CommentsA VIEW FROM HERE - The Declaration of Independence based the nation on individual inalienable rights and rejected any type of Group Rights.
There is a school of constitutional scholarship called Declarationism which posits that the Declaration’s principles of inalienable rights should be used in construing the US Constitution. Abe Lincoln espoused the principles of Declarationism when he said that a house divided cannot stand. The nation could not continue on the basis of group rights where one race could be master and another race be slaves, since the Declaration said all men had the same inalienable rights.
Power Mongers Hate Individual Rights
Power mongers turn to Group Rights, as typified by both Right Wing White Supremacists and by Pelosi’s Identity Politics (aka Wokerism). When a society’s basic values are individual inalienable rights, it is very hard to stir up hatred of another group. The founding fathers were steeped in the religious wars which brought bloodshed and destruction to Europe for hundreds of years after Martin Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517. As most historians acknowledge, those wars were usually fought more over secular matters. Appeals to Holy Mother The Church or the purity of Protestantism, however, provided the emotionalism and blind loyalty to the group where facts counted for nothing.
The core of any Group Right’s movement is that it is 100% correct, the out-group is 100% wrong, and never shall the twain meet. Since life itself does not breakdown in such a simplistic dichotomy, Group Rights is filled with absurdities. The Dems want to corral the Gays under the Identity Politics banner but the major leaders of the Gays are White. The major groups which viciously attacks Asians on the streets are minorities and not Whites. (Only two of the 20 people arrested for anti-Asian hate crimes in NYC in 2020 were white. The rest were minorities.)
For its part the GOP has seized upon the fervor of the anti-Freedom elements of the religious right to fight against Roe v Wade. The great value of gathering people into a group where loyalty is far more vital than facts and logic is that the religious people who oppose abortion fail to recognize that Roe v Wade is based on individual liberty. They are oblivious to the fact that if the government has the constitutional right to outlaw all abortions, then the government also has the right to mandate abortions.
Both the Dems’ anti-white Wokerism and the GOP anti-Freedom crusade against Roe v Wade make money of their respective parties. Both parties spew lies and misinformation faster than Mt. Vesuvius covered Pompeii in lava flows. The main difference is that traditionally the Dems’ lies have been more like soft core porn, while the GOP favors explicit hard core disinformation. The fundraisers in both parties are overjoyed that the US Supreme Court did not immediately overturning the Texas anti-freedom, anti-abortion statute. In fundraising potential, abortion ranks high along with the Whites vs Minorities. The more extreme the GOP’s position, the better for the Dems’ fundraising and vice versa.
(Roe v Wade is based on the rights of privacy which is a facet of the Declaration’s and the US Constitution’s right of liberty. Two persons’ inalienable rights are involved. Thus, Roe v Wade sets up a mechanism which balances the rights of the woman and the rights of the emerging fetus. In the first trimester, the woman’s inalienable rights control, during the second trimester reasonable health regulations limit the woman’s rights, and in the third trimester the unborn’s inalienable rights predominate. A decision that outlaws abortions deprives women of the inalienable right of liberty and in some cases of her life. Abortion any time for any reason likewise tramples upon the unborn’s inalienable rights).
The Majority of Americans Reject Both Extremes
The majority of Americans are centrists, which is a fact that the left wing Wokers and the GOP Right both detest. The Dem and GOP extremes are united in one thing – the necessity to kill off any centrist consensus on anything. As a minor footnote, both the Dems and the GOP abhor Declarationists who have no room for group rights, be it Dems’ Wokerism or GOP White Supremacy aka ethno-Europeanism. A Declarationist’s way to describe the current national division is not Right vs Left or GOP vs Dem but rather the Dem & GOP united against the centrist Americans.
Now Back to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky
One still does not know whether Walensky is recklessly incompetent or whether she intentionally sabotaged Joe Biden’s entire Presidency. Her May 13, 2021 announcement that vaxed people did not have to wear masks was a political attack on the GOP by singling out the unvaxed to wear masks indoors while good vaxed Dems could be maskless. The ruling was anti-science in that everything known about the viciousness of Delta Variant said to use extreme caution. In his biggest political faux paus to that date, Joe Biden then started attacking the GOP for its Covid policies. That killed Biden’s centrist approach for everyone to mask up.
“Lewinsky’s statement undercuts the core concept of “Public Health.” There are times when collective action is crucial and Lewinsky’s destroying the growing public consensus to wear masks is unforgivable.” May 17, 2021, CityWatch, How the CDC Stabbed Joe Biden in the Back
If silly little me sitting on my perch on the south slope of the The Oaks in Los Feliz could see the ramifications, all the smarty-pants advisers in Washington had to have grasped the implications. Nonetheless, Biden followed Walensky’s lead and his message ceased to be centrist that “we can do this together” and became “the GOP is killing us.”
Had Joe Biden’s centrist approach succeeded in having the nation reach herd immunity by July 4th, that would have been horrible for the forces of national division. Nothing pulls the rug out from under Pelosoi’s divisive Wokerism more than for minorities and whites work together to defeat a common enemy. The entire structure of American political life is that Whites and Minorities are mortal enemies who must fight over a shrinking pie. What horrors could have followed our nation’s reaching herd immunity by July 4th? A centrist coalition of Americans who favor facts over lies and decency over political treachery?
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. The views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch. You may email him at [email protected] )
