Episode 39 January 3, 2020

CLP topic category: Irreconcilable Differences.

Polarization and the Inevitable Disunion of America.

Introduction.

Our podcast today expands on Zack Beauchamp’s article, “The Constitution Was Not Built For This,” to explain that the ideological polarization in America will lead to a civil disunion.

We argue that Beauchamp, a socialist writer for Vox, is correct that Madison’s Constitution of 1787, was not built to resolve the growing polarization between socialists and natural rights conservatives over the nation’s mission and purpose.

We argue that socialists promote class conflict and racial polarization as a strategy to overthrow the government in order to replace the current government with socialism,

Typical of the left wing hope for polarization is the article by Sam Tanenhaus, The Promise of Polarization, where he argues that “Ideological division was once seen as the solution to America’s political gridlock.”

In leftist language, “gridlock” is when socialists cannot convince Republicans to collaborate with Democrats.

Beauchamp writes,

“Republicans’ in the House who did not vote against Trump’s impeachment reveals a broken system — and a democracy at real risk of failure. … the GOP’s willingness to back the president to the hilt, in spite of clear and obvious evidence of abuses of power, speaks to an urgent threat to American democracy: Our constitutional system is ill-equipped to withstand extreme polarization.”

Beauchamp makes the same observation as Bill Maher that the result of polarization is that the two sides see each other as ultimate enemies, not a citizen-compatriots.

Beauchamp writes,

“Under conditions of extreme polarization, the two camps start to see the other side as not merely a political opponent, but an existential threat to the American way of life.”

For Beauchamp, the impeachment is simply a necessary first step in removing the voting rights of 63 million conservatives, in order to make progress to a hoped-for one-party socialist tyranny.

His argument is that Republicans in the House, who did not support the left’s drive for impeachment, are intolerant and are contributing to polarization.

In our first section, we argue that Madison’s Constitution was designed to ameliorate commercial and financial conflicts between the natural aristocracy and common citizens.

Madison assumed that all citizens understood that the purpose of the Revolution was liberty, and did not design the rules to resolve the first principles of the national purpose.

In our second section, we explain why Madison’s Constitution is inadequate in solving ideological polarization. We argue that Madison’s Constitution is a failure that cannot be fixed in order to ameliorate the divisions in America.

Victoria Nourse, a left-wing law professor at Georgetown University, explained her concept of a crisis, as opposed to a constitutional failure,

“A constitutional crisis is a fight among branches of government in which neither side backs down, and there is no clear resolution within the constitutional system.”

She is right that Madison’s Constitution offers no solution to polarization, but mischaracterizes the impasse as a constitutional “crisis.” Madison’s rules assume a national consensus among citizens that does not exist, and is a failure, not a crisis.

The socialists have a coherent strategy of using polarization to divide American citizens in order to implement a socialist state.

In our third section, we extend the comments of Beauchamp to include a representative range of left wing opinion to demonstrate that the desired outcome of polarization is the implementation of a one-party socialist state.

We conclude our podcast with the observation that natural rights conservatives must begin to see the Democrat socialists as an existential threat to individual liberty.

The only non-violent solution to polarization is for conservatives to create a new democratic republic, with a new constitution, that es