1968, here we come?

As you may recall if you read my interview with Joseph Benti over at the TV site, 1968 was a pretty bad year. I've long had a fascination with '68, and a frustration with it as well. I don't go much for the music or the clothing or the hair; I don't care for the drugs or the sex or the Haight Asbury lifestyles of the times. It is, however, an intensely interesting time historically; the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy; the civil rights and antiwar riots sweeping the country; the chaos of the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the comeback of Nixon in Miami, the cliffhanger election night.

As we see our world seem to collapse before our very eyes, you hear 1968 brought up a lot in comparison. Patrick Buchanan, who was there in 1968 working on the Nixon campaign, asks the question: is it worse today than it was in 1968? The answer may surprise you; read it and see what you think. And if we're not there yet, is it where we're headed?

The new fascists and the end of America

As I've said many times in the past , I draw my inspiration from unusual places. Today, it comes from one of the classic TV blogs I frequent. At Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, Ivan Shreve describes a time that was perhaps a bit too thrilling, a what-if scenario that supposes the British were defeated at Dunkirk, that the Germans invaded in July of 1940, and that World War II took a very different turn. It's all explored in the 1966 movie It Happened Here, and the title of Ivan's article is the thought for the day - really, the thought that everyone ought to keep in mind: "The appalling thing about fascism is that you've got to use fascist methods to get rid of it."

This, of course, would come as no surprise to the new fascists, the campus fanatics trying to destroy any kind of speech that doesn't align with their own belief system. To them, coining a phrase, "error has no rights"; in other words, some thoughts are so egregious, so clearly wrong, that there can be no protection for them, no allowance for letting people consider them and make up their own minds. To the new fascists (and, really, there's nothing new about them), these thoughts are by their very nature dangerous, so dangerous that they cannot even be allowed to see the light of day, and so must be squashed, often in the name of freedom or some such nonsense. In order to prevent people from being hurt, one must hurt; in order to allow people to be free, others must be made less free; in order for all to be equal, some must be superior. Truly, it would make the Fool Killer shake his head and walk away, overwhelmed by the magnitude of his opportunity.

And it proves the point of Ivan's quote: fascism, which is what these people purport to fight (although I doubt they really know what fascism is, because they're ignorant people and they refuse to acknowledge their own behavior), can only be defeated in two ways, and one of them is by resorting to the very same weapon. The other is by education, which is antithetical to the ways and means of the new fascists, for what they call "education" is what a civilized man knows as "brainwashing," or perhaps even torture.

All this is important because of what we see happening down south. As Dreher points out, when the Civil War statues are pulled down and the police do nothing to stop it, a line is crossed, and this is when it ceases to matter which ideological side one is on. It is then that we come to the true meaning behind the founding of the United States, and the importance of the Rule of Law. It is often said that we are a government of laws, not of men, but since the rise of Oprah and the dominance of feelings over logic, this time has been coming, and is now here. When we reach the point where the law can be nullified based on how we feel, then the law loses its moral authority; when the white supremacists begin to pull down the statues of Martin Luther King Jr. and desecrate the monuments to the heroes of the civil rights movements, the same fascists who destroyed defenestrated the names of Lee and Jackson will wail and gnash their teeth, begging the authorities to intervene on their behalf. And what will their rationale be? That Truth demands it? But, in the words of Pilate's eternal question, what is truth? When gender is what you say it to be, when marriage is what you say it to be, when there is no percentage to logic and words mean whatever the situation demands, then is not truth whatever you say it to be? I'll tell you, the police are going to find it pretty damn hard to enforce laws based on that kind of truth.

That, my friends, is why we live in a government of laws and not of men. It's because the law has to apply equally to all in all situations, and it's why the new fascists have just forfeited that protection with their actions this week. Over the decades we've gotten used to the idea that things will turn out all right in the end because they always have, and besides how else can they turn out? Dreher says there won't be a separation, because geography no longer is the determinant of the fissure lines. Maybe that's the case, but Dreher is always a great one for saying what isn't going to happen; he's not very good at saying what is going to happen. And my feeling is that if you can't say what is going to happen, then why should we believe you when you tell us what isn't going to happen?

Logic, and gut feeling, suggest that this madness can't continue much longer without something happening. Not every civil war is fought along geographical lines, but almost every one is bloody. While Google practices intellectual genocide, while the new fascists eviscerate any trace of law, the pressure inside the cooker builds, and builds. When it blows, as it must, it will not be a pretty site. And if the best we can do is keep pressing down on the bubble when it pops up, we know it will simply pop up again somewhere else.

Throwback Thursday: On the real persecution

At the risk of being disowned by my fellow orthodox Catholic friends, I picked up a copy of Rolf Hochhuth’s infamous play The Deputy a couple of weeks ago at a used book store.  It was no great revelation to me; I’ve read it before, and I bought it on this occasion as a research aid for a writing project that you may or may not ever hear about again.  It went on the bookshelf, between The Complete Works of Ayn Rand and How to Become a Libertarian in Six Easy Steps.

As a work of fiction likely to be taken as fact by readers and viewers, The Deputy is little more than a slanderous piece of Communist propaganda, deliberately promoted to tarnish the reputation of Pius XII through lie and innuendo.  And over the decades since it was published in the early ‘60s, it has indeed gone a long way to smear a man who, in the immediate aftermath of WW2, had been praised by Jews and Christians alike for his efforts to save Jewish lives while in a delicate position.  Evidence has since been uncovered linking Hochhuth with East German intelligence, and it’s likely that the whole thing was part of an orchestrated plot to undermine the Church.

It’s also not that well-written; far too polemical and strident, not to mention the slander I mentioned earlier (which, I guess, means I shouldn’t have to mention it again).  As a play, though, at least in written form, it has some intriguing qualities.  For one thing, Hochhuth’s prose stage instructions go on and on, sometimes for pages.  They’re obviously meant to be more than just directions; indeed, they provide background and commentary in such depth that they become an integral part of the story.  If you’re attending it as a performance without having the book in front of you, there’ll be so much left out that you won’t really receive the full impact.*  With some judicious editing, it would be reminiscent of a book I enjoyed quite a bit, Michael Herr’s Walter Winchell – a prose novel written in the form of a screenplay, complete with descriptions of fade-ins and fade-outs, camera cuts, and the like.

*Of course, there are many who’d argue that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

If there’s one redeeming factor in my purchase, aside from the research aspect (which has already borne fruit), it’s that I bought it second-hand, which means that neither Hochhuth, his publisher, nor anyone else connected with The Deputy made any money off of me.  Had I been forced to pay full price, I probably would have had to make a trip to the confessional.

There is, however, one thing I’d like to note in favor of The Deputy, although it has nothing to do with the book itself.  It came to me as I was driving in this morning, pondering the Christian persecution that seems to be in America’s immediate future.  Oh, I don’t necessarily mean a persecution on the scale of the Holocaust; it’s more subtle and insidious than that.  It’s the persecution occurring when an individual refuses to conform to the new social order and realize that religion is best kept hidden away in a dark corner, not to be brought out into polite company.  You’re OK if you want to cling to your superstitions, just don’t do it where you can be seen, or in a way that might influence public policy.

It might not be as pronounced as wearing a yellow Star of David, at least not at first.  But when you’re queried at work about political beliefs that have nothing to do with your job, when you can be forced to step down from a job or sell a company because of contributions you’ve made to various organizations, when the government can try to force companies to fund insurance coverage for acts that violate their own religious beliefs – well, you fill in the blanks.

Eventually it spreads.  The skeptic might suggest that, in a free-market economy such as ours, anyone confronted by religious discrimination is at liberty to start their own company, hire people who agree with you, and so on.  But when the prospective business isn’t able to get funding because lending institutions won’t provide it to those of a certain ideological or theological bent, when the business can’t attract customers because of intimidation tactics waged by those for whom freedom of speech applies in only one direction, when the burdens placed by government on the business force an owner to choose between conscience and profit – well, you try explaining it to someone who still has to put food on the table for a wife and children.  There’s more than one form of persecution, and sometimes the unbloody ones are every bit as painful and damaging.  They don’t attack the body, at least not outwardly, but they chip away at the soul.

Which leads me back to The Deputy.  Hochhuth’s claim is that Pius allowed political and financial considerations to prevent him from taking a stronger stance against Nazi persecution of the Jews.  And for all of his preaching, there’s no doubt that Hochhuth’s words (if they’re sincere and not simply a propaganda tool) show a great deal of compassion for the plight of the Jews during WW2.  If he really means what he says, if his fictional Fr. Riccardo (based, supposedly, on St. Maximillian Kolbe) really exemplifies, in his contempt for Pius, a desire to empty himself out for those being persecuted, then one can at least begin to understand the depth of abandonment that the Jews must have felt back then.  To have the entire world abandon you, turn its back on you and ignore what’s being done to you, and then to have the man who carries the greatest amount of moral authority remain silent* - well, that truly speaks to the dark night of the soul.

*To be clear once again: despite Hochhuth’s claim that the play was “ein christliches trauerspiel,” that is, a Christian tragedy, I believe it to be a smear job backed by the KGB, with no intent of sincerity.  However, as Caiaphas discovered (John 11:50), anyone can be an inadvertent prophet, no matter how much the thought might horrify them.

And so, as we enter the once and future persecution, I will put that hat on and look toward Rome and its bishop.  Can you see what is happening here, or are your eyes only on the refugees and the dissenters?  Do you feel the pain that so many are feeling, the choices that are having to be made, the sense of despair that rises, or are you more interested in kissing babies and playing the role of the kindly, benign father?  Are you prepared to confront a powerful government of an increasingly post-Christian nation that wants to marginalize Christianity and its beliefs in the name of progress and majority rule?  Are you ready to speak out for those who have no voice, to show the truth to a world that prefers not to see?

Are you aware of how high the stakes are, of how immigration and social justice and wealth redistribution and all the rest are of no consequence without this basic freedom?

In other words, are you ready to interfere?

Or, like Hochhuth’s fictional Pius, are you all-too willing to allow worldly considerations to influence you to look the other way?


Originally published July 21, 2014

Playing the Trump card

On election day I'd posted the epic scene from Apocalypse Now where Morrison is singing "The End" while the helicopters swirl overhead. It wasn't meant to be a pessimistic bit, because I'm not a pessimistic guy. I'm a realist, which I realize some people believe to be a euphemism for pessimism. I don't look at it that way, at least not in my case; if it was, I'd have been listening to Leonard Cohen songs while I was writing it.

What I mean by all this is that this country has reached a precipice, and I don't know that it can be pulled from it. You may remember this piece from earlier in the year, in which Terry Teachout had wondered aloud whether or not America could continue as a country where people "talked past each other." I think now is the time to look at this again, particularly in light of the electoral map from Tuesday's election.

This first image is a visual of the electoral vote. Trump (the red states, natch) has won or is winning in 30 states, compared to 20 (plus the District of Columbia) for Clinton. It's a fairly stark map, because even though Clinton continues to lead in the popular vote (albeit by a very slim margin), not only does the electoral vote support Trump fairly decisively, you can see how Clinton's support (with a few outliers) is concentrated along both coasts, and stops around the Mason-Dixon line. But look at this second map:

This shows the vote broken down by county, again using the red/blue key. As you can see, red dominates the map, with pockets of blue here and there. And then there's this one:

You've probably seen this floating around, showing that half of the population is concentrated in a very select areas. I've no idea how accurate this is, but even if it's not 100%, that's not the point.

Here's the point.

Donald Trump won 30 states and the electoral college, but lost the popular vote. George W. Bush won the electoral college and lost the popular vote. Richard Nixon, in 1960, won 31 states (if memory serves correctly) and barely lost the popular vote. Except in cases of landslides, Republicans consistently (but not always) win a majority of states, a majority of counties in those states, but can still lose the presidential election.

What this indicates to me is that a growing number of the American people suspect that their votes no longer count, that a small number of states covering an increasingly small amount of landmass can determine the outcome of a national election. We could see a candidate win 35 or so states and still lose. He could win an overwhelming majority of counties and still lose.

Why is this important? Let me cite an example: a friend of mine called me Tuesday night. She lives in a state where only the three big population centers vote Democratic - the rest of the state goes Republican, but because most of the people in the state live in those three cities, the state almost always goes Democratic in the presidential election. She voted for Trump, "not that my vote counts," she added. In other words, she feels disenfranchised. And that's one person living in one city in one state. What happens if it reaches the point where entire states feel disenfranchised, where the residents of 35 states understand that it doesn't matter what they think, it doesn't matter what 70 of the states that make up the federation called the United States believe, that 30% of the states can dictate the nation's policy to everyone else. (And throw a hissy fit when they lose.)

That is not good; it's bad enough when individuals feel disenfranchised, but when entire states come to feel that way, then you truly have created "two Americas." A state that feels permanently shut out of the decision-making process can never truly feel like an active participant in the governing of that nation. That's what people mean when they talk about Balkanization, that's what they worry about when they look at countries where ethnic cleansing takes place. I'm not suggestion that ethnic (or ideological) cleansing is about to take place here, at least anytime in the near future, but I am saying that this is how nations break up. It's more than Teachout simply saying people talk past each other. It's that the credibility of majority rule itself is in danger, when that majority is concentrated in a small area relative to the size of the entire country, when a minority of states can dictate to the majority. It's called the tyranny of the minority, and it most definitely is on its way to happening here.

Tuesday's election is the exception that proves the rule, because if this continues, I don't know that we can see this kind of result again. The Californians are talking about secession, as Texans have done in the past, for the opposite reason. Perhaps it's time to let them go, to let them form nations that have more in common with each other than calling themselves a part of the "United States." Because the demographics suggest it's more like an enforced unity, and when we can't even agree on a common American culture or an agreed-upon definition of words upon which the debate can be framed, when we can't even agree on the existence of good and bad, right and wrong - well, there's nothing united about that.

Music for the day

This doesn't mean that today is the end, that it will be all over after the election. Oh, no, my friend, it is just the beginning of the end. I'm not a pessimist - I prefer the term "realist" - but I feel this country has crossed the Rubicon in some fundamental way that precludes the possibility of going back. In that sense it truly is "the end." Regardless of who wins today, and I definitely have my favorite, from here on in it's full speed ahead to whatever awaits us. What that end will be, what form things will take in the future - well, that remains to be seen. Could the future be brighter? Of course! but again, that is not for today, the beginning of the end. Perhaps we will know when we reach the end of the beginning.

Wish I'd written that

Art  began to champion everything opposed to the Enlightenment and science:  It exalted emotion over reason, instinct over rationality, sensation over thinking, primitivism over civilisation.  Taught first in art colleges, this avant-garde philosophy found its way into recording studios.  In fact, a number of influential British rock musicians actually started out as art students, among them Keith Richards, Peter Townshend, Eric Clapton, and John Lennon.  As a result, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who, Cream, and many of the other British bands were deliberately creating music that expressed the philosophy of the artist as a romantic hero who smashes established culture to create a new culture of moral freedom, emotional release, animal energy, and vivid sensation.  The sheer energy of rock -- the pounding beat, the screams, the spectacle -- is intended to bypass the mind and appeal directly to the sensations and feelings."

Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, "How Now Shall We Live?"

Take that from the turn of the century book, then modern pop music being listened by the generation protesting (see the Charlotte riots, Occupy Wall Street, and other left-wing marches) and ponder how the idea of defying authority heard in rock and rap tunes over the past 50 years has given us such lunacy of disobeying authority (note the number of police hatred in NWA's "Foxtrot the Police" and Tracey Darrow's "Cop Killer," and the famed Time Warner shareholders meeting where Charlton Heston protested Mr. Darrow by reading in front of the Board of Directors for the company the ditty whose title is too lewd to publish.

Do you see a pattern based on what Mr. Colson (now deceased) and Mrs. Pearcey wrote a generation ago?

The Declaration of Independence

The numerous cases that have asked us if the Declaration of Independence should even be celebrated Monday by just the pushing of sexual freedom over all have forced us to read the document our Founding Fathers posted 240 years ago, because the same things happening with the Founding Fathers then are happening now again. Read this, and consider the absurdities of the "pass the law, get elites to overturn the laws"; let's look back at the document and consider we are turning to what led to this document's adoption 240 years ago.


The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

In Congress, July 4, 1776

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops
among us;

For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

For imposing taxes on us without our consent;

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;

For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses;

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies;

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrection among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in our attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity; and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

WE, THEREFORE, the REPRESENTATIVES of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.


[Signed by] JOHN HANCOCK [President]

New Hampshire
JOSIAH BARTLETT,
WM. WHIPPLE,
MATTHEW THORNTON.

Massachusetts Bay
SAML. ADAMS,
JOHN ADAMS,
ROBT. TREAT PAINE,
ELBRIDGE GERRY

Rhode Island
STEP. HOPKINS,
WILLIAM ELLERY.

Connecticut
ROGER SHERMAN,
SAM’EL HUNTINGTON,
WM. WILLIAMS,
OLIVER WOLCOTT.

New York
WM. FLOYD,
PHIL. LIVINGSTON,
FRANS. LEWIS,
LEWIS MORRIS.

New Jersey
RICHD. STOCKTON,
JNO. WITHERSPOON,
FRAS. HOPKINSON,
JOHN HART,
ABRA. CLARK.

Pennsylvania
ROBT. MORRIS
BENJAMIN RUSH,
BENJA. FRANKLIN,
JOHN MORTON,
GEO. CLYMER,
JAS. SMITH,
GEO. TAYLOR,
JAMES WILSON,
GEO. ROSS.

Delaware
CAESAR RODNEY,
GEO. READ,
THO. M’KEAN.

Maryland
SAMUEL CHASE,
WM. PACA,
THOS. STONE,
CHARLES CARROLL
of Carrollton.

Virginia
GEORGE WYTHE,
RICHARD HENRY LEE,
TH. JEFFERSON,
BENJA. HARRISON,
THS. NELSON, JR.,
FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE,
CARTER BRAXTON.

North Carolina
WM. HOOPER,
JOSEPH HEWES,
JOHN PENN.

South Carolina
EDWARD RUTLEDGE,
THOS. HAYWARD, JUNR.,
THOMAS LYNCH, JUNR.,
ARTHUR MIDDLETON.

Georgia
BUTTON GWINNETT,
LYMAN HALL,
GEO. WALTON.

Divided we survive?

This is perhaps the most optimistic thing I've read in weeks. From Terry Teachout (H/T Rod Dreher):

Never before have I felt so strongly that Americans are talking past instead of to one another. It is, I fear, our future and our fate—which is why I have come to believe that I will live to see Red and Blue America negotiate a “soft disunion.” No, there won’t be a second civil war. I can’t imagine the citizens of Blue America waging a shooting war over much of anything, least of all continued union with people whom they disdain. (Red America is a different story.) But the gap that separates the two Americas has grown so deep and wide that I find it increasingly difficult to imagine their caring to function as a single nation for very much longer. If I’m right, then I expect that they will ultimately find a more or less polite way to stop doing so.

The main obstacle that stands in the way of the soft disunion of America is that Red and Blue America are not geographically disjunct, as were the North and South in the Civil War. Even in the biggest and reddest of states, there are deep-blue enclaves that have no wish to be absorbed into the whole. Perhaps they will be the West Berlins of the twenty-first century, tiny islands of dissent in vast seas of concord. But if the desire to separate is strong enough, then the problem will surely be solved one way or another. Abraham Lincoln said it: “If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.” And so we may, sundered by inattention.

Teachout says this with regret, and Dreher is inclined to agree, but I see this as very hopeful. For the first time in quite a while, I see a possible way out of the disastrous collapse into which this country has fallen, destined to end with its inevitable end. I've felt for some time that a confrontation was inevitable, one that might end in Civil War (armed or unarmed), with the winner taking all. I used to think that, because of my age, I'd be unlikely to have to go through this, but in a remarkably short period of time I've come to see it as Teachout does, that it will happen in my lifetime, and it's been a sobering realization.

This way of thinking about the future changes things. Rather than living under an increasingly repressive government, one which feels no compunction about murdering its unborn, euthanizing its seniors (either outright or through rationed healthcare), not just legalizing but imposing the acceptance of unnatural acts on its population (with harsh punishment for those who don't go along) and crushing any semblance of religious freedom - if you're telling me there's a way out of this, even if it entails the dissolution of the formerly United States of America - all of a sudden, I can see a light at the end of the tunnel that isn't an oncoming train.