Okay. We'll argue like adults. Prepare for another term-paper post. But we can't discuss serious problemns with sound-bites.
Here's the hard, nasty reality:
very few people really support 'the Constitution', or the ideas that it embodies -- Free Speech, due process ... the whole idea of limited government -- when they think their core interests are challenged.
And I'm not talking about the well-known general ignorance about the American Constitution.
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Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation | How Well Do Americans Know the Constitution? ]
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Most Americans don't know what's in the Constitution: "A crisis of civic education" ]
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Americans know literally nothing about the Constitution | CNN Politics ]
I mean the concepts in it. The ranks of my side don't believe in them, and the ranks of your side don't believe in them, when push comes to shove.
Take the issue of Free Speech. The Constitution actually prohibits the government from 'abridging the freedom of speech', but mobs can do the job just as well, or better.
And they are now, on college campuses, against my side. And when these kids move up and into government, we'll find them putting their intolerance into law, just as they've already abolished equal protection under the law with respect to racial privileges.
Now, I'd love to be able to say my side, all those Trump supporters, are of course principled supporters of equal protection, free speech, etc.
But of course it's not true, as a quick look at American history will show.
I personally experienced left wing meetings being disrupted by right wingers -- who were let off in court, when their lawyer just stood up and quoted one line from Barry Goldwater, 'Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice'.
Another friend of mine did time in prison for wearing a uniform during an anti-war guerilla theatre skit. He took his case to the Supreme Court and won. Another acquaintance -- a Black activist who was a thorn in the side of the police -- got thirty years for giving a marijuana cigarette to an undercover policeman. He too finally got justice in the courts, after serving four years.
Yet another friend was sitting in prison in Boston awaiting trial under the Smith Act, when the Supreme Court, in the Yates decision, allowed him to walk free.
All these events have two things in common: they happened a long time ago, when, roughly, my side was dominant. And it was the courts, acting against popular opinion, which carried out the wonderful ideals of the Constitution.
Google the 'Communist Control Act of 1954', co-authored by one of the most left wing men ever to sit in the Senate, Hubert Humphrey, and you'll get an idea of the popular mood of the time. (Imagine if Trump came out in support of something one-tenth as draconian as that bill today!)
It's the ruling elite who defend liberty, if anyone does. This is a conservative 'insight'. We're not naive optimists about the masses of people. People will struggle for their own interests, and in the long run, this is a good thing. It's dragged us forward from the dark ages.
But the average person is not an enthusiast for the liberty of his enemies, which is what the whole idea of liberty is really about. Everyone wants liberty for himself.
It's why the Constitution -- by which I mean the whole thing, including the Bill of Rights amendments -- puts so many restrictions on government, even on, maybe especially on, democratic government.
It's why my side likes to repeat the mantra, 'We live in a Republic, not a Democracy'.
As for threats to liberty in America. Yes, the future looks dark. We could well see a genuine anti-democratic quasi-fascist movement in America, under the right circumstances -- say, a big military humiliation abroad, followed by or concurrent with a deep depression. It's happened before. Maybe not even 'quasi'.
Right now genuine fascists are an isolated minority, shunned by conservatives for whatever reason. But there could be someone smart enough to avoid the scary word, but incorporating the essence of fascism: a pseudo-left social program, combined with the tactics and organizational methods of Lenin, blaming the usual suspects for the financial crisis, promising to make the trains run on time again? (And in America, there are multiple 'usual suspects', not just the poor Jews again.)
He might, under the right circumstances of social disintegration, get a lot of support. As Trotsky said, the wires of democracy cannot carry too high a social voltage.
Don't worry about Mr Trump. He can't even spell 'fascist'.
Is there a symmetrical threat from your side, a mass communist party aiming at one-party rule, the crushing of opposition, etc? This was a real threat in Europe for some years after WWII -- the Communists in Italy and France got close to 40% of the vote, but, with the Marshall Plan, couldn't make the breakthrough.
But I actually don't worry about that in America. I don't see your side having the social base for a serious mass communist party. Eight decades ago, yes. But not today.
What your side is doing is slowly destroying the country from within, teaching its young people that it's inherently evil, hollowing out the military and police. At the same time, you've joined with our neo-cons to keep trying to be the hegemonic world power, guaranteeing that we'll get involved in wars we can't win. (That used to be a speciality of my side, but we've learned something from that, or a lot of us have.)
So what's going to happen? Beats me. And beats everyone else, too. No one knows the future.