The Cold Civil War

Posted on | April 3, 2012 | 18 Comments

by Smitty

My current commute is ~45 minutes. I like to use that time to check in with Stacy, and continue the attempts to guide him along paths of TweeDeck righteousness. We’ll get him there.

I also like to chat up my dad, a retired Navy E-7 with a GED who may or may not be a representative sample of the ‘boomer‘ set (he actually predates Stacy’s cadre by just over a year) who, on the cusp of retirement, is shocked, Shocked! to discover there’s a Commie in the White House.

Dad, who quit smoking after about 40 years, just had his blood sugar clock in at 200+. He’s controlling it nicely with diet and exercise (two things he’d paid scant attention these decades), thank heaven. He’d already been irritated, since his mid-eighties retirement from the Navy, with that relative success story in government-run medicine, the Veteran’s Administration. As the pill-eating stage of life looms, the thought of ObamaCare not only offends him as a case study in stillborn policy, but also as the antithesis of what he spent 23 precious years of his life defending against: a threat to liberty.

What would the third POTUS do?
My task, in these conversations, is to offer dad the value of the education the taxpayers have poured into my head (thanks!), as well as the blogs I consume at just below the addiction level. Like TweetDeck, an RSS reader is a powerful tool. I recently blew away about 75% of my subscriptions, because the signal-to-noise ration was too far gone. One of the keepers was The Corner, where there was a choice Thomas Jefferson quote from 1807 that cuts to the heart of our Constitutional crisis:

Congress may make the law; whatever is proper to be executed by way of a treaty, the President & Senate may enter into the treaty; whatever is to be done by a judicial sentence, the judges may pass the sentence. Nothing is more likely than that their enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us go on then perfecting it, by adding, by way of amendment to the Constitution, those powers which time & trial show are still wanting. But it has been taken too much for granted, that by this rigorous construction the treaty power would be reduced to nothing.

and, later:

I confess, then, I think it important, in the present case, to set an example against broad construction, by appealing for new power to the people.

Read the whole, beautiful thing. It’s refreshing to read of a President who grasped that he was ultimately a servant of the people. That’s the sort of thing dad expects.

Doing your job is unprecedented? Only if your name is Barack Obama.
Via Sissy Willis on Twitter (Stacy, your attention is called to the TweetDeck agent) we have the contrast of #OccupyResoluteDesk quoted at Red State taking a far less American tack on the question of the source of power in our nation, with a response from Leon Wolf:

(BHO):“Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

Look, I’m not here to debate the finer points of Marbury v. Madison with anyone, but the fact remains that since that decision was handed down over 200 years ago, it has not exactly been “unprecedented and extraordinary” for the Supreme Court to overturn laws passed by Congress (no matter the size of the majority). In fact, it happens all the time. That is the entire point of the doctrine of judicial review, first announced in Marbury and affirmed without serious challenge ever since.

Read the whole thing. But understand that, past Obama’s bluster, ObamaCare is the antithesis of everything our system of limited government is intended to do:

Who:A small number of people of only one party drafted a bill in relative secrecy.
What: A bill so vast that no one could hope to achieve due diligence in reading it, estimating its costs, or even have an honest grasp of its Constitutionality.
Where: The location where ObamaCare was crafted is about the only straight piece of the puzzle.
When: The shenanigans of the timing for ObamaCare are one of the less murky aspects of it. Other than the fact that is was rammed through so quickly that no one read it.
How: All of the drama of the Town Halls, the Scott Brown election, the attempt to deem ObamaCare passed to avoid personal responsibility, the propaganda drama of the Word that Rhymes With ‘Bigger’ allegedly being used on Representatives. . .are we supposed to forget that, Barack?

I’m saving the question of Why for the conclusion, but I will claim Progressive and Postmodern reasons when I get there. But first, a couple of other points. Dad hates these sorts of digressions, but I don’t often break away from TweetDeck for a real McCain-ian stemwinder, so bear with me.

Flogging the SCOTUS like a rented mule
Ace links to Mickey Kaus, wondering aloud if the details of Friday’s initial vote at the Supreme Court may have been leaked to #OccupyResoluteDesk.

Kaus wondered a few days ago if/when we’d get a leak from the result of the conference vote — the first, non-binding vote by the judges.
This is the hottest question in the nation– could any wife or husband not help but beg to be told? And what about all those clerks? Secrets are fun to keep, but even more fun to tell!

Let’s see here: Elena Kagan on the softball diamond with the iPhone, or Sonia Sotomayor sharing wisdom in the restaurant with the Blackberry? Why would they not tell their patron? The vote may have been secret, but it wasn’t secret secret. Perhaps the two ladies have some sense of obligation to the Constitution and their respective oaths. I will cheerfully retract my impingement of their honor if they join the opinion that ObamaCare is as anti-American as the Yamato, beside the fact that ObamaCare has a similar displacement.
Yid with Lid notes the pattern at work:

This is not the first time this President has tried to intimidate the court. During his 2010 State of the Union Address, he lied about the court’s decision in the Citizens United Case,

“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.” Justice Alito shook his head and mouthed, “Not true.”

Alito was correct the POTUS was twisting the truth for his own political ends.

The Supreme Court, flawed though it may be, is almost the last remaining impediment to BHO’s power, at least within the Beltway.

Now, why?
In discussing current events with dad, merely hating on the Commies is not enough. That’s just present-tense, emotional outlet. One needs to understand why, in order to formulate a solid strategy. While I offered a think piece on the topic a few weeks ago, let me summarize that in closing.

Postmodernism rejects the notion of Truth outright. Reason without Truth is a boat with no rudder; no forcing function to keep it on a stable course. Lacking such, Postmodern politicians are all after power. Their own, really, but couched in terms of the state. State power also hates liberty, the power of the individual. Whenever a Postmodernist speaks something correlating with history, fact, and reality, it is either accidental, or camouflage.
Progressives don’t believe in liberty. Tracking the teachings of Gustav le Bon, the Progressives behave as though the American people are a vast, mindless mob, suitable for herding. The iron bureaucratic rod of ObamaCare is thus a fun way to fetish power, to rake in a boatload of cash on the stock market, and a civic duty to keep the hoi polloi properly penned.

This old lust for power of these Postmodern Progressives represents a return to medieval days. When power is held by few, having the correct patron is paramount. Ask Sotomayor and Kagan, who can be relied upon to disgrace themselves and try do defend ObamaCare with their opinions. How could 26 of 57 states be correct in their suit against The State? (Please prove me wrong, ladies). When the public debt finally destroys the economy, having the correct friends and speaking correct thought will become more important than liberty.
And so history will reflect some years hence, and decide we are currently in a Cold Civil War. The zombie of Communism has arrived, even though the Cold War officially ended a score of years ago. To finish the deed that the Soviet Union started, the destruction of the exceptional American Constitutional order, #OccupyResoluteDesk is striving to foment this second Civil War. To divide Americans racially, economically, and spiritually, and so ease the conquest.
Thus, resist we much. 2012 is not just ‘the most important election of our lifetimes’. It is shaping up to be the climax of this Cold Civil War, where zombie Communism is thrown back, and a third, post-Progressive era begins. Or the birth of AmSoc.

Update: Jimmie Bise offers a great chaser.

Category: Barack Obama, Democrats, Health Care, Progressivism, Supreme Court

Comments

18 Responses to “The Cold Civil War”

PaulLemmen
April 3rd, 2012 @ 8:57 am

Right on the money Smitty! As my own writings on this subject show, we are of a mind! I’ve even used the term “Cold Civil War” recently …
lyle
April 3rd, 2012 @ 9:22 am

Great post!
Charles
April 3rd, 2012 @ 10:05 am

You needn’t talk of civil war, the white flag has been run up.

What was most interesting about the third day of oral argument was that Justice Stephen Breyer essentialy argued from the bench that the 26 states don’t have to take ObamaCare and it would be an abuse of discretion for the Secretary of HHS or the President to punish them for that decision.
richard mcenroe
April 3rd, 2012 @ 10:31 am

Interestingly, when reviewing complex laws for Constitutionality, one of SCOTUS’ chief mechanisms is to review the debates and discussions that preceded the passage of the law, to get a sense of what Congress was at least trying to do and whether they’d structured a Consitutional mechanism for doing it.

SCOTUS cannot be happy that there WAS no such debate and discussion in this case.
A Guy From Lithia Springs
April 3rd, 2012 @ 12:05 pm

A few corrections. BTW, I love the old-fashioned references to “communism”. Based on nothing but the fevered imaginations of the right, but hilarious nevertheless. This President is basically what used to be called “moderate republican”, when such an animal existed. The political landscape of the right has moved off the shoulder of the road and into a ditch. Only thing that can explain it. And despite all the references, the qualifications, the attributions, this is simply another conspiracy piece, is it not? A fear of some shadowy group trying to take over? Try again. And finally if there is any group out there which gets devoured by their own if they deviate from “sound political thought” its the right. The Tea Party are nothing more than political commissars of the right, are they not? Toe their version of the party line, or else.
smitty
April 3rd, 2012 @ 12:20 pm

I’ll grant you that “moderate Republicans” are more part of the problem than the solution, but the attempt to re-brand #OccupyResoluteDesk as one is laughable.
If the rest of your dismissal of the Postmodern/Progressive argument on offer here held any water, then ObamaCare would’ve received a rubber stamp at the oral arguments last week like the Commies promised.
You can dismiss my choice of labels all day, but the fundamental question of the individual vs. the collective drives the conflict we see today.
Adjoran
April 3rd, 2012 @ 2:51 pm

Pardon us. Your Che tee shirts and Stalinist tactics must have fooled us.
Adjoran
April 3rd, 2012 @ 2:55 pm

Right after Obama’s senseless claim that it would be “unprecedented” to overturn an Act of Congress passed by a “majority” (yo, Comrade Barry, don’t ALL laws pass with majorities?), one legal scholar noted that since Marbury v Madison, the Supreme Court has overturned an Act of Congress on average once every 16 months.

For a “constitution law professor,” this guy is frightfully ignorant. At least his lecture students got a solid background on Critical Race Theory.
Tennwriter
April 3rd, 2012 @ 4:07 pm

Stalin was a right winger.
elaine
April 3rd, 2012 @ 4:16 pm

Kinda makes one wonder what his grades at Hah-vahd looked like, don’t it?

Either he’s truly that ignorant of the basic checks and balances the Founders placed on each branch of government, or he was lying when he made that statement (one might ask, “To what end?”). And whichever answer is true, it doesn’t speak well of our president…
smitty
April 3rd, 2012 @ 4:18 pm

A concise troll, but Stalin was a fascist Commie, and thus akin to #OccupyResoluteDesk, not a right winger.
elaine
April 3rd, 2012 @ 4:19 pm

Right-wingers believe in personal responsibility and smaller government. Therefore, Stalin was hardly right wing…

But let’s just say what he really was: a totalitarian. And so is comrade Obama. Both Stalin and Obama want iron-clad control over the people concentrated in the hands of the ruling elite.
elaine
April 3rd, 2012 @ 4:31 pm

I don’t recall any “moderate Republicans” of the days of yore who argued that the Constitution can be contorted to mean whatever we say it means. And that, in a nutshell, is what Obama and his democrat pals have been arguing for the past two or three generations now.

Republicans have historically supported fiscal and social conservatism. At least on paper and in their party’s platform. In reality, they often failed to deliver the balanced budgets necessary to ensure fiscal responsibility, and we as a nation are the worse for their lack of diligence.

Democrats, on the other hand, ever since Woodrow Wilson have been just fine about carrying monstrous debt, even when the nation is at peace. It’s spend, spend, spend! And if we’re not spending enough — and even if we are — let’s find more unnecessary programs to suck even more money out of the private economy and into the government’s funds.

The fact is the Tea Party is the first time We the People have stood up and told both parties to stop this insane rush to spend future generations into perpetual debt. And you think this is a bad thing?

Then you are as dumb as our apparent “constitutional law scholar” president.
PaulLemmen
April 3rd, 2012 @ 5:44 pm

Will you share those mushrooms?
Largebill
April 3rd, 2012 @ 6:46 pm

From one old squid to another, tell your Dad thanks for his service.

Go Navy!
Adobe_Walls
April 3rd, 2012 @ 10:29 pm

Just because Pol Pot is tad to one’s left doesn’t make one a moderate/centrist.
Adobe_Walls
April 3rd, 2012 @ 10:53 pm

Excellent post the descriptor “cold civil war” is spot on, however I do not believe it ends without going at least partially hot whether Obamsky is defeated or not. The divides are too great to be bridged. The growth of government and it’s inevitable tyranny, regulatory and otherwise has been tormenting us for over a century now. The size of government and the expanding scope of regulatory control is growing exponentially, the rate of growth was much greater under GWB than Clinton. The rate is much greater under Obamsky than during the Republican’s Caligula period under Bush. For a hundred years and more they’ve been kicking the dog that doesn’t bite with increasing violence and frequency. Sooner or later the dog will have had enough.
Tennwriter
April 3rd, 2012 @ 10:53 pm

I’m sorry. That was a joke.