George Rebane
A main theme and designated category of posts in these pages is the idea of the Great Divide. The idea has been growing for some years now as the country polarizes, taking opposite sides of achieving objectives for the future organization of society best summarized under Agenda 21 (q.v.). While not embraced solely by a sizeable fraction of the Right, the Great Divide is vehemently rejected by the non-Hispanic Left. Those on the Right acknowledge the overarching objective of a GD in the peaceful achievement of one or more territorial partitions of the US so that people can gather into jurisdictions where they feel that their government more closely represents their socio-economic ideologies.
The movements for partitioning, like the State of Jefferson in California (replicated in one form or another in at least eight other states currently), are encouraged by the polarized political wranglings in Washington and the various state houses. And we must remind ourselves that these politicians really do reflect our own beliefs which today are so remote from each other that the hope for finding a ‘middle ground’ is now relegated to poets, songwriters, and charlatans.
Peggy Noonan’s piece – ‘Out of Many, Two’ – in the 2aug14 WSJ talks to the politicians’ contribution to the coming Great Divide.
If you, dear reader, are among the Left who will use Leviathan to resist to the bitter end any notion of a sustainable post-GD America, then you should be prepared to establish a world such as shown in the ‘Hunger Games’ future. There the autocratic elites have enslaved and partitioned their ideological pariahs into enclaves that are managed as virtual prisons. But you can be sure that those like me will not go quietly into such a dark night.
On a more dour note. Reports are coming in daily of the various economically mismanaged nation-states beginning to question the efficacy of (classically) liberal democracy as the desired form of governance. Most have dunned it through national dialogues questioning capitalism as the continued basis for their economies – even though they have not practiced capitalism in the years leading up to their economic debacles – because it is such a convenient strawman to demagogue to the teeming and huddled masses of their own making. The direct corollary here is that you cannot destroy capitalism without collapsing the Bastiat Triangle’s other rights of individual liberty and security of your person (see under ‘RR Fundamentals’, upper right).
But the most direct assaults on liberal democracy are now coming from national leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban who are telling their people of the benefits of adopting the illiberal ways of countries like Russia, Turkey, and China – more in ‘The Illiberal Idea Rises’. This new cohort of leaders have concluded that our Founders’ seminal question ‘Can Man govern himself?’, for which America was to be the Great Experiment, must now be answered with a resounding No! The progressive Left came to that conclusion long ago, and has since busied itself with how best to keep the man behind the curtain concealed until the time is ripe. Well, Obama’s ascendancy, re-confirmation, and take-no-prisoners presidency has told many in the world that the time for a new agenda of governance in the 21st century may well be now. And by some coincidence that agenda already exists (see above) and comports to all the ideals of environmentally sensitive and socially just people in the world. Oh happy days!


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