The American Divorce

This is an opinion article by an external contributor. The views belong to the writer.
The American Divorce

The rights bestowed upon the American people by the Declaration of Independence are indeed natural rights, rooted in Judeo-Christian morality, so that they may be inalienable by mere human effort.

What makes America, America? Perhaps the “self-evident” philosophical propositions of individual rights and equalities which have long been held high, proudly and patriotically, in accordance with the Constitution Of The United States – all under the protection of a limited government system.

Or, as one very well may argue, it might be the resonant attitude of being ‘destined for greatness’ by means of due process protections. This elucidates the legal relation between man and state government which in turn shields the diverse social fabric of community – consisting of cooperative institutions such as religion and family, as well as anti-libertinism social duties – from ever being wrongfully ambushed.

Still, the rising popularity of the disintegrationist view, a socio-political philosophy in which government must act as a regulatory antidote against the American system – to strip capitalism from its pre-existing hierarchical power – melts the glue of unionism on the basis of intersectionality.

The discriminatory meritocratic tendencies of society must, according to the disintegrationists, make place for coalitional politics along with equity-based facilities that rely on similar, polarizing beliefs as those being perpetuated by the alt-right.

For this very reason, the Founding Fathers initially doubted the notion of radical majoritarianism in an effort to abolish governmental protection of changing virtues rather than eternal rights; to no avail.

Be that as it may, the legislative branch, as James Madison would argue, must always be compelled to limit its statutory power to the protection of the Bill of Rights – ensured by the principle of checks and balances and constitutional federalism. Furthermore, the judiciary ought to fully depend on the executive arm of government – regardless of the then-reigning departmentalism – since, as stated by Alexander Hamilton, the Supreme Court will only undermine its moral authority if it were to become a super-legislator.

Disintegrationists modify the “equality of rights” into an ignominious neo-Marxist approach of government – a mechanism that transcends inherent rights in favour of the “equality of outcome” ideology.

Communism presumably heals man from its capitalistic thirst for ‘material’ by rebuilding our innate social way of living on the grounds of the perfectibility of mankind – thereby defying the existence of a ‘fixed’ human and biological nature. It is therefore hardly surprising that the disintegrationists reject the notion of any individual (negative) rights – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – that would pre-exist government a.k.a. the greater good.

Rather, they propose new, but factitious “positive rights” in the same vein as the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, predicated on the rather vague assumption that all current disparity emanates from inherent systemic discrimination and individualism.

Government must therefore take the form of a bureaucratic moral unit as opposed to a rigid and lawful institution shaped by delegated powers. In other words, disintegrationists desire a tyranny from above at the expense of free speech culture, capitalistic entrepreneurship and a free-market economy – comparable with a Marxist view of property right, the labor theory of value and a Soviet-like centralization of economy.

The disintegrationists progressivism seeks to harness historical revisionism in the context of contemporary Western philosophy – spawning the narrative of a time-ignoring critical race theory. In doing so, they manage to paint America’s history of rights and liberties, the so-called road to the unfulfilled promise, as an oligarchical collectivism characterized by economic and socio-cultural exploitation.

Through a politically driven lens and with the help of a biased collage consisting of misanthropic events throughout American history, paleoconservatism suddenly becomes the impetus for unjustifiable expansionism. The notorious 1619 project for instance received enormous amounts of backlash from left- and right-wing scholars after stating that a “consensual defence of slavery” would have been the dominant force behind the American Revolution as well as the establishment of American government, culture, philosophy and the overall founding of wealth and power.

Contrary to what Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed in his famous 1963 speech, the Declaration of Independence, as disintegrationists would put it, sought to perpetuate Jim Crow-like inequalities in class and culture in lieu of ‘real’ rights and liberties.

Donald Trump’s political slogan “MAGA” – reviving Ronald Reagan’s hopes for the spread of modern conservatism – was the obvious unionist response to such an unfounded attempt at a cultural and historical reformation. The fact that this dispute has since become an ideological war between democrats and republicans was, once again, articulated by NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo when he openly exclaimed that America “was never that great” – laughing at the idea of “American exceptionalism”; a theory which regained its popularity during the Obama presidency.

Modern America finds itself in the midst of a cultural, philosophical and historical divorce from which there is seemingly no escape.

In view of this fact, how can the American people mulishly refuse to throw in the towel when their country has lost widespread consensus concerning even the most basic values, morals and purposes of its being? The ‘experienced’ Biden administration has undoubtedly been assigned a most difficult task: to restore the ever-fleeting impression of unity as president Joe Biden so greatly desires, whilst simultaneously creating a finer balance between domestic and foreign policy-making for the sake of constitutional prosperity and universal morality.

Whether he will thereby find himself on either side of the socio-political aisle – or perhaps even move towards a more ‘European’ approach to politics  – or whether he will find the yet undiscovered ‘golden mean’ by which to rebind the ties, only time will tell.


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