Our much-admired fellow conservative Kurt Schlichter recently posted an article on Townhall asking a question we’ve been mulling for quite some time: Are We Looking At Another Civil War?
Mr. Schlichter observes that, “…while the chance of civil conflict is low, violence is not only possible but it has been used by the left as a means of making political change in America in the past. And the evidence is that the left remains ideologically open to using violence in the future to achieve its goals.”
We would like to agree with Kurt Schlichter that the “chance of civil conflict is low,” but as we review the reaction of the Democrats and their Far Left allies to the candidacy and election of Donald Trump we are more inclined to ask, how can we not have a civil war, than to accept that the chance of civil conflict is low.
In Part 1 we looked at some of the potential triggers to a civil war, in Part 2 we looked at how the Left is manipulating the composition of the potential combatants, in Part 3 we looked at the most likely combat scenario, and today in the fourth and final installment of the series we ask is such a civil war inevitable?
The late Angelo Codevilla, author of the must-read book The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It also published an essay with great relevance to divining what the future holds for the American experiment in constitutional liberty.
In “Our Revolution’s Logic” a 2018 essay that should have been a wake-up call to every conservative in America, Codevilla applied the "logic of revolution" to the escalating “Resistance” to the results of the 2016 election and concluded that the spiraling volume and intensity of opposition to Donald Trump and the demonization of his supporters eliminated any possibility of “stepping back.”
Fast forward to today and we see that not only was Mr. Codevilla correct in his 2018 assessment of the situation, but thanks to the COVID pandemic, the pace and intensity of the spiral toward revolution is increasing exponentially.
As Mr. Codevilla explained:
The logic that drives each turn of our revolutionary spiral is Progressive Americans’ inherently insatiable desire to exercise their superiority over those they deem inferior. With Newtonian necessity, each such exercise causes a corresponding and opposite reaction. The logic’s force comes not from the substance of the Progressives’ demands. If that were the case, acquiescing to or compromising with them could cut it short. Rather, it comes from that which moves, changes, and multiplies their demands without end. That is the Progressives’ affirmation of superior worth, to be pursued by exercising dominance: superior identity affirmed via the inferior’s humiliation. It is an inherently endless pursuit.
The logic is rooted in disdain, but not so much of any of the supposed inferiors’ features or habits. If it were, the deplored could change their status by improving. But the Progressives deplore the “deplorables” not to improve them, but to feel good about themselves. Hating people for what they are and because it feels good to hate them, is hate in its unalloyed form.
And, the pandemic, the 2020 election irregularities and the witch hunt in the aftermath of the J6 Capitol Protest have given Democrats and their allies a new and even more frightening set of tools with which to oppress their hated enemies.
While Democrat elected officials and their self-appointed elite progressive allies in the media, entertainment and business routinely flouted pandemic mandates, let murders out of jail with no bail and refuse to enforce even basic laws against shoplifting in Democrat strongholds like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland those outside the elite who protested the results of the 2020 election were fired from their jobs, barred from participating in civil society and in some cases dragged from their homes or places of business and imprisoned.
When this was happening in San Francisco and Portland it could be dismissed as a local “Left Coast” problem, but it has now spread to the federal government, where the highest law enforcement official in the land – Attorney General Merrick Garland – has refused to enforce laws against intimidating federal judges, even after a Democrat operative traveled from California to DC with the avowed intent of assassinating Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The result of this government-sanctioned lawlessness has been to take the limits and governor off all misbehavior on the Left and empower their unalloyed hate in what they themselves call a “summer of rage.”
And rage they have.
The Washington Stand has counted at least 63 acts of violence, property destruction, and disruption of religious services in the days since the leak of the draft Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case. Forty-four of these incidents have directly involved property destruction and vandalism of churches, pregnancy resource centers, and other pro-life organizations.
The Daily Signal later reported pro-abortion extremist group Jane’s Revenge published a “communique” June 15 claiming responsibility for attacks in 16 different cities, adding that these attacks were just some “among others.”
Later, the website known as Abolition Media posted another message from Jane’s Revenge in which that group claimed responsibility for two pregnancy resource center attacks in Detroit.
But not one arrest has been made.
This failure of the Biden government to preserve the peace and protect the lives and property of conservatives looks all too much like what was going on in Bleeding Kansas in 1856 where anti-slavery Republicans were attacked with impunity by pro-slavery Democrats, until one man stood against them and chose to answer violence with violence.
The Left has declared a “summer of rage” and their violence has so far gone unpunished by a Biden government that apparently agrees with them that violence is a legitimate political tactic. Some wise observers have suggested that Democrats and their allies on the Left would like nothing better than an excuse to follow-up the J6 witch hunt with a more general crackdown on conservatives. There’s a certain logic to that analysis, because as things stand now Democrats are making the rise of a 21st century John Brown on the Right almost inevitable and with it our second Civil War.
From John Brown a poem by William W. Patton
Ye soldiers of Freedom, then strike, while strike ye may,
The death blow of oppression in a better time and way,
For the dawn of old John Brown has brightened into day,
And his soul is marching on.
Joe Biden administration
Second Amendment
Dobbs decision
Supreme Court
Violence on pro-life organizations
voting rights vs election integrity
ballot security
election observers
censorship
political violence
BLM
Antifa
Janes Revenge