100 years of fairy tales and subversion.

For a long time it's been clear the Constitution was abandoned. Thinkers speak of "post-constitutional America" and they are right. The Constitution was killed off by the Supreme Court, chiefly, but we mostly pretend that it roars along full force. On a day without clouds, you can get a good suntan just from the emanations from the penumbra of the Due Process clause and stave off death with a dose of whatever makes the Constitution a "living" Constitution.

The New Deal Supreme Court's betrayal in distorting the Commerce Clause destroyed federalism (and hence the basic constitutional scheme) and ushered in the total state. Instead of state governments reasonably with reach of the voter, we got the federal leviathan where the voter, in dealing with the most accessible of his political masters, was but one of hundreds of thousands of each congressman's constituents. The bland, non-committal, evasive, gooey letters all of us "concerned citizens" has received from our congressional representatives tell us all we need to know about how indifferent they are to accountability to the voters and how they love half truths.

The passage of the 16th Amendment in 1913 (or was it the 13th Amendment in 1916?) authorizing a national income tax was perhaps even more destructive as it provided the wherewithal for the federal government to buy off voters with the tax money provided by them and, more likely, others, thereby reducing the voter to the status of the family dog. The grateful recipient of the occasional milk bone while their betters enriched themselves at the public trough.

All of which "conservatives" considered it frightfully impolite to discuss.

In an excellent article today, Brett Stevens discusses modern political failure in part the responsibility of cowardly conservatives. Wonder no more about why the West "has been unable to respond to reality and chases dreams and illusions":

In particular, few will speak up — Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan being the most visible exceptions — to mention the logical fact that diversity cannot work, and that Leftist delight in it exists only because a Third World population is being imported to permanently skew the vote to the left. That the native population of the United States and Europe is being replaced is beyond what conservatives will discuss because they are unwilling to challenge the liberal Establishment.

The alternative right also speaks hard truths about democracy, namely that most people vote for short-term self-interest instead of what will maintain civilization, and that in groups people compromise on the lowest common denominator. Democracy does not work; the American Constitution was an attempt to limit it so that it would, but that quickly became overthrown. Now we live in a Leftist time and we are seeing the consequences of Leftism as our economies, environment and societies plunge downward into chaos, but mainstream conservatives have failed to do more than a token effort against it, collecting votes and money as The Opposition Party without opposing the core idea of liberalism — that all people are equal — at all.^[1]

This brief excerpt doesn't do Mr. Steven's article justice. He really does provide an explanation for the conservatives' failure to think through our problems clearly and get any kind of traction in the battle with the totalitarian and nation-busting left. It's not all that complicated.

If the Trump phenomenon is a mystery to anyone still, this article will dispel the mists. The passage quoted above alone should do that.

American politics are just surreal, if you can consider the word "politics" to be a term signifying any kind of a contest between incompatible viewpoints battling for the favor of voters in the realm of ideas.

The politics of the entire West are surreal in point of fact. Police commanders escort hordes of invading Muslims along the country roads of Europe with no shame. It's just the most normal thing in the world for foreigners to stream unopposed into your country. Similarly quite normal is European navies acting as taxi services for invaders instead of an instrument to repel them.

Once admitted to a Western country, it's just taken as entirely normal, a given, something no reasonable person would question, that such persons can acquire the right to vote and bring in their extended family. The notion that if the foreigner wants to be with his family he should return home is just never even considered. An idea not even worthy of being called absurd.

Notes
^[1] "The alternative Right rises." By Brett Stevens, Amerika, 1/21/16 (emphasis added).