Replies

"On the other hand, there is probably more hatred between the opposing sides today than there was during the First Civil War."

I think he overstates the case by saying "during". But "before"? From my own reading, in terms of the level of vitriol, I don't think we're -before- the war, not during. It's heating up quickly now though.

What makes the current situation so different is that due to mass media, the two sides aren't really separated by geographic regions anymore. Where people were generally influenced mostly by their neighbors, it's much more likely now that people will be influenced by more distant sources. I personally live in New Jersey, and have -no- allegiance whatsoever to any old feelings for the Confederacy, but I'm a hard core conservative, and according to Southerners who want this to be a North-South thing I should be siding with them.

North-South won't be the nature of this conflict. It's all interspersed now, and if there is any geographic boundaries to it it's Coastal vs. Heartland. Which means I'll be having to move, I guess. Not that I'm complaining.

Qwinn

What makes this so tough to call is that we've got elements of Pre-Civil War America and the last days of the old Weimar Republic combined with an ubiquitous and overarching mass-media touting the collectivist-multiculturalist line. The ideological/spiritual divide is as deep as the Grand canyon and equally as unbridgeable.

Decades of the Left's cultural warfare have left us with a approximately a third of the population begging for a socialist savior such as Hillary Clinton, a third of the population too frickin' dumb to tie their shoes (or even care that they don't know how - some one else'll do it for 'em), and the remaining third unalterably opposed to the collectivist party line (endorsed by both mainstream political parties these days. Their legislation and policies speak for themselves). The fault lines within these categories run across race, gender and class - here, the 'long march' through all of our institutions by Gramsci-inspired Left has succeeded admirably.

The principal reason that these divides have become so intractable is that the Left has in Orwellian fashion hijacked and corrupted very language that we have used to frame the our debates.

Consider this: When your opponents lack the price of admission to civilized debate: a respect for reason, belief in objective truth, and a willingness to admit they're wrong when the facts prove it so; when your opponents' goals are to destroy the very foundation of your culture and your society - and to offer nothing in return but the howling nightmare of a society of cannibals and looters; when your opponents seize and indoctrinate your children's' minds in the politics of victimization and the nobility of human servitude and sacrifice - what then? When the institutions of higher learning are occupied by Marxist multiculturalists who despise the very philosophical foundation upon which the architecture of liberty and human dignity can be constructed - what then? Well, we know the answer - as Samuel Huntington has said, "History shows that no country so constituted can long endure as a coherent society."