Fight to the death

On social media I've seen conservatives accused of hypocrisy for supporting pre-election confirmation hearings for Trump's nominee to replace Justice Kennedy. A few observations:

i) I agree with them that McConnell's stated rationale to wait until the next election to fill the seat vacated by Scalia's demise was dodgy. 

ii) However, that doesn't make conservative like me hypocritical for supporting McConnell's action. I can support his action without endorsing his rationale. 

iii) There's nothing wrong, in principle, with a president nominating a replacement before a national election. It was Obama's prerogative to do that.

But by the same token, it's the Senate's prerogative to ignore a nominee. There's no Constitutional requirement for the Senate to hold confirmation hearings. It can simply let a nomination die. And I said all that at the time. 

On merely procedural grounds, there's no uniformly right or wrong course of action. It depends on the actual circumstances.

iv) There are different ways of winning and losing. You can have a football team where one team wins, the other team loses, and nothing changes. Players and family go home. Life goes on as usual.

You can have a war where the losers are executed, exiled, imprisoned, enslaved, their property confiscated, &c.

Many Americans have a live-and-let-live attitude. But that only works when both sides have a live-and-let-live attitude. Liberal social engineers are fanatical about ideological conformity. Because their policies lack widespread support, they can only implement their policies through coercion rather than persuasion. They require the punitive force of gov't to impose their will on the masses. 

Increasingly, that's why every national election and every Supreme Court nomination has become a battle to the death. The liberal establishment has made the cost of losing too high.

As a result, freedom-loving Americans can't afford to play nice anymore. Liberals who bitch about Trump or McConnell are like armed house-burglars who complain that it wasn't a fair fight because the homeowner had greater firepower. 

The liberal establishment has become ever more threatening to freedom-loving Americans. Don't be surprised if we oppose the liberal establishment with every legal means at our disposal. If you don't allow us to agree to disagree, the alternative is moral combat.