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ndrosenMore than twenty years ago, I bought a paperback of Abraham’s Lincoln’s great speeches, including an early (1838) speech in which his style was not fully developed, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions,” in which the orator argued that the “mobocratic spirit” of disdain for the law posed a threat to the American experiment in republican government. The situation today is not the same as what prevailed then, when various gamblers, Negroes, and random travelers had been lynched In Mississippi, as Lincoln noted, and the indomitable abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy had recently been murdered in Illinois, as Lincoln did not mention.
However, it is less than two months since our country’s most unfit president incited a mob to attack the Capitol, and less than one month since the Senate failed to convict him. There are surely Trumpublicans willing to engage in unlawful violence, and others willing to make excuses for it. This is not only an evil in itself, but a goad to the other side, making Democrats likely to see Republicans not only as mistaken fellow citizens, but as public enemies against whom anything from deplatforming to armed resistance is justifiable.
There is also a sharper division between the major parties than there was forty or sixty years ago, when there was more space for both liberals and conservatives in each party (a Mississippi Democrat might be very different from a Massachusetts Democrat). Politics is less rancorous and more stable when people who disagree about some issues reach out to each other to cooperate on others. The American Civil War happened partly because different sections of the country were opposed to each other over everything from slavery to tariffs; although I do not expect history to repeat itself, I do see the potential for major troubles of one kind or another.
However, it is less than two months since our country’s most unfit president incited a mob to attack the Capitol, and less than one month since the Senate failed to convict him. There are surely Trumpublicans willing to engage in unlawful violence, and others willing to make excuses for it. This is not only an evil in itself, but a goad to the other side, making Democrats likely to see Republicans not only as mistaken fellow citizens, but as public enemies against whom anything from deplatforming to armed resistance is justifiable.
There is also a sharper division between the major parties than there was forty or sixty years ago, when there was more space for both liberals and conservatives in each party (a Mississippi Democrat might be very different from a Massachusetts Democrat). Politics is less rancorous and more stable when people who disagree about some issues reach out to each other to cooperate on others. The American Civil War happened partly because different sections of the country were opposed to each other over everything from slavery to tariffs; although I do not expect history to repeat itself, I do see the potential for major troubles of one kind or another.
