Opinion: Civil War III?

By Donald R. McClarey, American Catholic, June 27, AD 2018 

The Left in this country is increasingly deranged.  They have long adopted the tactics of shouting down adversaries and engaging in street thuggery.  Not all Leftists approve of such tactics, but, as perusing almost any Leftist web site demonstrates, Leftist activists cheer on these measures.  Now the Left has taken to hounding administration officials, usually women, in public places and at their homes.

In a country that has known two civil wars, the American Revolution was a civil war as well as a war against British rule, this is all very dangerous.  Social media helps give a megaphone to extremists, and modern technology allows mobs to be summoned at a moment’s notice.  The Left has developed the charming habit of referring to anyone who disagrees with them as racist.  A term increasingly popular on the Left is Nazi for those having the temerity not to be Leftist.  Mark Shea recently called people who support the border policy of the Administration as being Devil Worshipers.   This is the language of hysteria and not the language of normal politics.  Sooner or later this is going to end in a violent battle, and once shooting starts it may well spread throughout the nation.

I have often wondered what the reaction of the leaders North and South would have been if, after election day 1860, some time traveler from the future had brought them into a room and demonstrated, with irrefutable evidence, that a course was being charted which would lead to 750,000 dead, leaving behind countless orphans and widows, in the next few years and a section of the nation devastated.  I think they would all have been appalled, and developed compromises to avoid our Civil War.  Perhaps that demonstrates too much optimism on my part as to the power of the better angels of our nation.  Alas, no such time traveler visited 1860, and no time traveler will visit our time to detail the human cost of the current folly that is taking us down a very dark path.

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