Classical Values has a very insightful post on those who incite civil war:
Being human, we all want to get our way. There is, buried somewhere in each one of us, a spoiled, angry child ready to have a temper tantrum. Some control it better than others. Whether learning self control over that inner child that wants to throw a tantrum when he doesn’t get his way constitutes “adulthood” I don’t know, as such a pronouncement strikes me as awfully judgmental. I don’t get my way, and I’m used to it. Yet I think I am a very childish person who has yet to grow up, and learning to accept not getting my way has not helped much. I am still stubborn enough to cling to wanting what I want regardless of the likelihood of my getting it. That may mean that while I’m still a child, I’m just not given to childish displays. (At least, not in public.)
I also realize that it is unreasonable to demand that others control themselves simply because I think that’s a good thing to do, but still, there are few things I find more tedious than people who throw public fits when they don’t get their way, and then demand that others take their fits seriously. In that respect, I am so, so happy about the election results last week. Had the Republicans lost, by now I would be having to hear innumerable cries on the right about how the only alternative we have left is civil war, that the Declaration of Independence gives us the right to violently overthrow the government, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
I’m glad we can go back to bitching about how the Republicans suck, rather than watch the Democrats floor the accelerator off the side of the cliff. People have been pretty amped up the past two years, and here’s hoping everyone’s collective pissed-off-o-meter goes from pegged back down to where it was around the time Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
Well, the right-ish folks’ pissed off-o-meter will (maybe) settle back down. The left? Off the charts, possibly into violent temper tantrum territory.
For your own sanity, I recommend you not look into how the today-moderate countries of northern Europe dealt with their communist militant problem during the 1920s
This can go from talk to action far faster then most people think, and once someone starts the music you can’t just turn it off. I have friend who spent a lot of time in Yugoslavia in the later 80s, early 90s. He’s talked about how the “bourgeois muffins” who egged on the crazies without ever expecting anything to happen.
“Or you can be sitting in a bar in Mostar in 1988 listening to the lunatics plotting to break up Yugoslavia because this time Greater Croatia will work then hear the same from the Serb side in Tuzla. They were each half right. Sad really.”
“A lot of this is situational. It took less than 48 hours when Bosnia went south for respectable people to loot their neighbors house, cut his throat and rape his daughter. Not all respectable people but far more than the ones who were nationalist zealots a week earlier.”
Civil war? Or even civil unrest on a large scale? Hardly. Not yet, anyway. Life isn’t a bowl of cherries, but it is still fairly comfortable right now. People are warm in the winter, cool in the summer, with a full stomach and they have enough cash left over to buy the wife ( or the husband) something nice now and again. The kids are getting the G.I. joe with the kung fu grip or the Malibu Barbie. On top of all that reality shows and the game on Sunday stand in as modern equivalents of the diversions of the coliseum to keep their minds off of dwelling over the fact of how screwed we might be.
If hyperinflation kicks in as bad as some people seem to think it will, who knows? Folks with empty stomachs staring across a mostly barren supper table at hungry kids is a bigger motivator for radical action than even the most dearly held ideological principles.
Of course my meanindering thoughts on the subject could just be that Burt Gummerish pessimist streak I have talking.
I am not calling for Civil War.
But I can see how one could very easily happen in the not-so-distant future. The political divisions in this country are growing and deepening, not healing.
I personally find that I have less and less in common with people who like the idea of government taking over the car industry, who want to tell me what light bulbs I can buy, who threaten me with high fines and even jail time if I don’t buy government-mandated amounts of health insurance, and who want to tax me to death for my own good.
I simply have no truck with urban lefties from any major American city. Nor do they have any with me, especially since I am a Red State white male who owns guns and voted for Republicans the last several elections.
No less than Thomas Sowell wrote in a column several years ago that people who want freedom and The Bill of Rights and individual power cannot continue to lie so closely with those who want total governmental control and regulation and taxes for ever more government programs to oversee our lives.
Eventually, something will have to give somewhere, some how.
And it will be very ugly when it finally does.
I’m not sure that the right winning an election, puts us further away from civil violence.
Liberal Columnist Urges “Violence” And “Revolution”
http://realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/11/08/liberal_columnist_urges_violence_and_revolution.html
The media likes to assume that the threat of violence lies on the right, but history seems to show that it often starts on the left.
But of course, this is the same media that writes cutsey stories about Commies like:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/nyregion/07joint.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=channing%20joseph&st=cse
They’d never (nor should they) portray a meeting of Nazi sympathizers so innocently. Commies get a free pass from liberal elites, even though the Communists killed more people than Nazis by a factor of 10 at least. And lastly, the Nazi’s were also a lefty group, regardless of what the elites want us to believe.
I’m all for Revolution, but only one person at a time: I really want to stoke the flames of freedom and liberty in the hearts of every person. Too many people want State Support, and because of that, if we had Civil War, there’s a very good chance that the resulting government would be more tyrannical, rather than less.
Before we even talk about Revolution, I want to have as many people desiring freedom as possible. As such, if we would have lost the last elections, I would not have called for Revolution. Instead, I would have shaked my head in shame, and bunkered down more for the coming tyranny–and made plans to try to hide from any resulting Civil War, as well.
Of course, if enough hearts are changed, we are much more likely to beat back the government peacefully anyway, through ballots–so I wouldn’t expect violent Revolution, unless the Government proves to be particularly stubborn.
Gentlemen, civil war should not result from an election by the people (secession, perhaps, but not war). Rather, armed revolt should only be prompted by a long train of unremediable, unconstitutional acts of government whose undeniable direct object is usurpation and absolute tyranny – T. Jefferson, paraphrased.
But preparation for such a revolution (l.e., arming ourselves) must begin now, while it is still legal.
Arnie
I agree Arnie… though I would point out that secession could lead to civil war.
Good point, Sebsastian. Both times Americans seceded from what they considered a tyrannical government they were invaded and attacked, resulting in long, costly wars. It is a definite risk!
Arnie