Can America Survive the Progressive Revolution?

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Rod Dreher, writing at The American Conservative, highlights Angelo Codevilla’s analysis on the current “revolution,” in America. Dreher points out progressives’ militancy, which has broken the American republic. Dreher suggests that increased federalism may be the way forward. He writes (abridged):

Here’s a provocative essay by Angelo Codevilla, the distinguished professor of geopolitics, in which he offers an analysis of the “revolution” underway in America. I’m only going to make some general comments, and focus on what jumps out to me.

Here’s how it begins:

Prior to the 2016 election I explained how America had already “stepped over the threshold of a revolution,” that it was “difficult to imagine how we might step back, and futile to speculate how it might end. What follows dissects that logic. It has unfolded faster than foreseen. Its sentiments’ spiraling volume and intensity have eliminated any possibility of “stepping back.”

Regardless of what else Codevilla says, can’t most of us agree that this general sentiment is likely true? Don’t most of us, whether our sympathies lie with the left or the right, share a sense that some important lines have been crossed in our politics and culture. Trump is not the cause, but the result, though it’s also true that Trump, in the way he has governed, has advanced the disintegration of the country. In that he has had help: I’m thinking of the Democrats’ mega-borking of Brett Kavanaugh.

Codevilla clearly sympathizes with the forces Trump embodies, though he is critical of Trump himself — as we will see. Codevilla believes that Progressives (he capitalizes the word) are responsible for breaking the Republic.

The Kavanaugh hearings were the Grand March of the Secular Puritans brought to bear directly onto our politics. Brett Kavanaugh was the witch who must be burned to protect the collective from Evil White Men. What made that event so revealing is not that Democrats opposed Kavanaugh (that is to be expected), but their eagerness to destroy him on flimsy personal grounds. A lot of us saw that, and concluded that if they’ll do that to him, they’ll do it to us.

As I’ve written about many times — at greatest length in The Benedict Option — Americans are losing our religion. The secular militancy of progressives, especially in the media and leading US institutions, strikes many of us — not only conservatives! — as out of touch with lived reality.

The thing is, he is not impressed by Trump. He says that Trump has been feeding Americans “empty calories” — that he’s more talk than action. Codevilla believes that the best we can hope for is that the forces Trump has marshalled will be able to fight Progressives to a draw — and then we can find peace by reaching a settlement that imposes a much stronger federalism. Let the blue states be blue, and the red states be red, and everybody else leaves everybody else alone.

I don’t see how that is possible, but I hope it is possible, because the alternative is extremely unpleasant. Codevilla concludes:

Unattainable, and gone forever, is the whole American Republic that had existed for some 200 years after 1776.