Democrats and never-Trump Republicans assert that Trump must not be reelected because he threatens the Constitution. Peggy Noonan goes so far as to say, in her most recent WSJ column, that Kamala Harris should move to a more centrist position on a range of issues in order to improve her chances of winning and thereby negating Trump’s perceived threat to Constitutional government.
The problem with this formulation is that the Democrats don’t much like Constitutional government, and indeed don’t much like the Constitution itself. (And by ‘Democrats’, I mean not only the Democrat officeholders and politicians, but also the larger Party, including the academics, bureaucrats, and media people who are the party’s ideologues and the beneficiaries of its polices and who think themselves entitled to be the kingmakers or prince-electors of America.)
For example, here is Hillary Clinton, calling for Americans to be civilly or even criminally charged for ‘misinformation.’ Here is Kamala herself, asserting that Trump has lost his free speech privileges and that his Twitter account (this is from 2019) should be taken down…and expressing dismay that social media sites can speak directly to millions of people without any level of oversight. Tim Walz says “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech”…the definitions of which, of course, he surely expects to be edicted by people ideologically aligned with himself. Democrat Representative Jamie Raskin has been a leading figure in Congress opposing efforts to investigate and curtail massive censorship programs coordinated by the Biden administration.
Many academics and journalists–representing professions that are highly Democrat-aligned–have attacked the very foundations of free speech and constitutional government. For example: New York Times book critic Jennifer Szalai scoffs at what she calls “Constitution worship.” In another New York Times piece, titled “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” two law professors (one from Harvard and one from Yale) call for America to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school, is author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States,” published last month. There are more examples at the link.
Democrats have also called for expanding the membership of the Supreme Court, for purposes of what used to be called court-packing, and been extremely tolerant of the ‘heckler’s veto’…indeed, often now the ‘thug’s veto’…to shut down speech which is considered Badthink.
This is not a matter of a few rhetorical excesses; there is clearly a very broad-based and multi-layered movement against free speech–and toward further centralization of power–among prominent and influential Democrats.
When Democrats cast themselves as defenders of democracy, I am reminded of the phrase ‘guided democracy’ as employed by the Indonesian ruler Sukarno to describe his system.
Many people forget that most official oaths are not sworn in favor of “the current administration of the United States government”, but to the Constitution of the United States.
Lots of actual traitors out there now.
I consider it to be highly likely that this could be the final election in this country that can be possibly considered to be real. Or it could not. In the absence of a societal belief in the legitimacy and integrity of the electoral process, there is no basis for claiming consent of the governed. At which point the Social Contract breaks down.
What are the odds that either side will consider the election results to be legitimate if they lose?
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai….Roger Simon cites Mark Halperin that “millions of Democrats would suffer from a psychological collapse that would create the “greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country”.
I hope not. The fact that Trump has already been president may, if combined with the right kind of words and actions from Trump, minimize this…and maybe we can all try to be calming influences on the anti-Trumpers in our lives.
Roger Simon link:
https://americanrefugees.substack.com/p/who-will-the-dems-replace-kamala
bobby b….treason is defined very narrowly in the Constitution, for good reason:
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
I don’t think violation of the Oath could be considered treason under this clause, unless it were accompanied by some kind of action clearly favoring an enemy.
Democrats have hated the Constitution since Woodrow Wilson at least because it puts limits on the executive..
What are the odds that either side will consider the election results to be legitimate if they lose?
I’d say approximately zero.
I’ve already seen on X plenty of assertions that the steal ™ is on again, including claims about truckloads of ballots already on the road along with people on the scene in North Carolina noticing that the democrat governor deliberately delayed rescue efforts to the red-leaning areas affected by Helene. On the other side, the mouth breathing morons of the left have never stopped frothing at the mouth that Trump will send them to prison, even though he didn’t send them to prison the last time he was president.
Having followed US elections since I was a child, I’m amazed that I’m supposed to accept that somehow it will take days or weeks to count ballots in certain states. Functioning countries with real elections don’t have that problem.
About the Constitution, why are we even having a discussion? The left plainly hates it and wants it to go away. The lip service they used to give to it was just that- lip service. It should have fooled no one, especially since they’ve been raving against it for generations, including- as noted- when Woodrow Wilson was president.
I don’t think violation of the Oath could be considered treason under this clause, unless it were accompanied by some kind of action clearly favoring an enemy.
Again, the left plainly hates the Constitution and wants it gone. If they somehow manage to “win” the upcoming election by their usual tactic of endless fraud, that will certainly result in the de facto end of that document as any sort of restraint upon their savagery. People will notice- no, people have already noticed how little the law and common sense matter to them.
Why should the left imagine that the limits written down in a dead letter they openly despise will somehow continue to limit the actions of anyone else?
”The fact that Trump has already been president may, if combined with the right kind of words and actions from Trump, minimize this…”
The only possible words and actions from Trump that could minimize this would be total capitulation to the Democrats’ agenda.
”…maybe we can all try to be calming influences on the anti-Trumpers in our lives.”
The only possible calming influence you can have on the anti-Trumpers is total capitulation to their demands.
Mirrors my thoughts and nice citations as well.
This is a 120-year old battle coming to a possible climax here in the next few months
Author confuses the Constitution, need for a law abiding society and a fair or just society as the latter two being an impingement on the Constitution by the Dems. This narrow perspective doesn’t deal with the serious illegalities the GOP has undertaken. From convictions for electoral fraud, shenanigans of Karl Rove, the insurrection led by Trump et al, the hundreds of convictions ensuing, the removal of the franchise by the GOP from millions by legal artifice, an order of magnitude greater GOP gerrymander, deceptive claims – all in all an ability to see the spec in the Dems eye but not the tree trunk in the GOP’s.
From the same people who believe in Q, yet deny science, who argue for conspiracy theories of evil intent as opposed to corporate elites attempting and achieving corporate state capture. If corporate elites do not have legislative capture explain why 64% of Americans can’t find $500 in an emergency, the minimum wage being below subsistence.
The theft of democracy is aided and abetted by those who are told they have an entitlement – yet are unable to achieve positive socio-economic outcomes for themselves due to…minorities or some other plated excuse they desperately seek to blame anyone but the corporate elites and their corporations that concentrate the bulk of wealth in this country for themselves. The Gini coefficient agrees.
The lack of education exampled here is not reflective of the level of rational thought exampled by the Chicago school. It is indelibly puerile.
the mouth breathing morons of the left have never stopped frothing at the mouth that Trump will send them to prison, even though he didn’t send them to prison the last time he was president.
Let’s hope all the LGBTMAPDQ+ advocates in elementary school are prosecuted, jailed, and lose their licenses for child porn.
The Left and Right are both correct.
There is—incredibly—a fundamental disagreement in America over sexually mutilating children.
Democrats claim mutilation liberates children to be truly who they are. People who oppose trans liberation should have their children taken from them and then be punished for their non-support.
Decent people want every social worker, psychologist, nurse, doctor, teacher who advocated or participated in the mutilation of children imprisoned or dead.
@ Bier Trappist. Shennanigans…oh my, not that. And as recently as twenty years ago too, with no mention of Kerry stealing Wisconsin.
Millions denied the franchise, you say. That would be a large number, requiring some, you know, evidence, father than mere assertion.
The belief that 64% of Americans could not find $500 in an emergency is simply false. The study in question asked if people would find it difficult to do immediately. Moving money or delaying a purchase was not included.
And not only puerile, but INDELIBLY puerile. It’s sounds fun to say, but I’m trying to picture what it actually means.
Some people find that a little caffeine in the morning helps them focus.
In the email this morning, two posts: The Rational Case for Trump, by Maxim Lott
https://www.maximumtruth.org/p/the-rational-case-for-trump
and The Rational Case for Harris, by Sean Culleton
https://www.maximumtruth.org/p/the-rational-case-for-harris
PubliusII…important point about Woodrow Wilson. He was opposed to the very idea of the separation of powers, arguing for this viewpoint based on extremely simplistic reasoning about the “organic” nature of government and the assertion that an organism could not have “organs offset against each other as checks, and live.”
One would think that anyone who had run any kind of organization would understand the need for “organs offset against each other as checks.” even at the simple level of an auditing department and the separation of payment authorization from payment execution…and, of course, the concepts of feedback control and homeostasis clearly demonstrate the need for those “organs offset against each other” in any complex system.
But when people are hungry for power, they tend to ignore chains of reasoning that could get in the way of its pursuit.
My tenant gave me my Colorado ballot. It was mailed to him next door because I moved to the other side of my duplex since the last election and never changed my address with the Secretary of State. So I went on the SecState website and changed my address. A week later I received another ballot at my address so now I have two. Of course I’ll shred the first one but still, I wonder if CO’s “gold standard” mail-in ballot election system would reject one of the ballots if I used both.
Wilson drank of the soup of German philosophy, whose wellspring was Kant who disdained natural rights, thats according to Popper, whose interpretation, Mark Levin noticed, hence his Congressional Government thesis at John Hopkins, and apres le deluge,
David Foster
October 21, 2024 at 9:05 pm
bobby b….treason is defined very narrowly in the Constitution, for good reason:
I know the narrow statutory definition, but I’m referring to the older, more general description of treason as opposing what you have previously sworn allegiance to.
The statutory definition is too flighty for my tastes. What is treason on Jan 5th could become patriotism if the fraudulent vote had been overturned. Do we owe allegiance to Biden, or to the Constitution?
“Free speech” described as a privilege – that sets my teeth on edge.
No – free speech is a right. A natural human right. Not a privilege bestowed on us by our so-called bettors.
ErisGuy: There is a very very very small number of people who have intractable gender identity dysphoria (a neurological condition). However, some traditionalists reject the very idea of GID, which can be a hardship for the genuinely transgender. So lots of fashionable liberals therefore unconditionally embrace any and all forms of transgenderism, including the large number of perverts and culture radicals who exploit transgenderism for thrills, and also gross overdiagnosis of GID. That has resulted in the wanton mutilation of thousands of children.
Unfortunately, there is a very small baby in this immense tub of dirty bathwater: a tiny number of cases of children who actually have intractable GID. Banning transition for minors will eliminate mutilation after false diagnosis, but it will also force the genuinely transgendered to go through unwanted puberty.
Governor Kasich of Ohio vetoed such a ban, because he was approached by families with transgender children, who (the children) pleaded with him to veto. He did – which leaves the door open to more overdiagnosis and mutilation.
There’s no good simple answer.
“CapitalistRoader
October 22, 2024 at 10:19 am”
It depends on what county you are in. In my county I have known our county clerk [and for that matter his father who has held elective office too] since the clerk was a pre-teen boy. Here in Colorado the county clerk runs elections and vote counts. Our clerk is a hardcore Constitutionalist. In more populated counties run by Leftists if they noticed the doubled ballots both would be counted for the Democrat regardless of the vote and if caught they would blame you.
Subotai Bahadur
@ David > “I don’t think violation of the Oath could be considered treason under this clause, unless it were accompanied by some kind of action clearly favoring an enemy.”
Does this qualify?
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2024/10/22/pentagon-suspects-employee-of-iranian-origin-in-israeli-strike-plan-leak-report/
David,
I finally got to your “rational” links. I haven’t had time to read them both, mainly because of the differences between them.
Each of the points for Trump is followed by a reasonably concise paragraph or two of support. The first point for Kamla is that she is best for the economy, followed by paragraph after paragraph of hand waving trying to sell that.
Looking on, the pattern repeats clear to the end of the page. Me thinks the pundit doth protest too much. If the point was true, it wouldn’t take a half chapter to illustrate and explain. I may try to wade through the rest but I find my tolerance for nonsense ain’t what it used to be and it was never that high to begin with.
Some quick responses to the some of the good comments above:
1) While there is a tiny percentage of the population that has gender dysphoria, the transgender movement is at its heart (as with so much) a political rather than a medical project. Once you unhitch gender identity from biological sex and then make that identity dependent on individual choice, you undermine the idea of distinctive sex differences in society under the leftist principles that social and legal norms must accommodate them. In fact the term “project” is specific since many on the Left see this as a long-term, step-by-step effort to undermine traditional society
2) Always keep in mind that not only is the conduct of elections left to the states which are sovereign entities, but that while the actual conduct of the elections are left to political sub-units such as counties that those political sub-units have no sovereign authority. A county needs to follow state law and regulation, it may appeal those laws and regulations but it must go through state court.
This became a big issue in the 2022 Arizona state-level elections when several Republican-majority counties, in protest over the shenanigans in Maricopa County, tried to withhold their certifications. Didn’t work
3) To David’s point regarding treason, there is an application of treason through legal term and custom. I wrote about the Iran-leak case earlier. If it was to be prosecuted it would be done so under various espionage laws given the lack of a formal state of war
What would be interesting and I think good for everyone is to prosecute the leaker(s) for treason given that Iran has not only declared the destruction of the US as a key aim, but has actively killed Americans.
It might not work as a legal maneuver, but it might end the fun people have in leaking information to a foreign power. Right now it is seen as a game based on the whims and wills of individual conscience,
Also I would change the statute so that the means for capital punishment for those sentenced to death for treason would be hanging.
From a GWU professor: Reminds me of the young man who said, circa 1933: ‘We Germans are so happy. We are free of freedom.”
https://x.com/BKCHarvard/status/1849134425776243025
We have been in a state of cold civil war for some decades now. The Left sees themselves as the True and Real Americans, with the Right being Amerikkkans, the twisted & evil counterparts of the True and Real Americans. And those on the Left, for the most part, really are loyal and patriotic citizens of the Deep State of America. They’re faithful to their oaths to the Constitution of the Deep State of America – which has the same text as the Constitution of Deplorable MAGA America, but a radically different interpretation (See various rulings and dissents from the Supreme Court over the last few decades).
And so the Left is willing to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship” – and commit any atrocity – to defend their Constitution and ensure the triumph of their America, and to see their worst enemy, ‘ultra-MAGA semi-fascist Amerikkka,’ consigned to the dustbin of history.