With the outpouring of anger over the conviction of Donald Trump, I thought it worth resending the piece I wrote a year ago at the time of the indictments (expanded from an article published in the American Thinker).
If a minor behavior meets a slap down and continues to meet a slap down, that behavior fails the utilitarian usefulness test. it disappears. On the other hand, the opposite is true. If a minor behavior meets any approval, it is repeated. The more repeats, the more visible and emulation of that behavior will happen. If a major act that is not currently supported happens, resistance is immediate and widespread. It may survive, but only with piles of corpses. I have known too many bad prosecutors, and I know that it starts with the overlooking, or deliberate insertion of the one, the first one, to desensitize everyone involved so that the next one is not a big deal. We have long built an attitude of excuses are exceptions that are now widely accepted as mainstream. From Bar Associations, interested parties such as LEO's, to politicians, media and worst of all the citizenry. I will always remember that the true point of that pithy phrase: Power corrupts... was really about the citizen, the majority, being corrupted, not the few.
My long held opinion of this not-so U. S. is that it is the best damned country ever! My emphasis is on the damned. I wish I could write. I wish people could read! This would be my book title. Our police and welfare state was flawed from its beginning by too weak a centralizing religious cult, a unifying faith. Thanks to the Protestant Revolt---and more than one book has lately examined this. One aspect of this lack is a too shallow understanding of Natural Law, and I confess I don't get it either. I am neither a philosopher nor a theologian. Nor am I a historian but I get this, the long understood Catholic teaching of the proper role of civil governments was that the Church held the trump card on our eternal destination depending on how we ruled ourselves and over others. Our Founding Fathers ranged from Deist to Calvinism (I think our original sin---is a kind of neo-puritanism rooted in Calvinism that still haunts us today.) Rush Limbaugh used to talk of how there are people who cannot stand the realization that somewhere there are people enjoying life. That neo-calvinist-puritanical impulse is what has fueled our police state mentality. At the opposite end is the ultra-liberal impulse of "Anything goes!" Between these any real justice is crushed. The only way we could have had a justice state would have been that every poor man would have representation in court from as good a legal team as that representing the government. In addition, a jury of his peers would have to be men of similar circumstance in terms of rich v. poor, age bracket, political and theological persuasion. All this would seem to be impossible in the "real would." Let's face it; no real justice is likely on earth. Natural never forgives---only God can. And then no forgiveness is possible from Above unless we repent!
We can add what Toqueville warned of-- to personal focus among a populace trying to gain personal wealth to the detriment of public duty. Many founders warned of the need for vigilance to protect Liberty. Leaving it up to the early ruling class led to our early foundering as a republic.
Who says you cannot write? You came up with a pretty good book title. If you do not use it in a future book, I might. I am curious what book(s) you have in mind that attribute our problems to the Protestant revolt. I wrote a book about Puritanism, and I still cannot decide if the Puritans are the reason for our "exceptionalism" for good or for ill. Probably both.
Thank you for the compliment. You are welcome to 'steal' the book title--for free! I am sure that any idea I have has been 'stolen' from somebody else! The puritan streak gave us Prohibition and still haunts us to this day, though from the "left" rather than from the "right!" Liberals have become the new puritans---fearing that, in the face of their anti-human ideology of the day, some of us are having a good time. Regarding justice, the ink was hardly dry before the Washington government violated the law with things like George Washington with Hamilton at his side violated the rights of local western Pennsylvania farmers making and selling local whiskey as a way to turn corn into needed cash. This action may have inspired the 1942 Supreme Court decision on grain used to feed a farmer's own livestock as somehow "interstate commerce." The same logic was applied to the 1960's anti discrimination rule against a local restaurant owner in the South who bought napkins from an out of state supplier. Bad as discrimination might be it thoroughly trashed any remnant of a business being private property---let alone local.
A second assault on just law and our Constitution was the Alien and Sedition Acts during the same time period. Thankfully that was put down at least prominently by the reaction in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolves.
The third was the failure to impeach Justice John Marshall for arrogating unto himself and the Supreme Court having the final say as to what both Framers and Ratifiers had in mind when they crafted the U. S. Constitution.
Courts have done more to erode the Constitution and our rights than any other body.
Congress, especially the U. S. House of Representatives has never to my mind ever defended the rights of the people.
Due to our too weak roots and lack of active participation by non-government entities fighting for ordered liberty, beginning with a proper at home and local independent school of our children, and too broad an electorate, we lasted as a Republic for about one lifetime.
The second lifetime we became an empire and emerging bureaucratic state.
The third has been consolidation of everything we were not during the republic, a police and welfare state---now in collapse.
Thanks for all you do
Mike Smith
Chase City (formerly Christiansville) in occupied Mecklenburg County, Virginia.
Sorry I didn't answer your question: I am not sure I got the Puritan idea from any book. I may have dreamed it up all by myself. I have read several books on our founding and development as a nation. My seminal work was Russell Kirk's Roots of American Order, though as written by a Yankee he gets the War of Northern Aggression wrong. Other works I have drawn upon have been Robert Stinnett's "Day of Infamy" on Roosevelt's getting us into WWII---though I disagree with his take on FDR's reasons. Drs. Thomas Woods' on economy and Dilorenzo on Lincoln have been examined. Books by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein on the Venona Papers and others on the Soviet-Marxist penetration of America. Can't forget Diana West. Other books on how the Catholic Church was and is taken over by Freemasons, Marxists and Sodomites cannot be ignored. My library is full of so many.
I wish I had come up with that book title. If you are not a writer, and a thinker, then I despair. It is a joy to have folks like you make comments here. I encourage you to develop your writing because being the selfish creature that I am I so enjoy hearing that which I am either ignorant of or not familiar enough with that is presented with imagination, logic and evidence.
If a minor behavior meets a slap down and continues to meet a slap down, that behavior fails the utilitarian usefulness test. it disappears. On the other hand, the opposite is true. If a minor behavior meets any approval, it is repeated. The more repeats, the more visible and emulation of that behavior will happen. If a major act that is not currently supported happens, resistance is immediate and widespread. It may survive, but only with piles of corpses. I have known too many bad prosecutors, and I know that it starts with the overlooking, or deliberate insertion of the one, the first one, to desensitize everyone involved so that the next one is not a big deal. We have long built an attitude of excuses are exceptions that are now widely accepted as mainstream. From Bar Associations, interested parties such as LEO's, to politicians, media and worst of all the citizenry. I will always remember that the true point of that pithy phrase: Power corrupts... was really about the citizen, the majority, being corrupted, not the few.
My long held opinion of this not-so U. S. is that it is the best damned country ever! My emphasis is on the damned. I wish I could write. I wish people could read! This would be my book title. Our police and welfare state was flawed from its beginning by too weak a centralizing religious cult, a unifying faith. Thanks to the Protestant Revolt---and more than one book has lately examined this. One aspect of this lack is a too shallow understanding of Natural Law, and I confess I don't get it either. I am neither a philosopher nor a theologian. Nor am I a historian but I get this, the long understood Catholic teaching of the proper role of civil governments was that the Church held the trump card on our eternal destination depending on how we ruled ourselves and over others. Our Founding Fathers ranged from Deist to Calvinism (I think our original sin---is a kind of neo-puritanism rooted in Calvinism that still haunts us today.) Rush Limbaugh used to talk of how there are people who cannot stand the realization that somewhere there are people enjoying life. That neo-calvinist-puritanical impulse is what has fueled our police state mentality. At the opposite end is the ultra-liberal impulse of "Anything goes!" Between these any real justice is crushed. The only way we could have had a justice state would have been that every poor man would have representation in court from as good a legal team as that representing the government. In addition, a jury of his peers would have to be men of similar circumstance in terms of rich v. poor, age bracket, political and theological persuasion. All this would seem to be impossible in the "real would." Let's face it; no real justice is likely on earth. Natural never forgives---only God can. And then no forgiveness is possible from Above unless we repent!
We can add what Toqueville warned of-- to personal focus among a populace trying to gain personal wealth to the detriment of public duty. Many founders warned of the need for vigilance to protect Liberty. Leaving it up to the early ruling class led to our early foundering as a republic.
Who says you cannot write? You came up with a pretty good book title. If you do not use it in a future book, I might. I am curious what book(s) you have in mind that attribute our problems to the Protestant revolt. I wrote a book about Puritanism, and I still cannot decide if the Puritans are the reason for our "exceptionalism" for good or for ill. Probably both.
Thank you for the compliment. You are welcome to 'steal' the book title--for free! I am sure that any idea I have has been 'stolen' from somebody else! The puritan streak gave us Prohibition and still haunts us to this day, though from the "left" rather than from the "right!" Liberals have become the new puritans---fearing that, in the face of their anti-human ideology of the day, some of us are having a good time. Regarding justice, the ink was hardly dry before the Washington government violated the law with things like George Washington with Hamilton at his side violated the rights of local western Pennsylvania farmers making and selling local whiskey as a way to turn corn into needed cash. This action may have inspired the 1942 Supreme Court decision on grain used to feed a farmer's own livestock as somehow "interstate commerce." The same logic was applied to the 1960's anti discrimination rule against a local restaurant owner in the South who bought napkins from an out of state supplier. Bad as discrimination might be it thoroughly trashed any remnant of a business being private property---let alone local.
A second assault on just law and our Constitution was the Alien and Sedition Acts during the same time period. Thankfully that was put down at least prominently by the reaction in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolves.
The third was the failure to impeach Justice John Marshall for arrogating unto himself and the Supreme Court having the final say as to what both Framers and Ratifiers had in mind when they crafted the U. S. Constitution.
Courts have done more to erode the Constitution and our rights than any other body.
Congress, especially the U. S. House of Representatives has never to my mind ever defended the rights of the people.
Due to our too weak roots and lack of active participation by non-government entities fighting for ordered liberty, beginning with a proper at home and local independent school of our children, and too broad an electorate, we lasted as a Republic for about one lifetime.
The second lifetime we became an empire and emerging bureaucratic state.
The third has been consolidation of everything we were not during the republic, a police and welfare state---now in collapse.
Thanks for all you do
Mike Smith
Chase City (formerly Christiansville) in occupied Mecklenburg County, Virginia.
Dr. Baskerville.
Sorry I didn't answer your question: I am not sure I got the Puritan idea from any book. I may have dreamed it up all by myself. I have read several books on our founding and development as a nation. My seminal work was Russell Kirk's Roots of American Order, though as written by a Yankee he gets the War of Northern Aggression wrong. Other works I have drawn upon have been Robert Stinnett's "Day of Infamy" on Roosevelt's getting us into WWII---though I disagree with his take on FDR's reasons. Drs. Thomas Woods' on economy and Dilorenzo on Lincoln have been examined. Books by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein on the Venona Papers and others on the Soviet-Marxist penetration of America. Can't forget Diana West. Other books on how the Catholic Church was and is taken over by Freemasons, Marxists and Sodomites cannot be ignored. My library is full of so many.
Thanks again
Mike
Seems Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer had it all figured out!
https://anthonyesolen.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share
I wish I had come up with that book title. If you are not a writer, and a thinker, then I despair. It is a joy to have folks like you make comments here. I encourage you to develop your writing because being the selfish creature that I am I so enjoy hearing that which I am either ignorant of or not familiar enough with that is presented with imagination, logic and evidence.