The emperor of the airwaves, Rush Limbaugh, discussed a Front Page Magazine column on the Civil War that I wrote. The column titled, The Civil War is Here has raised basic issues about what the left is doing.
The left has rejected the outcome of the last two presidential elections won by Republicans. It has rejected the judicial authority of the Supreme Court when it decisions don’t accord with its agenda. It rejects the legislative authority of Congress when it is not dominated by the left...
There is no form of legal authority that the left accepts as a permanent institution. It only utilizes forms of authority selectively when it controls them. But when government officials refuse the orders of the duly elected government because their allegiance is to an ideology whose agenda is in conflict with the President and Congress, that’s not activism, protest, politics or civil disobedience; it’s treason.
After losing Congress, the left consolidated its authority in the White House. After losing the White House, the left shifted its center of authority to Federal judges and unelected government officials. Each defeat led the radicalized Democrats to relocate from more democratic to less democratic institutions.
Rush Limbaugh discussed the column at length in today's broadcast. Here is some of what he said.
For example, I touched on it earlier here, and I stumbled across a column inadvertently by a guy named Daniel Greenfield at Frontpage Mag who describes the current circumstance in our country as a civil war. And he goes on to explain why it’s a civil war. And he touches on a couple things that really intrigued me. So I then began exploring them on my own, asking questions of myself, and then trying to answer them as a means by which I could arrive at an explanation for you that gets close, or as close as possible, to the way I’m thinking.
Let me ask you this. Are all of you that are on my team on this stuff, are all of you who voted for Trump, all of you anti-Democrat, all of you conservatives, Libertarians, whatever, do you not every day ask yourself in one form or another, when is this gonna end? Or maybe it is another variation: How are we going to beat these people? Or does it become “will we?” And then, if you go further, “how?”
But in any case, people are wondering, why in the world are things this way? Why does winning an election seem to mean nothing? ...
Remember now, what got me going on this is, if you’re like me, do you ever wonder when all of this is gonna end? Let me phrase it a different way. Do you ever wonder when the day will come the Democrats will accept they lost? Do you ever wonder when the Democrats will accept that Trump is president? And the answer is, they never will. They never will. They will never acknowledge losing the election.
They will never acknowledge Trump winning the election because they will never acknowledge the authority that the Constitution vests in the outcome of elections. They simply oppose it and resist it when they aren’t the authority. And when they aren’t the authority, they seek ways to behave outside the Constitution and outside those limits of authority in order to subvert and undermine that authority. And, as such, they are not willing participants in a constitutional and representative republic.
And because of this — and his column is much longer than those things I’ve shared with you — Mr. Greenfield maintains we’re in a civil war. He asks the ultimate question: When do civil wars end? “Civil wars end when one side is forced to accept the authority of the other.”
...
This is not your dad’s Democrat Party. That Democrat Party of the sixties and seventies? It’s gone. It has been radicalized, and it is like Sharia Islam. There is nothing else, and there’s no room for anything else. And if you aren’t with them, then you are never to be even acknowledged. You are to be delegitimized. You are to be destroyed. Pure and simple.
And that is indeed, as Rush points out, what we're dealing with here. Elections don't in and of themselves change anything. The left doesn't accept the system or its results as legitimate.
As I discuss in a follow up column, Winning the Civil War of Two Americas.
Democrats have not recognized a single Republican presidential victory this century. There is no real reason to think that they will recognize a third one. We can safely assume that the third or fourth Republican to win the White House, no matter who he is, will face the same treatment.
A two-party system can’t function if one party denies the legitimacy of elections won by the other side.
...
The Two Americas have come to a dangerous crossroads. The policy agenda of the Democrats would destroy America. That of the Republicans would destroy Anti-America.
American culture, economics and religion can’t survive the rule of Anti-America. That is what we saw in the Obama years. But Anti-America would do even worse if Republicans got serious about a reform agenda.
Elections are just a tool. They no longer produce a meaningful consensus. It's how you utilize that power that matters.