The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(07-23-2020, 01:12 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-22-2020, 06:23 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The National Guard was not needed to stop a few youths from throwing a firework or painting graffiti. That's all they were doing until Trump's goons showed up.

There's no-one better to quote than MLK. Disregarding what he says makes you look like.....
because you have forgotten what the true greatness of America IS.

I know, it's all Trumps fault as usual. I doubt Trump would stick his neck out over something minor. So, why doesn't the governor send in the national guard like he should and has the authority to do right now instead of doing nothing as usual and pointing his finger and blaming Trump. Why do Democrats act like teenage boys and girls? I'll give them credit they're all pretty much equal.  As I've mentioned before, I have a close friend who gave up on the Democratic party and there are about twenty million or so Democratic voters like him these days. You're not going to hear anything from them until November. Like I said, this is going to boil down to Liberal Culture vs American Culture.

States rights. The States have the right to act against despotic conduct of a President, a general, or some political clique in the defense of liberties established in the Constitution. 



The current Presidency seems to be treating the Boll of Rights as an irrelevancy when it gets in its way, denying people those rights when the exercise of those rights gets in the way of his agenda and his self-image. Trump is doing things that neither of us would have tolerated under any prior President, Congress has not delegated him such powers because those are not the authority of Congress to delegate to him.

Beyond any question, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments prohibit despotic behavior by Governors and legislatures even if elected and that they have decided that they can violate the Constitution.  The States can interpret the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to treat illegal encroachments of power by the federal government. as violations of State law. The federal government has extensive power due to the Interstate Commerce and General Welfare clauses to regulate state activity but no right to establish any agency of law enforcement or delegate to any existing agency the prerogative to delegate to an existing agency the authority to violate the Constitution of the United States. Yes, the federal government can have law enforcement agencies to deter, prevent, and punish on-the-job behavior of federal employees contrary to federal law; to do much the same against activities attempting to use the agencies of the federal government to violate the law (which explains the Postal Inspectors against mail fraud and shipment of illegal material such as drugs or child pornography through the mails); to apprehend fugitives who exploit state lines (the FBI typically uses the pretext of interstate flight to avoid prosecution); military police to apprehend AWOL soldiers and sailors, enforce the lawful regulations of the Armed Services, and to enforce compliance with federal laws; protection of federal property and secrets (I have worked for the US Census, and I am legally precluded from leaking any information that I received as part of my work, I will not even identify where I went to do Census work); and protection of federal employees on the job from criminal acts such as assault or murder.

Over more than two hundred years, America has much precedent in establishing the meaning of the Bill of Rights. At the same time the histories of other political orders demonstrate what is possible when rights similar to those enshrined in our Constitution are abridged and denied -- when governments close media outlets for criticizing the Leadership or its enforcers, when it discriminates against minorities (a practice commonplace in American history until proved unacceptable by the Courts), when it takes property without compensation or a mockery of compensation or strips people of the ability to enjoy the benefits of property ownership and custody, when governments do horrible things to people who dissent with the Leader of the time... this can involve lynch mobs that the government authorizes due to neglect or malign collaboration or the official misconduct of agencies of law enforcement. A police force with powers not granted by statutory law or acting with nebulous authority begins to suggest something that we can all consider un-American: a secret police. 

I have suggested that there are over three hundred ways in which to be American (OK, many of those are effective duplicates) but I have rarely discussed what is un-American. An Okhrana (Imperial Russia), OVRA (fascist Italy), Gestapo, Kempeitai, Cheka/OGPU/NKVD/KGB, Stasi, Securitate, BOSS (Apartheid-era South Africa), SAVAK (imperial Iran), Tontons Macoute (Haitian dictatorships of the Duvalier family), State Research Unit (Uganda under Idi Amurderin'), Mukhabarat (Iraq under Satan Hussein), or Comites de la Defesa de la Revolucion (Castro's Cuba) is un-Constitutional and thus un-American. Say what you want about Obama, but he never came close to doing any of the egregions assaults upon civil liberties that Donald Trump has done. Maybe we liberals have never been tested for stunts that this President has done; Trump is unique to the Presidency. OK, some of us remember "Tricky Dick" doing shady things, but in the end the system turned against such deeds as breaking into the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg to get dirt on a critic.   

Surely you would no more tolerate a liberal President using unidentifiable agents of law enforcement to make unwarranted arrests of political dissidents. So would we. Maybe I can't speak for conservatives, but I can look at the statements of some conservatives that hold such gross misconduct by the President, through order or acquiescence of the President against such behavior. We liberals rarely get to use such statements against the people for whom we vote. Sure, Donald Trump can state that our refusal to go along with his dream to "Make America Great Again" is disorderly contempt toward a lawfully-elected President.

Does it tell you something that one of Donald Trump's rivals in the 2016 Republican primaries, John Kasich (R-OH), an undeniable conservative and former Governor of a high-profile state, is endorsing Joe Biden? Kasich is a conservative on economic and social issues... but he must see something terribly wrong with the inchoate dictatorship forming in the Trump Presidency. Kasich is a conservative and not a fascist. 

Protection of civil liberties, due process, the rule of law, and governmental accountability is definitively American, and despotic rule is contrary to over two hundred years of American political heritage. Indeed our American Revolution was possible only because King George III denied people in the American colonies rights that they assumed that they had, whether one sees those as God-given or inherent in human nature. Civil liberties, due process, the rule of law, and  governmental accountability may no longer be particularly American, but their denial offends the sensibilities of people across lines of class, gender, ethnicity, national origin, age, sexual orientation, cultural identity, and even one's position on the political spectrum. 

The despotic tendencies of this President must not stand. Nobody can reasonably expect lockstep acquiescence with the next President any more than with the previous President, and our wannabe dictator is no exception. 

ABORT FASCISM NOW!