Posted by
Patrick Henry on Thursday, June 11, 2009 5:12:53 PM
Civil political discourse in the United States of America is but a distant memory.
Venomous partisanship flourishes and a ruthless winner-take-all spoils system seems
firmly in place. The media has divided the nation into "red states" and "blue states" on
the basis of a single election, and declared the losing party dead. The blogs are rife
with namecalling and hysterical tirades as liberals and conservatives trade hostile
barbs. The nation seems more polarized than at any time in its 200 year history.
There are chilling similarities between the current climate of enmity and that which
existed circa 1860 when civil war broke out between northern and southern states,
pitting Americans against each other in a bloody conflict that left scars still felt today.
It is simplistic revisionist history to suggest that the war was simply about slavery.
There were deep and pervasive economic and social differences between the north
and the south, with each concerned for its own business interests and each convinced
that its way of life was best. Unsettled disputes about federal rights versus states'
rights raged, with diverging interpretations of the constitution hanging in the balance.
The abolitionist movement was gaining steam in the north, with proponents casting
slavery as the moral issue that it was and calling for the freeing of all slaves. The
northern media shrilled termagant bile at the south, mocking southerners as uneducated
countryfied dolts with faulty moral compasses. Then Lincoln was elected, which
seemed to the south a last straw. Perceived as a pro-northern, pro-abolitionist, pro-
federal rights president, he would see seven states secede from the union before he
took the oath of office. Then, when the south had lost, with some of its major cities
razed to the ground, the historically inevitable happened. John Wilkes Booth put a
bullet in Abraham Lincoln's brain.
The simple point is this: when Americans see themselves as shut out of the public
conversation of government, when they perceive their rights being trampled upon
wholesale, when they see what they have worked and scrounged to accumulate about
to be confiscated by an invasive and oppressive regime, they WILL rebel. There are
few moralist arguments that trump the individual American's right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. And when that sanctuary is profaned, conflict is as certain as
night following day.
In tomorrow's post some direct parallels will be drawn between 1860 and today,
and some predictions will be made about where this frightening trend might be
going. Please share your comments, and tune in for Part II.