Is America Headed Toward a Civil War?

A new Rasmussen national telephone and online survey found that 31 percent of likely US voters say it’s “likely” that the United States will descend into a second civil war in the next five years. Eleven percent of respondents said that civil war in the near future was “very likely,” while only 29 percent said it was “not at all likely.” 1

Seven Forces Driving America Toward Civil War

Today, …we are a deeply unhealthy society with a dysfunctional government and for all our money, success and storied history, we seem to be on an increasingly dangerous trajectory.

1. A Post-Constitutional Era: Liberals don’t believe in the Constitution. Typically they deny this, but that’s exactly what a “living” Constitution means. You make it up as you go along. The Founders foresaw the instability and danger that would be created by this approach, which is why they wanted us to be a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Unfortunately, America has in many ways already become a post-constitutional democracy and we’re one liberal judge away from abandoning the Constitution altogether. Once we get to that point, America just becomes the representation of that old saying, “Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner.” Of course people are not lambs and when large numbers of them believe they are’t being treated fairly, they do have the option of getting away from the wolves.
2. Tribalism: The “you only have to listen to people you already agree with” nature of social media has dramatically ramped up the level of tribalism in the United States. The Right has gotten much more tribal since Donald Trump rose to prominence and the Left has taken tribalism into hyper-drive. Increasingly, liberals treat a range of opinion between Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton as legitimate while everyone else is viewed as a white supremacist Nazi primitive that must be driven down into the gutter for society to move forward. This makes any sort of dialogue or cooperation nearly impossible. When every issue is a zero sum war where one tribe must win or lose, a lot of people quite understandably ask, “What do we gain by staying allied to this other tribe?”
3. Federal Government Too Powerful: Federalism is a safety valve on the American pressure cooker. As long as people in San Francisco can, for the most part, live the way they want to live while the people in rural North Carolina can, for the most part, live the way they want to live, it’s much easier for everyone to get along. When people are unnecessarily forced to live under rules they find abhorrent because the federal government has become an octopus that has inserted its tentacles into every minute crevice of American life, it creates discontent on a wide scale. If most Americans wanted to live like people in San Francisco, they’d live in San Francisco.
4. Moral Decline: As Samuel Adams once noted, “A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.”
   
   A large number of Americans HAVE LOST their principles, manners and virtue and it shows through from the sort of politicians they elect, to their rudeness online, to the sort of shallow hedonism and fame whoring they find appealing. Americans are increasingly becoming a soft and decadent people which is problematic because the challenges may change, but we can be certain that Americans will face future challenges every bit as difficult as the ones past generations had to tackle. This is frightening because if you look at the “principles, manners and virtue” of Americans today, they don’t seem capable of dealing with monumental events like the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Depression or World War II. Most people in their twenties probably couldn't’t tell you why all those events were such challenges in the first place. When America faces a challenge bigger than we can handle because of ineffective politicians and our “amusing ourselves to death” population, there are no guarantees our republic will survive.
5. The Debt: America is a freight train heading toward a cliff, but because we’re not moving toward the edge at lightning speed, no one seems all that concerned. However, the fact of the matter is that a reckoning is coming. At some point, probably within the next decade or two, we will face a debt-driven economic collapse; borrowed money will stop flowing into the United States and Medicare/Social Security as we know it will fall apart because we will not have the money to pay it. If and when we get to that point, all bets are off because if regions of the country see an advantage to splitting off from the United States at that point, they will do it.
6. Lack Of A Shared Culture: There has never been a time when American culture was more fragmented than it is today. By that, I mean that there are legions of people with millions of fans or followers on the Internet that the vast majority of Americans have never heard of in their lives. We don’t have that shared love of anybody or for that matter, anything. Conservatives and liberals disagree on economics ( capitalist/socialist), religion (friendly to Christianity/hostile to Christianity), the Constitution (support / believe in a living Constitution i.e. no Constitution), etc., on and on. The average conservative and the average liberal disagree on 95% of the issues and in the few limited cases where they do look at things the same, they won’t support a proposal by the other out of sheer tribalism. Over the long haul, there has be something more to hold a country together than, “We wear Nikes, like pop music and play golf.”
7. Gun Grabbing: Liberals have fallen in love with the idea of ignoring the 2nd Amendment and confiscating all firearms. The logistics of doing this in a nation with hundreds of millions of guns (many of which are off the books) when many police departments and tens of millions of Americans would not cooperate is seldom discussed. Another thing that seldom seems brought up is that large numbers of conservatives would see this as a prelude to the government’s use of force against the citizenry. When it is discussed on the Left, there seems to be an assumption that lone resisters might get into fire fights with dozens of police or soldiers, as opposed to ganging up with other formerly law-abiding Americans to waylay gun confiscators, politicians and anti-gun activists at THEIR HOMES in guerrilla actions that would be silently applauded and supported by hundreds of millions of Americans concerned about their freedom. Confiscating guns is a dangerous and stupid idea that could in and of itself end our republic if a serious attempt were ever made to implement it. 2

A Step by Step Guide to a Socialist State

Saul Alinsky, author of "Rules For Radicals" and "How to Create a Social State" , died on on June 12th, 1942, but his many disciples carry on. Alinsky borrowed, refined, and popularized many of the precepts of Vladimir Lenin, a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. After the revolution Lenin ruled Russia with an iron hand of forced labor, slavery, poverty, and brutal terror. Today, Alinsky's disciples are many, including Hilary Clinton who authored her thesis on his teachings, and Barach Obama [and comrades] who wrote about Alinsky in his books.

Alinsky simplified Lenin's techniques and added aggressive tactical strategies to defeat their opponents. [Alinsky's tactics are found on this website under the News / Society / Politics tabs]. Both Lenin and Stalin made use of their converts which they described as "Useful Idiots". "These Useful Idiots have destroyed every nation in which they have seized power and control." "It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere."

Alinsky taught that eight levels of control must be established in order to foster revolution and create a social state.

1. Education – Take control of the media. Take control of the sources of information. Continuously challenge and degrade legitimate authority with insults, accusations and law suits. Challenge all established societal and moral norms and promote every deviation and perversion. Take control of education in schools and universities Replace fundamentals of education with mind dumbing nonsense, revisionist history, and idealistic propaganda
2. Religion – Ridicule belief in God as an outdated superstition, Turn technology into a religion - the new savior. Promote relativism and materialism. Continuously attack others beliefs and transgressions - demand perfection of others as a prerequisite for legitimate commentary. Deny religious practices in the public square. Legitimize sinful practices, destroy marriage and the family, and deny the right to life - our most fundamental God-given and constitutional right.
3. Welfare – Welfare, in the long term, is a form of slavery. The tactic uses sympathetic causes to take control of every aspect of others lives (Food, Housing, and Income). It discourages self-reliance by promoting dependency as a right. Those who do not understand the long term aspects of welfare are easily lured by false and seductive promises that discourage self-reliance and personal achievement.
4. Health Care – If all health care is controlled under a centralized authority, the entire populace is at risk. That centralized authority determines who lives and who dies, whose treatment is funded, and who is sacrificed, who is deemed worthy, and who is not. Control of health care holds the finances of a nation hostage. Centralized health care, and centralized government, fosters corruption. The Catholic Church teaches subsidiarity - that governmental decisions should be made at the lowest level (the level closest to the people) as is reasonable and possible. The current move to eliminate private and independent health care is nothing less than a coup d'état - another grab for power, control, and slavery.
5. Poverty – If the poverty level is high then poor people become easier to control and manage. Poverty takes away options, dignity, and freedom. Those fighting over morsels will not have the strength, will, or resources to fight back. The more those in power control the necessities of life, the greater their opportunity to pilfer public funds and imprison others.
6. Debt – Increasing the debt to unsustainable levels enables justified increases in taxes and promotes an inescapable poverty and dependence. Individual debt and national debt opens the door to revolution and conquest.
7. Gun Control – Take away the ability of people to defend themselves, and corruption and crime flourishes. It fosters a police state, a gestapo controlled by the powerful. The Declaration of Independence states that citizens have the obligation to oppose and overthrow oppressive government. The last line of defense in preserving our freedom and our nation may be armed opposition to governmental oppression. Proponents of gun control argue that disarming citizens is necessary for security, while down-playing the overall and more substantial consequences.
8. Class Warfare – Divide and Conquer. Create discontent. Foster tension and jealousy between the wealthy and the poor, along racial lines, along political viewpoints, and along religious beliefs and you keep your enemy small and easier to defeat. 3

Does any of this sound familiar?

Political contempt is the problem

by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, USA Today

… Marriage counselors say that when a couple views one another with contempt, it’s a top indicator that the relationship is likely to fail. Americans, who used to know how to disagree with one another without being mutually contemptuous, seem to be forgetting this. And the news media, which promote shrieking outrage in pursuit of ratings and page views, are making the problem worse.

What would make things better? It would be nice if people felt social ties that transcend politics. Americans’ lives used to involve a lot more intermediating institutions — churches, fraternal organizations, neighborhoods — that crossed political lines. Those have shrunk and decayed, and in fact, for many people politics seems to have become a substitute for religion or fraternal organizations. If you find your identity in your politics, you’re not going to identify with people who don’t share them.

The rules of civility also helped keep things in check, but of course those rules have been shredded for years…

America had one disastrous civil war, and those who fought it did a surprisingly good job of coming together afterward, realizing how awful it was to have a political divide that set brother against brother. Let us hope that we will not have to learn that lesson again in a similar fashion.4

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