The New Secession Crisis

Jeremy Carl at American Greatness thinks we are in the midst of another secession crisis.

The Democrats, he says, have seceded from the American order, and it’s up to real America to save the Union, just like Abraham Lincoln saved the Union in 1861.

You see, Carl thinks we need a Lincolnian revival.

In his opinion, conservatives have acted too much like James Buchanan in 1860 and 1861. They “dither” while the enemy has already started a war.

This is the first in a long string of historically ridiculous statements in a piece that can’t figure out if it wants to be Lincolnian or Jeffersonian, nationalist or federalist.

Carl urges conservatives to vote with their feet, coalesce in small communities, control the States they decided to settle, and then use them to knock down unconstitutional federal authority.

Sounds a lot like State’s Rights–and something Lincoln sought to destroy by invading the South in 1861.

Carl’s piece is indicative of the real problem with the Straussian/neoconservative/Claremont right. They can’t understand that the problems we face in America today were created by the Union victory in 1865.

Consider that Carl thinks we should use Lincoln’s determination to push back against the Left after his “indictment” of their disdain for traditional American society. His complaint centers on Leftist tactics over the last several months, tactics that would be impossible without Lincoln’s shredding of the Constitution during the War. In other words, the Left is using Lincolnian tactics to fight the right.

Carl doesn’t seem to understand this and falls back on the current idiotic Republican talking point of Confederacy=Democrats=Traitors!

He also uses the word “regime” to describe the United States government. I agree, at least since 1861, but no Confederate wanted to control the government in Washington. They favored independence, to be left alone, the same path Carl insists conservatives need to follow, all while criticizing the Confederacy for wanting to be left alone and praising Lincoln for his “firmness and determination” in blocking Southern independence.

You can’t make up this kind of irrational thought.

I agree with Carl’s indictment of the Left and thinking locally and acting locally would go a long way to offering a solution for our modern problems. Except you can’t do that if you believe we need to act more like Lincoln and less like the Confederacy.

He concludes by saying, “Lincoln lost Fort Sumter, but he, and America, would eventually triumph in the broader struggle.”

How so? By opening the Pandora’s Box of the “proposition nation”? By developing the tyrannical methods used by the Left to silence speech, arrest political opponents, rig elections, ignore the Constitution, and incite violence against their opposition?

If you think Lincoln won, you are correct, but “America” lost in this struggle, at least the old federal republic of the founding.

We see Lincoln’s America around us everyday. Nothing is left of the Founders’ federal republic.

“Conservatives” will never win until they jettison Lincoln and understand that he didn’t conserve anything with his war on the South.

The only victor in that struggle was the Left.

I discuss Carl’s silly piece in Episode 456 of The Brion McClanahan Show.