Claremont Institute publicizes excerpt from a book openly calling for right wing revolution/coup

How on earth do we not have any rules that bars public officials from saying stuff that is so batshit insane like this?

Because political speech is the purest form of speech and it’s protected under the First Amendment. Basically if you let government state what can and can’t be said, it will make sure that the only things that can be said further its aims. And why are you so sure that those aims are in your best interests?

I feel like up until this point we just assumed that people with severe mental health issues or anyone susceptible to delusions or cult behavior would never have enough mass appeal to win elections.

This has been a concern since the founding of the United States. The reason Congress has no role in selecting the president, the reason the election is run state by state instead of nationwide, the reason for electors in the Electoral College, restrictions on who could vote (property owners), the reason political parties are not mentioned in the Constitution, separation of powers, etc etc … these were all things to prevent demagoguery and the public from being hoodwinked into electing a charlatan.

And then you hear the stories of local judges, city counsels, and school boards making these completely batshit rulings that damage real people.

A key reason for the federal structure of the United States is to keep government local and closer to the people. If a majority of people in a city elected those officials then that’s their prerogative even if you do not like the policies they choose.

safeguarding democracy

I’m unclear what this means. Safeguard it from what? Majority tyranny? Minority tyranny? An electoral outcome that you don’t like? Returning to a situation where voting is restricted to only certain groups? What groups? Only those with college degrees from specific universities? Or by income level? By race?

From my perspective, the statements you’re making here while understandable from an emotional standpoint are betraying the same thing you are alarmed about. You are worried about a person/group having the edge in power and the way to stop them is to alarm yourself and others and ask for actions from the government that are both unconstitutional (the government doesn’t have the power to do it) or amount to majority tyranny (so screw the minority in size opinion, they just shouldn’t exist) or amount to minority tyranny (so only certain types of people with certain backgrounds and certain ideologies can have power, own the means of production, set the rules and screw the plebs who should just be grateful for what they are given).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m depressed too by the rancor and bullshittery I see from elected officials and those with bullhorns. I’m flummoxed at how poorly the political parties have managed their benches such that none of them have several quality presidential candidates able to draw attention away from a sitting president whose ability to serve is questionable and a spoiler candidate that sees politics as a TV reality show that exists solely for his own benefit and ego. I’m dismayed by this displayed preference I see in most of the hot button political issue arguments that the federal government should have so much power without realizing we’re paying an incredibly high cost for allowing that.

Not that it matters, I have lots of thoughts about how well the federal government follows the limits in the Constitution and has used its power to get bigger, more powerful, and override some of the original protections that were meant for all of our benefit - but it’s a pipe dream that this can be changed. After all, that’s why so many go balls to the wall to do and say anything to get that seat - it is so much influence and power! It is a cash cow for any one who serves! (And both of those aspects are part of the problem too).

Idk, I don’t want to mess with our free speech protections just because there are people advocating things I find highly questionable. I don’t want to bar felons from running for political office just like I think they should be able to vote. I don’t think Trump is going to be convicted of anything that matters anyway. If he were to get elected again, then it’s up to Congress and the Supreme Court to do their job. Congress especially. And that will require the two main parties deciding to work together and to give up on getting their way 100% of the time. The only route I see at the moment to get Congress to do that is for all of us to stop demanding that they erase the other side for being “crazy” or whatever (which as it happens would also severely blunt Trump’s appeal). Hence this post and me tilting at windmills.

You voiced a pretty widely shared view point on the left very well. You raise valid questions and those questions have answers. Before I go into what will seem like I'm picking apart your sentiments for contrarian reasons, keep in mind the answers to your questions won't provide solutions to our predicament. They only explain how we got here.

Rather than ask why we're here, you skirted around the more important question of what can be done about this? And the answer to that, in my opinion, boils down to two possibilities. We work within the system in numbers never before seen to enact change from within by playing against a rigged system, or, my personal favorite, and more in line with what you started off with, we take off the kid's gloves, burn it down, and take a note from the French on how to treat greedy, and narcissistic, apathetic rich people who wonder why we just don't eat cake.

Anyways, to address some of your points.

so we just never thought to put any rules or limitations in place specifically barring people with dementia, mental health issues, or fascist ideology from being able to run for office or keep their offices.

Mainly on the point of "so we never thought". That's by design. Always was. The original settlers left Europe for many reasons, but the curious one is they claimed they weren't allowed to worship in the way they wanted to. If you dig deeper, this meant they weren't allowed to persecute and judge in the way they wanted to. They were religious extremists looking to get away from sane people telling them they're insane. Of course there's the exploitation of resources and expanding of empires that's a result of industry and capitalism, but the fact these people wanted religious freedom meant the laws of the land post England were going to have as absolute little governence as possible.

Remember the colonies were essentially self governed and were absolutely reluctant to be told what to do by anyone else. Many of them disagreed with one another and had to be essentially bribed to sign the constitution. The reason it's so ambiguous and watered down without any teeth is several parts. One part is educated men not wanting regency in the land and wanting to create a living document that adapted with the times. One part is several states had a lot to say about the constitution and wanted it to be watered down or they wouldn't join. Another part is the religious slant requiring the constitution to be as open as possible. And another part is, as you put it, arrogance and shortsightedness. Faith in a super new democracy, faith in all men being spiritual and having morals. Faith that despite industry, America would know what's best for America and would be honorable and moral towards one another.

These stuffy nobles assumed too much. Not one presidential cycle later, the constitution showed how weak it was as smarter and more scrupulous men began exploiting every single flaw in it which led to ammendments left and right, clown shows of congress, ineffectual presidents, voting corruption, and of course the continuation of business in government because after all, if was men with businesses that wrote the thing in the first place.

A civil war later, and the industrial revolution, and corruption was basically hard coded into the constitution with special interests embedding themselves into the system, changing it, controlling it, and rigging it.

Conservatives have been around for a long long long time. This judgmental, racist, fearful, entity you point out existed before Ellis Island and the statue of liberty and has roots in Christianity from before they settled the new world. You think the quakers just what, went away?

That the Indian genocide was a self defense thing and not a happy purge of godless men?

Anyways, the holes in the constitution were by design. The exploitation was inevitable and an oversight of men who only hung around themselves and the constitution became ripe for abuse. Not for trying though, attempts to correct the document were made over the years and some progress was made but God snuck in too much, the constitution has this weird divine thing attached to it making it some living document that's pure and shouldn't be changed and we've built an entire government on top of a busted piece of paper that should have been rewritten at least ten times over.

The agreed upon decorum has essentially boiled down to "don't be too greedy or we all lose" meaning, so long as all the players in congress agreed to not break the rickety system, everyone could profit and the world keeps spinning.

Well, there's no end to the greediness and both parties started to slowly abuse their position bit by bit until it got heated. Think of a pendulum gently going back and forth. Things like "The New Deal", the FBI, push the pendulum further one way and it comes back to hit you harder so you push it further on your end with things like Watergate, the war on drugs, Reaganomics, and off it goes more violent than before. Each time you justify your big stick policy by saying "the other side is doing it" and the soft agreed on rules get expanded more and more.

JFK royally pissed people off. Bush Sr, Jr, McConnell, Cheney, "the old guard", royally pissed people off. Clinton was a slap in the face, Obama was a slap in the face, and then finally, a man so greedy, so self centered, so amoral and agnostic that the system finally buckled.

It has been buckling since its inception. It buckled into a civil war. It buckled into the great depression, a symptom of rampant and unregulated industry and capitalism and banking, a symptom of years of exploiting a weak constitution. We survived because we let Europe burn twice and profited greatly twice. We survived because we built a huge stick that everyone is afraid of but we've been rotting since jump.

Now all bets are off, there is no more decorum. The inmates run the asylum. The only survival is how well you can exploit the system. Democrats know if we engage like that it will quickly turn into chaos and eventually people will take to the streets.

Democrats are delaying the inevitable either by choice or out of ignorance, but unless radical change happens from within, rich people will keep riching, corporations will keep wiping their ass with government and justice, and we'll keep being exploited.

The great wheel of revolution. It was already foretold. They just got the time wrong.