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| Home Front: Politix |
| Victor Davis Hansen - The Fifth American War |
| 2018-02-17 |
| [National Review] The country is coming apart, and the advocates of radical egalitarianism are winning. The wars between Trump, the media, the deep state, and the progressive party ‐ replete with charges and counter-charges of scandal, collusion, and corruption ‐ are merely symptoms of a much larger fundamental and growing divide between Americans that is reaching a dangerous climax. On four prior occasions in American history the country nearly split apart, as seemingly irreconcilable cultural, economic, political, social, geographical, and demographic fault lines opened a path to hatred and violence. During the Jacksonian Revolution of the 1830s, factions nearly ripped the country apart over whether the East Coast Founders’ establishment of a half-century would relinquish its monopoly of political power to reflect the new demographic realties of an expanding frontier ‐ and its populist champions often deemed unfit for self-governance. For the most part, the Jacksonians won. Three decades later the nation divided over slavery, prompting the most lethal war in American history to end it and force the defeated Confederate southern states back into the Union. The Great Depression, and the establishment’s inept responses to it, left a quarter of the country unemployed for nearly a decade ‐ hungry and desperate to expand government even if it entailed curtailing liberty in a way never envisioned by the Founders. The result was eventually the redefinition of freedom as the right of the individual to have his daily needs guaranteed by the state. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #8 Country coming apart? I'd say those fires were stoked heavily in the last adm. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2018-02-17 21:20 |
| #7 I wasn't suggesting he was. I have major respect for Dr Hansen, but I think he overdoes it when he says the country is coming apart. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2018-02-17 20:53 |
| #6 VDH is NOT your normal perfumed pundit. |
| Posted by: Frank G 2018-02-17 19:23 |
| #5 ...which should be an indication who to bet on in the next civil war. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2018-02-17 17:02 |
| #4 The average American is made of sterner stuff than the pundit or political class. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2018-02-17 11:28 |
| #3 The country is not coming apart. A selection of the population is having a tantrum and are becoming increasingly isolated as a result. The left is inflicting a type of emotional terrorism upon the nation, with the hopes that folks will take their side to shut them up. This is how Peggy Noonan and others turned on their ideals during the George W. administration and why #NeverTrumpers folded immediately rather than deal with 8 years of the same. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2018-02-17 11:28 |
| #2 Mr. Hansen left out the first American War which was a bit of brother vs brother in the war for independence. See - King's Mountain |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2018-02-17 09:42 |
| #1 So many people who are attracted to progressivism or liberalism say I want to be liberal and accepting or I'm for progess in our society. Big mistake, that is not what progressivism/liberalism is about. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2018-02-17 08:43 |