Lord, help me Jesus. Do people really want another Civil War? Do people really think another Civil War will solve anything? Do people really think another Civil War will work out any better than the first one did? Too many people on both sides are wishcasting another American Civil War. Stop. A generation of men were left moldering in graves. Nothing was settled by the last one. We are still dealing with the scars from the last one.
Tyler O’Neill of the Daily Signal spun me up today. His article “Terrifyingly Plausible: Why You’re Wrong to Think Civil War Can’t Happen Here” is flat out wishcasting. He conjured up a media-approved Nostradamus to give weight to his article. Unless you want more young men and women dead, stop.
Young Tyler wrote:
Demographer, historian, and author Neil Howe hasn’t just coined the term “Millennial,” he’s also predicted the future to an eerie degree—and he thinks America’s in for very rough seas ahead. He says a civil war in the U.S. is far more plausible than most people think, and he dismisses the reasons Americans often discount that possibility.
Some Americans (points to self) don’t discount the possibility. We fervently pray against a Civil War because we studied history in school in the olden days. We know the Union was preserved, but the costs were high. But, just for the halibut, let’s see why Mr. Howe thinks it could happen:
Why a Civil War Is Likely
Howe notes that “our politics have taken on this kind of Manichaean style, where the red zone and blue zone are so mutually exclusive in their sense of themselves, their agenda for the nation’s future, that it hardly even matters who’s leading the party.” (“Manichaean” refers to the tendency to view one side as perfectly good and the other side as perfectly evil, and it traces back to a world religion that arose with the prophet Mani in the 200s A.D., which taught that the physical world is evil and the spiritual world is good.)He cites Carl Becker, who wrote an essay in 1941, “The Dilemma of Modern Democracy.”
“When most of what you’re talking about is the width of sidewalks and the diameter of sewer pipes, just coordination issues, democracy works really well,” Howe says. “But when you’re talking about issues that virtually define who you are, it doesn’t work. He said no one is going to accede to a vote count that goes 51% against you.”
“You are not going to give up everything you believe in just because you came up three votes short,” he explains.
These are reasons why illegal immigration is so dangerous. This is why assimilation is so important. This is why learning about American History, and the choices the Founding Fathers made, is so important. Ideological rhetoric is dangerous. This article from PsyPost blames Republicans:
A recent study published in Injury Epidemiology uncovers a troubling sentiment: a small yet notable segment of the U.S. population believes that a new civil war is necessary to “set things right.” This belief was more commonly found among certain groups, including “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) Republicans, individuals who hold racist views, and supporters of extreme right-wing political organizations and movements. Despite this, the overall support for civil war remains low, even within these groups.
It’s mostly Democrats who draw on violent imagery:
Proud Democrats want a civil war. pic.twitter.com/FT4rrRBGat
— Local Joe❌ (@namemeifucan) September 2, 2024
Both sides should be wary because the Civil War didn’t really solve anything. While slavery was the main cause of the War, it did not end when the war ended:
“So then when did slavery actually end in the United States?”
There are multiple dates that could be singled out, depending on the geographic location of the enslaved person. The Civil War, fought over slavery, ended in April 1865, but the end of slavery was more like a process, rather than an event that occurred on a particular day. There were some cases of people who escaped to freedom or won their freedom in court years earlier. And Berry argues that the most important date to highlight would be Dec. 6, 1865, when the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, was ratified by the States, just about a year after it was passed by Congress on Jan. 31, 1865.
Up to 840,000 soldiers and civilians died in the Civil War at a time when the population of the United States was under 32 million. We have more efficient ways of killing now and a population of 341,000,000. You do the math.
The amount of stupidity to consider a Civil War is stunning. Instead, consider why your fellow Americans think you are wrong. You probably are.
Featured Image: jcsullivan24/flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons
John in Indy says: The (general) Right doesn’t want any kind of civil war, though many expect attacks on them by the totalitarian / Globalist/ Left that could result in armed conflict
Expectation of an attack is not wishing for one.
Part of the general failure to understand the Civil War is the way it is taught, which ears in at least three ways: First, that while there was a significant economic conflict of interests between the internally cussed manufacturing States of the North and the export based natural resource economy of the South, the pre-War struggle between the States was over control of the Federal government in the admission of new States.
Second, that the Federal government was entirely financed by tariffs, import and export duties, and excise taxes, as on whiskey, most of which was paid by the Southern States.
Third: that the Northern and the Southern States could live without each other, but the Federal government could not survive without the incomebfrom the Southern States. It was the Federal government which had to have a war to preserve their power over the States. This was why the Federal reinforcement of the customs enforcement Fort Sumpter in Charleston harbor was seen as a declaration of war by S Carolina.
A conflict today would not be one of armies, but one of individual beliefs and individual actions. This would likely be more like Bosnia, N Ireland, Yugoslavia, or the pre-Civil WA conflicts of “Bloody Kansas”, Missouri, and Arkansas. It will be first in and near large, typically Democrat, cities, and will be horrible for all who are near near those conflicts.
ANDY says: There will be no Hot Civil War. However, the country will break apart, eventually, through Federalism. The breakup will be political, but mostly due to the exploding national debt. Interest on the debt (already a trillion) will eventually consume the entire budget. With no government check (SS, Medicare), there is no incentive to stay. It’s happening now. People are not signing up for military service. You fight for freedom, not censorship. You fight for right to vote, not to see that vote watered down by ballot mules. You fight for justice, not lawfare against regime opponents… You fight for law and order, not the FBI/DOJ becoming a Stassi/Gestapo for one party. Blue states don’t have kids and if they do, they don’t join the military in significant numbers. You’ll know it’s breaking up when States start ignoring the Federal government.
Yeah-Me-Neither says: It’s one thing to wish for a civil war – no one does.
It’s another thing to recognize that such a war will be thrust upon us – the blue states insist that red states act in a certain way, and the blue states are willing to send the military to make that happen.
When war is started by the other side, the defending side must defend itself.
Phil Hawkins says: I have been following this topic on multiple sites (mostly on Substack) for a couple of years. Here’s a Substack article of my own that combines what I said in a bunch of those comments.
https://autisticredneckphilhawkins.substack.com/p/another-civil-war
It includes a map of the 2020 election that I found on Brilliant Maps, showing the vote by counties rather than states, and with five shades each of red and blue to show the strength of the vote. I also discussed the erroneous assumptions the southern planters relied on in 1861–and why they were wrong; today’s Democrats also have a lot of mistaken assumptions.
I agree that things may get ugly for a while, especially in some blue cities. And not even in all of them; when I wrote that article, I was living in Indianapolis, where they had a Democrat mayor but a Republican governor, which held things down during the Floyd riots.
Garrett D Crawford says: The only hope of avoiding it long term is a return to federalism, extending down to the local education board and health department. Not going to happen.
WKAIII says: It occurs to me after some hefty consideration of what the lead-up to such an event would entail, that there would not be a repeat of the first American Civil War as much as of a French Revolution-style insurrection. A real one, not a contrived Reichstag Fire like January 6.
What would incite such a reaction? A Republican-controlled Congress and White House would result in the same violent tantrum throwing by the paid agitators and brain-dead minions who always riot, for any reason. Even as gas and grocery prices dropped, employment rose and crime rates ebbed, they’d go out and burn. loot and kill. Until, at least, they were stopped by somebody employing the Curtis LeMay dictate of “Kill enough of them and they’ll stop.” That would be about it.
However, if the Progressives take power, we could see things like the curtailing of 1st and 2nd Amendment rights, imposition of travel and power-use restrictions in the name of “Climate Change,” packing the Supreme Court, doing away with the Electoral College and the Filibuster, nationalizing elections . . . all the things that somebody would do if they were to try to install a one-party autocracy. If these measures passed and were written into law, you would not see state-level non-compliance. There’s too much money flowing from DC for it to be that “official.” so to speak. Governors and state legislatures would not take that strong an action; Social Security and Medicare would be cut off if, say, Missouri declared itself to be exempt from such Federal laws. Credit card transactions could be shut down. Assets held in national banks and brokerage firms could be seized. There’s much too much economic integration to have that kind of recognized, regional or state-aligned conflict.
There would, instead, eventually be a precipitating event – a Ft. Sumter – that would involve somebody (or somebodies) dying in defense of a church, pregnancy center, school, library or simple demonstration that was deemed anathema to the new Democratic Peoples’ State.
At that moment, simultaneously, you’d see lynch mobs dragging Democratic pols out into the streets and hanging them, or worse, all across the landscape in “red” areas, even in ostensibly “blue” states. There might be attempts at law enforcement but by far most law enforcement officials would side with the citizens, especially sheriffs, once the tide became too great to effectively quell. Sympatico pro-government Zoomers and other lefties would in most cases hide while a few brave and stunning souls would be cut down where they stood if they tried to step in the way. College campuses would burn as pro-Left demonstrations came under fire and the opposing mobs simply destroyed everything around them.
You’d also see a large, as in millions, armed crowd descend upon Washington. After some heated firefights with overwhelmed and outnumbered Capitol police, fair or not, bureaucrats of every stripe would be dealt with just as harshly treated as their local counterparts. Should a known Democrat Senator or Representative, Administration official or SCOTUS justice be found, brutality would ensue.
The armed forces would split very unevenly, with everybody outside of political brass siding with the citizenry but largely standing down outside of defending their own families and communities. There would be no “F-15” moment like Biden or Swalwell seem to be so fond of threatening people with. It most certainly would not look like that idiot movie the Obama cabal put out earlier this year.
It would be short, nasty and brutal. Decades of resentment and frustration would find release like a broken steam valve. Once over, it remains to be seen who would assert control but what is certain is that we as a nation would never be the same. One or the other political philosophy would have to be completely purged from memory for there to be no chance of a repeat a generation or two down the road.
Let us do what we can to prevent the precipitating events by getting as many as possible to vote GOP in November, locally as well as nationally.
BJ says: *sigh* There isn’t going to be any civil war. (I almost wrote “silly war”). The people who seem to be desperately wish casting for one all seem to think “Yay! Civil war means I get to kill anybody I hate and then everybody has to obey me!”
No.
Let’s be realistic here.
Say an American troublemaker calls for civil war (whether blue or red). What then? You pile all your guns into your car or truck, and then you go…where? Where would you rally? Who would be your leader? Who would lead the leaders? Where would you get food? What about gasoline? Where would you get clean water? Where could you sleep safely? Who would be your targets? What would be your objective? Who would tend the wounded? Who would bury the dead?
Let’s face it, folks, you’d have a far higher chance of dying of dysentery than bringing about a “new USA”.
Yes, the first war between the states did happen, but that was because the Confederate states formed a natural alliance in their bid to preserve slavery. Every Confederate state had an economy that depended on slavery, whether an individual owned slaves or not. The richest and most powerful people were usually the ones who owned the most slaves.
When Abraham Lincoln was elected, the same leaders who profited most from slavery were the ones who wanted secession. If they had held their fire and stayed in the union, they probably could have forced President Lincoln and the abolitionists into another compromise. As it was, they seceded and gave President Lincoln a perfect reason for war.
That’s not the case today. Millions of Red voters live in Blue states, and millions of Blue voters live in Red states. The guy you argue with on the internet could be the same guy who plays checkers with you on weekends, or goes to Garden Club with you. The vast majority of Americans don’t want war: they want to do their jobs, love their families and live their lives. They may watch movies about civil war once in a while, but that’s as close as they want to get to it.
Hank says: We won’t see huge armies marching around the country, having battles whenever they occasion to bump into each other. Perhaps more like the Missouri border clashes (Bleeding Kansas) style small raids and ambushes. Some might say we’re already in one, but so far only the Left has been the aggressor, the death toll passed off as just random crime.
Draigh says: I spent more than two decades trying to figure out why those on the left have demonized those on the right. Only after this last presidential election did I begin to see many on the right say, “enough is enough.” We are not Nazis and if you look at the actions of those on the Left, they more than fit the descriptions of the Nazis of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Most on the right have a live-and-let-live attitude. But when the left begins to push their ideas on others, the right is just now realizing what is happening and beginning to push back.
Civil War? I hope not. But it wouldn’t surprise me all that much.
TMB says: Actually, the Civil War solved, or resolved, a couple of things. In itself it didn’t end slavery in all of the states, but it created the conditions for passage of the 13th Amendment which did. It also put an end to the question of whether a state could secede from the Union: no. And it welded the states into a singular country. Whereas before the Civil War people said “the United States ARE…”, after the war they said “the United States IS…” It definitively answered Lincoln’s question, whether a country could exist half slave and half free. That we still deal with the issue of race in this country doesn’t prove that nothing was solved by the war.
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