Planned Chaos

     No, I’m not thinking of the book by Ludwig von Mises, though it is somewhat relevant. I have in mind the mushrooming portents of violence-to-come that’s presaged by these stories:

• Fourth-Generation Warfare
• DonaldTrumpWatch website tracks Trump donors.
• Activist group plans post-election chaos.
• Anti-Trumpers plan mass resistance.
• The AntiFa Industry At Work.

     There’s a great deal of consistency in the reporting on this subject. What frightens me in particular is that there’s a general consensus that the results of the election will not matter. Even in the event of a landslide Biden victory – not particularly plausible, but let’s allow the possibility – disruptions and violence intended to induce President Trump to leave office will follow. Homeowners known to have supported the president will be targeted for arson. Individuals who’ve been seen wearing Trump-supporting T-shirts, hats, or buttons will be assaulted when they leave their homes. Aggressions far beyond the usual “cancel culture” BS will be rampant.

     Chaos is coming. The Left is going all in. And no: You really don’t have enough ammo.

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     For a long time – at least three decades and probably longer – two periodicals have been regarded as the flagship publications of the American Left: The Nation and The New Republic. As a rule, when a major opinion piece breaks in either one, you may take it as written that it proclaims an element of Leftist doctrine. That makes this New Republic article a matter for widespread dissemination and discussion.

     Before I excerpt the most relevant portions of the article, I shall say this: I have several copies of the article saved, including some on removable media. It cannot be taken from me by any hacker. I will not permit The New Republic’s editors any post facto mealy-mouthed “We were only kidding” nonsense. If you would care to read the whole thing, then regardless of whatever The New Republic does or its preferences to the contrary, all you need to do is tell me so.

     Now to the critical excerpts. Please read them all, with attention.

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     Having won a clear Electoral College victory, Trump has taken the opportunities he has been given to nominate three [Supreme Court Justices]. Senate Republicans have been approving them through the process the Constitution set out. They acted strategically to hold one of those seats open. You will not find in the Constitution a prohibition against doing so, or, for that matter, any suggestion that the court should be evenly balanced between the appointees of two political camps or parties that didn’t exist at the Founding and that aren’t intrinsic features of our political order.

     Republicans haven’t flouted the constitutional order. They’ve made use of it. Things haven’t gone wrong because a system that was humming along fine until recently has been damaged in some fundamental way. The system is humming along essentially as it always has with increasingly dire results. The crisis is not that the American constitutional system is broken but that the American constitutional system is working—perhaps not as the Framers intended but, as a legal and administrative matter, mostly as it was designed to....

     Those in the center giving a thought to court-packing now are considering “constitutional hardball not to win the game,” as Jurecic and Hennessey write, “but to get to a place where the cycle of retaliation and politicization can be ended.” But if it’s possible—granted, a very large if—why shouldn’t the game be won? We’ve seen multiple periods of one-party dominance in our history; we’ve also seen defeated political parties wither and die. Why shouldn’t the Republican Party join them?...

     The American left should work toward abolishing the Constitution someday—either for a new document or a new democratic order without a written constitution....

     This and this alone was the genius of the Founders and Framers: not a special capacity for principled compromise and not extraordinary foresight or a collective wisdom sure to endure through the ages, but rather the force of their will. That is what it takes to break from an empire; that is what it took to cobble a nation together out of states with divergent economic and sociopolitical interests. And as we approach the close of a year in which we’ve fought bitterly over what we should claim from our history and what we should take from these men, it seems probable that we should try to inherit at least their audacity—whatever spirit convinced them they possessed the consciences and the intelligence to create not only a new country but a kind of society new to the world.

     Do we have any less a right to do so? It is beyond debate that we are their moral superiors; after over two centuries of democratic experience here and of observing the democracies that have bloomed across the globe, we know infinitely more about the institutions that they built and democratic governance than they did. They declared themselves the tribunes of a public that they defined and delimited for their convenience. On the day we as a people finally rise beyond narrow faction and above the power of capital ⁠to make ourselves a new republic, it is certain that we will do better—securing for truly all Americans not only a framework of now familiar political freedoms but a framework of economic rights rooted in the notion that democratic values and a revulsion for arbitrary, unchallenged authority should shape more than just our system of government. Until then, a half-measure: If it is given the opportunity, the Democratic Party—without hesitation, guilt, or apology—should pack the Supreme Court to its advantage.

     The author’s name is Osita Nwanevu. We might well ask where he and his antipathy to the American Constitutional order were born.

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     Some time ago, I wrote:

     Few politicians, whatever lip service they give to the Constitution, are happy to be constrained by it. This is because by its very existence the Constitution expresses a small set of rules which together constitute the principle of republican government:

• There must be a Supreme Law;
• It must be easy to refer to and to comprehend;
• All other law must conform to it.

     Compare that to the principle of democratic / majoritarian government:

• A majority can make and enforce whatever laws it wishes at any time.

     ...and to the principle of authoritarian government:

• What the Fuhrer decrees shall be the whole of the law.

     The typical politician who owes his office to a democratic process, and who wants to remain in that office for as long as possible, will chafe under the constraints of the Constitution. He'll seek ways to circumvent it in matters that permit him to pander to his constituency. If pressed, he'll make excuses:

• "This is something the Founding Fathers didn't foresee."
• "The amendment process takes too long and doesn't always work."
• "The crisis is far too urgent; we have to act now, regardless of Constitutional constraints."

     Those are the most popular excuses. No doubt there are others.

     The republican principle, of which the Constitution is the American expression, is the only protection Americans have from tyranny, whether majoritarian or autocratic. What freedom we still retain is ours because our politicians haven't yet worked up the collective courage to defy the Constitution in certain particulars. However, they get closer to discarding it completely with every passing day.

     Nwanevu prefers majoritarian government – government in which there are no recognized rights: i.e., no recognized constraints on what the government may do to you. The sole barrier against that sort of rule by the mob is the proclamation of a Supreme Law. Nothing else will serve. But power-lusters, angry about having their schemes thwarted or delayed, will always chafe under such a principle. Nor does it matter whether they’re really well-intentioned. They always think they are:

     It is beyond debate that we are their moral superiors; after over two centuries of democratic experience here and of observing the democracies that have bloomed across the globe, we know infinitely more about the institutions that they built and democratic governance than they did. [Nwanevu again]

     What they want is power:

     Those who have seized power, even for the noblest of motives soon persuade themselves that there are good reasons for not relinquishing it. This is particularly likely to happen if they believe themselves to represent some immensely important cause. They will feel that their opponents are ignorant and perverse; before long they will come to hate them...The important thing is to keep their power, not to use it as a means to an eventual paradise. And so what were means become ends, and the original ends are forgotten except on Sundays. [Bertrand Russell]

     Unbounded, unconstrained power always culminates with the slaughter of the opposition. There are no known exceptions.

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     As I said above, when a major opinion piece breaks in either The Nation or The New Republic, it proclaims an element of Leftist doctrine. Those periodicals are wholly owned propaganda mills for the Left and never, ever deviate from the line the Left’s kingpins have adopted. There was a time when that was not so. Indeed, I remember when no other than Michael Kinsley, as reliable a left-liberal as has ever lived, conceded in the pages of The New Republic that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual, Constitutionally guaranteed right. He wasn’t happy about it...but he conceded it. However, that time is long past.

We now know what the Left has planned,
And what the chaos is intended to further.

     All the masks are off. Indeed, they burned to ash in the fires that have consumed large portions of formerly great American cities. There is no longer any excuse for saying, whether to others or to yourself, that “they mean well.” That could not be further from the truth.

     Prepare accordingly. And pray.