May 12, 2006
A CIVIL WAR USUALLY INVOLVES TWO SIDES:
The Red and the Blue: A Harvard professor worries about America's coming civil war. (Dean Barnett, Weekly Standard, 5/12/06)
D. Quinn Mills is worried. The respected Albert J. Weatherhead, Jr. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School fears that America may be headed toward calamity.Convinced that two straight elections which he characterizes as "tied and disputed" have gone to the Republicans and that good-faithed, but fatigued, Democrats have "exhausted all other legal options," Mills cautions that a third straight cliffhanger marred by Republican skullduggery could well result in a civil war. By which he means a real, honest-to-goodness Civil War, except this time around it won't be the Blue and the Gray but the Blue and the Red. To warn America about this gathering storm, Mills has written a novel titled Blue! Red! (available online here) and is conducting a sparsely attended online seminar on the subject for the Harvard community.
An often compelling read about a polarized electorate heading to explosion over a contested presidential election in 2008, Blue! Red! nevertheless sometimes veers into the realm of the unintentionally hilarious.
Even though the book begins with the mandatory disclaimer that it "is a work of fiction and that any resemblance to real persons is purely coincidental," the plucky Democratic candidate in the book is a female senator ("Sheila Brinton") whose husband was once president of the United States. Senator Brinton shows a lot more intestinal fortitude than the previous Democratic candidates for president who, in the book's retelling, meekly allowed themselves to be cheated out of the presidency.
"I want to keep fighting," Senator Brinton declares. "I want
the Presidency with every fiber of my being - I want it for the Party, for our people who've been beaten down . . . I'm afraid that if I concede now, and I run again next time, they'll steal the election again. If they steal election after election, we have no choice but to not accept it. I'll not back down; I'll not concede like those soft men who were candidates before me conceded."Strangely, Blue! Red! foresees the college football bowl games becoming the site of armed conflict between rabid partisans (with Republicans naturally being the aggressors). [...]
But where Mills stumbles is in his assumptions about American political passions. If you're reading this story, you're strange; strange in a good way, but strange nonetheless. You're by definition a high-end consumer of news. Few Americans have ever heard of, let alone often read, political magazines or websites.
You'd think such people would notice that our side has the guns.
Posted by Matt Murphy at May 12, 2006 4:19 PMThis just came up at my house with my younger brother (an ROTC enlistee this coming fall). I pointed out the same, that it's the red(-necked) conservatives that have the guns. And the birthrate. And many businesses. And a lot of the farmland...
Posted by: Jay at May 12, 2006 5:01 PM"Strangely, Blue! Red! foresees the college football bowl games becoming the site of armed conflict between rabid partisans"
Well then shouldn't we change the colors associated with the political parties to Blue and Green?
His plot is similar to my upcoming novel, except instead of bowl games the war is fought in faculty tea rooms.
Posted by: pj at May 12, 2006 5:17 PMVoter ID and thumb prints for everyone!
Posted by: Jayson at May 12, 2006 5:19 PMNice line about Vanilla vs French Vanilla...
Posted by: Mike Beversluis at May 12, 2006 5:20 PMBased on the quality of the quoted excerpt, I assume the book's opening sentence is "It was a dark and stormy night."
Posted by: Fred Jacobsen (San Fran) at May 12, 2006 5:37 PMYou don't have to be a Weatherhead to know which way the wind blows.
Posted by: jdkelly at May 12, 2006 5:49 PMAh, but Mr. Murphy, their side has the will to power. Remember who the terrorists were in the 60's. Guns are a little too honest for the Left, but pipe bombs are OK.
Posted by: Robert Mitchell Jr. at May 12, 2006 6:13 PMWe have more on our side than small arms.
Quick, was Franscisco Franco Blue state or red state?
This is one the most around-the-bend examples of B.D.S. we have seen to date.
Go ahread, lefties, try to register all the convicted felons as voters. Remember what Solzhnitsyn said about Communists referring to criminals as "socially friendly elements"--tell me who your friends are. . ..
Posted by: Lou Gots at May 12, 2006 7:42 PM Mr. Gots, I would have to say red state. Freedom of movement and a stable body of laws fairly applied. A little too 'law and order' for my taste,
but considering the Commies never forgave him for stopping them, not a big surprise, or out of line. As bad as Spain under Franco was supposed to be, I knew a kid who was happy to have excaped to there.
Robert M.: My point had been that left-wing insurgents will have much more to worry about than just the militia. Both law enforcement and military will be all over them, green helicopters as well as black.
In the first Civil War, much of the American military went with the insurgents: not this time.
There is a poignancy to the leftist insanity that they must be bought off to avoid a really bad temper tantrum. It bespeakes a growing understanding that it is all over for them, that they have lost the debate and now must threaten.
Posted by: Lou Gots at May 12, 2006 10:37 PMThank you for your thoughts Mr. Gots. My point was that the Left is filled with passive-aggressive twerps who would not formally declare war. How many terrorist acts would we have to see before we fought back? I think we both agree that terrorism is not a problem to be solved by the police, but the military doesn't want to operate on American soul, and the Intelligence agencies seem to be staffed with Leftists. Also, the computer side seems well stocked with Leftists. Destroying America is already the goal of many on the Left. Can we survive if 20% of the country decides to play spoiler?
Posted by: Robert Mitchell Jr. at May 12, 2006 10:49 PMRobert- The Left can't survive without us.
Posted by: Pepys at May 13, 2006 12:09 AMThey aren't surviving now.......
Posted by: Robert Mitchell Jr. at May 13, 2006 12:10 AMPerhaps the 'blue' will rely on WMD....
Or maybe they think that if only USC had beaten Texas last January, the nation would be on the way to recovery.
Posted by: jim hamlen at May 13, 2006 12:28 AM"Can we survive if 20% of the country decides to play spoiler?"
Um, Yes.
You give far too much credit to the last batch of leftist terrorists this country produced in the 60s and 70s.
How many people did the Weathermen kill? (On purpose, that is. You can't count any Weathermen who blew themselves up accidently.) How about the Symbionese Liberation Army? Put together, it's less than ten. Even the German Red Army Faction (a.k.a. the Baader-Meinhof Group) only managed to kill 34 people in nearly 30 years of operation.
By any measure, these are not spectacularly successful guerrilla movements.
So, this supposed Civil War is a complete fantasy.
The American left has neither the will nor the ability to wage a successful terrorist war against anyone, much less the people who actually know how to handle guns and make bombs.
Thank you for your thoughts Mr. Miller. In the 60's the Left was winning. Now they are losing. Power, People, Ideas, the Left is in retreat. There are a lot of people suffering from BDS, and they seem to be in control of the Schools. Many people with more intelligence then wisdom. I didn't say guerrilla, I said spoiler. Guerrilla's are fighting for something. I'm thinking about the proactive suicide the Left has been pushing.
Posted by: Robert Mitchell Jr. at May 13, 2006 12:56 AM