National treasure Dr. Victor Davis Hanson brings us some thoughts on how history may not repeat, but it often rhymes. Excerpt:
Why are progressive regions of the country—especially in the old major liberal cities (e.g., Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle)—institutionalizing de facto racial quotas through “proportional representation” based on “disparate impact”? Why are they promoting ethnic and racial chauvinism, such as allowing college students to select the race of their own roommates, calibrating graduation ceremonies by skin color and tribe, segregating campus “safe spaces” by race, and banning literature that does not meet commissariat diktats?
Why are they turning into one-party political fiefdoms separating the rich and poor, increasingly resembling feudal societies as members of the middle class flee or disappear? What does it mean that they are becoming more and more intolerant in their cancel culture, and quasi-religious intolerance of dissent, on issues from climate change and abortion-on-demand to critical race theory and wokeness?
Isn’t it strange that there are entire states and regions wholly reliant on the money and power of “one-crop” Big Tech monopolies? And why, in the 21st century no less, are Democratic-controlled counties, cities, and entire states nullifying federal law?
In archetypical “states’ rights” fashion, blue-state “sanctuary cities” are as defiant of the federal government as the Old South was when it claimed immunity from federal jurisdiction—all the way from the nullification crisis of 1830-1833 to George Wallace in 1963 blocking the door at the University of Alabama.
As always, read the whole thing. It’s worth the time. Dr. Hanson always is.
What’s interesting in this whole self-sorting that’s going on is the celerity with which people are moving over the last few years, and the fact that the divide isn’t really by state; even most of the blue states are red outside of the major cities. So called “blue” states are only blue because of metro areas; as witness our former home of Colorado, a mostly red state overwhelmed by the Denver-Boulder Axis, or Illinois. rendered blue largely by Cook County.
The Civil War – not really a civil war, but a war of secession – is more correctly called the War Between the States. But the current issue isn’t that; it’s a (so far, cold) war between major metropolitan areas and, well, everywhere else. If this does come to open conflict, it’s not at all clear how we can thread that needle.
Dr. Hanson concludes:
We think the Old South lost the Civil War—but did it in the end?
That is, did the Union win the short-term battle to abolish slavery and save the Union, but lose the long-term war of ideas and values by adopting the very ethos of the long-defeated—even as vanquished Southerners reformed and gradually embraced the visions of the victors that the Northerners themselves would eventually reject?
In any case, in the 21st century, Tennessee and Florida are far less racially obsessed, freer, and more affordable, more transparent, more tolerant, and more law-abiding states than are the racially-fixated, stratified, manorial, and dogmatic surveillance states of California, Illinois, and New York.
That’s correct, but it won’t sell in San Francisco or New York.
