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THE VIEW FROM HERE - Mankind’s struggle has always been to forge a society where the weak are not prey for the predators. All groups have a few members who are significantly stronger than others and the only way the weak are protected is to form alliances, i.e., governments which protect the weak from the rapists, thieves, and murderers. By grade school everyone knows that one or two bullies can terrorize the entire playground, and the kids’ only protection is the school administration.
When the Roman Senate feared that Julius Caesar was becoming a tyrant after he had crossed the Rubicon River in northern Italy with his army, they set upon him with daggers. In monarchy after monarchy, succession was by murdering one’s own family as seizing power by any means possible was the rule of the powerful. Later, a stronger faction arose to have another war of succession. The evil done by the powerful at the top is the basis of the oldest political philosophy story in Western History, Sodom. The entire city was destroyed by the injustices of the four ruling judges. This was the same theme with which Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and virtually every thinker afterwards struggled – How to have a just society where the few strong do not trample the many weak.
The Declaration of Independence founded our nation on a new concept. “... these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” (Bold added)
Unlike in other nations where the strong ruled and abused everyone, in America the lone weak individual has inalienable rights (unalienable - inalienable = same word), and it is the function of the government to protect the individual. While we were supposed to learn the complexity of governing in school, it’s obvious we did not.
The Constitution, which was designed to protect the inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, limited the powerful every chance it got. The entire document was designed to keep violent, self-centered, evil men from gaining power. Since they knew that power-mongers would gain some power, the Constitution had devices to thwart them and to remove them if need be,.e.g., impeachment.
The Worse Idea Ever Proposed
In 1950 the American Political Science Association (APSA) made a proposal which has essentially ruined our society. Working together, Americans had survived the Great Depression and had prevailed in World War II. The APSA hated the fact that both political parties spanned conservatives and liberals. Many GOP were more liberal than Democrats and vice versa. When they came together in Washington to govern the nation, the Congressmen and Senators were not devoted to partisanship so that their party could trample the other party. Instead, they listened to what their voters back home wanted where many Dems voters wanted what many GOP voters wanted and that dynamic for Washington to have cooperation. July 2, 2018, The New Yorker Magazine, The Rise of McPolitics, by Yascha Mounk
The APSA hated that government moved slowly and they ignored the Declaration and Lincoln’s statement that a house divided against itself cannot stand. The APSA proposed that America should polarize into two separate warring factions where neither’s political platform had a common element. Then, the voters elected one party and its agenda. It was a lunatic proposal. While neither the GOP or Dem could vanquish the other, polarization did destroy cooperation. We’ve reached the point where some would destroy the nation in order to have their way. The goal is to seize power and damn the consequences.
The APSA proposal was a predator’s wet dream – total power to abuse. This dream was not for conservatives or liberals, but a siren song for rapacious power-mongers. For liberals, it was a way for them to impose their desegregation agenda on everyone else. While segregation is per se unconstitutional, that did not mean it was a fact. On the other hand, polarizing the nation into extremists who believed “my way is the only way” psychologically recapitulated the lead up to the Civil War. While integration based on individual inalienable rights of each person without regard to race, creed, color, religion, national origin was the sole value which no American could long oppose, the APSA favored a polarized nation where one group imposed its will on the other.
Slowly, the two political parties moved farther apart. At times, one could blame the South as it became too GOP, and blame the Dems as they became inhospitable to conservative ideas. If one were to be a true GOP, one had to reject any idea from the Dems and vice versa. Thus, the APSA got its desire – a polarized nation. The polarization has led the lunatic MAGA Freedom Caucus to want only what it wants and it wants it now. Wait until 2024 for more lunacy, when the Dems demand slavery reparations.
Polarization Mandates Lies
When a nation is polarized, lies become political currency. There is no room for truth, complexity or admitting that one does not know all the answers. Political speech becomes basically propaganda to satisfy the extremists in order to keep their support. While the MAGA lunatics are the polarizers de jure, if Dems want to be honest, (and they definitely do not), the most polarizing element over the last few decades has been Nancy Pelosi’s Identity Politics and the Wokers. They totally reject the Declaration of Independence where it says all individuals have inalienable rights and instead Wokers insist that Group Rights are paramount. Group Rights as promoted by Pelosi and Wokers result in violent, bloody conflicts. Look how many years Ireland was torn apart; look at the Yugoslavia after Tito passed away; look at the Sunni and Shia. Who can really say that telling Blacks for decades that the deck is stacked against them so that they cannot get ahead and that America owes them billions of dollars did not mislead some poor Blacks to smash and grab, to home invasion robberies, to increase Black on Black crime, while at the same the Woker leaders want to defund the police and District Attorneys like LA’s District Attorney George Gascón think “catch and release” is a wise policy. Few mention the disaster Gangsta Rap had on the image of the Black community; it basically became America’s ID – the exact opposite of Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream Speech. While some notables have grown beyond those early days and are respected role models, one has to be dim witted not to realize that it elevated the worst in our society and unjustly demeaned Blacks.
By the time the angels came to visit Lott in Sodom, had not Sodom’s fate already sealed? Their visit merely allowed Sodom to be Sodom so that Lott’s family could escape before the fire and brimstone.
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. You may email him at [email protected]. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not those of CityWatchLA.com.)
