Jul 02 2024

Have The Rules Changed Or Haven’t They?

     Back when certain Y-chromosome bearers decided it was time to take the thirteen colonies-become-states and make them into a nation – a decision some think they regretted afterward – they had certain rules in mind about governments and how they were supposed to be formed. The most important of those rules was no violence. They’d had their fill of it, and were uninterested in a second helping. Federal officials were to be selected according to procedures specified by the Constitution.

     Note that all those procedures were violence-free. Mostly they involved the casting and counting of ballots, whether by private citizens or by state legislatures. For those Constitutional procedures to be altered would require that the Constitution itself be amended, which has happened several times since then. See the Twelfth, Fifteenth, Seventeenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth, Twenty-Second, Twenty-Third, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments for the details.

     But today, certain parties are dissatisfied with the “no violence” constraint. It seems they want violence, whether threatened or actual, to be the deciding factor. Have a few examples:

     Let’s pass over the stupidity of those claims in silence. These are open calls for the assassination of Donald Trump. Why? Because the proponents thereof think that, should he live long enough, he’ll win back the presidency, and that’s just too… something. So the Constitutional procedures by which the president is elected must be set aside in favor of violence.

     How are you feeling just now, Gentle Reader? A mite uncomfortable? Perhaps a trifle sweaty? If everything seems to you to be chugging along nicely, see your brain care specialist at once. The Republic, which has been in considerable danger for some time already, is now teetering at the edge of the abyss.

     Time was, it was considered a threat to the national peace, barely short of criminally actionable, to make such statements. The FBI was dispatched to deal with persons such as these. But today the FBI is corrupt. It answers to corrupt overlords, whose ruling moral-ethical principle is can I get away with it? (No, it’s not yet a Praetorian Guard. Give it time.)

     I’ve written before that a militant minority that’s willing to “go to the mattresses” can overpower a lax, unfocused majority. There’s ample historical evidence. The tweets above aren’t necessarily dispositive, but they are suggestive of the sort of thinking that’s going on among America’s militant and openly violent Left.

     Among the Constitution’s original provisions was a somewhat indirect method for selecting the president:

  1. States would form their legislatures by procedures specified in their respective constitutions or charters.
  2. Those legislatures would then select electors – their number determined by each state’s Congressional representation – that would convene in the nation’s capital on a specified day.
  3. On that day the electors would poll themselves for their choice of the next president and vice-president.

     So even if the state legislatures were populated by men selected by popular vote, popular vote itself took no part in the selection of the president. That was up to the electors the legislatures chose – and those electors were not bound to vote in any particular way. The whole point was to trust the presidency, America’s highest public office, to the wisdom of carefully selected men, rather than to the passions of the great mass of citizens. Today, of course, all that remains of that original procedure is the Electoral College itself… which the Left is desperate to abolish.

     Today, what looms largest, both here and abroad, is the prospect of left-wing violence. Despite the (supposedly) secret ballot, many private citizens are afraid to vote for their preference. The consequences are less foreseeable than ever, while the possible damage to person, property, and civil peace are inestimable. Worst of all, the “forces of order” seem unequal to the challenge, whether from incapacity or disinclination. Faith in the prospect of a “peaceful transfer of power” is waning.

     I’m getting rather tired of it all. I like peace in the streets. I want to go about my business without fear of being assaulted for being a conservative. So if the rules must change, then how about we try strange women lying in ponds distributing swords again? It seemed to work fairly well the first time.

1 comment

  1. I’ve seen the calls for violence and elimination for well over a decade now. Hell, you can look back just a few years ago and see the calls for us unvaccinated people to be rounded up and put into camps. The Left always ends up calling for the elimination of their opposition. Their politics and their morals are based off of envy, one of the Seven Deadly Sins. When you start there, it’s not a far distance to any of the other sins.

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