Russell Kirk argued that there are three cardinal ideas in Western civilization. There is the idea of justice, the idea of order, and the idea of freedom. Justice is the process that protects a man’s life, property, natural rights, status and his dignity. Order is the principle and the process to ensure that a people will have just leaders, loyal citizens, and public tranquility. Freedom is the principle that a man is made master of his own life. These three great concepts are the cement of American society.
Some nations have order without justice or freedom. China is a modern example of a tyranny where order is maintained, but there is no justice or freedom. Somalia is an example where there is freedom, but no order or justice, the libertarian ideal. There can be no justice, of course, without order and freedom, which is the point of the American experiment. Our society is a regime of ordered liberty, designed to give justice, order and freedom all their due recognition and respect.
Most everyone in the American chattering classes, takes order for granted, in fact, they never think much about it. Instead, they spend their energy fretting over liberty and justice. That has been the basis of the political divide in our ruling class since the end of World War II. The Left has largely been focused on justice, particularly the ideas of status and dignity. The Right has focused on liberty, particularly with regards to property. Both sides of the political class have always assumed order was a given.
Of course, order is not a given. The Roman Republic is a good example of what happens when order breaks down in the ruling class. The elites slowly stopped enforcing its own rules on the ruling class. Whether out of necessity or convenience, order slowly broke down. By the time Marius and Sulla came along, playing by the rules was a sucker’s game, if you were in the ruling class. That set the stage for a strong man willing and able to ignore custom and seize control of the state.
The other way in which order breaks down is the example of Weimar Germany. The political class lacked the means and the moral authority to impose order. The chaos on the streets is commonly blamed for the rise of you know who. The disorder following the collapse of the Soviet Union is blamed for the rise of the oligarchs. History is full of examples where the ruling class either lost control or lost the moral authority to maintain control. Every revolution in history follows this model to some degree.
What we are seeing in modern America is a strange combination of how order breaks down in a society. The American ruling class is concluding that the rules really do not work for them. They do not have the will or ability to simply toss them aside and impose a new order, but they refuse to allow the old rules to limit their power. That is what is happening with the chaos we see in the courts. Judges, who are members of the ruling class, are willy-nilly overthrowing the constitutional order.
As Daniel Horowitz wrote last month, the Federal judiciary is claiming power for itself, that it has no constitutional basis. Judges are just making things up so they can overturn laws and thwart the constitutional power of the President. The Founders contemplated rogue judges, so there are provisions for removing a judge from the bench. That is fine for one judge here or there, but no one has ever thought about what happens when the whole judiciary goes rogue. The remedy may be too dangerous to attempt.
Take a look at the list of suggestions in that article. Having states ignore Federal courts is not a small thing. it is a click away from secession. If a state legislature elected to go this route, they would be placing themselves in legal jeopardy. A federal judge could order the arrest of the speaker of the state house or the governor. Would the governor respond by having the judge arrested? It is not hard to see how this can get out of control, pitting the political class against itself, but also against factions in the public.
In a rational, liberal society, there should be debate and division, within the context of an agreed upon set of rules. What the court is doing in America is questioning the very idea of rules. They are claiming for themselves the right to make up whatever they feel like in the moment, in whatever incoherent fashion they choose. This is not judicial activism, so much as it is judicial anarchism. The founders never contemplated such a thing and our political class assumes that this is impossible.
A break down in civil order always ends the same way. Whether it is the result of civil war in the ruling class or a war between the ruling class and the people, there is a collapse in moral authority. Everyone loses respect for the old rules, which kept the old order. What comes next is also predictable. A man on a horse rides in and has the will and the means to impose order. That is what comes next if the political class does not suppress what looks like a revolt from the bench. Otherwise, someone else will.
Isn’t this one of those “how many divisions has the Pope moments?
This shit would end if Trump just stopped paying the salaries the corrupt judges.
So Napoléon, not Hitler.
‘Are you serious? … Are you serious?” – Nancy Pelosi
The people in power do not fear the American people and they do as they please.
Unless we go Banana Republic to topple the corrupt regime or torches and pitchforks storming Frankenstein’s Castle it’s doubtful anything will change.
Just a little, slightly off the topic observation. Back in 2012, what I observed during Sandy, was that the Cloud folks didn’t fare very well in a general state of disorder. Their basic survival skills are, shall we say, atrophied.
Overprotected Snowflakes have never developed risk assessment skills, so the world really is a dangerous place for them. They will be forming puddles in the street when the safe spaces are gone. Under every antifa mask is a crying toddler.
A man on a horse, or perhaps a man in a tank will maintain order in the streets if the fires draw too closely to the homes of the cloud people. For reasons I can’t comprehend, they think being progressive in itself is a ghetto pass. The virtual reality of blue pill justice is the map that will never match the territory.
A.J.P Taylor was commissioned to write the history of England from 1914-1945 for the Oxford History of England series. This is his opening observation:
“Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police.”
That sounds like the globalist multicultural fantasy, doesn’t it? Of course it was only possible on the foundation of a thousand years of worked-out rules and limitations, all of which are gone now,
Talk about a “high-trust” society. Taylor has just described life of the everyday person in the home country of the world’s most advanced Empire on the brink of the Great War.
Hmpfffff.
Men, not so fast. We have allies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=117&v=UXzD-RkZnQg
And the shitlibs have a mutiny brewing within their ranks. Everybody – stay positive. Our host’s ratings and readership is growing. The NFL is losing money because their players are niggers and not black people. Hell’s bells – Hillary got KICKED to the curb while the nation roared with derisive laughter.
No defeatism, you lot! That’s an order! 🙂
very cogent and insightful. nobody has yet tried to “impose order” on a nuclear power before. I think once the bats are off a number of interested parties will want parts of the floundering giant . the UN would be glad to
” help”, Nato too, the Chinese ,maybe the Russians , certainly mexico will want to ” protect its citizens living in the US “. It’s gonna be a heck of a show.
Judges have never been appointed “for life” but only “for good behavior”. That certainly does not include judicial anarchy or judicial tyranny..
“[T]he Federal judiciary is claiming power for itself which has no constitutional basis.” I note that the Federal courts have been doing this since at least 1803. The Marbury v. Madison power grab was the greatest of all and set the stage for everything that has followed.
The turn of phrase I enjoy to describe the supreme court is “The Poz Ayatollahs”
I was naively disappointed at trumps response to the travel ban Watsonification as a simple appeal. I mean, the solution to the blatently rogue courts (gay marriage in particular was an unseemly touchdown dance gkr this stuff) isn’t more courts.
It took six months to get to the supreme court where they reapplied the faintest whiff of legitimacy whole removing it’s teeth. By that time of course every Somalian, Sudanese and Libyan and his dog has streamed in aware that time may be limited.
I was allowing myself to hope for an Andrew Jackson “let him enforce it” moment which never came.
The courts like every other part of the political machine (Congress, civil service, military, media and academia), have lit a bonfire made of their legitimacy and are creepily holding hands and dancing around it. They are worshipping their seemingly unlimited power to dictate the terms on which we all must live.
Seemingly.
None of what you describe happened by chance (or incompetence). Just look to the Supreme Court, where many appointments were clearly made based upon political gamesmanship rather than judicial excellence. All of this is a consequence of electing politicians based upon their cunning rather than their civic integrity. The only civil way to fix this IMHO is a Constitutional Convention and the adoption of a term limits amendment.
Term limits don’t make a difference if the donor class determines who runs for office. Contrary to top-dollar sophistry, money is not free speech. It corrupts.
The restrictions on money corrupt more than the absence of restrictions because restrictions are targeted by the class already in the tree house.
The entire political apparatus is set up around the donors. That has to be addressed in order for anything to change. So that once elected, the incumbents and their donors can’t prevent from running for office a decent nobody who actually wants to serve his people. The donors, mostly corporate interests, run the show. The money flowing from donors dictates what happens in our country. If the money were controlled, groups like AIPAC and Lockheed Martin and Aetna Insurance would lose their voices and constituents would have a chance of being heard.
Your failure to harbor doubt that your argument might instead be a tool of the deep state is impressive. Control of money and speech always and everywhere favors the establishment and is invariably loved by progs.
Nonsense.
Restrict the ability to donate to those eligible to vote.
Punish receiving donations from those not eligible by five years hard time.
given the powers that be and are apparent, what do you think the outcome of a constitutional convention would be? the constitution, spat upon and ignored, would likely be declared ‘dead’, or ‘no longer applicable’.
the route is to demand a return to constitutional govt and electing those who would do so. those who do not, recall/impeach them and continue the process until only ‘citizen representatives’ actually run for office.
it takes a spine to do what is right. this leaves out, as a guess, 95% of the slimy creatures living in the cesspool on the potomac. they can only be counted on to enrich themselves with money and power by selling us out.
Wake me when the targeted assassinations of judges commences. That might put a crimp in them. Absent that, nothing left standing.
Great article Z Man! You’re so right about this. Here’s an article today about how the NFL Commissioner Goodell ignores the League’s own rules on player conduct during the National Anthem. Our nation is truly at risk if we cannot hold the elites accountable for flouting the rules.
https://news.grabien.com/story-roger-goodell-ignoring-leagues-own-rule-book-letting-players
maybe goodell *can’t* get the players to follow the rules.
At the risk of bringing you-know-who back into it…. The “prerogative state” seems to sum up our current predicament pretty well. You could get impartial justice in the 3rd Reich, the police were as competent and honest as police can be, and the legendarily impartial, efficient civil service functioned like always… provided you didn’t conflict with Nazism’s core values. Then the “prerogative” kicked in, and judges would overturn the law at whim to get the proper National Socialist result. Or the criminal police would kick your case over to the secret police. The civil service clerk would lose your paperwork. We live in a Social Justice prerogative state — voters can vote on stuff, and cases will be adjudicated impartially, provided the votes and the cases don’t conflict with Social Justice. If they do, the judge will simply make something up to get the correct answer.
The their search for political form the Framers held no man in such high esteem as Montesquieu. But they faced the great obstacle of his dictum about the size of republics: they must be small to succeed. Their response to this was original and brilliant, yet lasted but 72 years. In democratic government the citizen himself lends to it his own despotic tastes. There is not a single example of democratic government growing less despotic. To patch the system gives further life to the system, the catch-22 of conservatism.
After 72 years of experience with the U.S. Constitution, the Confederates wrote one with interesting changes;
1. The U.S. allows the states to decide who may vote. The Confederate specifies citizens.
2. The “General Welfare” clause from the U.S. is removed
3. Corporate Welfare is eliminated
4. Line item veto given to the president
5. Amendments originate with the states
6. Federal officials, including judges, can be removed by states in their jurisdiction.
Number 3 above removes most of the tendency toward Oligarchy that has damaged the country.
I think that a fundamental problem for the American model was pointed out by John Adams when he wrote “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” When the American people became immoral or amoral it was the beginning of the end. I can’t say that Americans aren’t religious. They are. But not in a good way. There is no one more religious than a young SJW. But, the religion of America now is a religion without a sovereign God. I think that one of the things that led the American people to this place is the mercenary nature of contemporary Americans. Setting up a country where you could actually succeed and move beyond your caste was a radical departure for Earth. Sure, in Europe there were individuals who, through hard work, genius and inspiration, rose to the highest levels of society. But, there were probably more who rose to the highest levels of society by following the Law of the Jungle rather than the Law of the Land. In other words, some played by the rules, others didn’t. In America, you could actually play by the rules and get a pretty nice life. You might not be as rich as Croesus, but you were respected and could sleep at night.
Greed has become maybe the primary motive for so many Americans. Jay Gould’s quote that he could pay half of the workers to kill the other half is just an observation of a fundamental law of insufficiently moral and sufficiency greedy people. As peoples’ consciences become numbed, there become fewer and fewer principles they will not betray. I do believe that although a certain percentage were always corrupt, in the early days of the American Republic many politicians were actually statesmen and Federal judges were mostly ethical. However, the same principle that eventually leads to the downfall of communism or socialism infected the Federal government. That principle is that even “good” people will only sacrifice so much for those that won’t work for themselves. Why should someone be a representative for peanuts when they can bend a few rules and live the Life of Riley? Hey, this job is a burden and nobody appreciates me! And the decline is exponential as it continues. Murderers can rationalize the murder they committed. Although the first one is the toughest, it becomes easier over time.
Once a political system is compromised, mercenaries are necessary to keep the status quo in power. Mercenary politicians. Mercenary justices. Mercenary journalists. Mercenary ministers. Mercenary academics. And for where the rubber hits the road, mercenary policemen and soldiers. The liberals of today could never implement their goals if it weren’t for greedy mercenaries in the ranks of law enforcement and the military. They’d get their ass kicked. These two groups are composed of two entirely different types of people. Liberals are of the left and hate the police and the military. The police and the military are of the right and hate liberals. As long as a policeman will take 40 pieces of silver because he is overworked and unappreciated in a dangerous occupation, the “thugs” will let themselves be used for goals that are anathema to their own personal beliefs. And, of course, he does it “for his family”. Those on the right used to engage in duels for the sake of honor. They wouldn’t have any trouble engaging in violence to take this country back if it weren’t for the superior arsenal of the police and military.
The system is now beyond repair. The patient can’t be saved, even with the most potent antibiotics and best medical care. Time to put the Federal government to sleep and form a new one. The inevitability of this will be evident when the apocalyptic economic collapse occurs. Be ready.
The three branches of govt are supposed to be separate but equal but we all know the Judiciary is more equal than the other two.
I actually had an insane fantasy that Trump would declare an act of the Judicial or Legislative Branch unconstitutional and void the act.
That would be a great thing for our country as it would tend to return the constitution to us and we would decide what it means in terms of thus-and-such.
For instance, Trump declares ACA unconstitutional and voids it and the competitors in next POTUS campaign would be constrained to advance their ideas why ACSA is or is not Constitutional and we the people would say what the Constitution meant by voting for which candidate we thought best represented what the constitution meant.
The people have been made void by the Judiciary
Just like you pointed out in your post on race relations, the rule for the people in charge is to to use magic if all else fails. The idea that the founders’ beliefs about liberty were intended to lead to something as nihilistic as dudes marrying dudes might seem insane to you or me, but some rabbis in robes went in a back room, sliced open the chicken, and read its entrails. The Haruspex auguries said men must marry men and borders are a thing of the past. You may disagree, but Kagan and Ginsburg have the black robes and the knives and the altar and the chickens, and it’s their job to do the bidding of the Gods to keep them happy so they don’t rend our world asunder.
Joey;
Well, they do claim to be mind-readers. IIRC, Judge Kennedy (the weather vane) claimed that sodomy was now OK because anybody opposed was animated by “animus” against it. There simply could be no other motive. /sarc.
So, no chickens were endangered in this ruling (!?) OTOH, you could be right because using ‘the reading of the entrails’ is one big way divination is done by pagans and satan worshipers (BIRM).
What do they use in actual Caribbean voodoo_? Probably goats are involved.
Chickens…
Reading their own Spirit Cooking, they are.
What we need is a common enemy. We need to ally with Russia to destroy ALL of Islam down to the last filthy dog, worldwide, starting with Europe (the most common battelfield). China will come along in due time.
Don’t snicker, you know what the alternative is.
The common enemy of most Americans are Jews.
The technical term for a society ruled by judges is a Kritarchy. This is a topic near and dear to me.
This problem can be fairly easily addressed by restricting the subject matter jurisdiction of the lower Federal courts. I’ve written long comments about this topic on this blog and on the Kakistiocracy blog before. I won’t repeat them, but suffice it to say that Congress has complete authority to restrict the subject matter jurisdiction of the lower Federal courts. It should do so. (This was the solution of the Founders–Federal courts has very limited subject matter jurisdiction until the 1870s.)
A less drastic option is to establish specialized courts which are assigned sole subject matter jurisdiction of particular subject matter issues, rather like the Federal Circuit has appellate jurisdiction over all matters arising under U.S. Patent laws. For example, a Federal Immigration Court system could be established and assigned sole subject matter jurisdiction over any matters arising under U.S. immigration law. Ditto for election law. This would eliminate the practice of forum shopping that is so near and dear to the left and would establish a uniform body of federal law on the subject matter issues.
Another option is to reorganize the Federal court system to restrict the influence of renegade Circuits. For example, the 9th Circuit should be redefined to have jurisdiction over cases arising from the District Court of the Northern Mariana Islands and a new Circuit should be created to assume the 9th Circuit’s docket.
The point is that the issue of Kritarchy is modern America is completely fixable. The fact that establishment Republicans never even attempt to fix this is an indication of how little they care about this issue.
Now that corruption has metastasized into every American facet, who will make and implement these much-needed fixes?
I feel fairly sure that they would rule that such limitations on their jurisdiction are themselves unconstitutional.
Such a ruling would be ridiculous, of course, but which rulings anymore are not.
One variable that is different now versus any time previously is the distributed communications platform that is the internet. I wonder if “a man on horseback” will be enabled or hindered by not being able to control a message or message channels.
To give an example, this blog. Say a Prog leader was able to stand up and say “out with you wrong-thinkers”, I’d presume that there would be a significant pushback from a large percentage of the population, some of whom read this blog. There would be enough information flow and coordination via other channels to resist any sort of “unapproved” strong man. Of course the converse would be true, so I wonder if there would be a William of Orange type character who would come in from the outside to take over…
Never underestimate the likelihood of huge numbers of people to believe false things, and to be led around by the nose by those who are sophisticated in the methods of mass psychology.
There is also the matter of when everyone has a voice and a soapbox, no one voice is worth very much.
living in the end stages of empire has never been a pleasant thing over the entire history of the world. such is where we find ourselves today. while the timing of the end is never known, save in its aftermath, the signs are always there.
when our current empire breaks up, so will the nation, into two, or more, pieces. somewhere there will be a piece composed of those who believe in and are willing to adhere to the tenets of freedom, justice and order.
the empire will be destroyed by financial/economic means. that is how all empires end – spending themselves into the abyss – and ours will be no different, even considering our ‘exceptional’ nature.
“Judges are just making things up so they can overturn laws……”
Hence why I am thankful to this day that Hillary is not POTUS where she would have filled every Supreme Court position with activist judges and effectively ended the US as we know it. Picture the 9th Circuit and that’s what the SCOTUS would be like for the next 25-30 years.
One would have laughed 20 years ago if a Judge said the Constitution does give the legal authority for a 40 year old male pervert to go into a ladies room with 14 year old girls because of gender fluidity. Today nobody is laughing.
The obvious counter-point to that being Chief Justice John Roberts who simply invented the ability to construe an unconstitutional mandate passed under the commerce clause as simply another tax. In this, he was a willing participant in the same lie that President “It’s not a tax” Obama told the American people. Once the ACA passed, the Administration immediately changed its tune to defend the law as a tax, and our supposedly conservative justice folded like a cheap lawn chair.
The only answer is for the electorate to rewrite Constitutionally what the courts are empowered to do, and to grant to the Executive and Legislative branches the ability to override a Supreme Court ruling.
All of that, of course, means that Political Class would be voting against their own interests. So President Hillary or not, the problems will continue.
The Federal Courts, except for the Supreme Court are the creatures of the Congress and could be abolished overnight.
IIRC it would not even need a Presidential signature.
It would be a meaningful lesson to the left.
The breakdown of order is attributed to post modernism ideology, a mutant offspring of Marxism, taught by the liberal Progs at our universities. Deconstruction of order is the default strategy of the Progs to bring about the chaos that permits them to take over. In their conceit, they overlook that setting fires to burn to the old order leads to a real danger of incinerating themselves in the very conflagration they created. Some hardcore progs of the nihilistic persuasion are not unlike the Joker, who seek to ignite the whole world just to watch it burn
Paging Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
IMHO, the breakup of the United States as currently constituted is both inevitable and desirable. A state defying the Federal Judiciary, with the backing of it’s people, and a fairly sympathetic president in office, looks like a pretty good way to get the ball rolling, to me. It’s dangerous, certainly, but the alternatives are Czechoslovakia 1992 or Spain 1936, and I know which one I prefer…
What remaining solutions exist to keep our country from following the path of Rome? For the first time in my life, I actually have no hope for the future of our nation (and it’s not because of Trump, though I don’t believe he’s going to solve anything either). It’s my opinion that Democracy only works as long as the electorate is adequately educated and informed which is fair to say is not the case anymore. We live in a time where the vast majority of Americans have access to the entire realm of human knowledge (the internet), but prefer to spend their time on entertainment only. The only “news” that is consumed comes from talking heads who are worked directly with those who they are supposed to be monitoring. Traditional journalism is dead, accountability for our ‘leaders’ is non-existent, the intelligence community is in complete control, and there is no money left to throw at our problems to make then disappear for another election cycle.
My best guess is that everything comes crashing down once the baby boomers try to retire and find that the $200T necessary to fully payout social security as promised disappears into thin air. All generations that follow will realize their futures are not secure and the massive taxes that we are paying are going into a blackhole to support wars that benefit only the military industrial complex.
I’m genuinely interested in hearing if anyone has a solution to the madness, but I’m not holding out hope. The only question left in my mind is when, not if, the ship sinks below the surface.
I hope the U.S. breaks up so the 40% or so of the people who constitute ”my nation” have a chance to regroup and build again. Perhaps they will have learned something from this epic fiasco. Probably not.
It will be located in the intermountain West with some of the Great Plains. But there is the problem of the southern border and Denver.
Any survivable such entity would require diverse food production, energy and a defendable seaport. So, without TX and LA (state not city), +++ this is a really bad idea
Yeah – I don’t know why so many of these survivalist types who envision a new nation springing from the remains of the FUSA – think that it’s going to be landlocked out in the Midwest.
Pay attention: everybody lives on the coasts. There’s a reason for that.
Do you really think that a landlocked nation surrounded by your enemies is a really good idea? If you do – it really calls into question anything else you might be asserting as what the future will turn out to be like.
Complete and total fantasy is not a good way to judge the arc of the future.
@Tax Slaveand everyone else. You guys are way better educated than I am so pretty much I still stick to reading the comments. However what would make anyone think that if our beloved country ever separated that THEY would leave us alone? They continuously infiltrate. It’s their nature to destroy. They could never be satisfied until we are either seized, silenced or outright eradicated.
I understand the level of peace it brings to ones mind to embrace that idea of separating regionally but it won’t happen. I personally would move if it was feasible. Feasible meaning to be left alone to live my life unfettered.
A little off topic maybe but I too have been making remarks to friends and coworkers about getting involved. That we’re going to lose if we don’t get as passionate as them or more so. It’s tough when we’ve accumulated a comfortable lifestyle with vacations and financial security. I’m not saying any of us wouldn’t be in front to take the first bullets but by nature we are slow to rile. At least slower than them. That is a yuugge disadvantage.
I’m on GAB. If only to increase their membership by one. Maybe I should be on FB to be more in tune when rallies are hosted. I don’t know…I know we’re all getting to our boiling points. I just hope it’s sooner than later.
This is why we need to work with the far right, rather than against them.
You might this fiction which follows your premise precisely.
https://www.amazon.com/Tales-of-New-America-ebook/dp/B00DGJ5EFI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1371720436&sr=1-1&keywords=tales+of+new+america
It’s time to stop with the educated electorate bit. Politics is tribal. The failure of your political system is ado of too many tribes that have mutually exclusive MOs. Dumb homogenous societies can maintain order. Massively heterogeneous societies are incapable of order. Judicial tyranny is simply the white and Jewish upper class attempting to placate the unhinged desires of the minority coalition. The former out of sheer terror and the latter out of hatred for majority politics itself.
Any unwinding of the political knot is going to involve incremental revelation about the nature of minority coalition politics. Namely, the ruling caste left is going to have to come under attack by their pets. This is the only way to dissuade them from doing what they want to do, which is leverage minorities into a comintern with which to utterly destroy the implicitly white right.
Helicopter rides.
Will;
I agree that the USA will default on our national debt at some point because it is simply impossible to pay it, particularly politically, as you point out. But the important question is how it’s done and what happens afterwards.
It may be that there is a scheme in the works right now using just the sort for of legal sophistry that Z Man describes above. The generic name of that scheme is ‘odious debt’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odious_debt
Now, the historical precedent is that there is some sort of coup or revolution and the new regime repudiates the debts of its predecessor. Those inside without connections to the new regime are ‘SOL’ as we used to say (s**t out of luck). Those outside without a powerful and ruthless patron to force payment have to figure out how far they are willing to go to collect. Usually negotiation ensues.
The doctrine of ‘odious debt’ was conveniently concocted by a Russian emigre shyster in Paris in 1927 to provide a rationale to the war-weary Western Powers why they shouldn’t try to collect the debts incurred by Russia under the Czars from the USSR.* It is beloved in NGO world to this day. Briefly, it holds that it is *morally wrong* to try to collect any debt that was created against ‘the will of the people’ and against their interest, by unjust rulers, etc.
Ordinarily, this doctrine is attempted by NGO’s against the foreign creditors of their particular favorite third-world pesthole (e.g. Haiti). But could the Cloud be so mad as to try to apply it against domestic creditors, like us_? To ask is to answer, I’d say. They have to know that the debt cannot be paid. Suppose their plan to pay it is to make the US majority-minority and then apply this doctrine. The NYT editorial writes itself already: “Because of the long history of racism and exploitation, blah, blah, blah, it would be unjust to hold the shiny city of new America responsible for the debts incurred by the evil, bad racist old America…”
All of a sudden the Cloud’s apparent insanity about immigration and constant race-baiting identity politics make a lot more sense… That it is an evil, stupid plan on many levels, with many ways to go badly wrong, doesn’t mean that it is not their plan_! And they *do* hate us.
*People didn’t just escape from the USSR in the mid 1920’s and Stalin’s assassins roamed Paris (where the shyster lived) nearly at will, killing regime enemies who put their heads up, as well as those Russian emigres who just pissed him off. Yet this high-profile fellow thrived. At that time, the Western Powers were militarily capable of collecting the Russian debts using their tried and true methods of gunboat diplomacy. ‘This was no coincidence, comrade.’, as the commies are found of saying to this very day.
In the hundred or so years leading up to the French Revolution the Parlements, or judicial bodies battled with the royal power over legislative legitimacy to the point that the kings actually made a habit of exiling and attempting to replace them. The conflict made the courts the darling of the people until the Parlements began actually deciding in their own class interest in the lead up to the Estates General called by Louis XVI. At this point a potential moderating influence that might have been able to help form a constitutional monarchy lost moral authority and legitimacy ing the eyes of the Third Estate and thus was excluded from participation by the National Assembly. This aspect of the revolution after the tennis court oath gets little discussion by historians because the loss of legitimacy was so great that there wasn’t even any debate about it. The Parlements were simply left in the dust.
This void in having a higher level system of justice led to the anarchy and massacres of prisoners. The people became the higher court, only with disastrous consequences, and they got replaced by the Committee for Public Safety.
I’m not going to attempt to outline some similar trajectory for our court system, but the point is that when you have a breakdown in judicial review to the point that it makes itself into an absurdity, then problems on the criminal justice side aren’t far behind.
Think on this: What kind of judicial response would you expect to see if it looks like there could be a convention of the states? Do you think liberal judges are going to sit back and watch the thirty Trump states outvote their favorite places? It would be an equivalent of what the Parlements did in 1789.
I have performed this thought experiment many times tpd: Assume that somehow Congress finds the will to pass a proposed amendment clarifying the 14th with regards to the rights of citizens and illegal immigrants, specifying that the rights of the former == the full set of rights enshrined in the Constitution and that the rights of the later are very basic (food, shelter, medical care while awaiting deportation). Let’s further assume that 34 states give it the thumbs up and it becomes part of the constitution. What next? The outcomes I keep coming up with are
Continued nullification by Prog states and municipalities because feelz.
Courts scrambling to find loopholes, penumbras, and emanations that would neuter the new amendment. Virtually every law passed to enforce the new amendment would be found defective in some way and blocked by means of court order.
Civil disobedience and violence towards agencies and officials who try to apply the new laws in the short time before they are struck down.
Social media and legacy media filled with talking points and memes intended to turn low information citizens against the amendment and anyone who voted to ratify it or who tries to enforce it.
Right along the same line. The tendencies are there, it’s only a matter as to how they get expressed.
All that needs to happen is for 3 of the Ninth Circuit appeals judges to disappear.
What the hell are we paying “Special Forces” for?.
Yeah, there’s not a lot of good options left.
I know that this is not history, but rather the insight of a man who had spent a lot of time studying the classics. In I Claudius Graves has his fictional Claudius observe that even if he stepped down and gave power back to the Senate, the Senate would do nothing, leading to some “wolf” seizing sole power in fairly short order.
The legislative branch has the Constitutional power to fix this and won’t. The states could nullify, but that would lead to civil war or even greater Federal coercion towards the states, which in and of itself sets a very bad precedent. The President can fight it via the bully pulpit and disobedience, which leads to dictatorship. An Article 5 convention is a dream. The Progs are perfectly positioned to infiltrate it and subvert it, while we’re not even ready to lead it.
Nope, not a lot of kit left in the kit bag.
Your post made me realize that although Constitutional checks and balance are distributed among the three branches, the Founding Fathers must have realized in the final analysis those provisions were mere bluffs to attempt to discourage misuse of accumulated power, as the implementation of them would lead to the nasty consequences you mentioned. It’s the same bet made by prison guards that the inmates will never figure out how easily they can take over the facility. The founders knew that lasting civil order can only be achieved by the individual moral character of each citizen.
As George Washington put it:
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
The Constitution was written by and for a sober and moral people. As for the checks and balances being a “bluff”, I can only say that our founding fathers knew that the only way to deterministically prevent usurpation of power, was to give the ferral government absolute power in the first place. They were caught between anathema and impotence – the ultimate ‘rock and hard place’ dilemma.
What we witness today is the destruction of all that is God and Holy, using the very virtues of goodness and holiness – that is, (((they))) have used our charity, patience, and long-suffering against us.
The answer is staring us right in the face, but most will refuse to recognize the one solution that has any hope of success, and the hour is getting late.
I think we need to built a lot more light poles in D.C. They will be needed in the months ahead.
Just bought new bumper stickers for the cars and truck.
“Rope, Politician, Lamppost
Some assembly required”
Hey. The ‘rules’ don’t apply to important people. Every one knows that. They don’t apply to judges, black professional athletes, Hollywood celebrities, billionaires, Clintons and Obamas. etc.
It’s not just that the rules do not apply. They literally have their own separate set of rules. I was pretty mad, but right, when I predicted that nothing would be done to Clinton even though she was quite clearly committing felonies left and right with her illegal “private” email server. Comey said as much in his bizarre acquittal in July 2016.
What we learned in his little speech is that there is a heretofore unspoken *other set of rules* known as the “Well, she didn’t really mean it” rules. That other set of rules does not exist for people outside of the Government Party. Try it with the IRS sometime. Or, those with a security clearance, try it with DoD or CIA sometime.
It’s the other set of rules that I think is going to bring us all down. Illegals have their own set of rules now, for example. The law says one thing, but there’s this other set of rules that you and I never heard of called the “GFY rules” which are superior to, and hold veto power over, the regular rules.
The list of individuals and groups above propriety (not only laws) is very long indeed. All coincidently are progressives or allies of progressives.
If you were to go back and listen to Comey’s press conference where he appointed himself Grand Jury, Attorney General, and Judge…he actually says very clearly that current government employees should *not* assume that this little ruling for Clinton applies to them in any way.
A lot of people sort of brushed past that in their outrage that she was let off the hook, but to me that was the absolutely most damning part of his presser that day – that she really was being held to a completely different set of rules, and that those rules would not be applied to others.
Reason #152 why Comey should have been fired a long, long, time ago.
So the Bush family are progressives now?