Conflicts

“I John Brown an now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.”

In 1859 John Brown and a score or so of followers seized the armory at Harper’s Ferry with the idea of starting a revolt among  slaves in Virginia. It was a foolhardy and pointless venture from the first. It had almost no chance of success, and if it had succeeded, it would have led to a brutal suppression of the slaves Brown wanted to help and a hardening  of the opinions of those in the slave states against any thought of ending slavery.  Yet, so inflamed were passions in the country that many sensible people supported Brown’s attempt without regard to any concern for its practicality, and various mature and serious abolitionists helped fund it. Many people seemingly were ready for something to be done about slavery, even something hopeless and quixotic. Less than two years later Brown’s prophecy came true with the divided nation at war with itself in the bloodiest conflict in American history.

A few weeks ago, a crusty old rancher in Nevada defied federal bureaucrats who wanted to remove his cattle from a piece of federal land. He was in arrears on his rent and legally had no leg to stand on. Yet people all around the country rallied behind the old man, seemingly ready for someone to do something about the federal authorities’ encroachment on people and their rights, even if he was in the wrong in his particular fight. That tells us something important.

We are nowhere near the conditions of the 1850’s, and there is no present danger of armed conflict  within our society. There are reasons  to be concerned however. The divisions within the country are deep and raw, and the Obama administration has made them worse by its actions. Many of those who oppose his administration do so fundamentally and with deep concern for what is being done to their country and their freedoms. More and more people are calling the present political situation a war,  only metaphorically to be sure, but a war. And one can hear serious, sober people musing about the possibility of citizens someday having to resort to armed resistance against the government, not yet in any concrete way but not in a purely fanciful one either.

People on the left should be especially concerned. The present conflict in the country is nothing like the old disputes between labor and management where reasonable people on both sides knew they needed each other. Now many in the opposition view the welfare and bureaucratic constituencies of those now in power as a pure burden they would be better off without, and as a pragmatic matter are mainly correct to do so.  They don’t need those in those constituencies in any important way while those in those constituencies need the productive people  (a  majority of whom are in the opposition) to survive.

Prudent leftists would at all costs want to keep this from dawning on too many of those being fleeced and herded -   taking their victims for what they can and kicking them around as much as they can without making them disturbed enough to do something about it. The great risk at present for the left is that a large number of the victims are starting to notice and are becoming significantly bothered.  So such prudent leftists might  suggest to  Obama to call off the regulators, tell all the  commissars and commandos manqué in the various agencies to stand down and disband, and ease off in general.  They might  hope for the election of a Republican of the moderate sort in 2016 to help things simmer down.  Of course one cannot know how many leftists are prudent. Prudence seems to be in short supply among our present rulers.

We should all hope things can simmer down. The problems of this nation are real and serious,  but they need to be settled peaceably. Even whiffs of other possibilities are worrisome.