“President Joe Biden has now declared that the United States is facing an existential crisis comparable to what it experienced during the Civil War, a struggle that will produce a truly democratic form of government with universal franchise or which will result in the denial of basic rights to many citizens. And he is quite willing to address the issue employing a maximum of emotion and fear mongering unmitigated by a minimum of reasonable suasion, saying “We’re facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole. Since the Civil War — the Confederates back then never breached the Capitol as insurrectionists did on January the 6th. I’m not saying this to alarm you. I’m saying this because you should be alarmed.”
Of course, what may have occurred on January 6th has nothing to do with the issue currently in play, which is voting rights, though it is only one aspect of what is essentially a revolution sponsored by the Democratic Party to reorder the American political system in such a fashion as to guarantee its dominance for decades to come. Other steps will include greatly increased immigration, a war on so-called domestic terrorists and decriminalizing or choosing not to prosecute many felonies committed by party constituencies.” Giraldi
Comment: Actually, the Confederates did not wish to overthrow the US Government. As Jefferson Davis stated “All we ask is to be left alone.” i.e., to be allowed to leave the Union. They believed they had a legal right to do that.
Giraldi lays out in this piece the cogent arguments against the Democrats’ legislative proposals designed to reduce our present election system to a “Potemkin Village” charade in order to create a de facto one party state like the old USSR. pl
from Geraldi’s piece: “…court case after court case, the 2020 election was the most scrutinized ever,” Biden said. “The ‘big lie’ is just that: a big lie!””
I wonder which court it was that Biden thinks actually “scrutinized” any evidence.
“He and his colleagues in Congress are deliberately and with malice pushing an agenda …”
Antifa and BLM stand ready to intimidate any judge, lawyer or police officer who dares adjudicate the law against their agenda, defend those accused, or arrest those violating law impartially. Numerous DA’s stand ready to release accused allies without trial. And, of course, we have our Famous Barack Integrity outfit, whose lawyer fabricated evidence to present to the FISA court as well as had numerous “informants” in D.C. on the 6th; and, to top it off, the Governor Whitmer “plot”. Said FBI agent is now in a bit of personal trouble:
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2021/07/19/fbi-agent-whitmer-kidnap-case-arrested-following-domestic-incident-richard-trask/8013618002/
And so the mythology of 1/6 is created. Like all good mythology it builds upon earlier myth – in this case that created by the victors in the WBS and which Mencken so eloquently exploded.
Giraldi is absolutely right in his last paragraph that the CW comparison is apt, precisely because the current administration is intent on demonizing a large section of the citizenry. And of course the issue here again is States’ rights. The assertion that “domestic extremists” pose an existential threat could easily become self-fulfilling hyperbole. Whether this is being done “carelessly” or with deliberate malice is open to question, in my view.
The fact that the planned legislation is unconstitutional on its face is seemingly no barrier. Is this because the Dems hope to get these laws on the books and delay efforts to strike them down until after the midterms?
Barbara Ann
From that Mencken essay – “But let us not forget that it is oratory, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination — “that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i. e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and vote of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom at all. Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality of the Gettysburg address? If so, I plead my aesthetic joy in it in amelioration of the sacrilege.”
What a wonderful heresy it is.
Reading this exchange put me in mind of something earlier this day read. I place it here simply because of the links included on it – although I would offer the post itself, though originally appearing in 2017 as the author states, “But [it] is as topical today as then.”
https://borepatch.blogspot.com/2021/07/when-you-erase-history-its-awfully-easy.html
As to Biden’s “[T]he United States is facing an existential crisis comparable to what it experienced during the Civil War, a struggle that will produce a truly democratic form of government with universal franchise or which will result in the denial of basic rights to many citizens.”
But heck, here I was thinking that “denial of basic rights” had already been accomplished with the lockdowns and et ceteras.
(AR is the postal abbreviation for my state – and easier for me to type. Plus that’s how my browser is saving it for other sites.)
PL
The problem I have with that sentiment, is that it seems to treat “Union” as an abstraction with no meaning. Yet, thousands of men were ready to fight to protect that abstraction. How do you get people to do that if they don’t have it internalized? Sure, one could argue that the people were fooled to work against their own interest. However, there is evidence that “Union” had religious connotations, as a new creation by God and given to the American people — American exceptionalism. This was a feature of the second “Great Awakening”. What was “that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion”? Clearly Lincoln evokes the “new birth of freedom”, i.e., being “born again” in Christ.
This is partly why I can agree that the war was not “about slavery” per se.
Scotts
Those who thought God had made the Union for his own purpose rather than the mere men who created it as a matter of governmental convenience were sadly deceived. Several of my ancestors were such. Their delusion does not justify the invasion and destruction of the South. “A more perfect union” in the preamble refers to a desire to create a better functioning form of government rather than an earthly utopian kingdom. Be not deceived by the difference in 18th Century usage of the words. I have more respect for others of my ancestors who were civilian contract teamsters for the Army of the Cumberland. They did it for the money and made no bones about that.
I don’t think that the Union Army volunteers were fighting for an abstraction. Many however were enlisting to help out their fellow Unionists in the south.
Battle of 1st Manassas [anniversary is tomorrow the 21st] claimed to be the first battle of that horrendous brother-on-brother war. But the first battle or skirmish was in Phillipi, where Union troops arrived to protect the majority pro-Union people in what is now West Virginia. Those counties were trying to secede from Virginia and from the Confederacy, but were being met with force.
There were many other examples of the Union trying to protect the rights of non-seccessionists in the south. Neutral Kentucky’s legislature had to petition Lincoln for federal troops to protect them after Columbus KY was invaded by Confederates from Louisiana.
Missouri was also invaded by the south. Ditto Maryland, and both the Arizona and Indian Territories.
Southern Loyalists were throughout eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, parts of northern Alabama, northern Georgia, Texas Hill Country, the Ozarks, and even in parts of Loudoun County Virginia. They provided tens of thousands of volunteers for Lincoln. Western North Carolina even formed their own Union infantry, cavalry and artillery regiments.
Leith
It may or may not be that Union Army soldiers felt deeply enough about Unionist minorities in the seceded states to die for their sake. It is the case that the states were the sovereign entities that ratified the US Constitution in a process that contained nothing then or now within the document itself that ratification was irreversible. People who did not accept state decisions to secede were free to sell and leave.
Leith,
Let’s not forget that the war/”the cause” was not popular among many in the North. The Union had to impose a draft in 1863. The anti-draft riots were some of the most violent and generally terrible that the US has ever seen.
I always wondered to what extent the much abused masses of sweat shop laborers in the industrialized North sympathized with the slaves in the South. They had similar problems of their own, after all.
Ft. Sumter, already erased from history. Just like Lincoln’s 1st inaugural address. Or Eisenhower’s comments on Lee.
“General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was a poised and inspiring leader, true to the high trust reposed in him by millions of his fellow citizens; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.”
Eric,
The Confederacy had to impose a draft in 1862 when so many of the 12 month volunteers refused to reenlist. The south stood to lose half their regiments and, given the dearth of white manpower, they could not afford that. They expanded the draft later that year, but had to include the Twenty Negro Law in that second conscription act out of fear of slave rebellions after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. That deprived the Southern Armies of more needed manpower. If they weren’t able to transfer slave labor to direct support of the army, they would have been in an even worse predicament. Lee took from six to ten thousand slaves on his Gettysburg campaign.
TTG
There does not seem to have been much difficulty in integrating Confederate conscripts. They were usually sent to hometown units. There were six to ten thousand Black Southerners with the ANV in the Gettysburg Campaign. About half of them were slaves and half free. All were armed. After the battle Lee had several thousand of his Black auxiliaries march his prisoners back to Virginia. This caused some confusion among the Union Army prisoners. There were very few Black desertions in Pennsylvania. Shelby Foote recounts the statement of one of the ANV Blacks when asked what he thought of the Pa. farm country. “Not bad,” he said, “but it don’t come up to home.”
Just watched a Mike Lindell/Alex Jones video. Lindell is holding a “Cyber Seminar” on Aug 12th in which he claims it will be shown conclusively that the election was stolen from Trump. He also stated that the evidence is so overwhelming that the Supreme Court will have to rule on it and that they will rule 9 to zero in Trump’s favor. One can hope.
Lindell, as engaging as he is, fails to say on what grounds SCOTUS will rule 9-0. This is distracting hyperbole.
I would bet that SCOTUS finds some rationale for not taking the case.
In my first year at Yale Law School, they had us read a book about the various ways the Supreme has for not taking a case.
Sadly, we already saw the mindset of the Supremes when they would not accept the case made by Texas that their rights as a State were wronged when other States clearly, flat out ignored their responsibilities under the Constitution which stipulate that rules for Federal elections were to be set by the legislatures of the several States, something actively flouted by the States that Texas (joined by a number of other States, recall) had alleged. It was the duty of the USSC to take on this case, as under the Constitution, such disputes between States are their exclusive domain, and that duty includes the responsibility to adjudicate the claims, not merely to sort out appeals from lower courts arising from lower courts’ decisions, something which otherwise constitutes the bulk of their duty.
Of course, this arrant dereliction occurred under the cloud of threats to pack the Court with a wave of new members whose loyalties to the democrat party (or the UniParty comprised of democrats and republicucks) would pretty much guarantee the outcome to accord with their interests, no matter how corrupt. FDR’s similar threat to pack the Court in like fashion was beaten back; with but the current pack of compliant politicos this actually may have been carried out.
It was shameful conduct, and I suspect that it is indicative of the course that the Court would adopt here, no matter the suspicions raised by the conduct alleged. Why? Careerism, and I rather suspect that some of the members are so invested in their ideology, and/or being blackmailed in some fashion, that they’ll dig in their heels regardless of the damage their abrogation of responsibilty inflicts upon the Republic.
It has come to this.
It would make a sounder case for SCOTUS to accept an action against any states after “proven fraud” that allowed wrongly electoral college members to select the POTUS.
Texas was premature – they faulted Fulton County, but at that point did not have proof of any fraud. What level of proof of dispute is necessary to trigger SCOTUS original jurisdiction settling may disputes among the several states. What has triggered this SCOTUS jurisdiction in the past – border issues, contracts, disparate impacts?
But how does one get to the level of confirmed and noticed fraud by one, or several states, in order to trigger a case by another state against that offending state?
How does one state prove they were damaged by the other offending state? Just the proven fraudulent election taint itself? Damaged just because “the other guy one”? Physical damages, monetary damages? Psychic damages? Existential constitutional damages?
A thorny legal question since the US Constitution grants all election process to be reserved to the state legislatures. SCOTUS cannot choose which have sent valid electoral college participants and reject others.
Would the wronged state legislature therefore have to formally withdraw their electors and un-certify their prior participation? What happens if their electoral vote could was immaterial to the final outcome anyway.
Laches? Estoppel? Lack of ripeness by the time any case actually reaches SCOTUS, since another election would be pending.
Goal: Over-turn the election? Set federal constitutional standards for state electoral college processes? Punish the offending state, put them in some sort of election federal receivership, like they did over Jim Crow states and the Voting Rights Act.
Amazing, and naively charming, the Founders never considered this degree of sinister election fraud when they wrote their revered governance document. Just turn in your secret written ballots, and count them. How hard is that?
Just like the Founders never contemplated we would grow our own government into an alien, cancerous, independent appendage that is now devouring “we the people” 250 years later.
Maybe we do need a constitutional convention and/or start the amendment process to deal with these lapses in the original document. I can’t even imagine the dysfunctional chaos that would create today.
How can Biden complain about a rise in “covid” when he opened the back door to over a million illegal and untested border crashers. Just to keep his teachers union bosses happy and keep their failing K-12 classrooms filled for another generation.
Biden and his deep state unions created the current US existential crisis. Take the blinders off, Biden. You own this one. It has nothing to do with voting rights; it is the deep state swamp’s voting wrongs that is destroying this country from within. Blood is entirely on your hand, Biden, leader of the party of the deep state.
Biden is doing to the US what Democrats did to California. You do not want to let this happen to the rest of the US. You do not want more Kamala Harrises to arise out of the California swamp and take over the rest of this nation.
The mass-scale political enfranchisement has been the top goal of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party since the 1960s, and since these lunatics are the loudest, most deranged, racist, unproductive and suicidal bunch, the Dem establishment is unleashing them against the rising pitch-fork conservative populist folk. I would assume that the nefarious plan is to flood the country with tons of undocumented immigrants, mobilize them to vote Democrat keep the “Blue” as it is and change the “Red” to purple, keep the wages down, drive the ‘heartlanders’ out and provoke them even more. The heartlanders have 2 options: a. To fight but lose against the leviathan, or, b. to submit, put down their arms, lose dignity, and accept the Universal Basic Income plan that is already being fully distributed to the Californians by the dem elites. Additionally, the Dem elite establishment is hitting two birds with one stone: 1. unleashing the rabid progressives against the heartlanders, i.e. let them destroy each other as the Dem elite see both as major threat to itself, 2. keep the progressive out of the power structure in any way possibile. Just recently the rumors started spreading that Pelosi is prepping Katherine Clark (D-Mass) to succeed her as the next Speaker, which further reinforces the idea that the path of the progressives to power is going to be delayed/made quite difficult. The Senate is not and has never been so receptive to progressive ‘takeover’, neither the presidency and the tough cop Kamala are progressive-friendly. The Dem elite has always been extremely hostile to any form of conservative populism, especially from the rural and rust-belt regions and therefore every admin has consistently tried to ‘address’ this issue in its own ways. The threat in the eyes of the Dem elite establishment has remained the same ever since. It seems as though history is repeating itself all over again; back in the 60s and 70s it was the ‘paranoid-style politics’ described by the liberal intellectual Richard Hofstadter and the threat of John Birch Society, in the 70s and 80s the “Moral Majority”, in the 90s it was the Culture Wars, in the teens it was the ‘Tea Party’ and the most recent manifestation is “Trumpism” or “MAGA” or “Qanon”. I have seen this movie before. I think the Dems will regret it if they choose to do what they have been doing since the 60s…It will blow up in their faces. Their problem is that they don’t want the U.S. to become a nation-state, but to remain a crusader state. Yes to ideology, no to bread and butter.
Relevant pieces:
https://www.axios.com/katherine-clark-speaker-house-559b6389-8256-4a18-97e4-91a4fec67602.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/15/opinion/us-foreign-policy.html
(note: how the Biden foreign policy doctrine is closely linked to domestic situation)
St. Fauci vs Rand Paul.
https://twitter.com/marinamedvin/status/1417519859865378825?s=21
The pandemic has unleashed lockdowns, Mail-in ballots for all, unusual vote counting, and now vaccine passport to curtail the free movement of citizens and their access to services.
We know that St. Fauci funded the gain-of-function research in Wuhan. We know he played a big role in obfuscating the origins and strong-arming virology researchers to claim lab leak was a conspiracy theory. We also know the NIH fast-tracked EUA of the vaccines with limited clinical trials.
Why aren’t we seeing more of a push to have a transparent investigation into the origins and the initial pandemic response policies wherein public health officials usurped powers while abrogating constitutional protections?
Biden’s intelligence community 90 day re-appraisal is a smoke screen to bury potential complicity in unleashing the pandemic.
Isn’t Giraldi former CIA?
If so, why is he criticizing the swamp, his natural habitat.
No current/former State Dept, DOJ, CIA, FBI, NSA type can have any credibility.
Lie down with dogs, you get fleas.
TV
He is one of their greatest critics.
No current/former State Dept, DOJ, CIA, FBI, NSA type can have any credibility.
Back when the USSR was a going concern, Communist recruiters were very cautious about recruiting idealists who actually believed in Communism. If the Kremlin recruited a vile mercenary sort, and that vile mercenary later discovered that nobody in the Kremlin truly lived for the ideals preached by Communism, no harm was done. But if the Kremlin recruited a starry-eyed idealist who wanted prosperity for the downtrodden, and that starry-eyed idealist were to discover that the Kremlin was interested in preserving its own power rather than lifting up the downtrodden, then the starry-eyed idealist would become a furious warrior against the Kremlin.
Several former swamp creatures — Bill Binney, Ray McGovern, etc. — formerly held security clearances; yet they now seem to be honest whistleblowers. I could indulge in the stupid rhetoric of “all cops are bastards” and modify it to read “never trust anyone who has ever held a top secret clearance” — but that would be stupid and intellectually lazy, and I refuse to do it.
Rank and file of Edgar Hoover’s FBI.
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1417538153943031808?s=21
The American Stasi have been alive & well ever since Edgar Hoover. Framing folks at least since the Teddy Deegan hit in the 60s is in their playbook.
As a name, the War Between the States is one of the accurate ones. Since a civil war is a conflict between two or more groups to control a geographical area usually to establish a government over that area, the “civil war” in the 1860’s was not one. To secede means to leave. The southern states did not want to control the land area of the northern states.
The first inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln on 4 March 1861 is a taboo subject for some because of what he said in his own words after being elected president.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp
In paragraphs 3-7, Lincoln says,
“Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that–
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
“Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:
“Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.
“I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause–as cheerfully to one section as to another.”
In paragraphs 8-12 he talks about the issue of fugitive slaves. The rest of the speech presents the position that the existing union should be “perpetual”, and that “… no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union ….” There is some sophistry in Lincoln’s argument that somehow the existing aggregation of states must never separate, and that if any violence occurs, it will be the fault of those leaving, who would be the “aggressors”. By leaving!
Lincoln’s own words reveal what the terrible war was really about.
https://twitter.com/girlziplocked/status/1417467210319212546?s=21
Carl Sagan. Prescient!
Lincoln describing his oath as to “preserve, protect, and defend [the Government]” at the end of his first inaugural was, in hindsight, a big red flag.
The anti secession argument is particularly specious. No case was presented that secession would damage either the North or her (presumably) intact & preserved Constitution. Instead, the only claim made was that Lincoln had a duty to prevent the seceding entity doing harm to itself; “Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy”. No evidence is given for why self rule via secession is so obviously doomed – compared to, say, self rule via colonial revolution.
Mr. Willmann,
The War Against the Bad Whites is the new manifestaion of the WBS, or the War of Northern Aggression. This is the point of this post at the Z-man Blog I link to below.
As Barbara Ann notes perceptively, Lincoln (no peace be upon him) tipped his hand in his conflation of the Constitution with the Federal Government. The Republic has been in mortal peril ever since, and the assault has been waged unceasingly in subsequent years, driven by ever-expanding ambition to concentrate all meaningful control into the hands of the Federal government. The Z-man makes a case that the Yankees (the GoodWhites in their own mind) in alliance with the Minoritarians, have resolved upon the War on Bad Whites as a continuation of this running battle.
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=24462
It would make a sounder case for SCOTUS to accept an action against any states after “proven fraud” that allowed wrongly selected electoral college members to officially choose the POTUS.
Texas was premature – they faulted Fulton County, GA, but at that point did not have proof of fraud. What level of proof of dispute is necessary to trigger SCOTUS original jurisdiction settling “disputes among the several states”. What has triggered this original SCOTUS jurisdiction in the past – border issues, contracts, disparate impacts?
How does one state prove they were damaged by the other offending state? Just the proven fraudulent election taint itself? Damaged just because “the other guy won”? Physical damages, monetary damages? Psychic damages? Existential constitutional damage?
A thorny legal question since the US Constitution grants all election process to be reserved to the state legislatures. SCOTUS cannot choose which states have sent valid electoral college participants, and reject others.
Would the wronged state legislature therefore have to formally withdraw their electors and un-certify their prior participation? What happens if their total electoral votes were immaterial to the final outcome anyway.
Laches? Estoppel? Lack of ripeness by the time any case actually reaches SCOTUS, since another election would be pending.
Goal: Over-turn the election? Set federal constitutional standards for state electoral college processes? Punish the offending states, put them in some sort of election federal receivership, like they did over Jim Crow states and the Voting Rights Act.
Amazing, and naively charming, the Founders never considered this degree of sinister election fraud when they wrote our revered governance document. Just turn in your secret written ballots, and count them. How hard is that?
Just like the Founders never contemplated we would grow our own government into an alien, cancerous, independent appendage that is now devouring “we the people” 250 years later.
Maybe we do need a constitutional convention and/or start the amendment process to deal with these lapses in the original document. I can’t even imagine the dysfunctional chaos that would create today.