The nation is embroiled in a civil war, well kind of. It’s not a great struggle, which comes to mind when you think of Abraham Lincoln’s remarkable Gettysburg address, but it is a real civil war. It was started decades ago and just as with our original one it has taken years to ferment and fester to this point.
In the last Civil War, we had a class of American’s who sought to maintain their privilege and position in an economy that was about to transition from agrarian to industrial. The economics of slavery was on the verge of proving cost-prohibitive, but still, we had those who demanded their rights must be maintained and the rights of the slaves dismissed.
This belief that one class of humans was superior to another class was not new or unique to the South. Quietly it was shared by many in the North and it traces itself through the history of mankind where one people would enslave another at the drop of a conquest. Egyptians, Babylonians, Hittites, Sumerians, Greeks, Romans, Huns, Chinese, Japanese, Samoans, the list includes every culture known. It seems to be a foundational human trait, which is passed along generation to generation until supplanted by a different moral choice.
As the voices for secession grew louder in the South, they chose to argue the rights of the States were more important than the rights of the Federal. This had been a long-standing debate within the colonies and states, it was one of the leading reasons for the Federalist papers and the counter-arguments of the anti-Federalist groups. Since the majority of Southerners didn’t own a slave the argument over States’ Rights was a much more persuasive one to rally around.
We are now in a different time, and as a nation, we hear different voices. What strikes me as the most significant difference between then and now was history has shown the South had a unity of purpose, which I don’t see in the fragmented anarchists leading today’s revolt.
We have dealt with identity politics and political control of the debate so long that today everyone believes their cause is more important than someone else’s cause. It is clearly a struggle for power and domination in the political arena. When the legitimate politicians abdicate their responsibilities and roles in leading the city, the county, the state, or the federal governments, they leave a void to be filled by whatever power block chooses to step in. It could be Antifa, BLM, LGBT, or Hell’s Angels. But, just as in a Parliamentary form of government no single identify group can command enough authority without coalition or brute force, and so far, no one seems willing to tolerate opposing views. This does not bode well for the sustainment of the revolution. Today those voices have the support of the media, but otherwise, it’s not too different than the attempted revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s when the anti-war protesters attempted to take over control of the civil rights movement.
Eventually, leaders in both groups were co-opted into the mainstream political parties with the most radical moving to the Democrats who promised them the loudest voice. I assume the same will happen today, but nothing is certain except the human traits of greed and ambition will dominate the uprising.
