By Any Means Necessary

The Cold Civil War is heating up, and if the Left has its way, among the casualties will be the Constitutional order in which co-equal branches of government check and balance each other’s power. This being the bedrock of the American system, and our penultimate bulwark against tyranny, the times may soon become “interesting”, and you might like to plan accordingly.

That this is the direction things are moving, if it weren’t obvious enough already, is brought into focus by two articles at Vox, here and here. They describe, with zesty approval, how the Left, fed up with the difficulty of imposing their aims on the rest of us by Constitutional means, intend simply to elect someone who will do it all by executive force. That someone, in the opinion of Matthew Yglesias, should be Hillary Clinton — who, he says, “DGAF”. (For our more civilized readers, this is an abbreviation for a vulgarity implying insouciance about rules or consequences.)

Mr. Yglesias writes:

Her view is that the bad guys don’t play fair and square, and there’s no reason the good guys should unilaterally disarm.

By “bad guys”, Mr. Yglesias refers to the scores of millions of his fellow Americans who disagree with the “progressive” agenda, who think the Constitution still ought to mean something, who favor a limited government with enumerated powers, etc. (Far better to disarm them instead.)

… Presidential power is, in part, a question of laws. There are some things the executive branch can do and others that it can’t. But to an extent that’s often not sufficiently appreciated, it’s largely a question of norms (legally speaking, after all, the president could have his or her team do basically anything, up to and including murder people, and then pardon them) rather than statutory text.

… Clinton’s record in politics is characterized by a clear willingness to push harder than the typical public figure against existing norms. There was no winnable Senate race for her to enter in Illinois or Arkansas in 2000, so she ran in New York instead. Barack Obama forbade her from employing Sidney Blumenthal at the State Department, so she employed him at her family’s foundation instead. Sandy Berger faced criminal penalties for destroying classified documents at the National Archives, but that didn’t stop Clinton from informally employing him as an adviser on sensitive Middle East peace negotiations.

She decides what she wants to do, in other words, and then she sets about finding a way to do it ”” exactly the mentality any Democrat would need to move the needle on policy in 2017.

A candidate for our time

None of this means that you need to like Clinton. On many issues she’ll push executive power in somewhat unorthodox ways in pursuit of an agenda conservatives hate. On a handful of issues ”” likely those most directly connected to foreign policy ”” she’ll push executive power harder than Obama did, in pursuit of an agenda that liberals will find much less congenial than Obama’s.

But she truly is the perfect leader for America’s moment of permanent constitutional crisis: a person who cares more about results than process, who cares more about winning the battle than being well-liked, and a person who believes in asking what she can get away with rather than what would look best. In other words, as nervous as the rumblings of scandal around her emails make many Democrats, the exact same qualities that led to the server drama are the ones that, if she wins, will make her capable of delivering on the party’s priorities in a way few others could.

The Islamist president of Turkey, Recep ErdoÄŸan, once said: “Democracy is like a train. We shall get out when we arrive at the station we want.” There is no reason, as the Framers well understood, that democracy cannot lead to tyranny and despotism; indeed, they understood that this is its natural and lawful tendency, as history had shown without exception. In the Islamic world, democracy naturally tilts toward theocracy. The modern Left, correctly understood as a secular religion and a contiguous extension of the Puritans’ “errand into the wilderness”, is tipping once more in the same direction.

I mentioned above that the separation of powers, and the Constitutional system of checks and balances between them, is the penultimate bulwark against tyranny. It is no coincidence, in these times, that the ultimate rampart — the pre-existing right that guarantees, if anything can, all the others — is also under continuous assault.

31 Comments

  1. Whitewall says

    The Left was on the losing side of the first Cold War. The war didn’t end, it only paused while the Left retrenched and extended its long march. A sociopath like Hillary who can lie her red liberal ass off to the families before the coffins from Benghazi, will have no qualms about not only lying bold faced to us, she is quite sinister enough to tell everybody what she will do by her own power-even if conjured in her mind- oath of office be damned. That is a 2016 Democrat.

    “But she truly is the perfect leader for America’s moment of permanent constitutional crisis”….that meaning, the only crisis for the Left is not being able to impose their agenda Constitutionally. They would become traitors to their oath. I suspect aggressive resistance to her at that point.

    Posted October 10, 2015 at 1:48 pm | Permalink
  2. Whitewall says

    This am I summoned all the courage I could muster and snuck over to Maverick Philosopher and read “The roots of Leftist viciousness…” Fits right in with your post here.

    Posted October 10, 2015 at 2:05 pm | Permalink
  3. Malcolm says

    Here’s a link to Bill V’s piece.

    I suspect aggressive resistance to her at that point.

    I have predicted for some time now that Mrs. Clinton won’t even get the nomination, although that may be based on some too-charitable assumptions about the bloody-mindedness of Democratic voters (for example the assumption that were she to face felony charges, it might erode her support). But it already astonishes me that anyone, given what we know about this appalling woman, could still want her elected to the highest office — so perhaps I am too generous to the character of the Left, or I underestimate the extent to which this cold civil war has already become hot.

    Posted October 10, 2015 at 2:43 pm | Permalink
  4. Whitewall says

    History repeats, or maybe just men repeat history-http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-10/damascus-debacle-how-cia-handed-over-syria-putin-silver-platter

    Obama now has his Bay of Pigs. He is also crawling away from the Middle East on his “all fours” like it was the end of Viet Nam. That’s Putin’s boot print on Barry’s shinny arse. This is the stage for our “Cold Civil War”. Seems oh so familiar.

    Posted October 11, 2015 at 8:37 am | Permalink
  5. the one eyed man says

    One of the graver problems we face as a nation is governance at a time when the Right, fed up with the difficulty of imposing their aims on the rest of us by Constitutional means, intends simply to ignore the responsibilities placed on them by the founding document and create chaos and disorder instead.

    Senate Republicans have ignored their constitutional responsibility to confirm or reject Presidential nominees, in hopes that they will recapture the White House and make appointments more to their liking. As a result, we have a record number of vacancies for judicial seats, resulting in courts having enormous backlogs. Justice delayed is justice denied.

    We know from Kevin McCarthy’s admission that Congressional Republicans are conducting taxpayer supported opposition research for partisan gain. (To quote G. Pyle: surprise, surprise, surprise.) A committee staffer who was fired for his naÁ¯ve understanding that the latest committee was actually about Benghazi is now filing a lawsuit against them. But hey: if the first seven investigations don’t support the Republican attack line on Benghazi, it’s time for number eight! And while we’re at it – after the longest congressional investigation in American history – let’s time the release of our report in the middle of the 2016 presidential election!

    Congressional Republicans shut down the government, and blew a $24 billion hole in the economy, in an attempt to extract unilateral concessions to effect policy changes they did not have the votes to achieve through the legislative process. (I would be eager to see the reaction from the Right if Democrats shut down the government unless and until gun control legislation was passed.) They operate under the delusion that despite the fact that they do not have sixty votes in the Senate to pass legislation, let alone enough votes to override a presidential veto, they should nonetheless be able to impose their will on the rest of government.

    Congressional Republicans wrote the Iranian leader in an attempt to sabotage negotiations over an arms deal, publicly cast doubt that they would enforce the agreement if ratified, and invited a foreign leader to harangue Congress into blocking the deal. (One wonders how Netanyahu would have reacted had Obama addressed the Knesset in an attempt to stymie Israeli foreign policy).

    Refusal to confirm appointments of a duly elected President, using the Congressional power of inquiry for partisan attacks, evading the minimal constitutional requirement of keeping the government operating, and trying to sabotage the executive power to conduct foreign policy are all prima facie examples of conservative attempts to impose its aims on the rest of us by a faction which is frustrated by the constitutional limits on its power.

    Faced with a renegade Congress which has been hijacked by the forty or so members of the hilariously named “Freedom Caucus,” what should a Democratic President do? President Obama has been timid about using the full breadth of his executive powers until recently, and whether President Clinton will do the same is unknown, the speculation by two bloggers in a third-rate website notwithstanding. If one side throws bombs, there is no reasonable expectation for the other side to play by Marquess of Queensbury rules.

    * *

    After years of complaining that Obama’s government experience was too thin to be President, the Republican presidential race is led by three manifestly unqualified candidates with no government experience whatsoever.

    John Boehner was ousted by a rump faction in his caucus, despite the fact that he is not only staunchly conservative, but his scorched earth opposition to Obama’s agenda marked the most obstructionist and inflexible Congress since at least the Civil War. Kevin McCarthy pulled out of the race when he realized that trying to govern an ungovernable caucus was a fool’s errand (although some speculate that he withdrew, so to speak, when rumors surfaced that he was porking a Congresswoman in his caucus). An anxious nation waits with trepidation to see whether the next Speaker will be Larry, Moe, or Curly, knowing that major issues need to be addressed immediately and the House is in a state of chaos and disruption.

    You get the feeling that things are falling apart, the center is not holding, and mere anarchy is being loosed upon the world (h/t the eukaryotic microorganism, W. B. Yeast). The traditional practice of divided governance, where both sides sacrifice some of their priorities to get the other side to do the same, ended in January 2009 when key Republicans swore to obstruct every Obama agendum, regardless of what it was or whether they supported it in the past, in an ultimately futile effort to deny him a second term. Obama’s repeated effort to find common ground were frustrated by a retrograde caucus which views compromise as tantamount to capitulation. The fact that House Republicans are a laughingstock and a national embarrassment helps nobody. I’m hardly alone in seeing a bad moon rising.

    Posted October 11, 2015 at 1:04 pm | Permalink
  6. Malcolm,

    Before you get into it with the contemptible one, here is a pic I am sure you will like.

    Posted October 11, 2015 at 5:13 pm | Permalink
  7. I forgot to mention that it is the Eilean Donan Castle, in Scotland of course.

    BTW, what happened to the ability to edit a posted comment?

    Posted October 11, 2015 at 5:21 pm | Permalink
  8. Malcolm says

    Och aye, Henry! I recognized it at once.

    The picture was too big for the page, so I changed it to a link. And I’ve reactivated that comment-editing plugin; I’d turned it off while I was trying to get the ‘nested reply” feature working (that’s turning out to be a tricky one, with the custom WordPress theme that I use.)

    Posted October 11, 2015 at 9:59 pm | Permalink
  9. Malcolm says

    Well, Peter, I can’t say I’m surprised to hear you say the things you’ve said. We all know what team you’re on. Rather than give all of this the point-by-point fisking it deserves, I’ll just respond in more general terms.

    Your message is is familiar enough. On your side are all the decent, reasonable adults, just trying to do simple, pragmatic, non-ideological things, while on the other are only bad and childish people — knuckle-dragging primitives who selfishly insist on spoiling everything for everybody. On your end of the field, otherwise known as The Right Side of History, is all that’s good and wise and progressive and best for America and the world, and on ours is all that is heartless and grasping and backward and vicious and ungentlemanly. Why, we even Shut Down The Government! (But all we did, in fact, was to present budget after duly legislated budget that funded all of the government except for those things our elected representatives decided should be opposed — which is of course in complete accordance with the “checking” role the Framers intended the House to play. )

    When the president pugnaciously refuses to accept a budget bill that would keep the government running, why is it not he who shuts down the government? When a President, knowing that a foreign agreement he wishes to impose is widely seen as a disastrous blunder and is likely to be denied the consent of the Senate, seeks to make the treaty anyway without Congressional approval, just who, exactly, is circumventing the Constitution?

    It’s easy to portray conservatives as relentlessly negative, simply because if they are to conserve the precious social, cultural, legal, and political heritage of which they are stewards for succeeding generations, then they have no choice but to stand in principled opposition when confronted by a faction that scorns and reviles what they must defend, and that pursues at breakneck speed a ruthless campaign to “fundamentally transform” the country they love, even to the point of aggressively displacing its people.

    When your baseline is the Constitution, and the nation’s founding principles of individual liberty, self-reliance, limited government, enumerated powers — when what you see as the foundation of American greatness is a political system guided more by local administration and the civil society than by a centralized Federal leviathan — then political change is measured by whether it moves the nation closer to or farther away from those essential principles. As the managerial state relentlessly expands its control over every aspect of American life, every compromise, then, with the implacable Left becomes a ratchet-like relinquishment of territory that both sides know will never be recovered.

    You seem to think that aquiescence in this destructive process is some sort of Constitutional “responsibility” laid upon the Legislative Branch. At some point, though, even you must agree that “compromise” is not an absolute good; if, for example, your party wants to kill all of the Jews, and mine doesn’t want to kill any of them, should my side accept a compromise in which we agree to kill only half of them? Even more, should we agree to this knowing that a year from now, the next compromise that will be expected of us will be to kill half of the Jews who remain?

    Peter, can it really be that if a president and party came to power whose clearly stated aim was to enforce a baneful ideology that, in your view, would destroy this nation, you wouldn’t encourage your representatives to obstruct them at every pass? Would you insist that they “compromise”?

    You chide the Right for being “fed up with the difficulty of imposing their aims on the rest of us by Constitutional means”. But this has things exactly backward: it was the Framers’ intention from the very beginning that the several branches of government each shall act to check and thwart the action of the others as they see fit. As even this Vox article acknowledges, it is the increasingly aggressive Left, and their petulant Executive, who are chafing at these Constitutional restraints, and who now intend to act as Imperator — Congress and the Constitution be damned.

    “What — we can’t fling open the borders, and impose amnesty for millions of future democrats? We can’t force our gun laws, disastrous foreign agreements, or draconian climate regulations down America’s throat, just because the peoples’ elected representatives refuse to rubber-stamp our demands? Then we’ll just do it some other way, because what of course what we want is right, and best, and so it will be done, by any means necessary.”

    What you sneer at as a “renegade”, “hilariously named” caucus that has “hijacked” Congress is, for others of us who see the world very differently than you do, the appearance, at last, of men and women in Washington who are prepared to stand on the highest of American principles, and to say, to the McConnells and Boehners in their own party as much as to the Pelosis, Reids, and Obamas: “Enough. Here we will make our stand for what is best and right and true about this once-great nation, before all is lost. The hour is late, an we may already have passed beyond all hope, but we must do what we can — not by burning cities and looting, nor by replacing the American people, nor by executive despotism, but by exerting the balancing Constitutional power that the Framers, in their wisdom and foresight, granted to Congress for just such an occasion.”

    Peter, by now I don’t expect you to begin to be able to understand any of this from any perspective other than your own. I know from years of unproductive bickering that you are instinctively, intuitively, and axiomatically incapable of giving any respect at all to those of us over here on the other end of this battlefield, or to the great principles and traditions — and indeed, the very essence of America itself — that we of the Right feel honor-bound, and duty-bound, to cherish and preserve for generations yet unborn.

    So I will focus instead on one point of agreement. You said:

    You get the feeling that things are falling apart, the center is not holding… I’m hardly alone in seeing a bad moon rising.

    Well, you’re right about that, if about nothing else. Things are falling apart, and fast. There are two distinctly different Americas now, and the great fissure between them is getting broader and deeper every day. That they hold absolutely incompatible and irreconcilable visions of what America is and ought to be is by now terrifyingly obvious; increasingly apparent also is the anger that is boiling up between them, and the feeling that this is no longer merely a political battle, but an existential one.

    I hate to say it, but I can see at this point no imaginable scenario in which this ends well.

    Posted October 11, 2015 at 10:00 pm | Permalink
  10. Dymphna says

    Another crucial piece of the coming chaos is the global demographic implosion due circa mid-century. Since it is unprecedented,there are no proposed ‘solutions’, though China has abandoned its draconian “one child” policy and supposedly the UN’s Agenda 21 will attempt to reign in the rural areas.

    See Sir Gregory Copley’s “UN-Civilization” on Amazon. No solutions, just descriptive scenarios.

    Posted October 11, 2015 at 10:46 pm | Permalink
  11. Malcolm says

    Dymphna! How nice to see you here. I hope you and the Baron are well.

    Posted October 11, 2015 at 10:49 pm | Permalink
  12. Whitewall says

    The Democrat debate tomorrow night could be interesting. I wonder if CNN can muster the integrity to ask tough questions? Why in the world is O’Malley there and double why is that mental case Lincoln Chafee? I can’t tell if Biden is in or out. All must do a delicate dance to distance themselves from the criminal Obama. Biden…how can he? He is still there like Raul to Fidel. I put my money on Sanders to do the best. He is honest about foolish beliefs. At least that is something.

    Posted October 12, 2015 at 8:30 am | Permalink
  13. the one eyed man says

    You begin with arguable predicates. The Founders did, in fact, construct a government with centralized federal power, which is why they ditched the states-centric Articles of Confederation. They wrote a document which is agnostic regarding whether the federal government should be large or small – that is why they included the elastic clause. The government we have today is the logical outgrowth of the Constitution, as we evolved from an agrarian society to an industrialized nation of 350 million citizens. So while you may consider small and limited government to be “the highest of American principles” — as it is always soothing to characterize yourself as being principled, and those who disagree as unprincipled — the fact is that the proper size and scope of government has been a matter of heated contention for centuries, not to mention a series of Supreme Court decisions over more than a century which recognize contemporary governance as aligned with the Constitution. Your view is not only the minority view, but it is far from the a priori truth you posit it to be.

    There is nothing wrong with your belief, and I have no quarrel with those who believe it. My concern is with tactics, and the way in which conservatives have run roughshod over the Constitution in order to use blackmail and extortion to achieve policy ends they do not have the votes to effect.

    We have had many more years of divided government than one-party rule. Over the centuries, when the opposing parties could work together, they did so; when they couldn’t, we had stalemates. However, it is unprecedented in American history for one political party to shut down the government, or threaten default on the national debt, to achieve policy goals which are beyond the constitutional limits of their power.

    In 2007, Nancy Pelosi did not shut down the government by sending Bush appropriations for everything except the war in Iraq. She did not defund the ATF to demand gun control laws; she did not defund the CIA to protest the use of torture; she did not shut down HHS because we had a horrible health care system. Had she done any of these things — and Bush would rightly have refused to sign the appropriations — the resulting shut down would not only have been a grievous dereliction of duty, but it would have been entirely her fault. When one party picks a fight, they are entirely accountable for its consequences.

    The suggestion that Obama is somehow at fault because he upheld the principle that the functioning of government is not a bargaining chip to be used as leverage in policy disputes is argle bargle.

    What concessions were conservatives willing to offer in return for defunding Obamacare, defunding Planned Parenthood, or defunding immigration enforcement? Did they offer to pass gun control legislation? Provide federal funding for abortion? Raise taxes? Of course not: these are non-negotiable positions for them. Progressives have non-negotiable positions too. However conservatives demanded that progressives abandon their non-negotiable positions, and receive nothing in return, in order to avoid debt default and/or a government shutdown. Why in the world should Democrats capitulate?

    Frustrated by the constitutional limits on their power, they blew a $24 billion hole in the economy — and achieved nothing by doing so — while showing the emotional maturity of a two year old who holds his breath because he can’t get what he wants.

    The Iran nuclear deal is not “widely seen as a disastrous blunder,” as the entire world, with the exception of US conservatives and some Israelis, supports it. It is also not a treaty (and treaties often are signed without Congressional approval, such as Bush’s treaty with Iraq to withdraw forces). Those who oppose the deal have every opportunity to make their case, but the decision making power resides with the President, not with Congress.

    However, faced with constitutional limits on its power, Republicans thumbed their nose at the executive authority to conduct foreign policy. When George Bush made the case for invading Iraq — something which was not just widely seen as a disastrous blunder, but which turned into the most disastrous blunder in American history — the Democrats did not invite Jacques Chirac to speak to Congress against the invasion, and they did not write to Saddam Hussein to voice their disapproval of Bush’s war plans.

    “If a president and party came to power whose clearly stated aim was to enforce a baneful ideology that, in your view, would destroy this nation, you wouldn’t encourage your representatives to obstruct them at every pass? Would you insist that they compromise?”

    We recently had a President whose did just that. Do you recall me — or anyone else — demanding that Pelosi and Reid shut down the government, refuse to confirm Bush nominees, or sabotage his foreign policy? Not only did Democrats act responsibly, they compromised with Bush and often gave him the votes necessary to pass legislation (including instances such as TARP, when Republicans were too cowardly to take a politically difficult vote, and Democrats enacted a program which ended up being extraordinarily successful). That tells you all you need to know about the difference between patriotism and partisanship.

    There is noting unusual about fiercely divided government. We have rules to deal with it. If conservatives want a smaller government, one which does not make nuclear deals, or one which has no national health care program, they are free to do whatever they can, within the limits of their constitutional power, to achieve those ends. What they do not have the right to do is go beyond their numbers, or their constitutional power, and throw sand in the machinery of government because they can’t get their way through legitimate means.

    I understand how difficult this must be. Conservatives are hopping mad because we have a popular and successful President they loathe, he is in office until January 2017, and there is nothing they can do about it. I get that. They are furious that their doomsday scenarios about Obamacare never came to pass, and it became a national success; that we have the fastest growing economy in the developed world; that the deficit was cut in half; and that Obama cleaned up the mess left from the Bush years when they held the reins of power. It is very difficult, as well as humiliating, to see your adversaries succeed after you have failed at the same thing.

    However, the intensity with which one believes something to be true has no bearing on whether it is actually true or not. You, and others like you, feel very passionately that the country is on the wrong track, the government is too big, and so forth. Your problem is that a majority of Americans have elected, and then re-elected, a President who feels very differently, and he has every right to use his executive authority to reflect the desires of those who voted for him. Moreover, those voters feel just as passionately as you do. We have a system of governance to resolve these disputes. It is regrettable that conservatives are disdainful of this system, and try to evade the constitutional limits on their power instead.

    Posted October 12, 2015 at 11:30 am | Permalink
  14. Malcolm says

    If conservatives want a smaller government, one which does not make nuclear deals, or one which has no national health care program, they are free to do whatever they can, within the limits of their constitutional power, to achieve those ends. What they do not have the right to do is go beyond their numbers, or their constitutional power, and throw sand in the machinery of government because they can’t get their way through legitimate means.

    Your argument runs aground here, I’m afraid. (I won’t bother addressing your hallucinations about the current administration’s flamboyant “successes”.) All that any of Mr. Obama’s opponents have done is to use the levers of power available to them under the Constitution, in particular the power of the purse. They have stopped far short of doing all that they had promised the people who elected them they would do: they preemptively ceded the treaty power twice, for example, and have consistently refused to force Obama to veto their budget bills.

    Again: when a president seeks intolerable policies, there is no Constitutional obligation whatsoever for the legislative opposition to make compromises. (See my remarks above regarding compromise.) They represent, first and foremost, their constituents and their principles. You are reading things into the Constitution that simply aren’t there; indeed you are reading into it the very opposite of what the Framers intended.

    I need to say more about your last paragraph. I will do so in another post.

    Posted October 12, 2015 at 11:53 am | Permalink
  15. the one eyed man says

    Except Congressional Republicans do not have the power of the purse. No money gets spent until an appropriations bill gets passed by Congress and signed by the President. They share the power of the purse with Senate Democrats, who can block their bills through filibuster, and the President, who can veto them. If they had the power of the purse, they could spend federal money any way they desired. They can’t.

    And, of course, an administration whose policies you find to be intolerable was re-elected by a majority of voters – who find his agenda not only tolerable, but desirable – and the President they elected is also obligated to represent those constituents and their principles.

    Bush’s policies were considered intolerable not only by Democrats, but by most of the world. Yet the Democrats compromised with him, repeatedly, as they placed the people’s business above partisan interests or ideological purity. It’s what adults do.

    It is also why the “Freedom Caucus” – whose conception of freedom does not extend to the individual’s freedom to make his own decisions about pregnancy, marriage, or euthanasia – has not achieved a single thing since arriving in Washington. By their refusal to compromise, they have lost one policy battle after another – most recently on Friday, when the caucus of reasonable Republicans joined the Democratic caucus to force a vote to restart the Ex-Im Bank. That is how anything gets done these days – a few dozen House Republicans join Democrats to fund the government and keep things running, while the rest of the Republican caucus stamps their feet and whines. The “Freedom Caucus” is learning that while their forty or so members can throw their weight around, the forty of so “moderate” Republicans in their caucus can do exactly the same.

    Posted October 12, 2015 at 12:09 pm | Permalink
  16. The federal power of the purse is not held absolutely by the majority party in the House of Representatives. That power is, however, hierarchically distributed, with the House majority’s power being proactive, whereas everyone else’s is reactive. Thus, the house minority party can thwart the Speaker’s party on occasion, and so can the Senate and the President, to successively lesser degrees.

    Ultimately, the Speaker’s party is preeminent in the power of the purse via the Origination Clause of the Constitution.

    Claiming that the House majority does not have the power of the purse is spurious.

    Posted October 12, 2015 at 1:42 pm | Permalink
  17. Malcolm says

    Peter, you wrote:

    …Congressional Republicans do not have the power of the purse.

    You need to brush up on your civics. Congress has the power of the purse. Not a penny can be spent until Congress appropriates it. That there are bitter disagreements in Congress about what to fund has no bearing on this fact.

    That there was more bipartisanship during the Bush administration simply shows that his policies were not as intolerable to scores of millions of reasonable and patriotic Americans as the current administration’s. Even Mr. Bush’s prosecution of the war in Iraq had broad bipartisan support, though many of those who supported him then revile him for it now. For all his flaws, and they were many, Bush never sought openly to “fundamentally transform” America, nor to divide it by pitting racial and political factions against one another, or demonizing, patronizing, and insulting those Americans who disagree with him, as Obama has done from the beginning.

    Above all, one felt that George Bush deeply loved this nation, its people, and its traditions, even as he found them, while Barack Obama reminds us again and again, both in word and deed, that he does not. Traditionally, the President has hoped to be worthy of the nation they have been chosen to lead. In Obama’s mind, though, the question always seems to be whether the nation is worthy of him. And he never lets the rest of us — especially white people, or successful people, or Southerners, or policemen, or gun owners, or observant Christians, or conservatives — forget it. And many, many millions of us, at last, have had all we are going to put up with. Millions on the Left, if the Vox article is anything to go by, feel the same way. This is not “business as usual” in America, not at all, because America itself is no longer the nation it used to be — a critical point that I think you fail to understand.

    (It scores you no points here, by the way, to refer again and again to those who supinely accede to you side’s agenda as “adults”, particularly given the childish petulance of your president, which is ever on display.)

    The rest of your comment simply acknowledges that there’s a grim, and perhaps mortal, battle underway in America, which is of course correct. More on that in my next post.

    Posted October 12, 2015 at 4:08 pm | Permalink
  18. antiquarian says

    One-eyed, the Republicans have no Constitutional responsibility to pass any kind of a budget. The Constitution says things about powers to spend money, but nothing at all about obligations. It doesn’t even require that we pay our debts; it’s only the fact that people will stop lending us money if we don’t that restrains us. (Something that those who threatened default knew and accepted, though I think it was a foolish method of trying to get their way.) Therefore, “shutting down the government” is a Constitutional nullity.

    As for abrogating, twisting, contorting, redefining and flat-out ignoring the Constitution, the Left is vastly guiltier than the Right. The Right is mainly guilty of it in terms of waging war without a Declaration of War by Congress (although the means by which they do so, beginning with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, was invented by Democrats). What has the Left done? Expanded the Commerce Clause to rationalize any meddling they want (Wickard v. Filburn, anyone?), expanded the Executive by means of agencies whose regulations, unapproved by Congress, are de facto laws, expanded the 14th Amendment to cover all sorts of things neither contemplated nor consented-to by its ratifiers, invented the fantasy of “substantive due process”, attempted flat-out to subvert a major part of the Bill of Rights despite the plain evidence of history against their interpretation of it (go ahead, talk about “well-regulated militia” some more, see how far you get), and ignored or defined away other inconvenient parts of the Constitution, like the 10th Amendment. And that list is only the ones that come most immediately to mind.

    Much of your position amounts to, you have no problem with doing things if done the regular, Constitutional way. If so, then presumably you would have no problem with returning to originalism in Constitutional analysis, undoing the rationalizations of popular opinion that much of the past century of Constitutional analysis amounts to, and redoing them– the things you like, anyway– by the regular, Constitutional way of passing Amendments. I’ll vote for some of them, but there is, frankly, some major glass in your house for you to be throwing that particular stone.

    It used to be that the Left actually did things the regular way. They passed the 17th and 19th Amendments. Heck, they even tried to pass the ERA, and that was within our lifetimes. These days, though, they wouldn’t bother with that. Academia would begin pumping out the rationalizations, and when enough devotees had made it to the Supreme Court, some new affront to that fundamental basis for democracy’s authority, consent, would come forth, and it would be decided that people dead for a century had already consented to something undreamt-of during their lifetimes. Then people like you would, as you always do, arrogate rationality and normality to that state of affairs. That your opponents have become much more intransigent in the face of that is amazing only to people as deep in the Matrix of the Left as you are.

    Any time there’s a Constitutional corner to be cut, usually rationalized with something to do with the “march of history” or “modernity”, chances are about ten to one it’s being done by the Left.

    Posted October 12, 2015 at 5:43 pm | Permalink
  19. JK says

    I generally prefer to avoid these sorts of tedious things but Antiquarian brings up a memory – and Malcolm’s title by any means necessary.

    (Don’t bother Anti, trying to figure out precisely “what/how” that’ll take too much studying. And it’ll be useless anyway.)

    One-Eyed?

    You recall that Bradley Manning fellow making the news a few years back I’m almost willing to bet? You probably recall too at least vaguely, what he was charged with.

    But recall the content the guy was summarily frog-marched to the brig for even before the courts-martial?

    As you’re way over a few timezones One-Eye you might Google up some reminiscences. And after you’ve bothered yourself looking at the specifics ponder just a few moments and ask yourself whether the stuff that got Manning to Leavenworth so quick didn’t resemble military secrets but rather

    Diplomatic dispatches?

    There was a time not so long ago that sort of thing was frowned on.

    Posted October 13, 2015 at 12:45 am | Permalink
  20. Whitewall says

    JK, If Manning…or whatever he/she/it is called now could be a Democrat candidate for president, his collective person would be out of jail.

    Posted October 13, 2015 at 7:06 am | Permalink
  21. JK says

    Right Whitewall, the Collective Singularity could pull off such a feat.

    Not knowing your personal situation but (in a general sort of way) your location and, for some professions even looking up specifics of what Manning leaked might be uhmmm deleterious … so;

    As “Adam,” Shamir (along with his Swedish son, a well-known anti-Semitic activist), has a key role in Wikileaks decisions, he was the editor of the group’s Russian-related US diplomatic cables that were leaked by PFC Bradley Manning […]

    (Keyword searches are one thing – links another).

    http://20committee.com/2013/07/06/wikileaks-snowden-and-the-belarus-connection/

    Posted October 13, 2015 at 11:06 am | Permalink
  22. Whitewall says

    JK, XX has turned out to be another fine source for info I didn’t know about until you linked it one time about 10 months ago. I wonder how much Snowden/Manning info might have been on Hillary’s home email set up. Reading more of XX also reminded me that, mentioning Maduro anyway, too much was left unfinished “down there” when the USSR fell. It angered me that certain characters were left alive.

    Posted October 13, 2015 at 12:37 pm | Permalink
  23. Malcolm says

    Thanks for that excellent comment, antiquarian.

    Posted October 13, 2015 at 1:34 pm | Permalink
  24. antiquarian@gmx.com says

    Glad to help, Malcolm. Don’t want to be an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle, after all.

    Posted October 13, 2015 at 3:41 pm | Permalink
  25. antiquarian says

    “JK, If Manning…or whatever he/she/it is called now could be a Democrat candidate for president, his collective person would be out of jail.”

    That actually occurred over in Russia back in the 1990s. The first round of bankers, scammers et cetera was sent to prison, and then some had to be released– because they had run for the Duma from prison and won! (The newspapers even had interviews with people who had voted for the new ex-cons despite having been among their victims.)

    Posted October 13, 2015 at 3:43 pm | Permalink
  26. JK says

    Well. Shake my Marion Berrys!

    (And my Louisianas too.)

    Posted October 13, 2015 at 4:08 pm | Permalink
  27. Whitewall says

    My God this is one hell of a blog!

    Posted October 13, 2015 at 4:55 pm | Permalink
  28. JK says

    You remember Whitewall, Marion Barry’s campaign slogan?

    He might not be perfect but he’s perfect for Washington DC!

    Posted October 13, 2015 at 6:47 pm | Permalink
  29. The Anti-Gnostic says

    The rest of your comment simply acknowledges that there’s a grim, and perhaps mortal, battle underway in America, which is of course correct. More on that in my next post.

    Correct, sir. It has taken three decades of adult life for me to realize there is no such thing as the “rule of law.” There is only the law of those who rule. Good people = good laws; bad people = bad laws.

    The ideological disputes are irrelevant at this point. The battle now is between peoples.

    Posted October 13, 2015 at 10:57 pm | Permalink
  30. Malcolm says

    Yes, that seems about right.

    Posted October 13, 2015 at 11:30 pm | Permalink
  31. Doug says

    “…By “bad guys”, Mr. Yglesias refers to the scores of millions of his fellow Americans who disagree with the “progressive” agenda, who think the Constitution still ought to mean something, who favor a limited government with enumerated powers, etc. (Far better to disarm them instead.)”

    I read stuff like what this guy says, and I can’t but think, is this fellow, for all his hubris, and desire to cram his ideology up my arse, impose his beliefs upon me regardless of my liberty, is he willing to pick up a rifle and through use of violence try and force me to consent to his beliefs with his life?
    Like citizen disarmament. Regardless of what the constitution says.
    I don’t need that piece of parchment to know I’m a Freeman. He can take it and do whatever he likes with it at this point. The only thing going to save liberty now is to fight like no tomorrow for it.

    It seems a rather long and bloody trail of history proves out people like this always manage to get others to do their dirty work for them. And they seem to always find a steady supply of lickspittles, sycophants, and willing executioners only too eager to gulag and genocide those who oppose those ideologies.

    Maybe America is exceptional, or maybe not.
    But I know I am in respect to this fellows end game of threat and use of violence by the state to impose its slavery.
    I know where all this is heading. There is no beating around the bush about it. It is all about guns, it always has. Not to be infringed means exactly that, but to a never ending stream of statist psychopaths, it is who has guns, who doesn’t have guns. Who controls who with guns, and who is controlled by the gun. Even more so in some respects, who is afraid of guns, and who is free because of guns.
    In the end, the gun is the only power this guy and his kind have. He can talk up a storm of BS about and dress up his arrogance for power over me in every sort of dissimulation, and whatever is the most “legitimate” method of imposing that power over me.
    It is still the gun which is the final arbiter on that score. Long as I got a pulse and the indomitable will to never say die, I’m manifest in my freedom, I’m legitimacy personified.
    To put it bluntly, I’m not giving my gun up. It is that simple. And he and his lickspittles, this cabal of scalawags, they are going to have to come take them.
    There is no delicate arguments or debate of the nuances on this subject.

    I may be getting up there in years, but I got a shitload of letsgo in me. I see and hear these clowns and their thinly veiled tyranny, and I hope if it comes down to it, they can have my rifle, with a red hot burned out barrel, my dead caracas lying on a mountain of hot empty brass, with a hundred of them dead all around me.
    Better yet, I live another day after making them die for their beliefs so I get the chance to pass on the idea of liberty on to the future.

    Posted October 17, 2015 at 8:34 am | Permalink

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