Will There Be Peace in America?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is peace. This Monday is Christmas Day, the day that we celebrate the Prince of Peace who is Jesus Christ. America was “discovered” by people who were looking for a place to worship God according to their conscience. The Declaration was written by men who believed in God, and the United States Constitution was organized around Christian principles. So how did it happen that Americans are divided as badly as during the Civil War.

The situation in the State of Colorado is one example of how much division there is in the United States. The Supreme Court of Colorado ruled Tuesday evening that former President Donald Trump’s name could be on the state ballot – for both the Primary and the General Election. Their reason is the “insurrection” that took place on January 6, 2021.

Of course, they did not mention that the “insurrection” began before Trump completed his speech, and they do not mention that Trump told his followers to go to the Capitol peacefully.

Nor do they mention that the unarmed people participating in the so-called “insurrection” did not strive to take over the government.

Nevertheless, the Colorado Supreme Court cited Amendment 14, Section 3 of the Constitution, which says that people are not eligible for office if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution of the United States. Ben Shapiro posted an article in The Daily Signal discussing the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court. 

It is unclear whether the provision applies to presidential candidates; it is even more unclear whether such a provision is “self-enforcing,” meaning that any electoral official in any state can simply declare for himself whether a candidate has been an “insurrectionist.”

Nonetheless, the court said it is qualified to determine who is guilty of “insurrection” under the 14 Amendment without any criminal case or impeachment case. And the court says that “the events of January 6 constituted an insurrection and … President Trump engaged in that insurrection.”

On a legal level, this is extraordinarily strained. Section 3 was designed to prohibit those who had served in the Confederacy from holding public office in the United States.

The Confederacy, as we know, was an armed rebellion against the United States that ended in the deaths of some 600,000 Americans on both sides. Trump, by contrast, made a series of legal challenges to the election, all of which were denied, and then claimed – on the basis of specious legal reasoning – that the vice president could simply throw out electoral slates that had already been certified. He then called for his supporters to protest at the Capitol building and a riot broke out.

This hardly qualifies as an “insurrection,” let alone proving that Trump engages in one. Trump, let us not forget, has not been charged with insurrection. He was not even convicted in his impeachment trial over Jan. 6.

Yet the Colorado State Supreme Court says it can bar him from electoral eligibility anyway.

Shapiro continues by saying that the decision by the Colorado Supreme Court is “mildly, unbelievably dangerous” and “sets up a perverse set of incentives for both political sides. He wrote that Trump can rightly claim that “lawfare has been used to thwart the workings of democracy – that a slate of judges in any state can simply negate the will of the voters.” In addition, the Biden Department of Justice “has been attempted to drag [Trump] into court before the election in order to stymie his shot at the presidency.”

Even worse, the example set forth by the Colorado Supreme Court encourages “Democrats across the country” to expect Trump to “be legally barred from the presidency.” Those expectations will be doused with a flood of reality “when the Supreme Court overturns that Colorado Supreme Court ruling,” causing the Democrats to “claim that the Supreme Court itself is rigged.”

All of which means that 2024 is going to be the most insane and ugly presidential election in American history. And that’s saying a lot, since 1968 and 2020 are both years that existed. Under what circumstances, precisely, would Democrats accept the result of a Trump election? Under what circumstances, precisely, would Republicans accept the result of a Biden election?

The weaponization of the legal system creates an all-consuming fire, burning everything in its path. There is simply no 2024 result likely to result in anything but complete – and perhaps violent – chaos at this point.

Peace is a good goal to work towards in America. However, it is difficult to live in peace when half the nation refuses to follow the laws. The United States was founded on the rule of law, and it became the most powerful nation by following the law. Now, the nation is undergoing a “fundamental change” due to unlawfulness.

Secret combinations are ruling our nation, and they operate on the principle that a “crisis should never be wasted.” If Americans do not wake up to the fact that they are losing their nation and insist on a government that follows the rule of law, America will be an unrecognizable nation. May God bless America because no mere mortal has the power to save America without the help of God!