Dan Miller at PJ Tatler asks Will the United States have another Civil War? I addressed this question several years ago, and more than once. In that first piece my response was:
Jefferson suggested a small armed rebellion every 20 years or so. We didn’t take his advice. Our last one ended in 1865, and it was so devastating I think it put us off rebellion entirely too long.
Government isn’t “us” and hasn’t been for a long, long time. It represents the people who run the Democrat and Republican Parties, and those who pay them the most. Government-run education has ensured that the end product coming out of our schools is uniformly ignorant of how the system is supposed to work, and it’s done a damned good job of indoctrinating our children in the “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” philosophy, and the “if it feels good, do it” philosophy. Fifty-plus years of this has produced a very large, very ignorant, very apathetic population.
I think that “pressing the reset button” is going to happen, but all it’s going to get some of us is a tighter collar and a heavier chain.
In the second piece I wrote:
What prevents another Civil War here isn’t the Army or the fact that we hold a higher loyalty to our Nation than to our State of residence, it’s ignorance and apathy.
Well, we seem to be overcoming the apathy problem, but ignorance? Not so much.
In the third piece I returned to my original position:
I cannot help but wonder: Are we going to war again, against each other? And what form would that take?
I think the answer might very well be “YES,” and the form will be that of domestic terrorism.
Dan Miller, in a longer piece at his own blog expands on his take on the subject:
Although the persistent atrophy of states’ rights is among the causes of many problems from which discontent arises, that atrophy does not itself seem to concern great numbers of citizens. It is also a reason why a civil war is unlikely: states now are much weaker than were those that seceded in 1861. Then, the states were considered far more than now as sovereign countries. Before and during the war, many of the South considered “United States” to be a plural expression. Hence, it was often said that the United States “are,” rather than “is.” When the country was viewed as a consortium of separate and sovereign entities, the plural usage was grammatically correct. The plural form has fallen into disuse; I still use it as a reminder that the states retain the authority not delegated to the federal government even though they have forfeited much of the power to exercise it.
I’ve said the same myself. What we have isn’t people in different states clamoring to be released from the Federal yoke, it’s people in large cities wanting Federally-provided welfare versus suburban and rural populations that generally want benign neglect when it comes to Federal interference.
The States aren’t “red” or “blue,” they’re differing shades of purple, but the cities are “blue” and outside the cities are, on the whole, varying shades of “red.”
You’ll note, all of the rioting going on isn’t occurring in places like Lizard Lick or Henley-in-Arden or Arma, Greece. It’s occurring in Philadelphia, London and Athens.
So no, we’re not going to see another iteration of “The War Between the States.” But we very well might see our major cities burn.