When 30 FBI agents showed up at Mar-a-Lago to cart off boxes of documents, it was an authorized, legitimate and justified procedure to retrieve national security secrets being illegally kept there.
Or it was an unprecedented regime raid on the home and office of the foremost political rival of President Joe Biden that called to mind a “Third World country,” the East German “Stasi,” the KGB or the Gestapo.
And Jan. 6, 2021?
That was a riot, a disgraceful breach of the Capitol, involving assaults on Capitol cops that deserved to be and are being punished.
No, it was more than that. Far more. It was an “insurrection,” a “fascist coup,” an act of treason led by far-right extremists to abort the transfer of power from the winner of the election of 2020 to the loser. It ranks right up there with the 1814 burning of the Capitol by the British.
Such is the magnitude of the divide in America, a divide that extends far beyond our clashing views of Jan. 6 and the Mar-a-Lago raid.
Consider abortion. Before the 1960s, abortion was almost universally regarded as a shameful and criminal act. Doctors who performed abortions were disgraced and sometimes sent to prison.
But after the Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court declared that Roe v. Wade in 1973 was wrongly decided, restoration of women’s right to an abortion is being championed by half the nation.
The other half of America yet believes abortion involves the killing of an unborn innocent child.
Part of America celebrates the Supreme Court’s decision to declare marriage equality for homosexuals. Yet, a traditionalist minority believes such a mandate imposes on the nation a secularist morality contradicted by the tenets of the Christian faith that was the basis of laws for our first two centuries as a nation.
Nor is it only clashing morality that divides us.
For a nation, a country, a people, a democracy to endure, there needs be a broad consensus of belief, culture, custom and politics.
On the issue of law and order, without which a republic cannot stand, there is now disagreement over the role and conduct of our police.
During the George Floyd summer of 2020, “Defund the Police!” was the clamor of the left, and among the street chants of Black Lives Matter was, “Pigs in a Blanket, Fry ‘Em Like Bacon.”
Only a stunning political recoil caused its abandonment.
For a nation, especially a great world power like the United States, some things are indispensable to its preservation.
A democratic republic needs to preserve the value of its currency, to defend its borders against illegal mass migrations and invasions, to preserve law and order, especially in its great cities.
Which of these requisites exist today when the nation suffers 8% inflation; 250,000 illegal aliens cross our southern border every month; and “mass shootings” occur daily in our cities during which at least four victims are gunned down, wounded or killed?
The preservation of a democracy also requires the confidence of its people in its defining institutions.
Yet, since the Reagan era, Americans’ collective confidence in our major institutions has fallen from one-half of the nation to one-fourth.
In 2022, confidence in the Supreme Court fell by a third to 25%. Only a fourth of the country retained high confidence in the presidency; and confidence in Congress plummeted to 7%, or one in every 14 Americans.
One in 6 Americans had great confidence in our newspapers, with only 1 in 9 citizens saying the same about television news.
In summary, we are a country whose people have a diminishing confidence in almost all of its institutions, from big business to the churches, universities and media. Only small business and the U.S. military enjoy the confidence of the American people.
Public approval of Biden’s performance is at the lowest level ever recorded for a president at this point in his first term.
True, we have been through and recovered from divisive times.
In the 1860s, 11 of the 33 states seceded and fought for four years to gain their independence of the Union.
The 1960s were divisive, but the left, with Sen. George McGovern its political expression, captured less than 40% of the vote against Richard Nixon in 1972. Ronald Reagan ran up two landslides in the 1980s.
Those days are long gone.
The left today dominates the academic community and culture to a greater degree than it once did and is further removed from the heart of the country in Middle America than it has ever been.
When, how, does America ever unite again? And what unites us, other than an external attack on the country, like Pearl Harbor or 9/11?
Where is the common ground on which to stand?
Does such ground even exist, given the divisions in religion, race and ethnicity, and the seemingly irreconcilable disagreements over morality, ideology, culture and politics?
Has the great experiment run its course?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.” To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.
When what is cooked up leaves a very bad taste in your mouth, you don’t throw out the ingredients, you throw out the cooks. Just throw out the darker Angels of the FBI and the Biden Justice department leadership, and let the better Angels of what was once a well led FBI and Justice Department start cooking up a new dish, and baking the traitorous Liberal leaders in ovens hotter than hell. Vote in November like your life depended on it, because it does. In 20 years when your bankrupted, starving children of the Democrat makers of mediocre America, at time of outright dishonest America, ask what YOU did during the great Pandemic of lies and government conspiracy, will your answer be, ‘I sat on my butt watching CNN and MSNBC eating popcorn, spending my stimulus checks, and hoping someone would fix things,,,,YOU ARE THAT SOMEONE. Evil prevails when good men do and say nothing. Only evil men with evil intentions contrive to silence you and the truth. No nation in the 1860’s could survive half slave and half free, and no American nation today can survive half secular Liberal Democrat and half Creator imaged American Conservative. Time to solve the issue peaceably is running short,,,probably about two stolen elections away from open rebellion.
BUT are there any “Better angels” left in either of those orgs? OR ARE THEY BOTH so rotten to the core, it would be EASIER TO just scorch earth both to the ground, THEN BUILD UP A new version in their place?
When Biden and his entire administration are completely replaced with Conservative leadership.
When the swamp is completely drained and every last alligator is accounted for.
AND when all these traitors, are swinging from the gallows.
When we allow a few to dominate over the many, we allow the few to manipulate the many.
i.e. The LGBTQ, BLM, Woke.
To fully advance the Lying, Treasonous, Demonic, Socialist Democrat Party’s destructive beliefs and agendas is to divide our citizens with hate and promote – racism, open borders, radical feminism, abortion-on-demand, the LGBTQ lifestyle, unfettered sexual identity, transgender, same sex marriage, child indoctrination into sexual confusion and perversions, the pagan Liberal left Democrats must do away with GOD, our Constitution, common sense, morality, Christian values and free religious exercise altogether.
Under the Disguise of “anti-discrimination.”
It is better to be condemned for standing up for one’s morals and values.
Than to be on their knees bowing down for the crumbs and the whims of the corrupt and immoral, demonic Democrats.
Bigotry is not necessarily always a bad thing.
One need not tolerate or accept every belief or action of another.
Scruffy_USN_Retired: Bigotry is not necessarily always a bad thing.
One need not tolerate or accept every belief or action of another.
Exactly.
How, When, Do We Come Together Again?
Sorry. Because of the Progressive Socialist dedicated dogma, the majority of the former Democrat Party has crossed the line that cannot be recrossed. They simply have no use for and so want to resend the entire Constitution and the Rule of Law, and redraw the Country into an Institution molded by their desire for power and control, enriching themselves despite how the legal citizens, the taxpayers suffer for their hubris.
There is no way the direction of the Country can be corrected unless it is righted.
And the gutless so-called Conservatives in the Republican Party need to side with the few in their own ranks who have been trying to take the fight to the Dems and not roll over and wet themselves because they’re being called names and threatened, because in truth they are capitulating with a toothless dog with a nasty growl.
And a strong percentage of the population will back them up if they just show the backbone to take the fight right back to the Dems and show them they can’t get away with their old tiresome tactics anymore.
The only day We will come back together is when the Conservative force Democrats to come back to the table, actually talk things over, and rule by cooperation, and not by threats or subterfuge.