Restoring The Constitution Can’t Happen With The Amoral, Atheistic Nitwittery

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – I have told you on about a billion and a half occasions, all you can really do is control yourself and what is in your community, or attempt to control what’s in your community, and more specifically in your own local sphere.  That means your family, close family, immediate friends and relatives.  You can’t possibly hope to effect and cause worldwide change because you desire it and because you think that Jefferson and Henry and Madison and company, that that’s what they did and all they had to do is snap their fingers.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  A thought-provoking and timely piece written by Joseph Baldacchino, and I believes it’s in this print edition of American Conservative Magazine.  Dan McCarthy just posted it online two days ago.  It is a review of Don Livingston’s great book Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century.  I won’t get into the details of this, but Baldacchino’s — for those of you looking for answers and wondering: Mike, how do we get out of this?  Yeah, yeah, [r]epublicanism.  Yeah, yeah, founding fathers.  Constitution, yeah, yeah.  That reminds me, by the way, today’s Pile of Prep is posted under the title “It Lives! The Constitution Is Revived For Boston Bomber,” so sayeth a professor at UC Irvine in the Los Angeles Times today.  We’ll get back to that later.

Back to Baldacchino, a very thought-provoking end to his review of Livingston’s book.  I’ll share it with you, especially those of you that wonder what the future holds and wonder what kind of part you can play in it.  I have told you on about a billion and a half occasions, all you can really do is control yourself and what is in your community, or attempt to control what’s in your community, and more specifically in your own local sphere.  That means your family, close family, immediate friends and relatives.  You can’t possibly hope to effect and cause worldwide change because you desire it and because you think that Jefferson and Henry and Madison and company, that that’s what they did and all they had to do is snap their fingers.  The fact of the matter is that the conditions existed for what could be done back in 1776, the spirit of ’76, and what existed in 1787 and beyond.  Sometimes we don’t want to fess up to this.

The fact of the matter remains today that most of our countrymen are a bunch of self-absorbed paganists.  They’re not of the Christian, gentlemanly virtue variety that men, especially statesmen, used to be.  The sooner we come to grips with that, what kind of reform can you possibly get out of non-virtuous connivers and schemers, especially those that are politicians?  The answer is, I suppose you can hope they’ll be less scheming and less non-virtuous, but don’t think it’s going to happen overnight.  This is where Joseph Baldacchino’s review of Livingston’s book comes in really handy in helping to get a grip on this.

[reading]

This book examines issues that should not be ignored at a time when past political formulas have ceased working. It is correct that, under the original Constitution, secession and nullification were considered legitimate [Mike: By the by, see my docudramedy What Lincoln Killed on the 3-CD set or digital download for proof of that.] if extreme, remedies for serious provocations. What once was true could, in theory, become true again. Yet the book fails to explain why Americans who habitually accept lawless government would suddenly elect state leaders prepared to use extreme measures.

[end reading]

Mike:  This is a question that I grapple with all the time.  What makes you think that all of a sudden we’re going to have this renaissance of state legislators and people that elect them that are going to embrace the things that used to be embraced in the 18^th and 19^th centuries?  Fat chance of that happening.

[reading]

Like many conservatives, the book’s authors seem to think that the principles of the U.S. Constitution could be revived if only more people could be persuaded of its correct interpretation. But the original Constitution and its liberties presupposed Americans with certain character traits and cultural habits. The moral, religious, and social practices prevalent in America in the 1780s were grounded in a Christian and British tradition. Only a society with that kind of public ethos would pay more than lip service to a Constitution of checks and balances.

[end reading]

Mike:  I think that sentence bears repeating.  “The moral, religious, and social practices prevalent in America in the 1780s were grounded in a Christian and British tradition.”  Don’t say Christian tradition too loud. There may be atheists listening who are going to yell and scream, [mocking] “You mean to say because I’m not a Christian that I’m unable to live under the Constitution?”  Yeah, something like that, although I suppose stranger things have happened.  It is possible.  Then he continues:

[reading]

Only a society with that kind of public ethos would pay more than lip service to a Constitution of checks and balances.

Returning to the Constitution of the Framers would require nothing less than a revival of the kind of civilization and character type from which it is indistinguishable. This cannot be accomplished quickly, through political speeches or decisions. It would require protracted moral-cultural regeneration of Americans, one person at a time.

[end reading]

Mike:  In other words, folks, throw in the towel and join the enemy.  That’s probably the best that we could hope for.  Maybe we can make them a little less poisonous, a little less onerous, a little less tyrannical.  I know that I’m supposed to counsel all sorts of jovial and positive reflections on the events of the day.  [mocking] “No, it’s not over.  Of course we can get it back.  We gotta get in there and elect a recon of Republicans, Mitter Church, and we’ll fix all this.”  I think Joseph Baldacchino, not only is he correct but we’ve talked about it on this show many times. Remember last week Daniel McCarthy, who’s the editor of American Conservative Magazine had that piece out and I read part of it to you on the air.  McCarthy basically said: Fold the tent.  Give up on your silly little quixotic quest to restore the Constitution.  It’s not going to work and it’s not going to happen.  The best thing that you could do is to deal with the secular, amoral, atheistic nitwittery out there that is the current citizenry and figure out how best to make some manner of angels out of them.

End Mike Church Show Transcript