For a while now I have watched our country ripping itself apart politically and socially. It’s not the first time this has happened.
In the late 1960s when I was a college student I witnessed leftist students opposed to the war in Vietnam burn down the student union building on the campus of the University of Kansas.
I was in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention when street fighting erupted between the police and demonstrators. I remember Kent State University on May 4, 1970 when 28 Ohio National Guardsmen fired 67 rounds at students protesting the war in Cambodia, killing four of them and wounding nine others.
During a period of less than four months in the summer and fall of 1969, eight bombings by the socialist-inspired Weather Underground and the Red Army Faction rocked major institutions in New York City. Both groups had the mistaken belief that they could bomb ideologies they opposed out of existence.
According to FBI statistics, the United States experienced more than 2,500 domestic bombings in just 18 months in 1971 and 1972. I remember some of them well. I covered them as reporter for the Chicago Tribune. The groups behind these attacks included the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the New World Liberation Front, the FALN, the “Family,” and the United Freedom Front.
What does any of that have to do with what’s going on in our country today? At first glance, not much. Nobody is protesting the war in Afghanistan the way the war in Vietnam was opposed.
Yet, here we are on the verge of a new Civil War in which some misguided nuts want to obliterate our capitalist republic and replace it with a half-baked system of socialism. Never mind that socialism has failed everywhere in the world it has been tried.
Instead of the egalitarian utopias that socialism promises, it has oppressed workers, wiped out individual incentives and freedom, and guaranteed that the ruling hierarchies thrive like drones in a bee hive populated with obedient worker bees.
As this is happening, those on the right are girding themselves for what they see as a war to protect the constitutionally protected rights that millions of Americans have fought and died for since the 18th Century.
They see politically correct speech constantly eroding the First Amendment which guarantees freedom of speech and expression.
They see the persistent wearing away of the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to bear arms against an omnipotent and possibly tyrannical central government. It’s no secret that socialist-leaning Democrats prefer a strong, Washington-based central government.
They hear the chants for a unrealistic Green New Deal, a guaranteed wage for everybody—even for those unwilling to work, free college educations, the end of cows, mandated single-payer government-run health care, and the murder of newly-born infants—otherwise known as infanticide.
We even have Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promising to provide progressive activists with an “enemies” list of moderate Democrats who dare to work across the aisle with Republicans.
So, are we on the verge of a second Civil War? Will we repeat the violence that almost destroyed our country between 1861 and 1865 when some 650,000 Americans died?
The political and societal signs are there as identity politics is turning us into a nation of competing tribes. Only the violence is missing. But it may not be far away.
Below I am reposting a fascinating article by Jeff Lukens, a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, a non-profit coalition of writers and grass-roots media outlets.
At the end of Lukens’ piece is a link to a short talk Michelle Malkin gave at the recent CPAC convention in National Harbor, MD. Click on it. You won’t be disappointed.
Read on . . . .
Is a Second Civil War Coming?
By Jeff Lukens
Civil wars are horrendous and bloody affairs. That’s why we should avoid them. They happen when two sides cannot settle on who runs the country. When they can’t reconcile the matter through elections, the country falls apart. When one side does not accept the election results, we have a countdown to a civil war.
Does the fact that Democrats are rejecting a duly elected Republican president really mean they don’t accept the results of any election they don’t win? If so, we may be already nearing America’s Second Civil War.
It is no secret that Democrats and Republicans are more ideologically divided than in recent years. Parts of the country detest the other parts. Coastal elites dislike flyover country. The blue states despise the red states, and vice versa.
We may now be near a point comparable to 1860. Modern Democrats hate President Trump as much as the Democrats of old hated President Lincoln. Democrats repudiated Lincoln for opposing slavery, and modern Democratic leaders are repudiating Lincoln’s belief that the government is of the people, for the people, and by the people. Then as now, Democrats are on the wrong side of history.
The average conservative and the average liberal disagree on the vast majority of the issues, and in the few cases where they can agree, each won’t support the other out of sheer tribalism for his side. Since Democrats can’t win the argument with reason and facts, they try to intimidate us into silence. While Trump is their focus, we should know that the loathing is really against normal everyday Americans.
The Constitution plays a central role in the disagreement. On the right are those who believe in its use as a restraint on government that can be altered only by a broad consensus through the amendment process. Conservatives believe that natural rights are created by God and that government cannot invent or alter them.
On the Left are those who believe in the living Constitution. This is a notion that the document is outdated and should change easily. The main method for doing this would be judicial rulings bypassing Congress and the voters. Basically, they just make it up as they go along.
The Left’s reach is broad. Leftists have been able to take over schools and indoctrinate our young people. They have taken over nearly all the news and entertainment media. The conservative side, conversely, has lost in these areas because it never fights back with the ruthlessness of the Left.
Lawlessness is now reaching across the United States, which the news almost totally ignores. The same networks that spent two years with wall-to-wall coverage to push the Russia collusion hoax are now refusing to report the documented attempt to remove our duly elected president by means of a Deep State silent coup.
The Left overwhelms the courts with legal actions designed to bog them down so that nothing conservative can be accomplished by Trump. Democrats will concede nothing without a confrontation. Lefty goons clash and threaten aggression with open immunity. They shout down speakers at colleges; they block airports, bridges, and highways. They take over college buildings, offices, and state capitals, and they terrorize individuals in their homes. Not only does their violence succeed, but they succeed just by threatening violence.
Democrats threaten the peace by advocating programs intended to deny the rights of average people to speak and worship freely and to defend themselves. Never mind that millions of Americans are ready to hazard life and limb to preserve these rights. Moreover, many of them vowed to do so when they served in the armed forces. When push comes to shove, they will not shy away from defending their families, their homes, their values, and their country.
While leftist liken their behavior to combating tyranny, they are actually combating anyone with whom they disagree. While their socialist agenda is losing ground with average Americans, leftists are doubling down, assaulting verbally, and sometimes physically, anyone who opposes them.
Ask yourself, why are liberals always angry? Why are they so vulgar? Why do they slander and push fake labels like racist, sexist, and homophobic? Why do they engage in “emotional outbursts” when challenged? Why are they violent?
The answer is that when they don’t have facts to support their arguments, they must resort to intimidation. The narrative is designed to keep people in a constant state of fear, thereby forcing rage and violence. They want us divided by race, class, religion, political affiliation, and more.
All they care about is control, and they will do anything to hold on to it. They want to keep people poor and in need of government assistance. The bigger the government, the more power leftists possess. When we are in need, we are weak. Divided, we are weak. When we are weak, we do not fight back. When we are united, strong, and independent, we think for ourselves and challenge what we are told to believe.
This is a dangerous time. Americans in 1859 had no idea of the cataclysm that lay ahead for them just a few years later. Nothing is certain, and hopefully we will avoid a similar disaster. We may have differences, but America is profoundly good and needs only sensible corrections that reasonable people can agree upon. We hope and pray that our differences do not escalate into a Second Civil War.
