Posted on 10/22/2007 6:40:16 PM PDT by dufekin
That's exactly what it is.
Mark Steyn with another gem. Food for intellectual thought.
His columns are the kind you read slowly, because of all of the profound thoughts contained therein.
Many here on FR allude to a looming type of civil war, that society has fractured along invisible fault lines, some dealing with reality and some dealing with rabid liberalism, some along the lines of failed Socialist policies that are trying to be resurrected, even after their utter failure has been exposed.
In American history this fractionalization of political thought reminds me of 1860, when the fissures of the body politic became deep, undeniable and irreversible.
I can only pray that the election decision next year does not become a close result ala 2000, but a decisive decision by the American electorate, one way or the other.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Shades of 1860 indeed.
The nomination process is failing before our eyes, too many, too early, "final" choices made NINE MONTHS BEFORE the election.
There will either be a religious right third party, or a fusion "national unity" center party, or even both. The left will rally around Hillary, and the GOP nomination won't be worth a pitcher of warm spit.
The witch may very well be elected with 35% of the popular vote, with 65% of the votes split to her right.
She will of course govern as if she won in a landslide.
Game on.
Unlikely. The separation between the conservative red states and the liberal blue cities is a profound chasm; the two sides increasingly operate off different perceptions of reality and different reasoning processes. The difference is as stark as night and day: capitalism versus socialism, Judeo-Christian morals versus atheistic moral relativism, American exceptionalism versus United Nations membership, victory as annihilation of terrorists versus victory as denial of terrorists.
I don’t know that it’s even theoretically possible now to unify the two sides of this chasm. Heck, The New York Times today published an editorial declaring that high taxes yield economic competitiveness. I don’t know any Oklahomans, now enjoying the lowest tax rate in the country, who could take such a contention seriously. But New Yorkers believe it. So we need to raise taxes to resuscitate the flailing economy, or we need to maintain or lower taxes (and drill for oil) to continue the prosperous economy.
There are many sides with multiple chasms.
CW2 Ping.
We’ve been using the expression “Cold Civil War” here on FR for at least four years, but it’s still nice for Steyn to notice.
Hree’s a link I found in about two seconds to Cold Civil War, from 2003 on FR.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1004834/posts
"The Iranian question will be revisited. Due to a national emergency the presidency will be temporarily eliminated in favor of some kind of collective leadership via Congress or the states, with the possible participation of the military. There will be a second civil war with tremendous loss of life."
Not a cause for confidence.
Still, You cant deny that Steyn is a master wordsmith
Reply #19: "I agree 100% with Prager, and I call the phase we are in "THE COLD CIVIL WAR.""
Even stranger, that thread is from Oct. 21, 2003, almost 4 years ago to the day.
Besides, I've done a bit of wordsmithing myself.
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Whatever it takes.
Ahhh... I should have recognized that you coined the term.
I’d be chapped too.
Jim, thank you for your thoughtful comments.
This may be a controversial thought, but I believe that the 2008 election is the Republicans to win or lose, especially if the Demon candidate is Her Heinous.
Because of what is at stake if she is the nominee, many on the right, even if Guilani becomes the R candidate, will vote against Hillary. Resistance will be against a third party, knowing full well this is the only way Hillary gets in. I wouldn’t put it past Hillary that she is actively trying to make this happen, that’s how political cunning she is. To me that’s the only explanation for Ron Paul’s inexplicable showing in the polls, and the man is certifiable.
But if the Republicans cannot defeat Hillary in 2008, a candidate with more real dirt on her than any other candidate in American history, and the GOP pulls another 1996 Dole/Kemp disaster, they deserve to join the Whigs on the ash-heap of political history.
I’ll be a broken glass Republican just one more time.
But never again. By 2012, we’ll have a constitutionally based third party if the GOP doesn’t get its bearings again.
Then again, we may have a new civil war before Hillary’s first term is over.
The illusion is over.
It’s fine with me, I’m sure others used it before me. I just googled it, and that FR thread from 2003 came up first. I almost fell off my chair when I read down the thread looking for the first mention of CCW, and came across 19. I didn’t read it that closely though, maybe it was already used up thread.
“The separation between the conservative red states and the liberal blue cities is a profound chasm; the two sides increasingly operate off different perceptions of reality and different reasoning processes. The difference is as stark as night and day: capitalism versus socialism, Judeo-Christian morals versus atheistic moral relativism, American exceptionalism versus United Nations membership, victory as annihilation of terrorists versus victory as denial of terrorists.”
That is one of the most profundly perceptive statements I have read in some time. Kudos to you for articulating it so well.
May I borrow it?
Wierd Karma
Sure...go ahead.
The question is what might turn this into a "Hot" civil war? Despite the common fantasy on the fringes of the Left very few in the entire world are being assaulted for attempting to turn their respective governments toward world socialism, but quite a few are being assaulted by their respective governments simply for hoping for some sort of democracy. One might have thought that this fits into the "progressive" paradigm, and one would have been mistaken - these movements are, broadly, abandoned and even cursed by "progressives." I cite Burma, China, Tibet, Iraq, Iran, Zimbabwe, and Cuba as examples. That list isn't exhaustive by far.
What we have here is a blatant abandonment of principle in favor of faction, politics in its most primitive, unthinking, tribal form. One of the things that makes it primitive is its proclivity for violence. We see this today in the identity of who gets shouted down on campus - left or right? Who gets their tires slashed at election time, their cars keyed, their signs stolen, left or right? And so the answer to the question of what might turn this into a "Hot" civil war is, I am afraid, the mere ability of the violent Left to get away with it.
I can think of several things that might encourage that. One, with us already, is the willingness of clearly partisan media to ignore or excuse acts of violence on the part of those whose cause they tend to view sympathetically. Another is the systematic disarmament of the enemies of the Left. Those who think "gun nuts" are the only ones to be concerned about this had better reconsider. Another still is the encouragement of violence by proxy in the form of inflaming sundry grievances on the part of the resentful. Yet another, and perhaps most dangerous of all, is the capture or subversion of state resources toward political violence that is disguised as enforcement of legitimate authority.
It is that last that concerns me the most. When politics at the national level is as tribal as some on the Left appear today we have the very real possibility of turning this "Cold" civil war into a "Hot" one. And inasmuch as the Left has displayed a consistent tendency to presage its acts by accusations toward the Right, one can readily imagine that those who desperately fantasize about a BushCo police state might not flinch at establishing a real one of their own. Those who cannot or choose not to differentiate between their own paranoid imaginings and legitimate abuse are more than capable of the latter.
The Jews found out about all of this in Nazi Germany - systematically divorced from political representation, systematically disarmed, hostile media giving moral sanction to systematic violence against them, and finally systematically murdered by a people so morally confused by then that it seemed justifiable. I invoke the "system" repeatedly here because no one in it bore personal responsibility until it was thrust back upon them at Nuremburg. It was a thoroughly evil fantasy world that manifested itself in the real one. It could happen here.
If it ever does, the resulting Hot Civil War would end up violent beyond imagination. Some on both sides fantasize this with the eagerness born of ignorance. In the comic books the blood is only red ink. In the movies, corn syrup. In the real world, it's blood.
All IMHO and subject to debate as always, of course.
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