archived: 26 Dec 2004 - 1 Jan, 2005         Back                 Next

Updated: December 30, 2004  

Junkie:  Dr. Jonas’ article below is the second installment in Part I of his series.  The first installment is reprinted immediately following this article. 

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                        “The ‘Unless’ of the ‘Coming Second Civil War’ Series, Part I” 

This column is the second in this series.  Each will be preceded with variations on this brief introduction.  In my view, this cataclysm will come to our nation because of the ideology, policies, and ever-growing political power of the Republican Religious Right (RRR).  As stated at different times and in different arenas by sources ranging the 2004 Republican Party Platform through George Bush to Jerry Falwell and Grover Norquist, their primary goals are to: impose their religious beliefs on all Americans through the use of the criminal law; reduce the functions of the Federal government to the barest minimum, outside of the military-industrial, prison-industrial, and thought-control sectors; and replace Constitutional government as we have known it with Executive Branch dominance operating entirely on its own authority.   

Except to their base in the Christian Right, the RRR does its best to conceal most of its true aims from the American public as a whole, to camouflage them alternatively with foreign wars, lies, slogans, and appeals to the basest instincts of fear and prejudice.  When the American public becomes fully aware of the true aims of the RRR, I am confident that they will reject it.  The rejection may come sooner, as the result of the political process (the “Unless” of the title of the series).  Unfortunately, it may come later as the result of a Second Civil War, which itself could come either before the RRR were able to institute as true fascist dictatorship, or after some period of national suffering from the occurrence of such an event.  My position can be characterized as bold, alarmist, totally premature.  I fully intend it to be.  We have got to start focusing on what the RRR is really about.  And so to the topic of this column.  

On the Op-Ed page of The New York Times of November 4, 2004, Andrei Cherny, a former senior staffer for both Sen. Gore and Sen. Kerry, wrote: 

“The overarching problem Democrats have today is the lack of a clear sense of what the party stands for. . . . Democrats have a collection of policy positions that are sensible and right. . . . What we don’t have and what we sorely need is . . . a worldview that makes a thematic argument about where America is headed and where we want to take it.” 

Many observers have been saying essentially the same thing for many years past.  In The New York Times of May 26, 2003, there was a front-page story by my high school classmate Adam Clymer about the state of the Democratic Party.  Adam told us that what all of the Democratic Party leaders and outside observers alike, even the DLC people quoted, agreed upon is that what we need is: a new "clear identity," the ability "to think strategically" (Peter Hart), a "better message," to "stand for something" (Bob Strauss), to be able to "show that we can make progressive government work" (Will Marshall), "to move away from incremental new reforms to big and broad issues" (Bill Carrick).   

In a New York Times article on September 25, 1987, the journalist E.J. Dionne wrote:  “All Democrats have been searching for language to call America away from the individualism of the Reagan years to a new sense of community.”  Bob Kuttner had this to say just before the 1988 election: “Democrats do best when they develop broad, embracing, expansive visions combining national purpose with economic advancement, and rally masses of non-rich voters.”   

We Democrats have not found that language, that vision, yet.  If we had, we have won the Presidency this time around.  Bush’s post-election approval numbers are the worst on record, according to none other than "Fox and Friends" on the Fox”News”Channel on 12/20/04.  In an article in The Washington Post of Nov. 9, 2004, Dionne pointed out that a significant number of people who agreed with the Democrats and disagreed with Bush on individual policy issues voted for him anyway, in part because of the lack of an overall vision on the part of the Democrats and the presence of one (although we would strongly disagree with its content) on the part of the Georgites.  Finally finding that vision will be crucially important for beginning the Democratic comeback in 2006 that will be necessary if our country is to be saved from the worst outcomes of Georgite policies down the road of history. 

For some time now, I have had on the table a proposal for that grand vision.  I will present it next week in Part II of this current series-within-a-series. 

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                        “THE COMING SECOND CIVIL WAR (UNLESS)” 

This column is the first of a series on this subject that will appear intermittently over time in this space.  The columns in the series will be interspersed with columns on other matters that strike me of worthy of attention.   

In my view, a Second Civil War will come to plague our country regardless of whether Bush or Kerry had won the 2004 election, Unless.  While something totally unexpected still could happen, Bush has almost certainly retained his grip on the White House.  Apparently, he did this with the use of massive cheating of all kinds across the country at the polls and within the guts of many voting machines.  Given Republican control of most of the courts through which any challenges in the key states must flow, it is highly unlikely that the outcome will be changed.  Of course, if the matter does somehow get to the Supreme Court again, just as in 2000 the final decision would come down to just one vote, that of  Sandra Day O’Connor, who, being an avowed Republican, would most likely vote just as she did in 2000. 

In any event, regardless of the results of this election, as I said in my view our country faces the very real threat of a Second Civil War sometime in the foreseeable future.  With the Georgites remaining in power, this war is likely to occur sooner.  If Sen. Kerry were somehow to ultimately win, unless he were to make certain critical policy and political decisions early in his Presidency (which, based on his performance both before and after November 2 he would be highly unlikely to do), this war would still come, although somewhat later.   

The reason, and the only reason, that we face this cataclysm is the ever-growing political power of the Republican Religious Right.  At its core is Karl Rove’s “base,” the Fundamentalist Christian movement, that is becoming stronger by the day.  The primary agenda of these people, and they tell us what it is every day in their speeches, sermons, and writings, is to gain complete control over the personal behavior and religious beliefs of every single American, through the use of the criminal law.  If they are not stopped, eventually the implementation of their agenda will lead either to civil war or to open, national, fascism and complete oppression of the all elements of the population that does not find favor with them. 

My position can be characterized as bold, alarmist, totally premature.  I fully intend it to be.  We have got to start focusing on what these people are really about, and it has nothing to do with “values,” whatever that vaguest of vague terms means.  In this series, I am going to deal with what I see as the issues rending the civil fabric of our nation that may well eventually lead to violent conflict, if they are not confronted forthrightly and directly and soon.  In my view, together they form the present “Firebell in the Night,” warning of future civil war, the term that Thomas Jefferson used in describing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 as a warning of just such a forthcoming event.  That Compromise dealt with the issue of the expansion of slavery into the territories and the new states that would over time be formed in them.  Among the issues today that are similarly threatening our national social fabric are those of: race, sexual identity and its civil expression, the status of women, freedom of religious belief, the role of government in our nation, and Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law versus the Rule of Man. 

In examining the parallels between the present situation in our country and those that existed on the rocky and convoluted pathway that lead to the First Civil War, in my view it is especially important to note the following.  The Civil War of 1861-65 did not begin as a contest over slavery, per se.  Abraham Lincoln came to see it as such by the time he wrote his Second Inaugural Address in 1864.  But the principal slavery-referenced issue that he campaigned on in the election of 1860 was the matter of its further expansion into the territories.  He wanted to stop it; the South wanted to promote it.   

They wanted to force the slavery concept into all of the remaining lands of the original Louisiana Purchase and those conquered from Mexico in 1846-8 that had not already been incorporated in the Union as States.  In a similar way, the Republican Religious Right wants to force its concepts of what it calls “morality,” such issues of belief as to when life begins and of personal identity and behavior as to sexual orientation, onto our society and into the minds of every member of it by the use of the criminal law.  If they get their way, there will eventually be the death penalty for anyone providing an abortion, prison for women who have them, prison or worse for homosexuals who “refuse to recant,” some contemporary version of the Inquisition for “finding the heretics” who don’t happen to believe in their particular version of Christianity and then punishing them.  Don’t believe me?  Go to “Christian Reconstructionism” (which is the fundamental theology of the majority of Christian Fundamentalists) on the web.  Falwell would start with the “secular humanists,” Coulter with the “liberal traitors.”   

Forcing the concept of white supremacy and thus black slavery onto all the territory of the United States other than that protected from it up until 1850, and forcing a particular view of “morality” upon everyone in the country by the use of the criminal law, are to my mind very similar, both in their effects and in their potential for leading to civil war.  In this series, I will be dealing with this primary issue and the others listed above.  But first, in the next two weeks, I will present a brief introduction to the “Unless” in the title of the series.  

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Dr. Steven Jonas is a TPJ contributing author.  He is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author of over twenty books. Dr. Jonas is one of America's most perceptive Democratic political analysts.

In his book The New Americanism, Dr. Jonas presents his case that the Democratic Party has come adrift from its founding principles.  He urges the Party to turn to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to find the new vision and mission that it, and our country, so desperately need. "The New Americanism: How the Democratic Party Can Win the Presidency  is available from Amazon.com (just click on the title) and BarnesandNoble.com.

He is also the author of The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022, originally published in 1996 under the pseudonym “Jonathan Westminster,” and republished with a New Introduction in 2004, under the same author's name.  The 2004 edition is available at www.barnesandnoble.com (just enter the title) and www.xlibris.com (“Bookstore,” “Search”).  Both versions are available at www.amazon.com (just click on the title).