The Divided States of America: A Return to 1861?

Dr. Jack Devere Minzey, born 6 October 1928 – died 8 April 2018, was the Department Head of Education at Eastern Michigan University as well as a prolific author of numerous books, most of which were on the topic of Education and the Government role therein.

This was the last of his writings before he passed. My hope is it helps the reader recognize and reject the emotionally charged narratives being perpetuated by our news media day after day and differentiate between the fact challenged accounts of current events and the reasoned and historically supported accounts like this one. – Thanks to Kristine Manning for sharing this.

Civil War: How do civil wars happen?

by Dr. Jack Devere Minzey

Two or more sides disagree on who runs the country. And they can’t settle the question through elections because they don’t even agree that elections are how you decide who’s in charge. That’s the basic issue here. Who decides who runs the country? When you hate each other but accept the election results, you have a country. When you stop accepting election results, you have a countdown to a civil war

The Mueller investigation is about removing President Trump from office and overturning the results of an election We all know that. But it’s not the first time they’ve done this. The first time a Republican president was elected this century, they said he didn’t really win. The Supreme Court gave him the election. There’s a pattern here.

What do sure odds of the Democrats rejecting the next Republican president really mean? It means they don’t accept the results of any election that they don’t win. It means they don’t believe that transfers of power in this country are determined by elections. That’s a civil war

There’s no shooting. At least not unless you count the attempt to kill a bunch of Republicans at a charity baseball game practice. But the Democrats have rejected our system of government.

This isn’t dissent. It’s not disagreement. You can hate the other party. You can think they’re the worst thing that ever happened to the country but then you work harder to win the next election. When you consistently reject the results of elections that you don’t win, what you want is a dictatorship.

Your very own dictatorship.

The only legitimate exercise of power in this country, according to Democrats, is its own. Whenever Republicans exercise power, it’s inherently illegitimate. The Democrats lost Congress. They lost the White House. So what did they do? They began trying to run the country through Federal judges and bureaucrats. Every time a Federal judge issues an order saying that the President of the United States can’t scratch his own back without his say so, that’s the civil war.

Our system of government is based on the constitution, but that’s not the system that runs this country. The Democrat’s system is that any part of government that it runs gets total and unlimited power over the country.

If the Democrats are in the White House, then the president can do anything. And I mean anything. He can have his own amnesty for illegal aliens. He can fine you for not having health insurance. He can use the IRS as his own police force and imprison citizens who speak against him. He can provide guns and money ( Fast and Furious, Iran nuclear deal ) to other countries to support his own agenda and watch while one of America’s Ambassador’s is dragged through the streets and murdered while doing nothing to aid our citizens. His power is unlimited. He’s a dictator.

But when Republicans get into the White House, suddenly the President can’t do anything. He isn’t even allowed to undo the illegal alien amnesty that his predecessor illegally invented. A Democrat in the White House has ‘discretion’ to completely decide every aspect of immigration policy. A Republican doesn’t even have the ‘discretion’ to reverse him. That’s how the game is played. That’s how our country is run. Sad but true, although the left hasn’t yet won that particular fight.

When a Democrat is in the White House, states aren’t even allowed to enforce immigration law. But when a Republican is in the White House, states can create their own immigration laws. Under Obama, a state wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom without asking permission but under Trump, Jerry Brown can go around saying that California is an independent republic and sign treaties with other countries.

The Constitution has something to say about that.

Whether it’s Federal or State, Executive, Legislative or Judiciary, the left moves power around to run the country. If it controls an institution, then that institution is suddenly the supreme power in the land. This is what I call a moving dictatorship.

Donald Trump has caused the Shadow Government to come out of hiding: Professional government is a guild. Like medieval guilds. You can’t serve in it if you’re not a member. If you haven’t been indoctrinated into its arcane rituals. If you aren’t in the club. And Trump isn’t in the club. He brought in a bunch of people who aren’t in the club with him.

Now we’re seeing what the pros do when amateurs try to walk in on them. They spy on them, they investigate them and they send them to jail. They use the tools of power to bring them down.

That’s not a free country.

It’s not a free country when FBI agents who support Hillary take out an ‘insurance policy’ against Trump winning the election. It’s not a free country when Obama officials engage in massive unmasking of the opposition. It’s not a free country when the media responds to the other guy winning by trying to ban the conservative media that supported him from social media. It’s not a free country when all of the above collude together to overturn an election because the guy who wasn’t supposed to win did.

Have no doubt, we’re in a civil war between conservative volunteer government and a leftist Democrat professional government.

Advertisement

Ukraine Official Refutes Key Impeachment Testimony

We see the word “BOMBSHELL” used in news media a lot these days and most of the time it’s nothing more than click bait.

This story, however, may actually fit the term.

This is from TIME magazine at TIME.com so my Left of center friends shouldn’t use the source as a fallback position to ignore it.

A top Ukraine official who is mentioned dozens of times in the impeachment report released last week and has been called a critical figure “at the center” of the impeachment inquiry, is now disputing testimony by the Democrat witnesses upon which the entire impeachment process rests.

In a recent interview with TIME, Andriy Yermak is questioning the recollections of crucial witnesses in the impeachment inquiry.

“Listen, I want to tell you straight,” Yermak told TIME in the interview on Dec. 4, “Of course, now, when I watch these [hearings] on television, my name often comes up, and I see people there whom I recognize, whom I met and know,” he says, referring to the witness testimony. “That is their personal opinion, especially the positions they expressed while under oath. I have my own truth. I know what I know.”

Where this really gets dicey is with regard to Gordon Sondland’s testimony. As you may recall, Mr. Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the EU, had previously testified that there was no quid pro quo but then later revised that statement and testified the opposite in a written statement and again during the hearings. That is important to remember and consider when listening to Yermak’s recollection of his “meeting” with Sondland.

The key testimony that allowed the Democrats to move forward with impeachment came from Sondland, the ONLY witness to say he believed there was a quid pro quo in place. NO OTHER WITNESS made this direct allegation.

That testimony hinges on a meeting between Vice President Pence and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in Warsaw on September 1.

Sondland testified that he pulled Yermak aside after the Warsaw meeting and told him U.S. aid to Ukraine would probably not resume until Zelensky’s government announced two investigations that could implicate President Trump’s political rivals.

From the TIME.com article –

“Based on the testimony from Sondland and other witnesses, the final report from the House Intelligence Committee concluded last week that Sondland made this offer of a quid pro quo clear to Yermak that day in Warsaw.”

Yermak disputes this. “Gordon and I were never alone together,” he said when TIME asked about the Warsaw meeting. “We bumped into each other in the hallway next to the escalator, as I was walking out.” He recalls that several members of the American and Ukrainian delegations were also nearby, as well as bodyguards and hotel staff, though he was not sure whether any of them heard his brief conversation with Sondland. “And I remember – everything is fine with my memory – we talked about how well the meeting went. That’s all we talked about,” Yermak says.

KABOOM! Is that bombshell enough?

In his initial testimony to the impeachment inquiry in October, Sondland said he never knew the U.S. aid to Ukraine was conditional on the investigations Trump wanted.

But then the following month, Sondland amended his testimony with a new sworn statement, in which he described the conversation with Yermak in Warsaw and identifying it as a quid pro quo on behalf of the president.

“I now recall speaking individually with Mr. Yermak, where I said that resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Sondland wrote in the amended testimony.

Yermak, a central figure in this entire process, says that never happened.

Mr. Schiff? Mr. Nadler? Houston?
We have a problem…