These are unusual times in Washington, DC, and in the whole country. The popular press and the Democrat party, which is to say, on one side, there are many voices trying to convince the unconvinced that President Trump is surely guilty of terrible acts involving Russian operators who “colluded” with the Trump campaign to put the electoral kibosh on the Hillary Clinton campaign. “Collude” means “conspire” generally and we know that Trump is guilty of that and much more because there is, after all, an investigation ongoing and going and going and “they” wouldn’t be investigating a PRESIDENT, for Heaven’s sake, if he were not guilty of something.
The investigation is under the aegis, which means an obscuring cloak, like a sheep- or goat-skin, of a person named as “Special Counsel” by someone high up in the Department of Justice, usually the Attorney General of the United States. There have been damned few of these. Democrats and the Press can think of only one other, when asked: Archibald Cox, who was the first “Special Prosecutor” (same thing as a special counsel if there actually is a crime to investigate) of the so-called “Watergate Scandal” and whose removal as such by President Nixon caused the resignations of then Attorney General, Elliott Richardson and of his Deputy, William Ruckelshaus over their refusals to fire Cox. Robert Bork, then Solicitor General, automatically became acting Attorney General and it was he who carried out the Presidents LEGAL order to remove Cox.
For Bork his legal exercise of authority, both his and the president’s, partly sealed his fate when he was nominated for the Supreme Court in the Summer of 1987 by President Reagan. Bork had become an enemy of Democrat justice and there are no resentments, there is no umbrage greater or longer-lasting than that of a liberal. Bork fired Cox. Even though Nixon’s brutal ending of the Cox investigations was a time of great Democratic rejoicing – Nixon having sealed his disgrace by that action, what could be more joyous – Bork was the one who provided the means and that was never, ever forgotten. Ted Kennedy, so-called Lion of the Senate, drunken murderer, he, prepared the most outrageous attacks and vilifications to sink Bork before he could even grasp what in Hell was being done to him. It had taken 14 years but justice was finally served… against Bork.
This is an example of one of the forces that mould and shape history: hatred. It is hatred of non-liberals, non-socialists, and it stems from the abiding leftist desire… need… to change humans. Human nature, designed, conservatives tend to believe, by God, is an affront to leftists who believe, essentially, that left-leaning humans can create not just a better world than God could and did, but even better humans than His. Heady stuff, and the fuel of giant resentments, perhaps explaining why liberals are always angry about something and why they are convinced in their hearts that people who disagree with them are in need of regulation and re-education, which require more government and LESS freedom. Freedom, itself, is resented by leftists, socialists, liberals, Democrats. Hence, anyone who defends freedom and less government, is an automatic enemy of the left. With so many enemies all around, it is no surprise that liberals aren’t happy very often.
Because liberals and other leftists are so convinced of their mission to separate people from human nature, they never accept a loss when they do, in fact, lose. What they do is immediately calculate how to win a slightly different fight on the exact same principle that they just lost. First they’ll need to devise a venue upon which the original battle can be recreated, whereupon some modified tactics might bring a victory that was simply not accomplished the first, second or third time. Of course, once the liberal victory is achieved, the result may never, ever be challenged since it is clearly on the correct path of history. None of that reactionary constitutionalism, freedom, independence or individual sovereignty and personal responsibility can be allowed to “weaken” the strength of the liberal welfare state.
After all, the reason socialism hasn’t worked before is because earlier practitioners were not as smart as the current crop. Actually what has always happened was that socialists ran out of money, and not their own. Today’s stripe of leftist, controlling types, have grown up in a world where virtually unbridled debt is somehow “normal.” Maybe we… they, can now afford to give up freedom for the opportunity to be coddled by socialists NOT because we won’t run out of money – that train, with its overpaid unionized crew, left the station long ago. No, it’s because we won’t run out of debt! So far, at least, the cliff’s edge is still out of sight. So long as there is unlimited borrowing from the future, there’s no crying need for wisdom, intelligence, historical reference or basic economics.
It’s sad to think that there are capable people who have made whole careers out of bringing us to this point.
How can we conduct rational discussions of public policy with a group that thinks non-liberal people are less than human and living in a past that they, liberals, hate. Not that liberals want to discuss policy with virtual Neanderthals who cling to guns and religion – what could they possibly add? – but there is a case to be made that what liberals would discuss is how to get conservatives to give up American traditions and historical truths… silly things like mother-father families and working for a living. It is a nearly unbridgeable gulf.
If individuals whose daily life is barely affected by these issues can’t discuss them, how can we expect congress-people to work out conflicts over the same ideas when their entire beings are consumed by re-election? Prudence tells us that there are honest liberals, as we know several just in the Merrimack Valley. And it seems still worthwhile to change their minds, bit by bit.