In David Armistead’s fascinating and insightful book Civil Wars: A History in Ideas, the author distinguishes three kinds of civil war: “successionist”, “supersessionist”, and “secessionist”.
Successionist civil wars are those that are fought over which individual shall sit atop a nation’s institutional hierarchy. The king dies. Who will succeed him? In this sort of war the body of the nation’s government and institutions are not at issue, only which head shall wear the crown. History is replete with these conflicts, such as the War of the Roses.
In supersessionist civil wars, the form of the nation itself is at stake. The population has divided itself into two bitterly antagonistic parts, fighting not over the crown, but for the territory the nation occupies. Such a civil war might pit a monarch and his loyalists against rebels who want to replace the whole system. Think of France in 1789, or Russia in 1917.
In a secessionist civil war, the population occupying one part of the nation’s territory declares itself a separate body, and seeks to sever itself from the rest — taking the territory along with it. That’s what happened in America’s so-called “Revolutionary” war.
What’s the difference, then, between a revolution and a civil war? After reading Armistead’s book, it seems to me that “revolution” is just a name that the victors sometimes give to a successionist (e.g., 1688), secessionist (1775), or supersessionist (1789) civil war that the rebels win. It makes the whole thing sound more “glorious”.
Civil war, then, is a genus with (at least) three species. This raises the question: if we are heading into another civil war in America — Civil War III — what type is it?
We generally haven’t had problems with succession in America, until recently. Elections have been ugly at times, but we’ve always had a peaceful transfer of power. (That’s no small thing!) But starting with the 2000 election, that’s been changing — and the election of Donald Trump has been bitterly contested since the day it happened.
What has also been happening in recent decades, and accelerating briskly, is the division of the American population into two distinct bodies. One seeks to conserve and restore the traditional nation and institutions, while the other despises it all, and wants it gone. It seeks to displace or replace the founding ethnic and cultural stock, the Electoral College, much of the Constitution, and the fundamental American idea of a limited government that exists only to secure our natural rights, while maximizing liberty otherwise. Because the two factions disagree not merely about questions of leadership and policy, but about the very axioms of nationhood, citizenship and the purpose of government that define the polis itself, there is no basis for comity or compromise. Moreover, the visceral antipathy between the two sides grows deeper, and more dehumanizing, every day: we’ve already reached the point where many people, especially on the Left, reject any possibility of comity or fellow-feeling for their political and cultural opponents. This all falls very squarely into the supersessionist category.
When things really get hot, however, the nation may well break apart — it’s far too big to be well-governed at the level of centralization that has already occurred — and a general bloodbath might perhaps be averted by some sort of regional, secessionist process. It’s hard to see how that can work, though, as Red and Blue are so hopelessly intermingled, county by county.
Here’s something else to think about: when you’re heading into a civil war, you don’t always know, at the time, that you’ve crossed the point of no return. To say when a civil war actually became inevitable is only possible in retrospect. Because I’ve “never metaphor I didn’t like”, I’ll draw one from astrophysics:
Surrounding a black hole is what’s called the Schwarzschild radius. In a sense it’s the “surface” of a black hole; it’s the distance from the singularity at which the gravitational pull becomes so intense that the escape velocity equals the speed of light. Once you cross it, you can’t get out: nothing, not even light or information, can escape. All spacetime paths within the Schwarzschild radius must pass through the singularity itself. But this fateful boundary isn’t a hard surface of any sort — in fact, if you are falling into the black hole yourself, you might not even notice as you cross it. It’s just that once you have, you are headed for that singularity, whether you like it or not. There’s no turning back.
What all this means is that it’s too soon to know what species of civil war the next one will be, or whether it might still be avoided. (I’m not very optimistic about that, but I suppose we may still be flying just outside the fatal boundary.) Only time will tell. As I’ve written before, a civil war is nothing to hope for — but keep your powder dry.
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I know you said it’s difficult to predict, but what’s your best guess as to where all this is going? I generally assume a generational blue wave once Trump departs, or maybe ten years thereafter. Dems begin to win nationally by a 50-45 margin that grows over time. Elections have consequences; liberal policies are enacted. The Senate could be a long-term source of obstruction if enough sparsely populated states remain conservative for the next 50 years, but I assume that’ll be overcome procedurally at some point.
What do the most conservative places and people in America, such as there will be in 10+ years, do then? What will be their situation vis-a-vis the new regime, and which of its policies will be most repugnant, onerous, and bothersome to them? Will people simply be unwilling to live under liberalism’s heavy hand? But in the concrete situation in which we will find ourselves, what are those people actually going to do?
I’m in my thirties and reasonably conservative (especially, agreement with your take on race, informed and scientific as it may be, makes me deplorable and anathema in my society), and my assumption is that, unless my views change, I’m destined to live out my days, especially from my 50s on, more or less censoring what I believe and adjusting however I must to exist in the new political order. My own workplace isn’t likely to become politically charged or fraught, and in any case in a decade I hope to be self-sufficient through rental income, and eventually via inheritance, making exposure to liberal pressures exerted in the workplace irrelevant. What concerns me most is future pressure to positively declare oneself an ally, failure to do so resulting in stigmatization. This is one reason I hope to opt out of public life.
In the future, I’ll read blogs like yours and Dr. Vallicella’s (long may you all endure), and whatever other stimulating dissenters to the new order emerge, but it’ll be for fraternal feeling and sane observation, not with an eye to political action. I predict conservatives will become more like chroniclers of society’s shift toward the left, attempting to understand, among themselves, what about human nature led it down this road, perhaps inevitably, continuing to speculate about the future, as we currently do, and practicing conservative values how we may. We might gather at a hotel for a conference of an intellectual nature, maybe hear about Michael Oakeshott or a panel on the evolution of healthcare coverage and why care is so bad, if it is, compared to yesteryear. Certainly we’ll bemoan education. Some of us will wax nostalgic about Trump the way people did about Reagan until recently. In this future, unless I see hard results that force me to change my tune on liberal policies, something intellectual honesty compels me to remain open to, I’ll look back with regret over the turn things took, remembering at least the diluted conservatism I saw eking out victories in my youth, even hope that butting against reality will force a course correction, at least temper how far leftward things tilt.
But I’m not sure I see myself becoming part of anything more reactionary than that. Some of us must fade into history. Sometimes there just are losers — pagan philosophers escaping into Syria from Justinian’s crackdown, Native Americans constrained to reservations, true-believing senior Nazis fleeing Deutschland, segregationists in the South, many of whom dot our nursing homes and have, one way or another, accepted the demise of the society they strove for in their heyday. These groups lost and had to cope with that in their own way, whatever verdict is passed on their place in history, whether in hindsight we judge them piteous or shameful. Long as I live, I will never be able to erase that I was one of those people who pulled the lever for Trump, hopefully twice, sure as a group to be cast as villains, sure, in my mind, to dwindle in influence and standing (such as we now have) as time passes.
I know the blue wave story I told may be a bit facile. The political organism we inhabit is such that some competitive political party, a revamped Republican Party or another party, at some point emerges to oppose the Dems. Whatever issues divide the country down the statistical middle, whatever these divisive issues end up being, will become centerpieces of political movements in opposition, ensuring political competition in the future. But assuming these don’t represent my interests, I’ll just have to find meaning apart from the drift of my polity.
Is it just me? Are others less likely to go quietly? We saw a petition in California for secession a couple years ago (despite the fact that if they just play the long game they stand to rule the Western Empire). A couple calls for a white ethno-state in North America have gone up from American Renaissance. I just don’t know that I see a procedural route toward a viable breakup, given the geographical entanglement you referenced. It’s too unlike the old North and South. Hence the tenuously connected conservative enclaves I mentioned existing in the future. But perhaps my individual temperament and situation is blinding me to other possibilities.
Casey,
Your concerns are well presented and they seem to weigh heavily on you. While our Blue enemy does seem unbeatable at times, they have one major stumbling block they can’t shake–themselves. The most vicious wars are often among the ranks of the Blue totalitarians. Future events are unknowable of course and sometimes a person will come forward to awaken a population or sometimes a shot is fired. Who knows.
For you at this moment, the best revenge you can bring is to live your life the best you can, in an honorable way as an example of what you believe. Marry if you aren’t already, have children and raise them properly. Live life! Some will hate you for it. They diminish themselves while you win the big prize: win at living life well. You are not alone.
I say this to you as someone about double your age.
Casey, I’ve replied to your comment in a newer post.
Malcom, Malcolm, Malcolm. I shed no tear for you or your mopey fans. Chained by “political correctness” ? From the those at the “peace coalition” front your powder might as well be soaked. Haven’t you heard “the end of every argument is murder”. I highly recommend a reading of “Male Fantasies” to fix your timelines and news feeds so we can get on with the next step, step down, impeachment or ballot box. I’m moving on. My aim is to hold McConnell and his bottom feeders accountable for disrespecting constitutional law. Want to know more? Listen to what I pilfered from the Roger Williams Jaguar Tour: facebook/xfootbusandrail. I charge double for those who pulled the lever for “The Lost Tycoon” and triple for those think another 4 is good for our image and the image of “others”.
Pandering for excuses to pull a trigger is no cause for good men. How much oil was spilled in the tanker attacks? What is the true cost per barrel? How much crude was saved by 3 south of border countries going black? How little does the New Persia care about the price now that they have joined the Green New Deal?
Don’t get where I am taking this? I shed no tear.
Hi Jim!
It’s nice to hear from you, old friend, but to be honest I can barely make sense of what you’re saying here: it’s all too scattery and elliptical for me to get anything from it other than a general sense of “orange man bad” (and perhaps another data-point in support of my claim that “we’ve already reached the point where many people, especially on the Left, reject any possibility of comity or fellow-feeling for their political and cultural opponents”).
If you have some distinct point to make, though, in plain English, I’m sure we can talk about it.