Tasine Loc: Southwest US

Angelo M. Codevilla is a retired professor of international relations at Boston University. Apart from his wide-ranging (and voluminous) academic writings, Dr. Cordevilla publishes frequently in Commentary, Foreign Affairs, National Review, and the The New Republic. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

"The 2016 election and its aftermath," Codevilla writes, "reflect the distinction, difference, even enmity that has grown exponentially over the past quarter century between America's ruling class and the rest of the country." He elaborates:

"The government apparatus identifies with the ruling class's interests, proclivities, and tastes, and almost unanimously with the Democratic Party. As it uses government power to press those interests, proclivities, and tastes upon the ruled, it acts as a partisan state. This party state's political objective is to delegitimize not so much the politicians who champion the ruled from time to time, but the ruled themselves. Ever since Woodrow Wilson nearly a century and a half ago at Princeton, colleges have taught that ordinary Americans are rightly ruled by experts because they are incapable of governing themselves. Millions of graduates have identified themselves as the personifiers of expertise and believe themselves entitled to rule. Their practical definition of discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, etc., is neither more nor less than anyone's reluctance to bow to them. It's personal. "

Of course, we see this attitude every day - most recently in the differing attitudes displayed by the U.S. senators towards former acting attorney general Sally Yates' testimony this week. Similarly, in the oral arguments on Monday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on the president's proposed travel ban.

Dr. Codevilla elaborates that, since the inauguration:

"Well-nigh the entire ruling class -- government bureaucracies, the judiciary, academia, media, associated client groups, Democratic officials, and Democrat-controlled jurisdictions -- have joined in "Resistance" to the 2016 elections: "You did not win this election," declared Tom Perez recently, the Democratic National Committee's chairman. This is not about Donald Trump's alleged character defects. The Resistance would have arisen against whoever represented Americans who had voted not to be governed as they have been for the past quarter-century. It is a cold civil war against a majority of the American people and their way of life. (emphasis added).

The task confronting statesmen, Codevilla writes, is to keep this "cold civil war" from turning hot. And that, he says, may require a new, pre-Jacksonian definition of federalism to take root. Specifically, Dr. Codevilla argues that:

"Now that identity politics have replaced the politics of persuasion and blended into the art of war, statesmen should try to preserve what peace remains through mutual forbearance toward jurisdictions that ignore or act contrary to federal laws, regulations, or court orders. "

We need, he writes, to limit "the U.S. government's reach to what it can grasp without wrecking what remains of our national cohesion." Specifically:

"Much of the heat in contemporary American politics comes from the attempt, principally from the Left but increasingly from the Right as well, to force the entire nation to live in precisely the same way with precisely the same values. Statesmanship should begin by questioning and moderating that tendency."

For example, much of what Codevilla identifies as the sources of "the heat" would be eliminated if a conservative Supreme Court overruled many of its social issues precedents and simply let the states go their differing ways. Whether that could be accomplished in time to hold the Union together is a matter worth pondering.

So is Dr. Codevilla's analysis.

Read complete article at:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/05/our_cold_civil_war.html
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In my view this analysis of America's condition and the reason for such a sad condition is the most sane, most logical, most honest assessment of what a few people are forcing upon an entire nation. It should be stopped ASAP. And President Trump could accomplish that if we had a few more honest journalists, a few more honest politicians, a few more honest judges. But where do we go to find them?

Michael Rich Loc: Lapine Oregon

Get the Universities to pull back on the reigns of societal control ...too much indoctrination and too little education has us where we as a Nation linger today...away from...GOD...

Tasine Loc: Southwest US

Yes, I agree. I believe a good solution to the failure of universities would be to stop federal student loans.....attendance would drop like a rock, the universities would have to cut back, and I doubt they would even know HOW to reduce spending or let excess personnel go. Perhaps they would even have to close shop. Wouldn't that be a shame? LOL. It is pointless to pay for non teaching of facts and of issues that have nothing to do with earning any sort of a living. Every class that offers fluff classes should not be offered. If a student wants fluff, let him have his fluff for FREE and let him get is anywhere besides on a university campus.

Michael Rich Loc: Lapine Oregon

Agreed!..