Sarah Hoyt is rightly concerned about what she sees as the growing prospects for Round II:
I’m hearing more and more “It’s going to come to shooting.” I have a sinking feeling in my water that it might very well come to that. I’d prefer not, though. Look, I have sons. Also, we do not live in a nice world. If our world were really the black-and-white world the liberals believe in, where the USA is the big bad wolf and everyone else is a sweet little lamb who wouldn’t hurt anyone but for fear of the wolf, a civil war might not be a bad idea.
Of course if the world really were like that, we’d be dealing with a species other than human and perhaps communism would work. Who knows? May be worth an SF story.
But the world is not like that, and the US even if it is rapidly flushing generational wealth down the toilet is still much wealthier than most of the world, and is way wealthier than most of the Americas. (This btw is taken by the communists as proof of malfeasance. It’s a religious dogma.)
While we are involved in a civil war – and let’s assume it’s only half as bloody and half as long as our last one – do you think the other nations of the world will sit still? Forget a Chinese invasion (though G-d knows you shouldn’t) or Russia getting involved on one side or another with a view to ruling portions of our country when all is done (and if you dismiss that, you should study the roles of France and England on the past civil war) and just think about the people who hate us and who think (and our media has HELPED this perception) all their woes are our fault, and who think they’re accumulating virgins in heaven – and prestige on Earth – by hitting us with acts of terrorism writ large.
How many cities do you think we’d lose to random acts of revenge?
What I mean is that it might very well come to that. But do you want it? Talk about setting us back generations. Yes, I know you’re furious and I’ve heard the “we have all the guns” boast. It’s not true, okay? Yeah, we have most of them. And sure, we probably could win in days. Except that you forget how many third world armies would gladly fight on the other side, once it got started. And would be promised everything they want if they do.
Oh, sure, they’d probably still lose – but I’m predicting we’d all be wading in blood to our ankles before it’s said and done, and parts of the country would be radioactive for a century.
Again, it might still come to that. And I think the other side wants that – probably more than even the nuts on the “right” – because part of their religion (don’t fool yourself it’s not one) is the belief that history has favorites and that they’re it. They think in the end they win. (They might perhaps want to consult the Norse legends, to figure out which said was believed to win in the end. Never mind.)
But before the shooting starts – in this moment in the heart of the storm – perhaps those of us to the right of Lenin should try something we haven’t tried before. Perhaps we should try speaking out.
Look, I’m as cowardly as the rest of you. I spent more than twenty years, between breaking in and finally losing my mind, listening to digs about “the rich” from people who could buy me and sell me outright; I spend years at parties and meetings listening to Marxist pap and not pointing out how stupid it was; listening to public figures on the right being denigrated as “stupid” when it was obvious they weren’t, etc. And I shut up. Because I wanted to make a living in my chosen profession.
I’m still not half as brave as I’d like to be, though I try to speak out if I’m present. And yes, I know I’ll pay a monetary price. But I don’t go out of my way to look for fights, because I’ll pay a monetary price. And also because, frankly, I know many good people on their side. I don’t want to upset them.
But consider….
Every time our silence gives consent, what we’re giving consent to is the inevitability of eventual shooting.
You know those massacres that have happened in every communist paradise? Here the would-be victims are armed. To quote the title of some Baen anthologies There WILL be War.
Unless we stop it now. Unless we’re as brave with our words as we eventually will have to be with our guns, if we stay silent.
I understand her concerns. The problem is that words aren’t going to stop anything now. For every Sarah Hoyt who immigrated and successfully managed the transition to American traditions and values, there are ten or more who did not and five native Americans who have abandoned the ideals and traditions of their forefathers in favor of one flavor or another of secular progressivism.
There is a powerful correlation between economic contraction and war, although the causality is complicated. Even so, it is readily apparent that the relative peace of the last sixty years, and the civil peace inside America for the last 148, is largely a byproduct of the explosion of the economic growth that took place, first in the USA, then later in the world, followed by the post-WWII Pax Americana that ensued from the American industrial infrastructure being the only advanced one left standing. But success invariably plants the seeds of its own destruction. Since the long moratorium on immigration ended in 1965, the post-1962 mass apostasy that followed Vatican II, and the great Hispanic invasion began in the 1980s, the inevitable national fracturing is rapidly approaching and will likely become more evidence with the next phase of the current economic crisis.
There no longer is one American nation, there are at least four. There are the Reds of progressive, secular America, there are the Whites of traditional religious America, there are the Browns of third world America, and there are the Blacks of feral America. These colors should be understood to be symbolic in the sense of the Russian Reds and Whites, not literal, as there are blacks whose allegiance is to White America and Hispanic immigrants who are far more Red than Brown.
Hoyt is primarily concerned about an eventual war between Red America and the giant government is both its inspiration and its weapon, and liberty-loving White America. But Brown America is the X factor; its political support for the Reds has been leased for the short term by state and federal largesse, but the Browns have little interest in either the progressive secular ideals of the Reds or the political and cultural traditions of the Whites. And Brown America is perfectly capable of starting the fireworks by virtue of its own innate irredentism, which will only become stronger as Red America’s ability to transfer resources to it wanes.
Anyone who has followed the history of warfare knows that wars seldom begin directly between the two primary powers. There is usually the Archduke’s assassination, the invasion of Manchuria, or something similar on the margins before the war begins in earnest. This is why Sarah’s plea for speaking out in preference to shooting, however sensible, decent, and heartfelt, is, unfortunately, largely irrelevant. I’m not saying it is not worth doing, quite to the contrary, I would similarly encourage others to speak out. I merely caution against putting any faith in its success.
There will be war, whether anyone truly desires it or not. There has always been war and there always will be war, the arrogant pretenses of the totalitarians and their self-serving promises of peace on Earth notwithstanding. As Vegetius wrote: Si vis pacem, para bellum. The Union cannot be saved because it no longer exists in the hearts of men.
“Twenty-nine percent of registered voters think that an armed revolution
might be necessary in the next few years in order to protect liberties,
according to a Public Mind poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University.”
