The American constitutional system faces Democrat Party attack
Fortunately, the virtue and wisdom of the founding generation shine forth
Recently, I finished reading two very different books, one warning of the threats to our constitutional republic and the other setting forth the defining characteristics of that regime. These are The Democrat Party Hates America by Mark Levin, Fox commentator, and Our Sacred Honor: Words of Advice from the Founders in Stories, Letters, Poems and Speeches by William Bennett, who served in the cabinets of the Reagan and first Bush administration. He calls the work The Book of Virtues.
The timing of my reading was coincidental as I had been reading Bennett’s book on and off and then my wife bought me Levin’s book. But the contrast could not be greater as Levin shows that Democrats are taking dead aim at everything that stands in the way, to use Barak Obama’s over the top language (but not inaccurate) of “transforming America.” This is not mere hyperbole but is uttered with complete conviction. Only a political party that truly despises this country would express itself in that fulsome manner.
Back in graduate school I remember learning about The Battle of the Books that occurred in Europe and to some extent in colonial America during the formative years of early modernity. Old structures and dogmas were giving way to more empirical and scientific approaches that promised a more just and viable future for mankind. Divine revelation was not extirpated but shared the intellectual frontier with rationalism. As I will show below, that mixture very much defines the new nation of the United States of America.
Levin in eight fact-laden, principle-based, chapters makes it clear that the Democrat Party is not a loyal member of our two-party system but determined to use every imaginable tactic or device to ensure that it will dominate elections far into the future. The end game is power, more so than any particular societal or governmental policy or program.
Front and center for Democrats, Levin writes, is authoritarianism, the opposite of constitutional government but also the bugaboo of the Democrats as they continually accuse Republicans and conservatism of espousing what they practice themselves. We live in an era when dissent from Democrat rule is treated as insurrection, whether that is parents objecting to schools corrupting their children or pro-life citizens protesting the murder of unborn children.
Racism has long defined the Democrat Party, which supported slavery and segregation for black Americans for most of its history, embracing antisemitism in the early twentieth century and antiwhite racism later, continuing until today. The party has exemplified the hoary features of authoritarianism by practicing language and thought control, now reaching the peak of censorship known as “wokeness,” previously political correctness, in a war on so-called “disinformation” and “misinformation” that writes off all criticism as spurious.
No less critical is what Levin describes as the war on the American citizen, holding that those who “cling” to family, work, religion and patriotism are barriers to the full flowering of the administrative state. Instead of fraternal and commercial relations, we face constraint by bureaucratic elites that know better, they believe, than citizens do.
To that end, Democrats war against the nuclear family—two parents and children—which stands in the way of homosexuality, lesbianism and transgenderism. Their constituency consists not of family members, but single women and racial minorities who have embraced government dependency and abortion mills.
It is a war on the Constitution, far more than the formal document, as our supreme law calls upon and draws from the combination of reverence and reason to shape our way of life and our participation in it. Levin concludes sharply with a chapter entitled “Stalin Would Be Proud” as he sets forth the systematic efforts of the Democrats to quash opposition by continuing criminal prosecutions of both ordinary citizens and the previous President Donald Trump. No one is exempt from the prosecutorial hammer.
Bennett’s book consists of seven chapters on the following: patriotism and courage, love and courtship, civility and friendship, education of the head and heart, industry and frugality, justice and piety. These qualities are not appreciated by many influential people to any great extent, even if millions of us continue to practice them.
The founders knew that they were engaging in a great experiment, the first nation in history to secure individual rights, necessitating great care in fostering the habits and sentiments that make that possible. Citizens must love their country and be prepared to make sacrifices on its behalf. America’s wars have been more righteous than not and to this day military service is honored.
But no less are love and courtship indispensable, for human beings in discord cannot get along with one another and certainly cannot support a nation. Today wedding and birth announcements have disappeared from newspapers as fewer and fewer people get married.
Civility and friendship require equal dedication as there is no top-down structure to enforce social status. Citizens must make good choices as they and they alone form the sinews of society.
Education in the fullest sense of the word is needed also, including worthy book learning in the Bible and the classics but also common sense drawing lessons from everyday life, its struggles no less than its successes.
In the commercial republic that we possess along with constitutional forms industry and frugality are indispensable. Even before the Revolution, Americans had demonstrated dedication to agriculture and, increasingly commerce, as there were markets on this continent and beyond that provided opportunities for prosperity. Not greed so much as self-improvement is the key to overcoming poverty.
“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society,” wrote James Madison in the Tenth Federalist Paper, meaning that it is the object of all law and government. We cannot be so free-wheeling or rebellious that we cannot know with clarity what our rights are. The rule of law is indispensable to individual freedom—each reinforces the other.
Finally, piety, a virtue under especially sharp dismissal these days, is needful as mankind needs divine guidance so far as we are blessed with it and call upon it. Something akin to piety is present in movements and mobs that embrace a doctrine without question. But if it lacks love and humility, it is dangerous to liberty and to order.
The various modes in which these virtues are set forth and explained in Bennett’s beautiful book by the members of the founding generation are the indispensable weapons against the plot to “transform” America.
Not merely by passion but by reason and reverence can we save our country.