I'll give you that, but my take on that "power play" goes back to Hamilton.
By that time, I think group-dynamics students would tell you, the players on both sides were already heavily invested in violence -- "martial law", "reorganizing the Southern States", "defending States' rights [and we're gonna whoop 'em], or pick your euphemism -- and ready to go to war after years of mutual recrimination, suspicion, aversion, and plain old hatred.
I think that's fair. It doesn't negate the hypothesis. It was a musing on the applicability of Torah when it comes to matters of liberty. This was clearly a Masonic wet dream: Liberty atomized to the individual. It doesn't work that way, but it did lead directly to our existing passe via the atomization of liberty's principal institution, the family, in the name of individualism. Funny how it was collectivists who pushed that.
Sure. For something or someone well understood and stable, substitute something counterfeit and manipulable. Who is better able to stand up to the serpents? Not individuals, standing alone and without the support of their kin groups.
You are right, kindred groups were once the building blocks of society, which corporatizing interests of the left and right have sought to pulverize, to leverage their own power.
Tacitus tells us that when the German hero Arminius sought to transform his advisory and leadership-based chiefdom into an absolute monarchy after his victory over the Romans, it was a cousin who responded to his direct command by killing him -- thus saving the people from the savior. This the kinsman did in full view of the court, and not one finger was raised against him as he left the hall afterward. He defended his rights, and everyone else's, and even admirers of Arminius recognized the fact.