November 6, 2012, the day on which Barack Obama was re-elected to the presidency of the United States, was a moment when the history of America was decisively changed. Some – and we are among them – think that the old America, the America founded in 1776, died on that day.

We have selected passages from several post mortems (see the whole articles).

Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh, who has lived under a communist regime, writes a lament:

Our Constitutional Republic died a peaceful death on November 6, 2012. Having reached the point of no return in a comatose state after years of progressive and illegal immigration assaults, the fabric of conservative society is now completely unraveled and Uncle Sam’s America is no more.The United States of America is now relegated to the dust bin of history as a “has been” empire. The Shining City on the Hill, the hope of so many millions since July 4, 1776, no longer exists. What rises from the ashes is a country that few of us will recognize, like, or learn to accept submissively. After 236 years of existence, a new country emerges today … The Supreme Court will be forever altered after its last conservative members will be replaced by the liberal academics who call themselves “progressives.” The rule of law will be implemented by Executive Orders, making Congress irrelevant. The communist motto “Forward” that resonated with so many ignorant Americans will plunge us into many years of darkness from which we will never be able to recover. We have proven our Founding Fathers right, they did give us a Constitutional Republic and we were unable to maintain it. … The welfare dependent Americans, unions, and illegal aliens have chosen for the rest of us the dark path of serfdom to big government and to socialist utopia. … Rallies in support of conservatism overwhelmed venues for Mitt Romney while rallies for our bumbling President became scarcer and scarcer. Yet, miraculously, at the ballot box, our President won all over the countrt. … Americans chose high unemployment, reduction of our military, communist indoctrination of their children, and loss of personal freedoms … I am saddened by the loss of millions and millions of American soldiers who have died to preserve freedom yet we lost it on November 6, 2012.

Ron Radosh gives some advice. He writes:

The president will argue that the nation has given him a mandate and endorsed the policies he sought to pursue, and that he will do all he can to move the United States to the “fundamental transformation” he said was his goal in the 2008 election campaign. That means the opposite of any attempt for serious compromise, and a hunkering down to try to move ahead with ObamaCare and other politically leftist programs. …  So what should conservatives do? … Those opposed to the direction Obama favors should provide serious and meaningful alternatives of their own, and present them to the nation. They should do everything possible to reveal to the nation that it is the White House, and not the defeated Republicans, that is failing to deal with the coming crisis of a growing entitlement state.  In foreign policy, which is the most dangerous of the coming crises that will face the Obama administration, conservatives should relentlessly forge ahead on issues like the failure of the White House in the murders of our diplomats at Benghazi, which candidate Romney foolishly failed to deal with in the last days of the campaign … It also means a continuing effort to raise the issue of the danger to the world of the growing radical Islamic movements abroad, to attack their ideology, and to make it clear that although Bin Laden is dead, his death did not put an end to a regrouped al-Qaeda.

J. Christian Adams sounds a note of optimism, looking to the individual states to preserve liberty. He  writes:

The Founders gave us a Constitutional architecture which was designed to delay the arrival of demagogues. And make no mistake about it, Obama is a demagogue. He has totalitarian tendencies which manifest over and over and over again. Whether attacking religious liberty, or secured Chrysler bondholders, this man comes from a worldview distinctly un-American. Thankfully the Constitution still is operative. Some of the liberties the Founders secured are still ours to treasure. The press remains free. We can still assemble. And I suspect after tonight, gun ownership will substantially increase. But another part of our Constitutional architecture provides solace tonight – the 10th Amendment. Sure, we’ve heard the 10th thrown about for years. But tonight it ripened. Whatever powers aren’t given to the federal government, it doesn’t have. And the states are empowered to push back against federal power. It’s funny how those wise architects 200 years ago anticipated things we couldn’t anticipate just a decade ago. It is providential that the document contains seeds that sprout over time. The 10th Amendment does not lend itself to the sort of corrupt interpretation that the Commerce Clause does. States retain power, period. …

Bryan Preston writes in a spirit of mea culpa but let’s-now-do-it-right encouragement:

We can blame the candidate, sure. Romney didn’t fully capitalize on his first-debate win, and apparently the Chris Christie/Barack Obama lovefest turned a lot of votes back to the president, too. But overall, Romney ran almost as competent a challenger’s campaign as I’ve seen. We can blame the press, sure. Benghazi alone would have sunk most presidents — most Republican presidents — in weeks if not days. The coverup by the Complicit Media was shameful in the extreme. But we’ve faced down the MSM before, and won. So, no, I don’t think we can just blame Romney and I don’t think we can just blame the press. Even combined, those two aren’t enough to explain what happened today. There is something deeply wrong with our country. We’ve been living on borrowed time — and trillions of borrowed dollars — for a decade already. We seem to think that we can keep on doing so. That more than anything else is “the new normal.” Thomas Jefferson famously said of the slavery issue, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” I tremble for my country when I think that the God of Compound Interestis a far more jealous God than Jahweh, Allah, and Zuul all wrapped up into a single, bloody package. Maybe that truth — the truth — doesn’t sell in a country that’s been suffering for four years now, and with no real end in sight. This election should have been something like a walkover for the challenger. But no. Our economic destiny is already written in stone, with four trillion in new debt run up by Bush and the GOP, and another six trillion by Obama and the Democrats. Our only hope is rapid and wrenching reform. The alternative is hyperinflation, Cloward-Piven [forcing the break-down of the system and then establishing communism], and all the rest of the Zimbabwe-like horror. And that means Mitt Romney didn’t fail us. That means people like me — people like you — failed our country. We had years to make the case, and we didn’t. We worked our bottoms off, but it wasn’t enough. So we must redouble our efforts. … Do not tire, do not flag, do not quit. … We will need to fight [Obama] at every turn. I’m not quitting. Don’t you quit now, either.

We won’t be quitting.

The worst is yet to be, and for as long as we have the freedom to say what we think, we – and all our readers, we trust and hope – will continue to do so.

… And, on further thought, do so even after that freedom is denied us, because then it will be even more necessary. That’s our pledge.