Is America Really Coming Apart?

Is the US really coming apart? Is this 1968 all over again? Should red states have their own 'sanctuary areas'?

http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/23/is-america-really-coming-apart-as-charles-murray-suggests/


Is America Really Coming Apart, As Charles Murray Suggests?

Photo of Jeff Deist

JEFF DEIST

President, Mises Institute

6:01 PM 06/23/2017

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A new Rasmussen poll reports that a majority of voters think so, and it certainly feels that way. Since Donald Trump’s election in November, the pace and intensity of deeply divisive rhetoric has accelerated. Antifa and the Alt-Right are literally fighting in the streets. Combative talking heads on cable news, vicious social media exchanges, riots at universities, a bitter special election in Georgia, and even the shooting of a congressman have both sides rethinking the entire political process and talking about abandoning the “rule of law.”


It is an uneasy time, a time for hard questions. Can politics really provide a solution to our problems, or is it the cause? Should we still abide by democratic processes when a significant portion of the country is enraged by the outcome? What if voting and elections simply weren’t anymore? These are the questions we need to ask and answer honestly.


Progressives, including Hillary Clinton, now openly label themselves the “resistance” and call for Trump to be removed from office. Anti-Brexit forces in the UK call for Theresa May simply to repudiate the referendum. Democratic elections, a cornerstone of neoliberalism, are not so sacrosanct when the wrong guy wins. Progressives’ sense of inevitability has been deeply shaken by Trump and the rise of nationalist movements in Europe. Has it been shaken enough to consider real alternatives to social democracy?


Conservatives too have radically changed their talking points. Bill Kristol tweets that he prefers a Deep State silent coup to living under the Trump state. David Frum calls Trump a liar and an autocrat. George Will claims the president has a “disability.”


But one conservative offers a workable answer to our unsettling situation. Angelo Codevilla, retired professor of the Claremont Institute recently wrote a remarkable article titled “The Cold Civil War.” The piece is remarkable not only because he worries about that civil war turning hot, or because he agrees —from the Right — with the idea of sanctuary cities or states that defy Washington. Why, Codevilla asks, could red states not employ some “Irish democracy” when it comes to hyper-politicized social issues like abortion, sexuality, and guns?


And why shouldn’t blue states do the same? This is already happening, as prominent mayors like Bill de Blasio have announced their opposition to the Trump agenda on issues like global warming. Could blue state nullification of federal edicts extend to healthcare, gun laws, and taxes?


The sheer scope of progressive victories in the culture wars compels Codevilla to offer a prescription for truly radical decentralization. Let the federal government control a few key functions like defense, but leave the rest to the states. Let California be California, and let Texas be Texas. To Codevilla, our intractable political, social, and cultural differences are simply not worth fighting over anymore. They’re certainly not worth shooting each other.


Mr. Codevilla’s is asking himself, and us, nothing less than whether the current political arrangement should continue.


Ludwig von Mises, the great economist who experienced combat in World War I, famously stated that “having to belong to a state to which one does not wish to belong is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest.”


This bold statement rings as true today as 1927, when Mises wrote it in a book titled Liberalism. Certainly most Hillary Clinton voters view the Trump administration as a hostile and illegitimate occupier with no legal or moral authority to govern. And undoubtedly Trump supporters would feel equally aggrieved under a Clinton regime.


A government big and powerful enough to cause widespread psychosis after presidential elections is a government without much legitimacy. People become irrational about politics precisely because government depressingly controls so much of our lives. It chooses winners and losers. It is the superstar player in American society, rather than the referee.


The obvious and reasonable option staring us all in the face is to go our separate ways. Let us consider political secession, radical decentralization, nullification, and localism as the realistic alternatives to a much more unpleasant conflict. Let us reconsider living as a loose confederation of states. 320 million vastly diverse people, from Anchorage to San Francisco to Topeka to Miami, cannot be governed by a top-down central authority in Washington.


Surely divorce, in whole or in part, is better than an abusive marriage.


Jeff Deist is president of the Mises Institute. Previously he worked as chief of staff to Congressman Ron Paul, and as an attorney for private equity clients.


The original ‘cold civil war’ article is here:

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/the-cold-civil-war/

 

Wow. So without even getting into the "subject" I'll offer this brief observation. A quick glance at the electoral map cleary depicts that conservatives have plenty of "safe space". Democrats are very astute at identifying problems, and then offering solutions that defy all logic.

 

I'm all for going are separate ways. It doesn't have to a messy divorce.

 

Without reliable sources it's hard to get a fix on the real margin that Donald Trump won by but if you look at the US map of how every county in every state voted it is very red. This would suggest that the left is severely diminished in America, perhaps on the verge of extinction at least in political power. I suspect the noise will continue but will cease suddenly with the arrests and convictions of major players in the last administration. For the last one hundred fifty days or so the noise has been non stop Russia, Russia, Russia and the Democrats demanded that Comey come clean and shed light on it. Well he did and now Loretta Lynch, Hillary Clinton, George Soros and the DNC are the focus of a Senate probe. All of these folks conducted themselves sloppily while engaging in criminal acts because they thought no one would dare question them. Well they've run out of liars to cover their lies and will have to explain themselves. This is not going to be a dog and pony show, America has had enough of that and won't tolerate it. Once the Senate panel has tasted blood there will be more. Karma's a bitch.

 

I will not believe that there will be consequences for Hillary Clinton until I see it delivered first hand. Hillary's campaign started the Russian Hoax, and has kept it alive to the point where it is doing real damage to the Democratic brand.

But look at who is being used as the scapegoat for the recent negative results. Hillary ??? Nope... None other than Nancy Pelosi.

 

Pelosi deserves much of the downturn of the D party. She's been nothing short of a disaster.
But she got richer.

 

Bernie got richer too for walking away...

 

To blame a majority of the democratic party's problems on Pelosi is nothing more than scapegoating. The problem is deeper than that.

 

She set the tone and still does. For many many years now.
At least publicly.
When did she become leader? When did the D party start it's serious downtrend.
I still point to Bill Clinton selling out the workers of America with NAFTA as the start of the D party abandoning working class America. Which had been the backbone of the D party.
And his signing of the repeal of Glas-Stegall. That was the fast pace to the financial crisis of 07, IMO.
It's also when I decided D/R were much the same.

 

I don't think the emotions today are as heated as 1968, but we're close.

The difference is that 90% of the animosity in 1968 concerned the war. Once the war was gone, much of the antipathy dissipated. Today, the division between left and right is over basic values and not a single, temporary issue. So the situation today is actually far worse. Our basic values are incompatible and won't be changing anytime soon. Things will get worse before they get better.

 

Funny you say that. I think all the domestic issues have and always will be a factor and with much the same outcomes from each sides beliefs.
But the common thread between the 2 is war. Much of the animosity today is war and how is Islam viewed on the whole.
The RW for the most part thinks all of Islam is at war with the west. Which of course, it is not according to most on the left and probably independents of which I claim.

 

Here's more:

http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2017/06/america_is_on_its_way_to_divor.html

America is on its way to divorce court: Marc A. Thiessen

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Posted on June 23, 2017 at 9:15 AM
BY PENNLIVE OP-ED
By Marc A. Thiessen

There is a place for contempt in our public discourse. We should have contempt for a regime in North Korea that brutalized a young American student named Otto Warmbier.


Marc Thiessen (Washington Post photo)
We should have contempt for a regime in Syria that uses poison gas to massacre innocent men, women and children. We should have contempt for Islamic State terrorists who behead Americans, burn people alive in cages and systematically rape Yazidi girls.

But we should not have contempt for each other.

Yet, we do. Our politics today is descending into a bitter spiral of contempt. And we saw the consequences in the attempted assassination of Republican members of Congress on a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, last week.

Back when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot in 2011, many on the left were quick to blame conservative political rhetoric - falsely it turned out. But the attack on Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., and his colleagues was politically motivated. The assassin volunteered for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called President Trump a "traitor" on social media and, according to witnesses, asked if the players were Republicans before opening fire.

No one is responsible except the would-be assassin. But his actions should serve as a wake-up call that the demonization of our fellow Americans who disagree with us has gone too far. The culture of contempt permeating our politics has now had near-fatal consequences. We need to put on the brakes and learn how to distinguish once again between our opponents and our enemies.

Case in point: A few weeks before the Alexandria shooting, Hillary Clinton gave a commencement speech at Wellesley College where she declared that Trump's budget is "an attack of unimaginable cruelty on the most vulnerable among us, the youngest, the oldest, the poorest." No, it is not. Using nerve agent on the innocent is "an attack of unimaginable cruelty." Putting a hapless college student into a coma is an "attack of unimaginable cruelty." Reducing the growth of government spending is not.


Think for a moment what Clinton was saying: It's not simply that Democrats and Republicans have an honest disagreement about how best to help the most vulnerable among us. In Clinton's telling, Republicans are waging war on the vulnerable. That is toxic.

No doubt, Trump has contributed mightily to our descent into the culture of contempt. (For example, the media is not the "enemy of the American people," Mr. President). But since Trump's election, the scope and scale of political contempt on the left have reached unprecedented heights. Just a few months ago, when President Barack Obama was in office, it would have been unimaginable for a comedian to proudly pose for a photo holding up the president's bloody, severed head.

Worst of all, we are in the process of cementing these attitudes in the next generation. On college campuses, students are being taught that it is acceptable to treat with contempt those with different ideas. We saw this phenomenon on display when Charles Murray - a distinguished conservative scholar - was shouted down and assaulted at Middlebury College in a riot that sent a professor to the hospital. Not a single student suffered any real consequences. Similar incidents are taking place on campuses across the country. Young Americans are learning that people they disagree with are not to be listened to respectfully and debated; they are to be silenced and driven out of the public square.

This is not to suggest that there is no role for righteous anger in political discourse. Conservatives felt anger about many of Obama's policies, and liberals have every right to be angry about Trump's policies they find objectionable. And they have every right to fight like hell to stop them.

But it wasn't so long ago that, despite bitter differences over policies, Republicans and Democrats still found ways to work together. President Bill Clinton and Republicans in Congress worked together to pass NAFTA and welfare reform. George W. Bush and congressional Democrats cooperated to pass tax cuts and education reform. Today, that kind of cooperation is unimaginable.
And the reason is simple: When anger transforms into contempt, permanent damage takes place. As American Enterprise Institute President Arthur C. Brooks points out, a marriage can recover from anger. But when couples become contemptuous of each other, they will almost certainly end up in divorce court. That is where our country is headed today.

Liberals need to understand: When they show contempt for Trump, they are expressing contempt for the millions of Americans who voted for him - including millions who twice voted for Obama. These Americans felt that the establishments of both parties were ignoring them and wanted to send Washington a message. The response they are receiving could not be clearer: We have contempt for the man you elected, and we have contempt for all of you who put him into office. They will never forget it.

We need to pull back from this spiral of contempt before it is too late. North Korea is our enemy. Our fellow Americans who disagree with us are not. It's time we learn the difference - before someone gets killed.

Marc A. Thiessen, a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute and former chief speechwriter to President George W. Bush, writes a weekly online column for The Washington Post.

 

Nice OP

 

I disagree with you.
Our basic values should be (incomplete list):

Air we can breathe
Food we can eat
Jobs that sustain people
Freedom to worship (or not worship) as we please
Freedom to speak out minds
Education and nurture for our kids
Dignity for our elderly

THOSE are basic values.

 

Right, so let's end it. Break up the country. Go to something more like a union of autonomous States with a very limited central government.

Texas has wanted to secede for a long time anyway.

 

Right! Why try to preserve something that no longer exists. A civil war could cost millions of lives and worse.

I know I don't ever want some yahoo like Sessions every controlling the laws where I live again. This is beyond unacceptable. Way way beyond unacceptable. As for Trump... for me that was the death of the country, I will never trust "Americans" again.

 

Write your representatives. Tell them that you want to vote to disband the country. I did. I am supporting West Coast Secession.

 

Where is your evidence that Texas has wanted to secede for a long time?

 

The Governor said so. It has been a movement for a long time.

 

And let's face it. The South never did want to be a part of the US. That's why they don't' want to give up their real flag. They are still fighting the civil war. Enough already!

 

I used to like people from the South and the heartland. But they clearly hate us and they always have. California has been a shining light of the nation for a century. But rednecks only see what they want and they hate us. So, screw them. We've been carrying their sorry asses for decades. Go your own way. We are far better off without you. That's a dollar for dollar fact.

 

That failed miserably the first time it was tried in this nation and there is no reason to believe that it won't fail again just as miserably. Just look at Kansas if you want an example of how libertarianism is a failure in practice.

 

The southern reactionaries have never stopped fighting the Civil War in their heads. They are always whining about needing to break up the US so that they can continue their racist ways unhindered.
They are so stupid as to think that they deserve any part of the US for their own exclusive little banana republic. Every state in the Union has liberal and conservative residents, and I am not prepared to surrender any part of my country to a bunch of racist ass wipes to placate their bigotry and hatred.
Such people are the real aliens in our country, and their agenda is essentially anti-American.

 

Yeah...we know....life under Kenyan dictator was much better. Give rational people a break, please. Move to Africa if you prefer Obama's style dictatorship.

 

With a minimal amount of government, because freedom is a zero sum game: the more power government has, the less freedom the people have.