{"id":1753,"date":"2024-02-24T14:20:40","date_gmt":"2024-02-24T22:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/?p=1753"},"modified":"2025-02-24T14:17:35","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T22:17:35","slug":"the-point-of-no-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aculpableinnocence.com\/home5\/aculpabl\/anthony_blog\/the-point-of-no-return\/","title":{"rendered":"The Point of No Return"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cA house divided against itself cannot stand.\u201d\u00b9<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span>(Abraham Lincoln, 1858)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Recently, President Putin\u2019s Ukraine war strategy was questioned by one of his long-time supporters who also led a mercenary army on a threatening march to Moscow. Though he eventually laid down his arms and appeared to reconcile with Putin, both he and his followers never modified their critique of Putin\u2019s war strategy. But that critique died with him when his private plane exploded shortly after take-off. He appeared to have met the common fate of prior critics of Putin or his policies. As a corollary to his fate, the mercenary army he recruited was then disbanded or allowed to join Putin\u2019s military. Putin understood he could neither win his unprovoked war in Ukraine nor govern Russia unless he eliminated any dissonant voice before it could muster a rebellion against his Presidency. He knew a divided house cannot stand.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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One hundred and sixty-two years ago, an American presidential candidate faced the reality that his country was despairingly divided between slave states and non-slave states. His political opponent supported slavery. He did not. If he should win, he would be then destined to become President of a divided electorate. Nevertheless, shortly after assuming office, he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, then sequestered it in his desk drawer. He feared that neither his campaign against the extension of slavery nor any proclamation against its inhumanity could bridge the divide between the American states. Instead, the Confederacy would have to be defeated and the Southern States reunified into the United States of America. He knew a divided house cannot stand.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/span>Today, any elected American President faces many divisive challenges. But, in a democracy, no President has Putin\u2019s power of suppression of adverse opinions or assassination of political opponents or dissidents. He, or she, must be ruled by the electorate and the governing principles established by the American Constitution and the rule of law derived from its principles. And those principles must be held as inviolable as a moral code, for they define the extent and limitations of the three branches of the democratic state, namely, the legislative, judicial, and executive. And democratic \u201crule by the people\u201d can only be assured by free and fair elections and, consequently, by the universal acceptance of the majority as reflected in those elections. Therefore, all of us Americans must understand and accept these principles as Civics 101, else forgo our responsibilities as citizens in a democratic state\u2014or worse. The alternative course would allow any divisive element to pervert, or even overturn, the very democracy that defines the United States of America. For, indeed, a divided house cannot stand.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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There are many ways in which Americans can become divided: wealth or income inequality resulting from runaway capitalism often abetted by powerful lobbyists; racial, tribal, or religious\/doctrinal persecution\/ostracism; or the usurpation of governing power by opportunistic men (yes, always men) who choose to serve their own interests rather than those they govern or the very principles of the democracy they swore an oath to serve. We Americans do not have or even want to have the Putin option. Nevertheless, we must now face the same reality that candidate Abraham Lincoln did in 1858. At the outset, he knew what needed to be done to preserve our American republic, thereby abiding by Benjamin Franklin\u2019s alleged exhortation, \u201cif you can keep it.\u201d And George Washington had also warned us that \u201ccunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.\u201d\u00b2<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>And those \u201cvery engines\u201d were referenced by a more recent President who, like Lincoln, admonished Americans that \u201cwe must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are.\u201d\u00b3<\/span> The values President Obama referenced by these words were made explicit in our American Constitution\u2019s Preamble and determinative in the \u201ccheck and balance\u201d structure of the government it constituted.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Nevertheless, America now finds itself divided not only amongst political factions, but also within the functioning of its Constitutionally defined branches of its government. How did Americans become so divided in their politics and in support of the founding principles of our democratic republic?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cyour union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>The simple answer to this question is our loss of perspective on the source of our union and the nature of our individual responsibility to preserve it. Again, the words of our first President come to mind: \u201cyour union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.\u201d<\/span>4 These were the words of the man who not only trained but also commandeered the volunteer army that won our freedom from the British throne. In addition, he also chaired the Convention in Philadelphia that gave America its founding Constitution. Both contributions to the founding of America\u2019s democratic republic were performed <\/span>without pay<\/span><\/i>\u2014for they were inspired by George Washington\u2019s love for a united America and the preservation of the freedom it guarantees for its citizens. Washington and the founding fathers of our Constitution demonstrated for all of us what it means to be an American. If the country they birthed had later lost the war of 1812, any of these men who survived would have been charged with treason and hung from the gallows. They exemplified the meaning of the word \u201cpatriotism.\u201d But how do we rate our performance on the patriotic scale today?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201ca decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

At this very moment in America\u2019s history, our two major political parties are at war with each other, where one Party resembles what Washington coined a \u201cfaction\u201d that would \u201cput, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party\u201d<\/span>4<\/span> rather than any alternative position in pursuit of the general welfare. Factions tend to fight for advantage rather than collaborate for any compromise that may benefit most, if not all, of their constituents. How can our personal freedoms be protected when we Americans can no longer agree on how we should unite to protect and extend them? Solzhenitsyn <\/span>may have been <\/span>right in his criticism of American liberals when he said, \u201ca decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.\u201d<\/span>5<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Let us review America\u2019s current state of our union and its effect on our freedoms:\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n