George Rebane
This will be America’s 240th birthday celebration observed by divers cohorts of “real live nephews of our Uncle Sam” not all of whom wish him a long life. Our divisions today are at least as great as those which gave rise to the South’s War for Independence – aka the Civil War. Americans grouped under the Left banner no longer share anything of significance in common with those who assemble themselves as various forms of the Right. By this I am referring to a comprehensive intellectual, spiritual, and ideological break. No common history, worldview, socio-political ideals, sense of Man, interpretation of foundational principles, application of logic and modes of critical thought are shared. And recently even the scientific method has donned a distinct and politically correct mantle.
The Left’s existential blindness and intellectual insularity has ascended to newly achieved heights. Today our socialist elites in the federal government (joined by most grass roots locals) are oblivious to –
** Russia’s impending demographic doom that builds upon its historical absence of a liberal experience and mandates its kleptocratic leadership to re-embark on a campaign of stealing entire countries. ‘If we can’t create it, we must conquer it’ sums their realpolitik.
** China’s unavoidable mandate to double its middle class, while maintaining strict communist party control, is still a conundrum to Beijing’s leadership. And while they are puzzling on the answer, they must divert the attention of their poverty bound masses with heavy doses of manufactured nationalism. Hence the de facto conquest of its surrounding seas and military build-up to counter conjured enemies as a self-evident prescription of patience for its people. This also lays the foundation of China’s own far eastern ‘Co-prosperity Sphere’ first introduced to the region by Imperial Japan in the 1930s.
** Islam is not now and never has been a ‘religion of peace’. It has always conquered by the sword and today has reached a do-or-die collision with the west. It has always been and continues today as a theo-political ideology of unexpected and under-appreciated power that has given rise to its centuries long on/off war with the west. Today, given new communication and transport technologies, Islam is in a war that it knows it must win. This is also a conflict that our Left believes to be a mysteriously motivated spate of disparate acts of worldwide terrorism that definitely draws no support from “true Islam”.
** Islam has markedly impacted western life and culture through 1) deployment of its terror dealing shock troops of Al Qaeda and ISIS, and 2) its ongoing program of colonizing Europe that is now abetted by a surge of illegal Muslim migrants. Islamism and its jihad are ideas that need no specific land areas or enduring leaders to survive and continue their globally inspired and locally brewed acts of terror. Without identifying and countering these ideas, the west will continue its current retreat into an autocratic fortress in which we abandon our liberal cultures in the vain search for a security that promises nothing better than what the Islamists have in store for us.
** The intra- and international birth and growth of cultural independence movements. People worldwide are again discovering that it is really the faiths and traditions of our fathers which turn out to define us, and not a doctrine from distant elitists that points to a global state inhabited by the soon to be perfected Homo Homogeneous.
In America our own Leviathan has declared its aim to have us disappear as a Westphalian sovereign nation-state, and meld into the coming Grand Amalgam (cf UN’s Agenda21). In response to the ever more embracing tentacles of Leviathan, groups seeking to preserve federalism (i.e. more regional autonomy) and even separation have arisen. All of these are either ignored or reproached by the Left with the argument that ‘we are stronger together’, not bothering to explain that this shibboleth holds only when that togetherness includes heavy doses of common beliefs and values.
In California, we are witnessing the seemingly futile efforts of the State of Jefferson Movement, and today columnist Thomas Elias reports on “Caleavefornia” – the exodus of the productive – and the California Independence Campaign. The CIC is yet another Great Divide movement that one ups SoJ on the current futility index – these folks want our state to leave the Union or at least be recognized by the UN as a separate jurisdiction. In any event, all of these stirrings communicate strong beliefs held by millions of Americans that are neither shared nor visible to our ruling elite in Sacramento and Washington. Appropriate thoughts for a weekend during which we celebrate the spirit of independence.
[3jul16 update] One of the constant themes in these pages is the utter disregard that the American Left has for the Constitution. Ignoring the Constitution has become such a normal course of business for Democrats that they don’t give it much thought any longer – and of course, the rot starts at the top. But to get an idea how casually Democrats dismiss the Constitution today, consider this sanguine statement by California Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer speaking in committee – “… the legislature sometimes ignores whether it’s constitutional or not. We make laws because we’re California, we do it anyway.” (video here) And some useful idiots still wonder how the stacks of the state’s insane laws have come to be. Something more to reflect on this weekend. (H/T to RR reader)
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