Friday, November 19, 2010

House Divided

Not many years before the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln made his famous House Divided Speech.  I fear that is the condition this country is heading into once again as the intellectual gulf between the parties appears to be widening.  The conflict at that time was over slavery.  What is the conflict this time?  I wonder if anyone can actually name it.

If you read the stuff on the left, as I sometimes do, you would conclude that its the rich vs everybody else.  The ones said to be on the right will say it is the socialists who are the bad guys.  Everybody else, I suppose, is okay.  You got the haves v the have nots; the ins v the outs; capital v labor; whites v people of color- you get the picture.  One group allies against the other.  The difference now may not be so much as regional, but there is a geographical component.  Most Democrats are from the large cities and on both coasts.  There are some also along the Great Lakes.  But everything else is Republican.

If some of these regions wanted to secede, how would they reorganize?  The same phenomenon exists within their own "blue" states.  Most counties in this country are red.  Blues are tightly grouped into large cities.

If there is a Civil War again, it will be one faction overwhelming the other.  Not one region v another as in the first Civil War.  It will be cities vs countryside.  But the main battle will take place at the highest level.  Whoever controls that wins the contest.  But it won't be an election.  It may be a coup, or an attempted coup.  The loser may start a rebellion, and then there could be a war.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

In Texas there has been talk of secession as long as I can remember. Texas is the only one of the fifty states that was an independent nation at annexation. It was admitted to the union by way of treaty. In the treaty, Texas maintained the right to secede or to split into 5 seperate states if it so wished. That may have become moot at the end of the Civil War. Recently I have heard people in other states threaten to secede. How serious they are is anybody's guess, but the Balkanization of the USA is a terrible idea. My belief is that when we become weak enough we will be attacked, possibly invaded (Red Dawn?). At that point we will come together again. How many will be left to come together and will they glow in the dark? I can't say.

Anonymous said...

A retraction must be issued. I have been re-educated on the method of entrance used to admit Texas to the Union It was by Joint Resolution of Congress. I'm seriously considering secession from this blog and splitting into 5 different posters. More later.

Greg said...

I think I will make a rocket and fly into outer space. Will that be the same as secession? Will Al Gore let me?