Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the thing most feared by the founders is taking place, our republic is being destroyed from within by political faction. Political faction is the great Achilles tendon of any human government that is not a despotism. Once a faction, and it usually if not always is the faction that favors arbitrary rule, increases the violence of their tactics and so the other side steps into that new level of violence in the political discourse. Each step up in violence by the one is met by the other until actual open violence against people becomes reality. Today in the US the progressive faction is rioting in the streets, beating up conservatives and denying people their right to speak, they have called for the impeachment of Trump before he even took office, they are ratcheting up the level of acceptable political violence to an heretofore unseen level in American politics. Of course the conservative faction will believe it has to utilize the same level of violence when they are out of power, it has been normalized by the progressive faction, and because not to do so would cede too much power to the progressive faction, and could inevitably lead to the extinction of the conservative faction. Never mind which faction is driving the car into the abyss, we are all in it, and they are driving us into a very dark place.
We will not have been the first nor the last republic to be rotted from within by political faction. Rome was reduced from a republic that protected and valued the rights of all citizens to arbitrary despotism. The fall was entirely due to political faction. It started even before the plebeians demanded tribunes be elected to the Senate to represent them, faction is and has always been a problem with any democratic element of government. People, being tribal, will pick a team and back it even when it becomes clear they have chosen poorly. The political violence became overt when Marius ordered many members of Sulla‘s faction executed. That was followed up by Sulla executing thousands of members of Marius” faction in the Forum. Rome’s polity was smashed once and for all, and many of Rome’s best had to flee the city, simply because they backed the wrong guy in the past.
Today we face a similar problem. The factions are different, one prefers arbitrary rule, the other would rather have limited government. Since the faction that seeks arbitrary rule plans on enforcing that rule with violence, they consider it just to initiate violence. Violence in a political arena could take a myriad of forms. It can be mere hostility to the other faction’s ability to get it’s message out, through beating up member of the other faction, to outright murder of the leaders of the other faction. The willingness to use violence is a quality of any faction that seeks arbitrary rule, they are willing to initiate violence, since they are planning on using it anyway to rule. The faction that seeks limited government however, does not believe it or any other faction has the just right to initiate violence for a political end. The result is that the faction that eschews violence will have a decided disadvantage in combating the faction that seeks arbitrary rule.
As the faction that seeks arbitrary rule becomes ever more powerful, and the extermination of their political enemies gets ever more clear, any setback no matter how minor, will set the faction that seeks arbitrary rule to become overtly violent, and we see that today. That overt violence however, no matter how carefully the script is written and how effective the crushing of opposing voices is, that violence is ugly and shows people the reality of what they support. All things good are beautiful just as all things evil are ugly. That ugliness cannot be long hid when a faction has become violent, and so most people will be repulsed by it, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Evil always defeats itself, especially at it’s acme, because once the mask comes off the ugliness underneath is so revolting people abandon it.
Abandoning the faction that is evil is the most important step. They have taken off the mask and their hideous face is in the open. Progressive’s glee at initiating violence cannot be denied, everyone sees it with their own eyes, silenced conservatives need not point it out, it is right in front of us. I wonder however, if this era of political violence will be embraced, as it was in Rome, or rejected. If it is rejected our children will live in a golden age, if embraced, they will live in a dystopian world of our making. Let’s make the right choice, the human hearted one and reject violence and punish those who embrace political violence, creating incentives not to engage in it in the first place. If the faction that initiates violence is sufficiently punished for it, the message will protect the next generation, until progressives re brand themselves again.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
