot settle
differences of national identity. This is why organizations like the European
Union and the United Nations are only superficially democratic. More to the
point, elections staged between competingnations
trapped under the authority of a single state -- nations so different in their
ideals that each seeks the other’s subjugation or destruction -- such elections
settle nothing. Any election that takes place under such conditions will
inevitably be seen as illegitimate by the losing side. Trump, progressives say,
is not their president -- and neither would Hillary ever have been ours.
When
elections and legislatures attempt to assert the dominance of one nation of
people over another they are, in effect, engaging in a kind of warfare. It is a
civil war with a bit less bloodshed -- or, perhaps, it is a civil war in its
initial shouting and shoving phase. Our daily outrage at the dishonest press,
the usurpation of power by minor federal judges, and the predictable shrieking
lunacy of our opponents only shows that most of us have not yet come to terms
with the reality of our situation. We are in an existential conflict between
competing nations -- we are not debating the
merits of particular policies. Our differences will not be resolved by orderly
procedural means. Reason no longer persuades. Hallowed traditions are despised.
The law has become unworthy of respect, because it is so often merely the
convenient weapon of people who are willing to cause us real and tangible harm.
Indeed, as progressives and conservatives have diverged, we have seen the
federal authorities selectively disregard the laws made by their opponents and
favor governing by the fiat of executive orders. “I have a phone and I have a
pen,” Obama famously declared. He might just as well have added: “…and I don’t
care what happens to those hicks in Kentucky and Kansas.”
A
federal government attempting to preside over separate nations bent on one
another’s destruction can be neither legitimate nor effective. Our federal
government has become little more than a hideous game of ideological badminton
between opposing camps of corrupt officials -- smacking enraged and
increasingly divided peons back and forth across the political net. Winning
national elections no longer means anything, not merely because the individual
officials themselves are crooked, but because the institutions they head are
now unfit to govern a republic.
It
is no longer possible for conservatives and progressives to coexist within a
single state. Sooner or later, the emerging blood feud between our separate
nations will overwhelm the superficial political game. It must. We are
nationalistic; they are globalists. We are the inheritors of Western
civilization; they are its detractors. We are the voice of stability; they are
the voice of chaos. We are the battered remnants of Christendom; they are the
unholy and improbable alliance of militant atheism and Islam.
In
the last few years I have heard quite a few ordinary conservatives raise the
terrifying specter of secession. I am sympathetic to their frustration but am
dumbstruck by the irony. How can we secede from the suicidal,
anti-American institutions the lunatic left has produced? Have progressives
not, in every way imaginable, already seceded from us? How can we rebel against
the United States by trying to uphold the U.S. Constitution? Are we radical and
rebellious in thinking that men are men and women are women? Are we xenophobic
bigots because we do not believe that every one of the 7.5 billion people in
the world should be, for all practical purposes, counted as U.S. citizens? We
cannot rebel against a government that has been so thoroughly usurped. We can
only declare, eventually, its utter illegitimacy.
Only
God can know precisely how events are going to unfold, but one need not foresee
the details to feel the bitter hatred escalating. Donald Trump, though he may
be well-meaning, an able manager, and the greatest showman since P.T.
Barnum, lacks the power to make a unified country from two utterly
antithetical and hostile nations. The more he thwarts the progressive agenda,
the more desperate and violent our enemies are likely to become. Left-wing
celebrities have been insulting Republican presidents for decades, but this is
the first time they have raised one’s bloody head in effigy. War, the last
resort of desperate people when all political and legal remedies have failed,
waits only for a triggering event. It waits for people to believe their futures
and their children’s futures will be so unbearable that they have nothing left
to lose.
