People take turns stomping a statue of Christopher Columbus after it was toppled in front of the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, Minn., on June 10, 2020. (Leila Navidi/Star Tribune via AP)
June 17, 2020 Updated: June 17, 2020
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And so we have arrived at a state of near-anarchy in the formerly United States of America, now disunited by paroxysms of rage attributable not to any specific, proximate cause, but a free-floating, frustrated anti-Western, anti-American rage that bids fair to consume our social fabric, our political system, and our still-young nation itself.
Don’t be fooled that the complaints about slavery, racism, police brutality, “white supremacy,” Confederate monuments or LGBT rights are behind the current unrest. They’re transient, and recurring, issues. The answer is more elemental—fundamental, even: pure hatred for Western civilization and the Enlightenment’s most notable offspring, the USA.
How do we know? For one thing, those of us of a certain age have seen this movie before. The claims of “racism”—it used to be called simply “prejudice,” but that wasn’t nasty enough—and “police brutality” were commonplace during the urban riots of the 1960s. There was indeed a “white-supremacy” movement back then, but it didn’t get very far—its leader was a nut named George Lincoln Rockwell, and he was assassinated in 1967 in suburban Virginia by a member of Rockwell’s own American Nazi Party.
True, the destruction of Confederate statues and the pointless idea to rename military bases who currently bear the names of southern generals no one but a Civil War buff would ever recognize (Braxton Bragg, anybody?) was not much mentioned. Of course nobody had ever heard of, or contemplated, the LGBT movement.
And the ferocity of the big-city race riots in Los Angeles, Detroit, and Washington, D.C.—not to mention the pitched battle in the streets of Chicago during the 1968 convention—were thus far more violent and destructive than the current round of civil unrest. But it’s starting to feel eerily similar.
So it’s worth noting that President Lincoln and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (both ardent opponents of slavery) wished to reunite the country after the bloodiest war in our history as quickly and peaceably as possible. But apparently that is not good enough for today’s street warriors.
Second French Revolution
The coming few months between now and the election are going to be among the most perilous in American history. For one thing, the country really has “fundamentally changed” in the half-century between the 60’s riots and now, not only demographically (for which we can thank the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965) but morally and spiritually as well.
Religious attendance has dropped precipitously, and has worsened since the unconstitutional CCP virus lockdowns summarily canceled the First Amendment’s explicit guarantees of free exercise of faith and freedom of assembly.
For another, there is now the very real question whether this New America now struggling to be born—and so gleefully celebrated by the party of fundamental transformation—shares any important values with the nation it is trying so desperately to supplant.
We are now in the throes not of the second American Revolution, but the second French Revolution, in which the old order must be entirely swept away by the newer on the grounds of revanchism (reparations for African slavery), irrendentism (Mexican demands for restoration of territory, also known as “la Reconquista”), and extreme institutional secularism (a hallmark of the French Revolution, known today as “laïcité”).
The fine line that separates ethnic pride (St. Patrick’s Day) from ofttimes hostile national chauvinism (Cinco de Mayo, which actually celebrates a Mexican victory over the French in 1862) seems to turn on whether the United States invaded or currently occupies any territory once administered by other countries.
America never invaded Ireland, but instead welcomed (with restrictions both moral and physical) the Irish in huge numbers—despite the fact that for nearly 70 years Irishmen figured among the foremost criminal elements in the country.
On the other hand, America defeated Mexico during the war of 1846–48, which resulted in the ceding of most of the American southwest to the United States—something the Mexicans have never gotten over, even though they were unable to protect that vast territory against Indian incursions, which is why they asked for Anglo immigration in the first place.
Willpower Needed
What’s needed now is willpower at the top to seize the moment. Donald J. Trump was elected not because enough Americans fell in love with him personally, but because he was the apparent antithesis to what they despised most: the spiteful Hillary Clinton; the relentlessly anti-American Democrats, with their sordid history of slavery, segregation, sedition, and secularism; the GOP junior wing of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party (PBFP) of Poppy Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John “Comity” McCain, Willard Mitt Romney, and all the other prominent Republican politicians since Ronald Reagan who have consistently betrayed foundational American principles in their pursuit of power.
The big question around Washington right now, however, is this: Has the president thrown in the towel on re-election? Few could blame him if he did. His soaring economy and patriotic “Make America Great Again” message were sabotaged by his spectacularly ill-advised decision to turn the economy of the United States over to two unknown doctors, Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, and to fall right into the tar-baby trap of holding daily press conferences with a politicized and medically ignorant media whose animus against him remains unbounded. As a Napoleonic official remarked of the execution of Louis Antoine de Bourbon: “C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute.”
Indeed, it was worse than a crime, it was a blunder. But Trump has had to battle against hostile outside forces from the beginning of his presidency: the Flynn sandbagging by a rogue FBI; “Russian collusion,” a Russian-backed disinformation campaign knowingly disseminated by the “red-diaper baby” media and the president’s mortal enemies in Congress; impeachment over something to do with a phone call to the Ukraine; the Chinese Communist Party virus, conveniently hatched in a Wuhan lab/wet market and consciously spread throughout the world around Christmastime for maximum impact in November 2020; a recrudescent Black Lives Matter movement (founded in 2013), awaiting a just-right white cop-black victim narrative to rekindle racial animosity while ignoring the horrific black-on-black death toll in places like Barack Obama’s Chicago.
What Trump Must Do
The president, however, has not helped himself. From the start, the politically inexperienced Trump relied on a small circle of advisors regarding personnel matters, chiefly including his daughter Ivanka and her hitherto undistinguished husband, Jared Kushner, whose father Charles, a New Jersey real estate mogul, pleaded guilty in 2005 to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering, and illegal campaign contributions (to Democrats), and did time in federal prison. Around 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., the pair is known as “the Democrats,” and it is they who consistently push Trump to the left.
The early appointments were disastrous: milquetoast Reince Priebus as chief of staff; Texas oilman Rex Tillerson as secretary of state; Scott Pruitt at the EPA; H.R. McMaster as the National Security Advisor; the comically inept Anthony Scaramucci as head of the terminally incompetent White House comms shop for less than two weeks; even Jim Mattis, the tough-talking, no-victory general and former secretary of defense also flamed out, and after his firing, has violated the Marine Corps tradition of never speaking ill of civilian leadership.
In the meantime, Trump managed to purge his most loyal MAGA troops, including Stephen K. Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Michael Anton, and Rich Higgins (the latter two at the National Security Council), to satisfy the in-house demands for “moderation.”
Is there still time to pull things together? The mood around Washington says no, but then when has official Washington been right about anything since 1945? Meanwhile, the North Koreans have just blown up their negotiating station on the border with South Korea, and the Communist Chinese are involved in a shooting war with India. There’s trouble everywhere you look.
Here’s what Trump must do, and right away:
- Stop the violence in the streets—by any means necessary, as the Left likes to say.
- Regain control of the blue states, including their “sanctuary cities.” Nullification of federal laws was settled by Lincoln and Grant in 1865.
- Remember that, according to the Constitution, every federal court below the Supreme Court is a creature of Congress, and thus subject to congressional jurisdiction. Presidential directives should not be countermanded by lone federal judges.
- Campaign hard for the House. Abolish “ballot harvesting.” Save the Senate, if possible, but be prepared to go it alone for at least the next two years.
- Lay down clear policy for the Defense Department and make American resolve regarding China, North Korea, and the Middle East clear to the rest of the world.
- And most important: unite the country around its foundational principles, and focus Americans on the future, not the past. The most important chapters of our history are yet to be written.
We have five months. Over to you, Mr. President.
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