CountryBeforeParty

Free Mind, Free Thinker, Freedom Lover, Patriot, Devildog, Parent, Soul Surfer, Analyst, Enigma, #USMCDevildogHatesGrifters, #FightYourBias #BoycottYourIdeology

[CountryBeforeParty @CountryOTParty]

"There cannot a greater judgment befall a country than such a dreadful spirit of division as rends a government into two distinct people, and makes them greater strangers and more averse to one another, than if they were actually two different nations. The effects of such a division are pernicious to the last degree, not only with regard to those advantages which they give the common enemy, but to those private evils which they produce in the heart of almost every particular person. This influence is very fatal both to men's morals and their understandings; it sinks the virtue of a nation, and not only so, but destroys even common sense.

A furious party-spirit, when it rages in its full violence, exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; and when it is under its greatest restraints, naturally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. In a word, it fills a nation with spleen and rancour, and extinguishes all the seeds of good-nature, compassion, and humanity.

Plutarch says very finely, that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies, because, says he, if you indulge this passion in some occasions, it will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will contract such a venomous habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you. I might here observe how admirably this precept of morality (which derives the malignity of hatred from the passion itself, and not from its object) answers to that great rule which was dictated to the world about an hundred years before this philosopher wrote; but instead of that, I shall only take notice, with a real grief of heart, that the minds of many good men among us appear soured with party-principles, and alienated from one another in such a manner, as seems to me altogether inconsistent with the dictates either of reason or religion. Zeal for a public cause is apt to breed passions in the hearts of virtuous persons, to which the regard of their own private interest would never have betrayed them.

If this party-spirit has so ill an effect on our morals, it has likewise a very great one upon our judgments. We often hear a poor insipid paper or pamphlet cried up, and sometimes a noble piece depreciated, by those who are of a different principle from the author. One who is actuated by this spirit, is almost under an incapacity of discerning either real blemishes or beauties. A man of merit in a different principle, is like an object seen in two different mediums, that appears crooked or broken, however straight and entire it may be in itself. For this reason there is scarce a person of any figure in England, who does not go by two contrary characters, as opposite to one another as light and darkness. Knowledge and learning suffer in a particular manner from this strange prejudice, which at present prevails amongst all ranks and degrees in the British nation. As men formerly became eminent in learned societies by their parts and acquisitions, they now distinguish themselves by the warmth and violence with which they espouse their respective parties. Books are valued upon the like considerations: an abusive, scurrilous style passes for satire, and a dull scheme of party-notions is called fine writing. 1/2" - Joseph Addison "Mischiefs of Party Spirit - 1711

[CountryBeforeParty @CountryOTParty]

And of course Bari Weiss denies that she is coddling power for $. Powerful people always deny that they are serving power.

But denial is not exoneration. Conduct matters.

When your actions consistently move in the direction of protecting Trump, soothing MAGA grievances, weakening 60 Minutes, and replacing hard-edged journalism with audience-management and “both sides” theater, people are allowed to draw conclusions.

You can call it modernization. You can call it balance. You can call it restoring trust.

But if the result is that the most important news program at CBS becomes less willing to confront power, then it is not reform. It is surrender.

Journalism is not supposed to keep authoritarians comfortable. It is supposed to make them sweat.

#ComfortTheAfflictedAfflictTheComfortable and #4thEstate as last check to power. But for you it's all just advertising chasing that private jet.

[CountryBeforeParty @CountryOTParty]

@bariweiss Sorry, but Mike Wallace would have eviscerated what you’ve done to CBS.

Hard-hitting questions belong on 60 Minutes. That is the one program in American television that should give nobody a pass! Least of all a man openly seeking more concentrated, less accountable power!

If the goal is ratings, access, merger approval, or keeping powerful people comfortable, then sure: soften the edges, launder the agenda, call it “balance,” and pretend both sides deserve equal credence no matter how detached from reality one side becomes.

But that is not journalism. That is not courage. And it is certainly not wisdom.

What you have done to CBS makes the ideals of The Free Press look less like a commitment to fearless truth-telling and more like branding: a noble-sounding wrapper around power, money, and audience capture.

“Both sides” is not a moral philosophy when one side is trying to corrupt the institutions that make journalism possible. Neutrality toward authoritarianism is not objectivity. It is surrender with better lighting.

#WeThePeople deserve better than another media outlet feeding the #PassionOfTheMob and calling it courage.

https://t.co/AyYFgTcCAd

[CountryBeforeParty @CountryOTParty]

Sorry but Mike Wallace would skin you alive for what you have done. Hard hitting questions belong on 60 minutes. That is one program that should give nobody a pass, especially a man seeking absolute power. And cuddling g his agenda because $ tells you it's better for ratings is something that should be done at most on other programs. What you have done with CBS shows you FP ideals are just illusion, unless you think giving equal credence to both sides no matter how crazy or no matter which one has the power that implicitly corrupts is the right answer. It might be if your goal is ratings snd money because #WeThePeople and the #PassionOfTheMob have never been called wise. But its surely not for the greater good or actual wisdom.
https://t.co/eU9BMDpWCq

[Gregg Nunziata @greggnunziata]

An independent judiciary is indispensable to liberty and the rule of law. Those who kick against it, left and right, threaten more than they understand.

https://t.co/AcjmQtQYSV

[Gregg Nunziata @greggnunziata]

I understand my legal conservative friends who prefer Trump over the alternative. But those who could not find their voice, once, in the last ten years, to condemn his indecent, unlawful, and unconstitutional behavior are simply cowards. They should never be taken seriously.

[CountryBeforeParty @CountryOTParty]

@JoelValdezDOW Ok Putin

[CountryBeforeParty @CountryOTParty]

You are an embarrassment to the Washington avatar you wear.

And I’ll admit something up front: I can feel myself falling into the philosopher’s trap here: the temptation to show open contempt for someone who clearly has not done the work, has not read deeply, has not thought carefully, and yet speaks with the smug certainty of a man repeating slogans he mistakes for knowledge.

That contempt is not my highest impulse. But your misuse of Washington deserves to be answered.

Washington was not a decorative mascot for whatever tribal theory you picked up from influencers and grievance merchants. He was not an avatar for lazy blame-shifting, reflexive cynicism, or the childish need to make every tragedy fit neatly into your preferred partisan mythology.

He was a man of restraint, duty, sacrifice, republican virtue, and self-command. A modern Cincinnatus. A man who surrendered power when lesser men would have clung to it.

A man who admired Addison’s Cato, and had it performed at Valley Forge, and understood liberty as something requiring discipline, character, and moral seriousness.

And in his Farewell Address, he warned Americans directly about the “baneful effects of the spirit of party”, because he understood that factional passion corrodes judgment. It teaches men to stop seeking truth and start defending narratives. It makes them mistake loyalty to a tribe for loyalty to the republic.

That is exactly what you are doing.

The Pope expresses sorrow for civilians being killed, homes destroyed, churches damaged, and innocent lives broken....and your instinct is not compassion, not reflection, not even sober geopolitical analysis. Your instinct is to vomit out a partisan talking point about Obama, the CIA, color revolutions, and NATO, as if every human tragedy must first be processed through your tiny ideological machine.

That is not wisdom. That is not patriotism. That is not Washingtonian. It is just tribsl faction wearing a powdered wig.

So no, using Washington’s image does not make your argument noble. It makes the contrast more embarrassing. You are borrowing the face of a man of principle to dress up a mind captured by faction, one who has obviously not done the work to be educated.

[Dan Carlin @dccommonsense]

Live testing your theory Marcos!

(Not) New CS show available now. Recorded back on April 7th. We're calling it "The Water in Which We Swim"

"Half the quality in twice the time" is our new motto! 😂

https://t.co/AS9J1DRu3y

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

No American president has ever sought to benefit so directly, and so immediately, from his own political decisions. Unprecedented

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

some thoughts for American parents—>

2026 Alexander Hamilton Awards: The Honorable Ben Sasse

https://t.co/7j6d3x3Yp4 via @YouTube

[CountryBeforeParty @CountryOTParty]

"Fyodor Dostoevsky once stood before a firing squad.

He had been arrested for reading banned books and discussing forbidden ideas. At twenty-eight, he was blindfolded, tied, and told to prepare for death.

He later said those final minutes stretched into an eternity… every sound sharper, every thought purified.

At the last moment, a messenger arrived. The execution was a ruse. His sentence was commuted to hard labor in Siberia.

He spent four years in a frozen prison camp among murderers and thieves. Chains on his legs. Disease in his body. Scripture was the only book allowed. The Gospels became his lifeline.

He emerged with one conviction burned into him: that man is fallen, suffering is real, and redemption is possible only through love freely chosen.

From that came Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov… novels that stare straight at evil and refuse to look away, yet insist that even the worst soul can be saved."
https://t.co/lO83CsYflp

[CountryBeforeParty @CountryOTParty]

"And we should be angry. We should be outraged. We certainly shouldn’t allow Trump and company to spin whatever comes out of this as a victory. We mostly defeated ourselves here, but we certainly aren’t getting anything for us. Maybe something for Elon Musk comes out of this, but there’s nothing for the rest of us coming out of this essentially tributary visit to China."
What good for @elonmusk is not necessarily good us #WeThePeople. We are headed towards #Corporatocracy #Plutocracy #Kakistocracy but most certainly not a system Of, For, and by The People.
https://t.co/OTwosSqs8K

[CountryBeforeParty @CountryOTParty]

“Just as printing made everyone a potential reader, today digitalization is turning everyone into a potential author,” he observed. The problem is that when it comes to discourse, quantity is often the enemy of quality. Rational public debate can take place only if participants accept certain conditions—above all, the obligation to be truthful and to listen to other points of view.
The internet, to put it mildly, is not known for encouraging these qualities. The problem isn’t just that people deliberately lie, spreading disinformation for personal or political gain. It’s that the public sphere has shattered into competing publics, each able to ignore the others. If you’re a vaccine denier, your social-media feed is full of other vaccine deniers, so your beliefs are always affirmed, never challenged. This makes democratic deliberation impossible. “The point of deliberative politics is, after all, that it enables us to improve our beliefs in political disputes and get closer to correct solutions to problems,” Habermas wrote, and that can’t happen if we are never challenged by counterarguments or kept honest by demands for explanation. (Or as he put it, using the technical language of his theory of communication, “communicative contents could no longer be exchanged in the currency of criticizable validity claims.”)"
https://t.co/ehNUqvkMBv

[CountryBeforeParty @CountryOTParty]

"There is one piece of sophistry practised by both sides, and that is the taking any scandalous story that has been I ever whispered or invented of a private man, for a known, undoubted truth, and raising suitable speculations upon it. Calumnies that have been never proved, or have been often refuted, are the ordinary postulatums of these infamous scribblers, upon which they proceed as upon first principles granted by all men, though in their hearts they know they are false, or at best very doubtful. When they have laid these foundations of scurrility, it is no wonder that their superstructure is every way answerable to them. If this shameless practice of the present age endures much longer, praise and reproach will cease to be motives of action in good men.

There are certain periods of time in all governments when this inhuman spirit prevails. Italy was long torn in pieces by the Guelfes and Gibelines, and France by those who were for and against the League: but it is very unhappy for a man to be born in such a stormy and tempestuous season. It is the restless ambition of artful men that thus breaks a people into factions, and draws several well-meaning persons to their interest by a specious concern for their country. How many honest minds are filled with uncharitable and barbarous notions, out of their zeal for the public good! What cruelties and outrages would they not commit against men of an adverse party, whom they would honour and esteem, if, instead of considering them as they are represented, they knew them as they are? Thus are persons of the greatest probity seduced into shameful errors and prejudices, and made bad men even by that noblest of principles, the love of their country. I cannot here forbear mentioning the famous Spanish proverb,

"If there were neither fools nor knaves in the world, all people would be of one mind."
For my own part I could heartily wish that all honest men would enter into an association, for the support of one another against the endeavours of those whom they ought to look upon as their common enemies, whatsoever side they may belong to. Were there such an honest body of neutral forces, we should never see the worst of men in great figures of life, because they are useful to a party; nor the best unregarded, because they are above practising those methods which would be grateful to their faction. We should then single every criminal out of the herd, and hunt him down, however formidable and overgrown be might appear: on the contrary, we should shelter distressed innocence, and defend virtue, however beset with contempt or ridicule, envy or defamation. In short, we should not any longer regard our fellow-subjects as Whigs and Tories, but should make the man of merit our friend, and the villain our enemy." - Joseph Addison - The Mischiefs of Party Spirit - 1711

[CountryBeforeParty @CountryOTParty]

"There cannot a greater judgment befall a country than such a dreadful spirit of division as rends a government into two distinct people, and makes them greater strangers and more averse to one another, than if they were actually two different nations. The effects of such a division are pernicious to the last degree, not only with regard to those advantages which they give the common enemy, but to those private evils which they produce in the heart of almost every particular person. This influence is very fatal both to men's morals and their understandings; it sinks the virtue of a nation, and not only so, but destroys even common sense.

A furious party-spirit, when it rages in its full violence, exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; and when it is under its greatest restraints, naturally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. In a word, it fills a nation with spleen and rancour, and extinguishes all the seeds of good-nature, compassion, and humanity.

Plutarch says very finely, that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies, because, says he, if you indulge this passion in some occasions, it will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will contract such a venomous habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you. I might here observe how admirably this precept of morality (which derives the malignity of hatred from the passion itself, and not from its object) answers to that great rule which was dictated to the world about an hundred years before this philosopher wrote; but instead of that, I shall only take notice, with a real grief of heart, that the minds of many good men among us appear soured with party-principles, and alienated from one another in such a manner, as seems to me altogether inconsistent with the dictates either of reason or religion. Zeal for a public cause is apt to breed passions in the hearts of virtuous persons, to which the regard of their own private interest would never have betrayed them.

If this party-spirit has so ill an effect on our morals, it has likewise a very great one upon our judgments. We often hear a poor insipid paper or pamphlet cried up, and sometimes a noble piece depreciated, by those who are of a different principle from the author. One who is actuated by this spirit, is almost under an incapacity of discerning either real blemishes or beauties. A man of merit in a different principle, is like an object seen in two different mediums, that appears crooked or broken, however straight and entire it may be in itself. For this reason there is scarce a person of any figure in England, who does not go by two contrary characters, as opposite to one another as light and darkness. Knowledge and learning suffer in a particular manner from this strange prejudice, which at present prevails amongst all ranks and degrees in the British nation. As men formerly became eminent in learned societies by their parts and acquisitions, they now distinguish themselves by the warmth and violence with which they espouse their respective parties. Books are valued upon the like considerations: an abusive, scurrilous style passes for satire, and a dull scheme of party-notions is called fine writing. 1/2" - Joseph Addison "Mischiefs of Party Spirit - 1711

[CountryBeforeParty @CountryOTParty]

When are Republicans going to stop electing demagogues, sophists, and grifters? I blame the fact that people dont read books anymore and think partisan news and opportunistic social media influencers capitalizing on their partisan blinders and motivated reasoning is "fine writing".
People don't recognize the hamster wheel are on because they dont actually learn history and philosophy, outside of memorized facts and figures to pass a test, enough to see the cause and effects of the past demonstrate we have been here before many times. We just keep making the same animal mistakes to the same engineered impulses, just with new more pernicious technology amplifying our worst instincts.

[CountryBeforeParty @CountryOTParty]

That is not republicanism.
That is exactly the kind of personalist politics the constitutional system was designed to resist.
Read Washington’s Farewell Address too. He warned directly against the spirit of party, against factional hatred, against those who would put party loyalty above country, and against the danger of ambitious men using popular passions for their own elevation.
That warning was not written for “the other side.” It was written for all of us.
Read more Burke, too. Not because Burke gives you simple answers, but because he understood the danger of tearing down inherited institutions in the name of rage, purity, and abstract grievance. A real conservative should be cautious about charismatic men who inflame the crowd, degrade institutions, and train their followers to see every restraint as illegitimate.
That is why I keep coming back to the Overton window problem. You seem to believe you are standing in the reasonable center because your information diet has redefined the center for you. But if your entire frame requires that Trump’s conduct is always excusable while every institution that checks him is corrupt, then that is not skepticism. That is tribal capture.
A serious reader of the Founders should ask:
What happens when one man convinces millions that only elections he wins are legitimate?
What happens when a party refuses to restrain its own leader because it fears his base?
What happens when legal accountability is redefined as persecution whenever it touches your side?
What happens when loyalty to a man becomes more important than loyalty to constitutional order?
Those are not Democratic questions. They are republican questions in the older, deeper sense.
So yes, read Plato. Read Aristotle. Read Cicero. Read Locke. Read Montesquieu. Read the Federalist Papers. Read Washington’s Farewell Address. Read Burke. Read Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Read Mill’s On Liberty. Read Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies. Read Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism.
Not so you can become a Democrat.
So you can recognize demagoguery, faction, institutional decay, and authoritarian temptation when they come dressed in your own side’s colors.
Because that is the real test.
Anybody can spot tyranny in the enemy’s camp. The harder thing is spotting it when it speaks your language, flatters your grievances, attacks your enemies, and tells you that your tribe alone represents “the people.”

[CountryBeforeParty @CountryOTParty]

@dylantjohnson91 I would seriously recommend extracting yourself for a while from the social media influencers + partisan news ecosystems that tell you what to believe through half-truths, motivated reasoning, selective outrage, & reality filtered through red lenses until it fits neatly into a curated tribal worldview.
I don’t say that as a Democrat. I am not one. I say it because this is what partisan capture looks like from the inside. You start to think your side’s assumptions are just “common sense,” while everyone outside your information silo looks captured, corrupt, naïve, or secretly aligned with the enemy.
That is how an Overton window shifts. Slowly. Repeatedly. Through the same claims, same villains, same slogans, same grievance rituals, same emotionally satisfying explanations. Eventually, “Russia gate,” “lawfare,” “witch hunt,” “deep state,” and “they arrested the opposition candidate” stop sounding like partisan framing & start sounding like neutral description.
They are not neutral descriptions. They are pre-loaded conclusions.
So here is my sincere recommendation: spend some time reading actual books. Better yet, read the books & authors that shaped the political imagination of the Founders & the older republican tradition they inherited.
Start with Plato’s Republic & Apology, not because Plato gives us liberal democracy, but because he teaches you to distrust sophistry, demagoguery, appetite-driven politics, & the manipulation of the crowd.
Read Aristotle’s Politics + Nicomachean Ethics, because Aristotle forces you to think seriously about regimes, civic virtue, moderation, character, & the difference between a healthy polity and a corrupted one.
Read Cicero’s On Duties and On the Republic, because Cicero understood republican duty, public virtue, law, ambition, and the danger of powerful men who place personal glory above the commonwealth.
Read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, because self-government begins with the government of the self. If a man cannot master his own passions, resentments, vanity, and need for flattery, he should not be trusted with power.
Read Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, because it reminds you that fortune rises and falls, and that wisdom requires detachment from the emotional storms of the moment.
Read John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, because it shaped the Founders’ ideas about consent, rights, legitimate authority, and resistance to arbitrary power.
Read Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws, especially on separation of powers, checks and balances, political moderation, and the way liberty depends on institutions restraining power. Montesquieu is indispensable. If you want to understand the architecture behind the American constitutional system, you cannot skip him.
Then read The Federalist Papers, especially Madison in Federalist 10 and 51. Federalist 10 is about faction, and it is painfully relevant now. Madison understood that factions are not abnormal. They are natural to free societies. The point is not to pretend faction can be eliminated. The point is to design institutions that prevent faction from consuming the republic.
Federalist 51 gives you the famous principle: ambition must be made to counteract ambition. That is the entire logic of checks and balances. The system assumes men are not angels. It assumes power must be checked because human beings are ambitious, self-interested, vain, and prone to corruption.
Now apply that principle honestly.
If your answer to every institutional check on Trump is “deep state,” “lawfare,” “witch hunt,” “Russia gate,” “fake news,” or “they’re all corrupt,” then you are not thinking like Madison. You are thinking like a partisan courtier defending a prince.
The Founders did not build a system where one charismatic man gets to stand above courts, Congress, elections, prosecutors, judges, juries, state officials, witnesses, and constitutional procedures simply because his followers believe every accusation against him is fake.