The 'cold civil war' in the U.S.: The common space required for civil debate...(MARK STEYN)

MacLean's, Toronto, Ontario, Canada ^ | 22 October 2007 | Mark Steyn

[dufekin]

William Gibson, South Carolinian by birth, British Columbian by choice, is famous for inventing the word "cyberspace," way back in 1982. His latest novel, Spook Country, offers another interesting coinage:

Alejandro looked over his knees. "Carlito said there is a war in America."

"A war?"

"A civil war."

"There is no war, Alejandro, in America."

"When grandfather helped found the DGI, in Havana, were the Americans at war with the Russians?"

"That was the 'cold war.' "

Alejandro nodded, his hands coming up to grip his knees. "A cold civil war."

Tito heard a sharp click from the direction of Ochun's vase, but thought instead of Eleggua, He Who Opens And Closes The Roads. He looked back at Alejandro.

"You don't follow politics, Tito."

That's quite a concept: "A cold civil war." Since 9/11, Mr. Gibson has abandoned futuristic sci-fi dystopias to frolic in the dystopia of the present. Spook Country boils down to a caper plot about a mysterious North America-bound container, and it's tricked out very inventively. Yet, notwithstanding the author's formidable powers of imagination, its politics are more or less conventional for a novelist in the twilight of the Bush era: someone says, "Are you really so scared of terrorists that you'd dismantle the structures that made America what it is?" Someone else says, "America has developed Stockholm Syndrome towards its own government." Etc. But it's that one phrase that makes you pause: "A cold civil war."

Or so you'd think. In fact, it seems to have passed entirely without notice. Unlike "cyberspace" a quarter-century ago, the "cold civil war" is not some groovy paradigm for the day after tomorrow but a cheerless assessment of the here and now, too bleak for buzz. As far as I can tell, April Gavaza, at the Hyacinth Girl website, is pretty much the first American to ponder whether a "cold civil war" has any significance beyond the novel:

What would that entail, exactly? A cold war is a war without conflict, defined in one of several online dictionaries as "[a] state of rivalry and tension between two factions, groups, or individuals that stops short of open, violent confrontation." In that respect, is the current political climate one of "cold civil war"? I think arguments could be made to that effect. My mother, not much of a political enthusiast, has made similar assessments since the 2000 election ...

Indeed. A year before this next election in the U.S., the common space required for civil debate and civilized disagreement has shrivelled to a very thin sliver of ground. Politics requires a minimum of shared assumptions. To compete you have to be playing the same game: you can't thwack the ball back and forth if one of you thinks he's playing baseball and the other fellow thinks he's playing badminton. Likewise, if you want to discuss the best way forward in the war on terror, you can't do that if the guy you're talking to doesn't believe there is a war on terror, only a racket cooked up by the Bushitler and the rest of the Halliburton stooges as a pretext to tear up the constitution.

Americans do not agree on the basic meaning of the last seven years. If you drive around an Ivy League college town -- home to the nation's best and brightest, allegedly -- you notice a wide range of bumper stickers, from the anticipatory ("01/20/09" -- the day of liberation from the Bush tyranny) to the profane ("Buck Fush") to the myopically self-indulgent ("Regime Change Begins At Home") to the exhibitionist paranoid ("9/11 Was An Inside Job"). Let's assume, as polls suggest, that next year's presidential election is pretty open: might be a Democrat, might be a Republican. Suppose it's another 50/50 election with a narrow GOP victory dependent on the electoral college votes of one closely divided state. It's not hard to foresee those stickered Dems concluding that the system has now been entirely delegitimized.

Obviously the vast majority of Americans are not foaming partisans. It would be foolish to adduce any general theories from, say, Mr. "Ed Funkhouser," who emailed me twice in the small hours of Tuesday: the first epistle read, in total, "who needs facts indeed. How do you live with yourself, scumbag?" An hour and a half later he realized he'd forgotten to make his devastating assessment of my sexual orientation, and sent a follow-up: "you are a f--kin' moron. and probably queer too!" No doubt. Mr. Funkhouser and his friends on the wilder shores of the Internet are unusually stirred up, to a degree most Americans would find perverse. Life is good, food is plentiful, there are a million and one distractions. In advanced democracies, politics is not everything, and we get on with our lives. In a sense, we outsource politics to those who want it most and participate albeit fitfully in whatever parameters of discourse emerge. For half a decade, the "regime change" and "inside job" types have set the pace.

But that, too, is characteristic of a cold war. In the half-century from 1945, most Americans and most Russians were not in active combat. The war was waged by small elite forces through various useful local proxies. In Grenada, for example, Maurice Bishop's Castro-backed New Jewel Movement seized power from Sir Eric Gairy, the eccentric prime minister, in the first-ever coup in the British West Indies. Mr. Bishop allowed the governor general, Sir Paul Scoon, to remain in place (if memory serves, they played tennis together) and so bequeathed posterity the droll paradox of the only realm in which Her Majesty the Queen presided over a politburo. Though it wasn't exactly a critical battleground, Grenada springs to mind quite often when I think of cultural institutions in the U.S. and the West. The grade schools no longer teach American history as any kind of coherent narrative. "Paint me warts and all," Oliver Cromwell instructed his portraitist. But in public education, American children paint only the warts -- slavery, the ill-treatment of Native Americans, the pollution of the environment, more slavery ... There are attempts to put a positive spin on things -- the Iroquois stewardship of the environment, Rosa Parks' courage on the bus -- but, cumulatively, heroism comes to be defined as opposition to that towering Mount Wartmore of dead white males. As in Grenada, the outward symbols are retained -- the flag, the Pledge of Allegiance -- but an entirely new national narrative has been set in place.

Well, it takes two to have a cold civil war. The right must be doing some of this stuff, too, surely? Up to a point. But for the most part they either go along, or secede from the system -- they home-school, turn to talk radio and the Internet, read Christian publishers' books that shift millions of copies without ever showing up on a New York Times bestsellers list. The established institutions of the state remain under the monolithic control of forces that ceaselessly applaud themselves for being terrifically iconoclastic:

Hollywood's latest war movie? Rendition. Oh, as in the same old song?

A college kid writes a four-word editorial in a campus newspaper -- "Taser this: F--k Bush" -- and the Denver Post hails him as "the future of journalism. Smart. Confident. Audacious." Anyone audacious enough to write "F--k Hillary" or "F--k Obama" at a college paper? Or would the Muse of Confident Smarts refer you to the relevant portions of the hate-speech code?

Speaking of which, Columbia University won't allow U.S. military recruiters on campus because "Don't ask, don't tell" discriminates against homosexuals, but it will invite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose government beheads you if they think you're bebottoming.

It's curious to encounter the soft-left establishment's hostility to the state. Go back to that line of Gibson's: free peoples develop "Stockholm Syndrome" about government all over the world, not least in Stockholm. It seems a mite inconsistent to entrust government to manage your health care and education and to dictate what you can and can't toss in the trash, but then to fret over them waging war on your behalf. Perhaps the next president will be, as George W. Bush promised, "a uniter, not a divider." Perhaps some "centrist Democrat" or "maverick Republican" will win big, but right now it doesn't feel that way.

Asked what would determine the course of his premiership, Britain's Harold Macmillan famously replied, "Events, dear boy, events." Yet in the end even "events" require broad acknowledgement. For Republicans, 9/11 is the decisive event; for Democrats, late November 2000 in the chadlands of Florida still looms larger. And elsewhere real hot wars seem to matter less than the ersatz Beltway battles back home. "The domestic political debate has nothing to do with what we're doing here," one U.S. officer in Iraq told the National Review's Rich Lowry this week, "in a representative comment offered not in a spirit of bitterness, but of cold fact." As Lowry remarked, "This is the lonely war" -- its actual progress all but irrelevant to the pseudo combat on the home front. In Neuromancer, William Gibson defined "cyberspace" as "a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation." The "cold civil war" may be another "consensual hallucination," but for many it's more real than "the lonely war."

[exit82]

The phrase is not from the Gettysburg Address.

It is from a speech Lincoln gave in June, 1858 when he accepted the nomination of the Republican Party for Senator from Illinois.

The phrase is actually a quotation from the Bible, from Matthew 12:25.(See also Luke 11:17): “And knowing their thoughts He said to them, “ Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself shall not stand.”

He used it in the context of a country heading toward a crisis because it was half slave and half free, and he believed that it would soon become all one or the other, but it could not stay as both.

His words were very prophetic.

I think we both see today as the two visions of what America is, from the traditional right to the radical left, cannot always exist together.

One will have to win out over the other.

[papertyger]

One will have to win out over the other

Ironic, isn't it?

The right doesn't know when violence is truly called for, and the left has to restrain its violence for fear of triggering the more lethal right :o)

[fewz]

Sorry ‘bout sighting the wrong source for the quote. Cranial flatulence, I guess.

Last night Glenn Beck had a couple of secessionist on his program. He said that there are 25 states that have active secessionist movements. I don’t think either of the two on his program were from the south. One of them was from Vermont.

I do believe that most southern states would be willing to let Vermont go if they want to go. Can’t say about the rest of the union.

[archy]

Two years ago I wrote The Splintering of the Democratic Party, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Albert Gore take a shot at the Green Party nomination.

Take a close hard look at the election of 1912. When Theodore Roosevelt completed his effort at repaying the Republican Party for turning their backs on him, they finished third in the national election, fourth in a few states where Eugene Debs' Socialists were particularly well-organized.

And history can and has sometimes managed to repeatr itself on occasion.

[archy]

The best I can figure -- given my age and all -- is he's a FDR Democrat. Proud American, patriotic but boy! how FDR Democrats hated Republicans.

Norry is closer to a Truman Democrat. Conbsider how Kansas City machine politician HST viewed [and treated] Douglas MacArthur and would have similarly viewed George Patton had Patton's truck/limo accident not interrupted GSP's intention of returning to his native California and entering Republican politics there. At the least, it's quite possible that Richard Nixon might have faved a REAL interesting primary challenge in his senate candidacy primary race there.

And *Senator Patton* has SUCH a nice ring to it, dontcha think?

GSP with Republican financier and asst. Secretary of War John Jay McCloy and Secretary of War Henry Stimson review the 2nd Armored Division, 23 July 1945 (Photo by Keystone)

General George S. Patton acknowledging the cheers of the welcoming crowds in Los Angeles, CA, during his visit on June 9, 1945.
(Acme)

[archy]

Today, I’m thinking the similar fault line would be public employees (maybe or maybe not unionized, but likely so) vs. private employees.

I KEEP telling y'all to learn the lessons of the 1918 Finnish Civil War....

Which was as much a war to maintain national sovewrignity as it was a real civil war....Does any of this sound familiar?

Throughout December 1917 and January 1918, the Svinhufvud government demonstrated that it would make no concessions to the socialists and that it would rule without them. The point of no return probably was passed on January 9, 1918, when the government authorized the White Guard to act as a state security force and to establish law and order in Finland. That decision in turn encouraged the workers to make a preemptive strike, and in the succeeding days, revolutionary elements took over the socialist movement and called for a general uprising to begin on the night of January 27-28, 1918. Meanwhile, the government had appointed a Swedish-speaking Finn and former tsarist general, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (1867-1951), as the commander of its military forces, soon to be called the Whites. Independently of the Reds, Mannerheim also called for military action to begin on the night of January 27-28. Whether or not the civil war was avoidable has been debated ever since, but both sides must share in the responsibility for its outbreak because of their unwillingness to compromise.

Within a few days of the outbreak of the civil war, the front lines had stabilized. The Whites, whose troops were mostly farmers, controlled the northern and more rural part of the country. The Reds, who drew most of their support from the urban working class, controlled the southern part of the country, as well as the major cities and industrial centers and about one- half of the population. The Red forces numbered 100,000 to 140,000 during the course of the war, whereas the Whites mustered at most about 70,000.

The soldiers of both armies displayed great heroism on the battlefield; nevertheless, the Whites had a number of telling advantages--probably the most important of which was professional leadership--that made them the superior force. Mannerheim, the Whites' military leader, was a professional soldier who was experienced in conducting large-scale operations, and his strategic judgment guided the White cause almost flawlessly. He was aided by the influx of jaegers from Germany, most of whom were allowed to return to Finland in February 1918. The White side also had a number of professional Swedish military officers, who brought military professionalism even to the small-unit level. In addition, beginning in February, the Whites had better equipment, most of which was supplied by Germany. Finally, the Whites had the benefit of more effective foreign intervention on their side. The approximately 40,000 Russian troops remaining in Finland in January 1918 helped the Finnish Reds to a small extent, especially in such technical areas as artillery, but these troops were withdrawn after the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918, and thus were gone before fighting reached the crucial stage. On the White side, however, the Germans sent not only the jaegers and military equipment but also a reinforced division of first-rate troops, the Baltic Division, which proved superior to the Reds.

The Red Guards suffered from several major disadvantages: poor leadership, training, and equipment; food shortages; the practice of electing officers democratically, which made discipline lax; and the general unwillingness of the Red troops to go on offensive operations or even to operate outside their local areas. Ultimately, the Reds suffered most from a lack of dynamic leadership. There was no Finnish Lenin to direct the revolution, and there was no Finnish Trotsky to vitalize the Red armed forces. These Red disadvantages became apparent in late March and early April 1918, when the Whites won a decisive victory by reducing the Red stronghold of Tampere, the major inland industrial center. At about the same time, German forces landed along the southern coast, quickly driving all before them, securing Helsinki on April 13 and, in the process, destroying about half of the remaining effective strength of the Red Guards. The last Red strongholds in southeastern Finland were cleared out in late April and early May 1918, and thousands of Finnish Reds, including the Red leadership, escaped into the Soviet Union. On May 16, 1918, General Mannerheim entered Helsinki, formally marking the end of the conflict. Each year thereafter, until World War II, May 16 was celebrated by the Whites as a kind of second independence day.

The tragedy of the civil war was compounded by a reign of terror that was unleashed by each side. In Red-dominated areas, 1,649 people, mostly businessmen, independent farmers, and other members of the middle class were murdered for political reasons. This Red Terror appears not to have been a systematic effort to liquidate class enemies, but rather to have been generally random. The Red Terror was disavowed by the Red leadership and illustrated the extent to which the Red Guard evaded the control of the leadership. More than anything else, the Red Terror helped to alienate the populace from the Red cause; it also harmed the morale of the Reds.

.... .

The divisions in society that resulted from the conflict were so intense that the two sides could not even agree on what it ought to be called. The right gave it the name "War of Independence," thereby stressing the struggle against Russian rule, for they had feared that a Red victory could well lead to the country's becoming a Soviet satellite. Leftists emphasized the domestic dimensions of the conflict, referring to it by the term "Civil War." Their feelings about the course of the hostilities were so intense that, until the late 1930s, Social Democrats refused to march in the Independence Day parade. Today, with the passing of decades, historians have generally come to define the clash as a civil war.

-more-

[archy]

Last night Glenn Beck had a couple of secessionist on his program. He said that there are 25 states that have active secessionist movements. I don’t think either of the two on his program were from the south. One of them was from Vermont.

He had a fella from League of the South on a couple of weeks bacxk, but the LOTS folks are mostly considered to be wannabee Federalists by real Southron secessonist advocates, who'd far prefer to see something more akin to a restored but updated Southern Confederacy.

They'll have to do it without Texas this time around, however.

[archy]

From what Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address, he seemed to think that the divided house that could not stand occurred when one side left.

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. Any people whatsoever have the right to abolish the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.
This is a most valuable, a most sacred right.'

--Abraham Lincoln, 1848

Omnium consensus capax imperii nisi imperasset"

-Tacitus

[Everyone would have thought him fit to rule, if only he never had.]

[archy]

Also factor in the economic collapse/hyperinflation of the Weimar years. Economic depression can make a society go off the rails,

Add in the seperate subculture and seperatist inclination in the Basque regions, for good measure.

[archy]

What would the official [Democratic] U.S. Government "response" _be_ from a democratic regime? You would certainly see martial law in the ground zero areas, and perhaps extending even statewide and into the surrounding states.

That's exactly the scenario we were practicing during the Vigilant Guard exercises last May, and during Valiant Shield last week.

Funny how those fires broke out in California just after a major JCS/FEMA/Homeland Security on coordinating the response of local, state, tribal, interagency, Department of Defense, and non-governmental organizations and agencies involved in homeland security and homeland defense, right in time for a real-world series of disasters requiring the the response of local, state, tribal, interagency, Department of Defense, and non-governmental organizations and agencies involved in homeland security and homeland defense....

Just a coincidence, no doubt....[but well-planned, nevertheless!]

[FreedomPoster]

Is there a monograph or two, in English, that you’d recommend?

[archy]

Is there a monograph or two, in English, that you’d recommend?

The two links in post #166 above are a good summary, and offer a couple of additional references.

Marko Tikka's book Terrorin aika [A Time of Terror] published last year is pretty near excellent, but isn't yet available in English, AFAIK.

Tikka has found new information about the flying units of the Whites, largely comprising schoolboys - child soldiers. Many were as young as 12 and 13; the youngest Red to fall was just nine.

"Child soldiers were not considered a morally questionable phenomenon - quite to the contrary", Tikka points out. He says that children and youths were particularly cruel in their fighting, because they lacked a developed sense of empathy, and the awareness that their actions had consequences.

[Travis McGee]

I can see our “urban youths” being very competent at liquidation ops, esp when plied with meth and ganja.

[archy]

I can see our “urban youths” being very competent at liquidation ops, esp when plied with meth and ganja.

Ever wonder why the Lefties had such concerns over the bayonet lugs as a *bad feature* during the *Assault Rifle Ban* period? There had been no great rash of drive-by bayonettings, and though the odd SKS may have been shown on a hip-hop album cover or two, it wasn't really a big deal with most users. But those who had studied the Russian Revolution and the sudden stop it came to in Finland in 1918 knew- they'd studied it in their college courses. Only about one casualty in four during Finland's War against the Reds was direectly battle-related; the rest were deaths in the prison camps [of either side] or, very commonly, decimation of enemy prisoners, either in retaliation, or *just because.*

And it was quite common to have young rookies who'd been hastily trained but hadn't been *blooded* yet to do the executions with their bayonets. Hey, it's cheaper than wasting a cartridge....

Now look again at the faces of the kids in that pic in the above post. And at their bayonets....

Both sides, Travis, or, more likely, those of several allied factions against the opposition of several others. Count on it.

[Travis McGee]

I lay great importance in NOT living in an enclave in a minority/majority area if and when the SHTF. It will just not do to be ethnically cleansed either by policy or by rage. Being ethnically cleansed may not mean a comfy ride out of dodge with ones possessions strapped to the roof. It may more likely mean waking up with the house on fire, or being marched to a gully.

[SauronOfMordor]

That’s a European “left and right”, which has little to do with how Americans tend to view “left and right”.

That's correct. European "right" is more leaning in favor of aristocracy and monarchy, which is the original meaning of the terms. From the wikipedia

The terms Left and Right have been used to refer to political affiliation since the early part of the French Revolutionary era. They originally referred to the seating arrangements in the various legislative bodies of France, specifically in the French Legislative Assembly of 1791, when the king was still the formal head of state, and the moderate royalist Feuillants sat on the right side of the chamber, while the radical Montagnards sat on the left.[14] This traditional seating arrangement continues to be observed by the Senate and National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic.

Originally, the defining point on the ideological spectrum was attitudes towards the ancien régime ("old order"). "The Right" thus implied support for aristocratic, royal, or clerical interests, while "The Left" implied opposition to the same. At that time, support for laissez-faire capitalism and free markets were regarded as being on the left whereas today in most Western countries these views would be characterized as being on the Right; the earlier "left-wing" politicians were advocates of laissez faire capitalism[citation needed] and the "right-wing" politicians opposed it, until the early nineteenth century when

anti-capitalism gained favour among the leftists due to the rise of socialism. Despite this, the left-controlled French National Convention decreed numerous economic interventions during the Revolution, including price controls (enforced under penalty of death),[15] forced loans on those with incomes exceeding 1000 livres, and the abolishment of the Paris Stock Exchange and all joint-stock companies.[16]

In 1930's Germany, the Communists were backed by Stalinist Russia, while the Nazis got a good part of their funding from the industrialists. This does not mean that the Nazis were pro-free-enterprise -- the conglomerates backing Hitler would have desired a state-run economy which ensured their profits. The essential difference between the Communists and Nazis would have been who was to be in charge, a difference which would disappear over time

[hippiechick]

This is related:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1834911/posts

[Who is John Galt?]

[Mr. Lincoln] used it in the context of a country heading toward a crisis because it was half slave and half free, and he believed that it would soon become all one or the other, but it could not stay as both.

His words were very prophetic.

Actually, his words were prophetic only because the northern States would not suffer the existence of slavery in the South - the South, on the other hand, had no intention of imposing the institution of slavery on northern States. A similar situation exists today: the 'Blue States' insist on imposing their views on gun control (one example) and abortion (another example) on the 'Red States,' via federal legislation and judicial edicts, even though the 'Red States' would be largely content if such issues were left to the individual States.

I think we both see today as the two visions of what America is, from the traditional right to the radical left, cannot always exist together.

One will have to win out over the other.

That, unfortunately, is the practical result of our winner-take-all, one-size-fits-all government, courtesy of the aforementioned Mr. Lincoln...

;>)

[exit82]

Thanks for the thoughtful post, and the parallels to today.

The last four Presidential elections (1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004) in my mind, have been about the future vision for our country. With the ascension of the Clinton candidacy, the left achieved a momentum to assault the Silent Majority on values and culture.

It could be argued that this started with Jimmy Carter, but Reagan and Bush I seemed to be able to blunt his damage, even the damage caused by Tip O’Neill’s Congress. That was a respite.

But these last four elections, as well as the time in between, have been one of a continual assault on traditional American values and culture. The Left today feels emboldened, with Hillary as their standard bearer, they know how important the 2008 election is, while many still sleep.

The fate of our country rests on the events of the next ten months.

And that is a sobering thought.

[mo]

“The question is what might turn this into a “Hot” civil war?.....”

IMHO....the pending inability to deliver on the entitlement benefits promised by the welfare state...in the face of a falling dollar. Ya need an economic trigger...as the North in 1860 started to actively interfere with the export trade of the South....