In America’s Next Civil War Will Be Worse Than Our Last for The American Spectator, which by the way never says that, H. W. Crocker III says many wonderful things but ends up making a hash of it.
He rightly concludes that the left's hysteria is a "destructive fire that will not be easily quenched, and cannot be reached by cool waters of rational argument."
But then immediately he advocates for just that, rational argument:
"[I]t seems to me that we can at least be as understanding of our own history [as President William McKinley]."
And also:
"[B]ut the point is to regain a rational, even if nostalgic, perspective on our past by eliciting laughter."
And finally:
"If America is to come together again, it will do so only through the restoration of what Lincoln called our mystic chords of memory, a common culture that emerges from a shared and sympathetic understanding of our past."
Well said, but by his own admission Crocker admits the North and South already had these things:
"North and South venerated the Founders. They shared the same language, the same religion, and, in large part, the same general stock. Most of all, they shared what Jeff Sessions was recently rebuked for calling an “Anglo-American heritage” of liberty under law, stretching from the mists of medieval England — even before Magna Carta — to our own Bill of Rights."
Just so. And still they went to war.
How much more we, whose "Anglo-Americans" can't even agree among themselves to stem the tide of the replacement of "the general stock" through immigration?
Such self-understanding demands what must be done for self-preservation: a halt to immigration, revaluation of citizenship, enforcement of assimilationist policies, and prioritization of family formation.
Without these things more leisure to ruminate about history won't even be possible. We'll be too busy watching our backs.
