At a recent weekend house party I hosted several friends and family. They came from many walks of life and professions. Politics, journalism, clergy, government, business, and academia were all represented.
One friend who was there is a highly accomplished professor and a nationally known expert on the political process. I have great respect for this guy and we share many of the same conservative views.
Days after the event, in correspondence on the current American political situation, he had some thoughts. He’s allowed me to quote him anonymously. “I am about go off into the ozone . . . so fair warning. This reminds me of the Boer War. By and large the British commanders were dunderheads (not Roberts or Kitchner) and the Brits damned well should have lost against the very capable and well-led Boers. The Brits won though–they simply had far too much material and human capital to spend and the Boers were overwhelmed. Here the Ds and the Progressives have the media, finance, the commanding generals, homeland security, academe and so forth. I am afraid we are fighting a rear-guard action, mostly in the courts.” By my reckoning this assessment spells the eventual demise of the America as we know it. No, knew it.
I’m not quite as pessimistic as my friend, but I’m in the same ballpark. The only way out I see is, as I’ve said before, a territorial reform or a charismatic figure who could appeal to traditionally Dem constituencies to vote Republican. Both hopes, I admit, are far fetched.
The first, the civil divorce option, is extremely constitutionally complicated and logistically complex. In a nutshell, the three West Coast states secede and form a left wing nation. Massive migration happens between the two nations. At the end of the deal both countries are run by governments that reflect the predominant ideology of their people. They get Venezuela on the Pacific. Without the electoral votes and congressional representation of the West Coast, Republicans bring back limited constitutional government to the remaining United States. Yes, there are myriad details. However, the execution of such may be better than likely permanent polarization or potential armed conflict between the left and the right, between the statist hordes and America.
The other option is a transformational leader who brings routinely victimized, by their own party, urban Dems to the Republican Party. That is almost a fantasy.
But then, as a young US Army Intelligence analyst in the early 1980s I was quite convinced we would be dealing with the Soviets for decades more if not into perpetuity. But that socialist authoritarian system died from within less than ten years later. Granted, with a serious push from Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II.
Perhaps we will be so lucky and something or someone will stop the rot. It won’t come from the populists, obsessed with bitterness and resentment, and it won’t come from today’s Democrats, a party fleecing America and dedicated to leftist social engineering. Like the Thatcher revolution in Britain, the most sweeping reform of a democracy in modern history, it will come from the conservatives. Pray God it comes before it’s too late.