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?

Some days I get up to 10 or more requests for donations "to stop the leftists". There was a time I did donate - when I had more money and when our government functioned as a true government. Those days are GONE for good as far as I am concerned. Comes the day republicans actually prosecute some of these leftists who are trying to steal our constitutional government so that they can do as they please, and as soon as a goodly number of them are sent to prison, NOT a cushy type prison, but one like Leavenworth for the crimes of treason, sedition, or malfeasance of office, THEN I MAY send some money to help these groups who pretend to represent us stay in business, but UNTIL that happens, NO MORE MONEY FROM ME FOR ANYTHING will be sent to the beggars in DC who pretend to try to help Americans.

I wonder how readers may feel about doing the same. If they don't do their jobs with the money they are regularly PAID, then it is folly to send them MORE with the silly idea that it will change things. I'd rather invest in protection than in folly.

I totally agree! It constitutes theft by virtue of threat of penalty which could include prison time. Theft at the point of a gun. It shows the picture: You and I have to obey the laws written by Congress; apparently government does NOT have to obey the same laws.

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I totally agree with you re these three loud mouthed liberals!

No, I don't remember it specifically. Not sure just WHY, but I had just gotten out of the Army Nurse Corps and was trying to adapt to a new hubby and a job at a county hospital's surgery center as a new employee...that must have been during that time. But not all Republicans are conservative,and that is a huge problem. Those who aren't are very, very good liars. President Johnson was a disgusting human(?) being, right up to his death.

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It is readily explainable. I believe all leftists are in fact mentally ill. I believe they are psychopaths without conscience,without manners, without caring one little bit about anyone but themselves. They never feel or express regrets, sorrow, or true happiness. They are sub-human and anti-America for some foul reason they cannot explain. They do not truly CARE about victims of any sort, they accept blacks solely club with which to bash conservatives who DO care more about the blacks than the left does, and so many blacks seem to fall into the left's trap.....the left doesn't really care about blacks or any other minority, but they use them for their own purposes.

I'm here so seldom anymore that I forget about the emoticons that are available. I spend most of my online time at American Thinker these days.

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;-) denotes a wink and a smile (friendship), at least it does in MY posts.

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/al-weaver-28976775

;-)

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I don't know who Al Weaver is. Does he write for a conservative or a progressive site?

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I'm sorry to hear that. I have trusted Trey Gowdy as long as I have known who he is. I disagree with him, but that isn't the reason I am now disappointed in him. I'm disappointed in him because he sounds as though the rats have gotten to him and threatened him, and shut him up. Trey had to deal with the FBI on other issues, and he KNEW there was illegal activity going on and he was stopped from doing anything about it. He provided too many sugary praises of the FBI in this article and doesn't SOUND like Gowdy, and this all after he had to break Comey. Comey is either crooked or working secretly and Gowdy felt he had to protect him. Your article doesn't convince me at all. It IS possible the FBI/Comey has turned honest, but I'd have to see it with my own eyes to believe it.

The article you provided may be right, but there is no more reason to believe it than there is reason to believe my post.

FTA by By Larry Klayman, Chairman and General Counsel
Freedom Watch
March 5, 2017
E mailed to me:

Obama's Denial of Trump Wiretaps Not Credible!

Federal Judge Leon Asked to Step In!

By Larry Klayman, Chairman and General Counsel
Freedom Watch
March 5, 2017

The newest revelations that the Obama administration wiretapped, that is "bugged," the president and all of his men in the lead up and after the November 8, 2017, elections are not surprising. In this regard, for over 2 years the highest levels of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have been secretly investigating the "harvesting" of highly confidential information including financial records of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, other justices, over 156 judges, prominent businessmen like Donald Trump, and public activists like me.

In this regard, a whistleblower named Dennis Montgomery, a former NSA/CIA contractor, came forward to FBI Director Comey with 47 hard drives and over 600 million pages of largely classified information, under grants of use and derivative use immunity, which I obtained for him with the U.S Attorney for the District of Columbia. Later, Montgomery, who suffers from a potentially fatal brain aneurism, testified under oath, for over 2 ½ hours before FBI Special Agents Walter Giardina and William Barnett in a secure room at the FBI's field office in Washington, D.C. The testimony was under oath and videotaped and I have reminded the FBI recently to preserve this evidence.

I have also met on several occasions with the staff of Chairman Bob Goodlatte of the House Judiciary Committee, since judges have been illegally surveilled, and asked them to inquire of FBI Director Comey and his General Counsel James Baker why their Montgomery investigation has appeared to have been "buried" for the last few years. They have done so, but as yet have not received, to the best of my knowledge, a clear response.

In addition I have gone back to one of the few intellectually honest judges on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (nearly all of the rest, save for another great judge Royce C. Lamberth, are politically biased appointees of either Presidents Clinton or Obama), and asked him to move forward to trial with the cases which I filed in 2013 against Obama and his intelligence agencies over the mass spying of hundreds of millions of Americans. Not coincidentally, before Edward Snowden revealed this unconstitutional conduct by the National Security Agency (NSA), which then was run under the direction of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), James Clapper, Clapper lied under oath to Congress, denying that this illegal surveillance was occurring under his watch. That he was never prosecuted for perjury at a minimum, not to mention that it is a crime to wiretap innocent Americans without "probable cause," is a testament to the reality that official Washington is afraid of the intelligence agencies, knowing that they can dig up "dirt" to destroy their political and personal lives. Indeed, this may help explain Chief Justice Roberts' inexplicable last minute flip on the Obamacare case before SCOTUS. What, for instance, did Clapper and the NSA/CIA have on Roberts that may have "convinced" him to rubber stamp President Barack Obama's unconstitutional Affordable Care Act.

Judge Leon, in the course of my cases before him (see www.freedomwatchusa.org), has already issued two preliminary injunction rulings ordering that the illegal mass surveillance cease and desist. He termed this unconstitutional violation of our Fourth Amendment, "almost Orwellian," a reference to George Orwell's prophetic book "1984" about "Big Brother." Judge Leon's rulings then prompted Congress to amend the Patriot Act and call them the USA Freedom Act, which sought to leave telephonic metadata in the hands of the telephone providers, like Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T, until a warrant was obtained showing probable cause that a target or subjects communications with terrorists or a crime was being committed.

It now appears that the Obama intelligence agencies, as I predicted to Judge Leon, have again ignored and flouted the law, and at the direction of the former president Obama and/or his men like Clapper illegally spied on targets or subjects like Mr. Trump and his associates, including Gen. Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser. This is why I have pushed Judge Leon to move my cases along to trial, and have offered to bring Montgomery forth to be interviewed by the judge in camera in the interim, as he has a security clearance to probe Montgomery about classified information which I cannot and have not accessed.

Legally speaking, my cases against the intelligence agencies also encompass the illegal surveillance of President Trump and his men, as what apparently occurred shows a pattern of unconstitutional conduct that at trial would raise a strong evidentiary inference that this illegal behavior continues to occur. Our so-called government, represented by dishonest Obama loyal attorneys in the corrupted Federal Programs Branch of the Justice Department, continues to maintain that they cannot for national security reasons confirm or deny the mass surveillance against me or anyone else. I have asked Judge Leon to enter a permanent injunction against Obama and his political hacks at the NSA and CIA, many of whom are still there and are bent on destroying the Trump presidency and attempting to blackmail prominent Americans, like me, who might challenge the destructive socialist/pro-Muslim agenda of the Obama-Clinton-Soros left.

My legal efforts to use the uncompromised court of Judge Leon to get to the truth about and issue orders remedying, and later monitoring the unconstitutional Fourth Amendment violations of Obama and his henchmen like Clapper, is of crucial importance. Congressional investigations as President Trump's White House requested Sunday, are likely to result in yet another cover-up. Appearances by so-called prominent Republicans like Marco Rubio and others on the talk shows Sunday do not inspire confidence, as Rubio and company on the Senate Intelligence Committee harbor animus to Trump, the president having vanquished the Republican establishment during last fall's primary season. And, even when it was shown that DNI Clapper had lied under oath to their committee, they, as usual, did nothing!
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As I have said a thousand times: our government is our greatest enemy: filled with filth, criminals, hate filled lefties and Muslims

Your thoughts?

Ditto!

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What a wonderful story this is, and how I enjoyed it through the tears it brought out. Those were great years in America - most people were kind and decent people, whole families existed, benevolence came from real people, not the government. Crime existed, but was nowhere as widespread as today, and neighborhoods were generally healthy and free of major crime. Many were poor, but few ever complained about their circumstances and they worked hard to get out of those circumstances without any whining. Immigrants actually WANTED to live the American life. I don't know about everyone else, but I'd trade today for yesteryear in a heartbeat.

Thanks, Slatten,for sharing such a rainbow in these days of constant storms within our political arena.

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I hear you! I still want him to just announce on the WH mic and do his tweets, and maybe a live presentation - without press interfering with insults.