A New Civil War?
Armchair speculation is always fun, even when the matter in question is deadly serious. It can
also be profitable since it forces the speculator to try to concretize the issues, factors, and
probabilities: “What would it take for so-and-so to happen? Whose interests would prevail?
What would be the effects and the side effects?” And so on. Well, these days it is not uncommon
to hear predictions of a second American Civil War. Sometimes that is just an exaggeration
denoting alarm at the cultural and political polarization of the electorate, worse than any in living
memory. But some of the talk is meant to gauge the likelihood of an actual armed conflict. Here I
would like to speculate about the possible causes and outcomes of a new Civil War.
There is a yawning gap between the combatants in the raging Culture War. There is great
puzzlement as well as anger over the favorite issues of Progressives: transgenderism, Gay
Rights, abortion, Political Correctness, “safe spaces,” open borders, Affirmative Action, Single
Payer Health Care, Socialism, Islamophobia, etc. It is way past agreeing to disagree. Both sides
seem to feel that great danger lies in store for the nation if their own agenda does not prevail.
That is probably not enough to catalyze a shooting war, though it is a necessary condition for
one. So what would be enough to light the fuse?
If Progressives regain power again, say, in 2024, I can imagine two scenarios that might goad
conservatives into armed resistance. One would be the government confiscation of guns. Once
such a measure were announced, you can bet we would see a number of local Ruby Ridge
confrontations. Gun owners, gun enthusiasts, would not merely bemoan it or protest it. Their
concern would not be mere anger at having their possessions confiscated. That would be bad
enough, but Second Amendment partisans would (and already do) see a broader issue: disarming
the population so as to forestall armed revolt. Of course gun-seizre would have the exact
opposite of the intended one. The gloves would be off, the Rubicon crossed, the die cast. Local
conflicts might well snowball into a civil war.
Secondly, with an unlimited influx of foreigners we would face the real-life enactment of Jean
Raspail’s prophetic novel The Camp of the Saints, in which missionary agitators in the Third
World stir up the masses to “get their slice of the pie,” undertaking a great pilgrimage to the
Promised Land, namely America and Europe. It would not be an armed invasion because that
would be unnecessary. The migrant hordes of starving scarecrows would, by their very presence,
be striking a death blow at the West’s weakest point: liberal self-hatred. Survivor Guilt is the
price liberals pay for doing well. It is false guilt based on a faulty assumption: that of the
“limited good.” Socialists are operating from the same error: that there is a finite amount of
resources and therefore of abundance. In this scenario, one believes that the well-off are hogging
a vastly greater share of the wealth at the expense of the poverty-stricken masses, who, in turn,
are poverty-stricken only because the rich have stolen their share. But this thinking is a vestige of the pre-modern world. Capitalism wrought a new thing under the sun. It made it possible to
increase wealth, to stop cutting ever-smaller slices of the pie and instead to bake a bigger pie.
Socialists are attempting to turn the clock back to the ancient and medieval eras.
Democrats/Socialists/Progressives howl that tax cuts go primarily to Capitalist Bosses and
Plutocrats and not to the poor and Middle Classes, and this is again the limited good fallacy, as if
business leaders are like Smaug the Dragon sitting atop a heap of treasure, allowing none of it to
go out to the starving peasants. But the ancient Roman poet Livy saw what Socialists do not see.
Livy told a parable in which the organs and limbs of the human body began to gripe that it was
the greedy stomach who got all the food! They decided to go on strike, hands refusing to bring
food to the mouth, jaws refusing to grind it, till there were equal shares for everybody! It did not
take long before the error of their policy became evident to them. They became weak and
enervated. In starving the stomach they were really starving themselves—because it was through
the stomach that all other parts of the “body politic” received their nourishment! In the same
way, the economy feeds business first in order to provide jobs for employees. Otherwise, you
have an equality of scarcity, of poverty, of penury. For Progressives, Venezuela, with its
needless, politically induced poverty, is not a warning sign but a goal! As someone recently
commented, the Progressive sees a mansion and says, “No one should live in a house like that!”
The Capitalist Conservative sees the same mansion and says, “Everyone should live in a house
like that!”
Unlike their rivals, Conservatives do take the hard lessons of Venezuela to heart. A wholesale
economic nose-dive at the direction of an Obama-like government might do the trick, prompting
revolution, though I rather imagine Conservatives would simply wait it out till the next election
turned things around, as in 2016. But if illegal immigrants flooded the country, I think that might
be the last straw. Conservatives would recognize such a tsunami for what it is: an invasion. And
they would turn it back. It would not be a pretty sight, but it would be necessary.
To me, the scenario most likely to produce a new Civil War would be the continued defiance of
Federal law by California and all the Sanctuary Cities. The Federal Government just cannot
brook this de facto secession by these local and state governments. Sooner or later, it seems
Washington is going to have to send in troops and nationalize these cities (and states). It would
be interesting to see what resistance might be offered. Antifa Brownshirts might fight back, but
I’m guessing most Leftists would retreat to their parents’ basements and hunker down and “fight
back” with a fusillade of nasty Facebook posts.
But suppose, just as a thought experiment, that the Feds lacked the backbone to bring the
Sanctuarians in line with Federal law. That would be equivalent to admitting that the Federal
Union was abolished. The Sanctuarians are violating the Constitution, but so are the Feds as long
as they don’t stop it. And then it becomes possible for states to secede officially. It would be as if
Great Britain had thrown in the towel and allowed Argentina to annex the Falkland Islands. It would be as if Lincoln decided to allow the Confederacy to go its own way. How would it go
down?
I picture an amicable divorce between the Red States and the Blue States. I suspect you would
have two or three new independent countries. To the west would lie Greater California,
combining present-day California, Oregon, and Washington. To the East would be Greater New
York, comprising New England, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Or maybe,
though not contiguous with one another, all the Blue states could be under a single flag, like East
and West Pakistan on either side of India. The result could be called “New Venezuela,” or maybe
the “United States of Abortion.”
Or both groups of Blue States, together with Illinois and Minnesota, could become provinces of
Canada, which would be contiguous. The Red States would remain as the United States of
America, or just “America.” I also suspect that California would sooner or later revert to
Mexico, especially in view of the open borders they would undoubtedly have.
I realize it would be very complicated, especially economically. Perhaps there could be a
commonwealth arrangement as there was under the Articles of Confederation. Perhaps there
could be an option for states to rejoin the Union if they found the new arrangement not to their
liking. This splitting of the present USA would enable the Red and Blue states to break the
deadlock, end the tug-o-war, that prevents each bloc from enacting the policies that the majority
in its states prefer. Talk about the Lab of Democracy! The Blue states could pursue their Leftist
agenda unhampered. So could the Red states. It would be like Lessing’s play, “Nathan the
Wise,” in which we read of a king who was to follow the tradition of bequeathing to his favorite
son a fabulous ring which had the power to make its bearer beloved by all men. This king, on his
death bed, found himself baffled, or he loved all three of his sons equally. When he died, the
sons were each given identical rings with no way to tell which was the original and which the
copies. The Grand Vizier explained that in order to prove whose ring was the genuine article, the
three princes must strive in friendly competition to deserve the love and gratitude of all his
subjects. A win/win situation! That’s what the Red and Blue states could do: try to do the
greatest good for their citizens using their preferred set of policies. Would Capitalism show itself
the best path? Would Progressivism prove the best? Perhaps the only way to know would be for
the Red and the Blue states to go their separate ways.
Robert M. Price
November 1, 2018
Robert M. Price (Ph.D. in Theology; Ph.D. in New Testament) has taught in colleges, universities, and seminaries. He pastored a church for some years and served as Director for the NY Metro Center for Inquiry. He writes for Free Inquiry and American Rationalist. Price is the author of many books including The Case Against ‘The Case for Christ’, The Incredible Shrinking Son Man, The Amazing Colossal Apostle, and Holy Fable: The Bible Undistorted by Faith. And he is a proud Republican. He currently serves as a Board Member of the organization Republican Atheists.
