Election of Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman Illustrates An American Cold Civil War
This article is an opinion piece from Bill Lockwood. Catch American Liberty with Bill Lockwood weekly at 11 a.m. Saturdays on NewsTalk 1290.
Charles Kesler, in his "Crisis of the Two Constitutions: The Rise, Decline and Recovery of American Greatness," observes that many political scientists are describing our political disorders today as a “cold civil war.” Though a cold civil war is better than a hot one where shooting at one another is involved, “America increasingly is torn between two rival cultures, two constitutions, two ways of life.”
Nowhere is this more evident than in Pennsylvania where Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman defeated Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz to become the next U.S. Senator from that commonwealth. Sadly, Fetterman suffered a stroke in May which very visibly affected his cognitive functions. He can barely speak cohesively nor read without special assistance.
What is more alarming that Pennsylvania voters would actually put this man in a public office of any kind — let alone the United States Congress. Curtis Houck from Newsbusters tweeted, “You can thank a lot of people for why Pennsylvania voters chose this mentally and physically impaired man who’s wholly incapable of doing anything remotely significant, let alone serve in the senate.”
So evident is this the case that many public pundits wonder if something is wrong with the election system in Pennsylvania. “Something ain’t right,” many muse.
It was radio host Buck Sexton who put it in proper perspective on Twitter: “People who voted for John Fetterman are why reality and rationality no longer matter in politics, just party identity and raw power.”
Raw Power
Raw power is right. The existing political order is in deep trouble. Back to Charles Kesler. In his book, he points out that political scientists sometimes distinguish between “normal politics” and “regime politics.”
The former takes place within an accepted political and constitutional order, and concerns means, not ends: “That is, the purposes and limits of politics are agreed; the debate is over how to achieve those purposes while observing those limits.”
By contrast, “regime politics is about who rules and for the sake of what ends or principles. It unsettles any existing political order, as well as its limits. It raises anew the basic questions of who counts as a citizen, what are the goals of the political community, and what do we honor or revere together as a people.”
Kesler surmised that America “may be leaving the world of normal politics and entering the dangerous world of regime politics — in which our political loyalties diverge more and more, as they did in the 1850’s, between two contrary visions of what constitutes the country.”
The only update that needs to be made is this: we are not leaving normal politics and drifting into regime politics - we are there, and have been there for many years.
Primarily is this championed by the Democrat Party on the left. Why do I say this? Conventional wisdom is that “both sides” need to settle down and be more amiable. But this is a gross misdiagnosis.
If I were an elected superintendent of a school system and insisted that more and more decision-making be made at each individual schoolhouse instead of the administration building — my central office — you would not say that I was after power and a strong regime. No, that would be those officials who wanted all decision-making to gravitate to my office.
This is exactly where the conservative wing of the Republican Party has been. Turn over power to the states, instead of the federal government, such as in the recent abortion decision. That is true federalism. But which party despises that decision and wants all such legislation to be made at a federal level? That’s right — the Democrats.
The reason America is in the mess it is in right now is precisely because the Democrat Party has been in “regime politics” for a long time while Republicans play tee-ball. And the cause of Oz’s loss to Fetterman in Pennsylvania cannot be attributed to Oz’s lack of good campaigning, as some have suggested — even Joe Biden supposedly won sitting in his basement — hiding from the sunlight. No, it is all power politics.
Democrats don’t care what cognitive abilities sit in the White House or Congress. As long as they have power.
This is why Donald Trump is needed. He may be uncouth and foul-mouthed and the left loves to capitalize on it. But we are in a cold civil war where soft-talking Republicans unwilling to stand against the Democratic Party power-mongers are not what is going to save the republic.
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