More than a decade ago, somewhere in the pages of National Review Online and writing under the name of my alter-ego, David Kahane, I coined the term, the Cold Civil War, and amplified the subject in my book, Rules for Radical Conservatives.
Despite all the evidence of the past several decades, you still have not grasped one simple fact: that, just about a century after the last one ended, we engaged in a great civil war, one that will determine the kind of country we and our descendants shall henceforth live in for at least the next hundred years — and, one hopes, a thousand. Since there hasn’t been any shooting, so far, some call the struggle we are now involved in the “culture wars,” but I have another, better name for it: the Cold Civil War.
Hasn't been any shooting so far. But with his recent rejection of federal authority, Texas governor Greg Abbott may have turned up the heat. Just as the South did during the first Civil War, Texas -- supported by fully half the states now -- has effectively nullified a Supreme Court order via the simple expedient of ignoring it. In this Abbott recalls another southern president, Andrew Jackson, who (perhaps apocryphally) in the case of Worcester v. Georgia (1832), said, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”
Or, to paraphrase Stalin, how many divisions does John Roberts have? The Court's authority derives from the will and the respect of the governed. But when an institution turns rogue, and refuses to act in defense of the nation in the face of clear and present danger, all bets are off.
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Mexican standoff.
It's notable that all four of the women on the Court -- at least two too many, but a potent indicator of the continuing feminization of the Republic -- flocked together, with Roberts the deciding vote. By now, conservatives are used to getting stabbed in the back from this enduring legacy of the Bush II administration, right up there with the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security/TSA. Bush may be gone -- and not all that gone, when you think about it -- but the evil he did lives on:
Three former U.S. presidents - Republican George W. Bush and Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama - have banded together behind a new group aimed at supporting refugees from Afghanistan settling in the United States following the recent American withdrawal ending 20 years of war. The former leaders and their wives will serve as part of Welcome.US, a coalition of advocacy groups, U.S. businesses and other leaders.
Just what we need, another "advocacy group," as if the U.S. government itself hasn't already been transformed into one under these three presidents and their love child, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. But here we are, in the middle of the biggest mass invasion in American history, a tidal wave of largely penurious humanity, unvetted, unchecked, of unknown health status, many of them without passports or any form of identification, criminals upon crossing our borders, and none of them bearing any loyalty to the country -- and until recently, no one raised a hand to stop it.
The Three Amigos.
And why would they, with the media just waiting to pounce on even a hint of "racism"? Having transmogrified the descriptor "illegal aliens" into "the undocumented" and now into simple, anodyne "immigrants" -- hey, aren't we all descended from immigrants? -- they've won the linguistic battle. Now, using Saul Alinsky's potent Rule No. 4 (“"Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity"), they've posited completely untrammeled immigration as a positive moral good and defy anyone to oppose it.
Back in 1916, Pancho Villa invaded the new state of New Mexico and attacked the small settlement of Columbus. Troops fought back, scores of people (mostly Mexicans) were killed. President Wilson, outraged, ordered Gen. John "Black Jack" Pershing to form a punitive expedition into Mexico; although it failed to capture Villa, the incursion did help to make the reputation of a young officer in the U.S. Army: George S. Patton, Jr., who personally shot several Villistas in a gunfight and made all the papers.
What comes of Texas' defiance remains to be seen. After all, it's not like the Rangers suddenly opened fire on Fort Sumter. All the Court did was to vacate a lower-court decision, thus permitting the feds to regain access to an area in which the Texas National Guard has been busily installing razor wire to keep out "immigrants" and to destroy the new barriers.
Why would they want to do that? To ask the question is to have it answered: because they want to. For too long the Right, in high dudgeon, shouts "don't they realize that...?" regarding every new enormity. But actions speak louder than words, and what the Left has been trying to tell us for years is: "of course we do." However, in picking the fight with the superannuated Biden -- a famously stubborn moral monster whose reputation has been deliberately covered up by the lickspittle media -- Abbott runs the risk of provoking a bitter, senile old man into doing something that he would absollutely relish doing. Would Biden order federal troops to open fire on the Texas National Guard? Who or what's to stop him? Dr. Jill? His AWOL secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin?
In any event, it's good to see an American politician stand up to the D.C. leviathan, which continues to assault the Constitution and the citizenry with its arbitrary ukases and its naked corruption. Time was when James Fennimore Cooper's archetypal American, Natty Bumppo, was the beau idéal:
Now, we're all subjects. Last week, four fearful women and a spectacularly weak man, hiding behind their robes of office in a Court whose only constitutionally mandated member is the Chief Justice -- leaving the rest to be self-aggrandized -- refused to protect the nation without a word of explanation. Message: obey.
Perhaps they've forgotten the opening words of the Declaration: "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..." If so, what happens next is on them.
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I am fascinated by this article and the comments! And the possibility that the senile old pedophile in the White House would send fighter jets to Texas, in my opinion is a real possibility. Living in East Texas I saw two fighter jets fly over Nacogdoches on Wednesday of this week. So yes, your term “the cold civil war” is spot on.
Is anything being defied here? The SC kicked the case back to a lower court and said the Border Patrol can cut/remove fencing the state put up; it didn't say the state couldn't put fencing up or replace what the feds cut down. None of this is going to be of much consequence until it gets back to the SC for an actual ruling.
Using the Texas example, governor's of progressive leaning states will allow President Trump to be thrown off the ballot.
What a bunch of silly talk.
If it turns hot it's going to be ugly and painful. Sadly I see two courses. Either the right capitulates and goes along to get along or the finally reach a point beyond which they refuse to go. I fear that point is near. Perhaps the suspension of the presidential election. Perhaps the jailing of Donald Trump. More likely, it will be something completely unforseen. Maybe Biden will send F16s against the American people. That would be a mistake of tremendous consequences.
President Biden should simply place all federal funds designated to specific states in impound until they comply with the Supreme Court. That would include all funding for any form of federal grants or aid.
Federal Funds?
You mean the money stolen from the Citizenry?
In late 2020, SCOTUS threw out a lawsuit brought by Texas challenging the pandemic related voting irregularities in the states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The court’s reasoning?
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"Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,"
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Texas’ response three years later?
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“SCOTUS has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which the Federal Government conducts its border enforcement.”
Roberts and ACB made the worst possible decision they could, setting the stage for armed conflict. Two groups of armed men-one stringing wire and one removing it. What could go wrong?
To this day, no one knows who fired the first shot at Lexington. Redcoat or Minuteman or 3rd party or even a ND. There are lots of 3rd parties along the border that may see opportunity in conflict. Radicals on both sides, foreign or domestic intelligence agencies, and the cartels come to mind.
It won't matter who fires the first shot. What matters is that Texas is in a state of armed rebellion against the United States and needs to be handled accordingly. Other governors sending law enforcement or National Guard troops to Texas are also now in a state of armed rebellion against the United States.
Every public official who has taken an oath to the Constitution, including law enforcement officers, should be removed from office per Section 3 or the 14th Amendment, since none are now Constitutionally qualified to hold those offices.
While your article overall is on point, the initial premise is wrong. It’s been widely pointed out (at least on X) that the Supreme Court’s order in question did not apply to the state of Texas, so Abbott’s actions or inactions do not nullify anything.
This is known as not seeing the forest for the trees.
The federal government may not have the authority to tell Texas they can't secure the border, given their unique legal status. It seems like that would be the sort of law that was in effect when they became a state.