The Great Divide

 Mike McDaniel has a post at the American Thinker entitled A New Year's reflection that reviews the year just past and projects a possible future. I am sure I will be reading a number of those today, but I wanted to highlight his post in part because it expresses the fundamental assumptions, seldom expressed, involved in each side's thinking in our ongoing public debate. McDaniel starts with the usual notion of taking a moment for reflection:

At the end of each year, as a new year is about to be born, we take a moment to reflect on the past and on what the new year might bring. According to the CDC—if anything they say can be believed—current American life expectancy for men is 74.8 years and for women, 80.2 years. There’s that white male privilege again.

But then he gets into the meat of the article. If you go to the link to his personal blog, you will find numerous articles speculating on the probability of a second civil war. And it is not just him. I have read many articles speculating that a civil war is exactly what the Left wants. After all, if the Left can provoke the Right into firing the first shot, they will have the excuse they need to send in the military. They will make, at least in their minds, Joe Biden's threat to use F-15s on American citizens a reality. It is in this context that he explains the difference between the two sides.

What we’re dealing with is hubris—excessive pride—which inevitably leads to disaster. As always, much depends on which path Americans take: the path of liberty or the path of totalitarianism. One side—Democrats/socialists/communists (D/s/cs)—believe in equality of outcome--equity. They believe not only in big government, but that government can never be big enough. They’re the self-imagined, credentialed elite, the morally and intellectually superior, the expert class whose policies, like themselves, are perfect, non-falsifiable. They know America is evil, systemically racist, oppressive and just plain stupid and it’s their destiny to fundamentally transform it, to create the new, D/s/c man. They alone are qualified to recreate human nature into what they know it can and must be: a mirror image of themselves. They are their higher power.

On the other side are Normal Americans, largely but not exclusively Republicans. Politics do not consume them. Because most are Christian they know they’re fallen, sinners, and they labor to be worthy of God’s promise. They aren’t entitled. They expect to work for what they have and expect to be judged on their abilities and effort. Working, treating others with sincerity and kindness, caring for their families and going about the innumerable small things that make up daily American life are their focus. They believe in the Constitution and the rule of law, in equal opportunity and merit. While many have credentials they know experience and demonstrated ability are most important. They know things, do things, invent and make things. They’re the people who make America work. They don’t care about race and gender. They judge others as Martin Luther King urged: on the content of their character. They know they can’t change human nature, but they might help others change themselves, one soul at a time.

The next four years will largely determine which of those views of America, of human nature, will prevail. If Donald Trump succeeds in draining the swamp, in clearing the deadwood and malice from the federal work force, we’ll have the opportunity to see just how much of that non-work force was not only unnecessary but detrimental to the republic. Not “our democracy,” but to our constitutional, representative republic, where elected officials and every federal employee are hired hands, accountable to the Americans who hired them, duty bound to serve them and the ideals that created and sustain our republic.

I have placed a key sentence in bold: They are their higher power. It is what Obama meant when he said that We are the ones we've been waiting for. One can not understand anything the Left articulates or does without understanding this unspoken belief: they are their own higher power. The Left firmly believes, as Dostoyevsky said, "Without God, anything is permissible." Lying, cheating, even murder if need be, for the cause. Criminality is whatever the Left decides it is today. For a look at what that is in practice, take a look at the history of the Soviet Union, or just look at what Trump has been put through.

That too is a fundamental difference in outlook. D/s/cs virtually never say “representative republic,” choosing instead “our democracy.” This is a very conscious choice, a matter of narrative and messaging, an attempt to define the terms of the debate and in so doing win before a word is spoken. “Our democracy” is a tyranny of the majority, totalitarianism dressed up in Sunday clothes. Our representative republic limits them in every way, in rhetoric, in intent, in power, and the self-imagined elite accept no limitations.

Please read all of McDaniel's article. I find most such to be rather inconsequential, the writers no doubt treat such articles as proforma. But McDaniel has expressed something worth keeping in mind whenever one deals with the Left.