Civil War Redux

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

William Faulkner, arguably the greatest Southern writer, said of the Civil War's place in America's
psyche, "The past isn't dead - it's not even past."

All Americans revere rebellion: it was sanctified to us when our "founding fathers" made us a nation
by rebelling against their rightful ruler.  Quite illogically, they also wished to confer on their new nation
an ideal of unity: "E Pluribus Unum."  But Southerners in 1861 showed that rebellion is inherently, des-
tructively, the enemy of unity.

George Santayana's famous quotation (slightly paraphrased here) was that "Those who do not learn
from history are doomed to repeat it."  Poor America !  We have not learned from our Civil War history
 . . . and it's not even past for us today.

One thing we still haven't learned is that rebellion and unity are not ultimately political principles.  Our
perceptive brother-in-Christ Tim in Australia put that truth as straight as it's ever been stated: "Politics
is not really about politics."

America's tragedy in the Civil War is our tragedy today; that so very few of America's (self-proclaimed)
"Bible-believing" Christians understand that God deems rebelliousness and unity spiritual principles,
and says a great deal about both in scripture.  For anyone who honestly believes scripture, God declares
the consequences of rebelliousness are destruction and death: as the South (especially, but not solely)
should have learned in the Civil War.  Unity is the work of the Holy Spirit, which Jesus prayed for all His
followers (John 17:20-21).  Perhaps even today's "Bible-believing" Christians can puzzle out which God
desires for us, and commends, and commands.

Nobody today misses the spirit of divisiveness in which we live, and the immense harm it has done, and
is doing, to America.  Anyone who knows anything about the Civil War should know that following the
spirit of divisiveness has painfully real consequences, and is the surest way any people can be made to
lay waste their own land, and murder their own brothers.

So It's disturbing that American "conservatives," who have long pursued political power by fomenting
division, are talking up a "new Civil War" on (those they choose to deem) their enemies: by which they
mean every American whose opinions differ from theirs in any point. 

Their faction's current Great Leader is a man after their own hearts, who has erected his political power
primarily on divisiveness, and violently attacks everyone who dares disagree with him.  It didn't start with
him, of course: "conservatives ' " demi-god founder, Ronald Reagan, legitimated rebellion against authority
. . . as a principle of government !! . . . in his proclamation that "Government is the problem !"  The current
president is only the most recent, and most autocraic, of Reagan's authority-hating brood.

And in recent months the current president (the greatest scholar ever, no doubt, of the lessons of American
history) has given his imprimatur (who needs a Vatican council to decide these things, when you're always
right, and have a Twitter acccount ?) to some of his followers' predictions of a "new Civil War."

So I was struck by another parallel between the divisive "conservatives" of the pre-Civil War South, and
those of our times, in a book I'm reading.  The author recently traveled across the South in the footsteps
of Frederick Law Olmsted, the famous designer of Central Park in New York, who made his trip in the mid-
1850s.  Olmsted intended to write a book about his experiences to help Northeners understand Southerners,
and show there was hope for reconciliation of the regions' differing views.

But by the time he'd finished traveling the South and wrote his book, Olmsted had come to see the regions'
world-views as impossible of reconciliation.

Though charmed by a Tennessee planter with whom he stayed, a classmate of his brother at Yale, Olmsted
quickly noted in the planter an anti-democratic spirit: a "devilish, undisguised . . . contempt for all humbler
classes," which arrogance seemed to distinguish all the slave-owners he met.  Contempt for "lesser" people
is still a hallmark of the "conservative" mindset: in which their revered Great Leader leads them, and leads
them all.

Talking with the planter and his slave-owning friends, Olmsted also found that they chose to dismiss Nor-
theners' opposition to slavery as "Yankee cant;" hypocritical pretense of moral principle.  Olmsted wrote
that they " . . . had no power of comprehending a hatred of Slavery in itself . . . and couldn't imagine that
the North would be governed by any purpose beyond a regard for self interest."  (quoted in Spying on the 
South: An  Odyssey Across the American Divide, by Tony Horwitz, pp. 84-5).

It's a view "conservatives" still hold today about their "enemies," anyone who claims the current president
ever did any wrong, the way Northeners claimed slavery was wrong.  Today's "conservatives" are as dismis-
sive of moral claims as were the "conservatives" of Olmsted's time.  And as ready to impugn the honesty
of those who raise moral objections, either from national ideals, or the Bible.  "Conservatives" still believe
that their "enemies' " motivations are base political self-interest . . like their own: and that their "enemies"
should be most hated for hypocritically pretending otherwise.

My late best friend, Mike Baker, told me about a conversation with his father during Watergate. Mike had
opined that it would be good if Nixon was removed from office.  Doesn't matter one way or the other, his
dad told him: everybody in public office is only there to line their own pockets.

"You don't know that's true," Mike said.  Of course I do, his dad replied, with this crushing logic:  "If I was,
I would."

The spiritual blindness that enslaves evil-doers is that they choose, and ultimately become unable, to
conceive any moral purpose higher than their own exists . . . for anyone.  Their arrogance that "no one's
better than me" issues in their belief that everyone is therefore as self-seeking as they themselves are...
and contempt for everyone they imagine is just as evil as they know they are.