By Peter Pavarini
How to Overthrow a Government. If history teaches us anything, you don’t need to be on the moral high ground to seize control of a country. Numerous coup d’états, civil wars and invasions have been won by the most despicable, amoral people ever to walk the earth. The overthrow of any government can be accomplished simply by a show of power and pure hatred for the established order if the masses acquiesce in the take-over. Vichy France comes to mind.
Victors don’t need a cohesive philosophy or clear objective if they can generate enough fear and chaos to cause people to settle for the imagined stability of a new order built on empty promises of safety, security and justice.
The Chasm Between Left and Right. The United States of America of 2020 finds itself on such a battleground. Hopefully, anyone reading this doesn’t need another recitation of the troubles our country has faced these past six or seven months. Suffice to say, the chasm between the Left and Right which opened during the first three years of the Trump Administration has become too great to be bridged by any established democratic process. In my previous blog[i] I addressed what it would take to turn a virtual civil war into a real one.
Just as the magnetic poles of our planet do every million years or so, the political poles of America are in the process of reversing. In just a matter of a few decades, the Left has become increasingly comfortable with the suppression of civil liberties like free speech whenever that advances their cause. Faced with accusations of systemic racism, the Right has become the new champion of racial equality as that concept was originally defined by the Civil Rights Movement. In a world where biological men who self-identify as women are encouraged to compete athletically with biological women, a growing number of feminists are aligning with traditionalists who don’t accept a large part of the LGBTQ agenda.
The New Orthodoxy. I’m old enough to remember when academia and the media could be counted on to be protectors of dissident viewpoints. No longer. The authoritarian proclivities of the Right have been appropriated by the Left. A New Orthodoxy now rules the day. Don’t believe me? When major news organizations describe arson and violent attacks on police as “mostly peaceful demonstrations that intensified”[ii], when a respected columnist can equate the lawful protection of Portland’s federal courthouse with “fascist movements” that rely on “political violence”[iii] but ignore well-documented violence perpetrated by Antifa-affiliated mobs, you know “up” has become “down” and “right” has become “wrong”.
This blog is not meant as an endorsement of a particular candidate or political party. At this point, I greatly fear that neither a Biden nor a Trump victory will bring a meaningful peace to our land. Unless something dramatic happens between now and November 3, 2020 that brings the American people together (an alien invasion perhaps?), I predict that the coming days will be among the darkest in our nation’s history. Win, lose or draw, too much is riding on the outcome of this election to quell the deep-rooted anger that plagues much of the American people. Something has to give.
Lincoln’s Lyceum Address. At the risk of offending some readers by quoting a great American president, I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln’s words to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois in 1838:
“Whenever the vicious portion of the population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity; depend on it, this Government cannot last.”[iv]
In his speech, the 28-year old Lincoln was condemning violence against blacks and abolitionists, especially the riotous mayhem of mobs bent on destroying the rule of law. More than twenty years later, he would be the president of a nation at war with itself. Despite his youth, Lincoln recognized the fragility of our republic:
“…good men, who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws…seeing their property destroyed, their families insulted; and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better, become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much adverse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose.”[v]
Our National Despair. Hopefully, the state of our nation has not yet reached the point of despair described by Lincoln. Perhaps a majority of Americans still believe we can peacefully express our firmly held beliefs without harm to others and are willing to stand up for the Constitutional principles that have kept us free for 244 years. Perhaps even members of America’s progressive elite, now safely ensconced in their summer homes away from the COVID pandemic and urban riots, will reject the peer pressure to be “woke” and push back against the forces of hatred. Perhaps it will become clear to almost everyone that no amount of virtue-signaling will ever satisfy those whose goal is to topple our government and way of life.
Once society unravels, no one is safe from the mob.
[i] https://alessandrocamp.com/2020/07/11/political-madness-a-prelude-to-civil-war/
[ii] Beckett Adams, “Media Continue to Pretend Portland Riots are Mostly Peaceful”, Washington Examiner, July 27, 2020.
[iii] Ryan Copper, “Why Trump’s Invasion of Portland is Textbook Fascism”, The Week, July 28, 2020.
[iv] A. Lincoln, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions” January 27, 1838, www.abrahamlincolnonline.org
[v] Ibid.
Be First to Comment