FORT SUMTER,CALIFORNIA

Despite appearances, there is no natural law that says history repeats itself. As inventive as we are, there are only a limited number of ways that humans can screw things up. We keep trying to come up with new ways, but until we evolve a new brain with more folds on the surface we will keep repeating ourselves.

No matter what our race, culture, or creed; whenever you get a lot of people together in a restricted space, some sort of political order and structure arises. Anarchy as a human ideal is about as fact based as the Land of Oz. And even Oz had a Wizard, sundry Witches, Munchkin Mayors, and probably Alpha and Beta Flying Monkeys.

People have different temperaments; some are more active, some more passive, some are dominant, some less dominant. Then there is the matter of talents, and lacks thereof. People end up being sorted out in various power relationships inside and outside of their family groupings.

It does not matter what the basis of the structure is, be it feudal, democratic, aristocratic, results oriented merit-based, or who has the biggest club and is more willing to use it on everybody else. They share two things. First, whatever the rules of the game, the social contract if you will, with the exception of a criminal fringe pretty much everybody in the society accepts and supports the rules actively or tacitly. Second, if a sufficient percentage refuses to accept those rules, the whole thing falls apart until a new order arises. The new order may or may not be better than the old, but it will be different than the old.

Our country and fairly unique society came into existence through that process. This is in part because we diverged demographically from the parent society. Our population was made up of exiles [including self-exiles], ne’er do wells, criminals, religious fringe elements from the British point of view, and a sufficiency of foreign elements to render the population no longer homogeneous with the old country. Couple that with the detail that in Britain there was much higher percentage of the population that had a vested interest in the existing system, and that a relatively small percentage of the minor nobility and none of the higher nobility and royal family bothered to cross the pond.

What we ended up with is a majority of the population who had no memory of serfdom, were not slaves [Leftist fantasies notwithstanding, slaves were always a minority of the population], and who were used to both being politically and economically free compared to the old country. And the aristocracy here really did not have the pull to make generations of sycophancy attractive and profitable as a lifestyle.

It started with a rejection of the laws coming from England, made with neither input nor consent of the local population. The response of the Colonists was to ignore, oppose, and . . . nullify those laws, which could literally only be enforced at bayonet point. And that started a pattern.

So we diverged, and the old system collapsed. It is said that during the Revolution 1/3 of the population were Patriots, 1/3 were Tories, and 1/3 were indifferent and just wanted to stay out of the line of fire. That may be a first order approximation of the size of the percentage necessary to reject the old structure to bring it down. Also in passing, it is said that only 3% of the population actually took up arms against the British, which indicates that the structure was more vulnerable to active opposition than one would think.

The pattern repeated itself in the middle of the 1800’s as the societies in the different sections of the United States diverged from each other. The differences were expressed violently on the floor of Congress [Democrat Representative Preston Brooks (D-SC) beat Republican Senator Charles Sumner (R-Mass) on the floor of the Senate, nearly killing Sumner.]. Earlier, during the term of President Andrew Jackson, South Carolina passed a statute declaring that they refused to collect tariffs passed by Congress and signed into law. It was called an Ordinance of Nullification.

While the British were not able to muster and apply sufficient bayonet points to enforce the laws nullified by the Colonists; President Andrew Jackson was able to aim sufficient bayonets at South Carolina. Formally, he stated:

I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which It was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.

Less formally, Jackson threatened to march the US Army south to hang the Democrat government of South Carolina. It worked and delayed the First American Civil War by a generation.

When the First American Civil War finally came, it was started as an act, if you will, of “pre-emptive nullification”. The election of 1860 was a triumph for the new Republican Party. They won the presidency, and with allied minor parties that agreed with them had a veto-proof majority in both Houses of Congress. The Democrats only held the Southern states’ congressional seats and state governments. And they knew that the abolition of slavery and increased tariffs were a priority for the Republican Party. Lincoln’s conciliatory statements notwithstanding, they knew it was coming and that the only way to avoid being crushed in Congress and having any law on any subject forced on them was to secede from the United States. They were nullifying the laws they “knew” were coming. Kind of like the now sadly defunct California secession movement today.

Those who created and ran the government of the Confederate States of America, with only a couple of exceptions, at the national, state, and local levels were Democrats. And the first secession was not surprisingly South Carolina, and the secession became open war in South Carolina.

Once again, the only way to overcome nullification of law and to preserve the existing structure was at bayonet point. And it was done. It cost 4 years, 3 weeks, and six days of actual warfare inside our borders. It cost 1,692,000 military killed, wounded, and captured on both sides. It cost 50,000 civilians dead on both sides. And it cost 80,000+ slaves killed. But it established, for what they believed was for all time, that the laws and the Constitution of the United States were supreme over any sectional or political interest inside the boundaries of the United States.

It held for a century before being challenged again, and the challenge and attempts at nullification came from the same source. The First American Civil War ended slavery and made Blacks citizens. That did not make America the home of total racial equality. Blacks were still second class citizens who were usually denied the vote by the descendants of those Democrats who created the Confederacy. Native Americans were third class citizens. And my ethnic fellows, Chinese, were not considered human beings under American law until 1943. But when you consider that actual chattel slavery of human beings still exists throughout Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia [As it has for thousands of years. Contrary to what the Left teaches in our schools, America did not invent slavery, it has led to the end of slavery in much of the world.]; we were and are better than most of the world.

In the 1850’s the push to end slavery began in earnest and led to the First American Civil War. In the 1950’s the push to make Blacks equal in actual fact began, and almost led to a Second American Civil War. The push for equal Civil Rights was opposed by the then solid Democrat former Confederacy. Those who lynched civil rights workers were southern Democrats. Those who supported segregation were southern Democrats. Alabama Governor George Wallace, who stood in the schoolhouse door, was a southern Democrat. Robert Byrd, longest serving US Senator [Democrat-W. Va.] founded his local chapter of the KKK and was its leader [“Grand Cyclops”]. Strom Thurmond, Democrat Senator from South Carolina, gave the longest filibuster by any individual Senator ever to try to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and he fought the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965.

The picture that most exemplifies the resistance to civil rights for Blacks is of Commissioner for Public Safety [Sheriff] Bull Conner of Birmingham, Alabama personally sic-ing police attack dogs on Blacks attempting to desegregate lunch counters. At the time, he was the elected Democratic National Committeeman for Alabama.

The Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964 and 1965 WERE passed. But the votes in Congress came from the Republican Party and from the Democrats of the NorthEast. The Democrats in the South solidly opposed equality for non-Whites. Look it up.

Having learned, to some extent, that formally nullifying Federal laws and the Constitution would meet with Federal force; Southern Democrats instead waged a functional guerilla war to maintain segregation and prevent Blacks from voting and going to school. And they murdered civil rights workers trying to register Blacks to vote and planted bombs in Black churches where their community was organizing.

It took bayonets again, and handcuffs, to end the guerilla nullification of the Federal Civil Rights Acts. The Democrat Governor of Arkansas, Orville Faubus, called out the Arkansas National Guard to block Black children from Little Rock schools in violation of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard, ordered them to stand down, and then ordered troops from the elite 101st Airborne Division to escort Black children to schools. The sure knowledge that they would do far more than escort if there were interference with the children helped break the nullification. As did the Federal government arresting, trying, and convicting those who murdered civil rights workers.

Democrats had tried again to declare Federal law nullified. And again they were blocked. If they had succeeded, both Federal law and the Constitution would have been nullified.

Which brings us to today.

For just under a decade, the Democrats have been nullifying Federal law by Executive Order, blocking and changing Federal statutes, ordering law enforcement to ignore the law if the criminal was a protected class, and attacking the entire Bill of Rights, with the exception of the Third Amendment. They have not found a use for quartering troops in our houses . . . yet.

For their efforts, the Democrats have lost first the House, then the Senate, most Governorships, and the Presidency. While they still control the Federal bureaucracy still trying to maintain the nullification of Federal law, they have lost control of most of the nation. Taking the 2016 presidential vote by county as a proxy for which party controls which county, we see that the Democrats have been reduced primarily to a string of “islands” of urban areas along the perimeter of the country, referred to sometimes as the Clinton Archipelago.

https://polination.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/clinton_archipelago.png

And in those islands of Democrat control, we are seeing both formal declarations of nullification of Federal law [“sanctuary cities/states” where they deny the validity of Federal immigration law] and guerilla warfare against the Bill of Rights. Now the Constitution gives the field of immigration and naturalization to the Federal government. Congress has passed statutes controlling immigration and naturalization. And the Federal courts have upheld the validity of those laws. Democrat cities, counties, and states are currently and formally declaring that they will protect illegal invaders violating those laws. A declaration of sanctuary status is no less a nullification of Federal law and defiance of the Federal Constitution than the Ordinance of Nullification passed by the state of South Carolina. And in the end deserves the same response. It is not a joke; it is not a game. It is a deadly serious attempt to dismantle the Constitution and the Union itself, replacing it with the rule of power instead of law.

I think it will not be considered by future historians to be purely a coincidence that every such attempt to do that has been by the Democrat party.

At the same time, in the islands of the Clinton Archipelago, we are seeing street violence by Leftist supporters of the Democrats under various names; Antifa, By Any Means Necessary [BAMN], Black Lives Matter, The Resistance, and endless permutations of others. Organized by Democrat politicians, Democrat academics, and Democrat media figures, they are advocating the use of force and violence to prevent “hate speech”. Hate speech functionally means disagreeing with a Leftist on any topic. They believe that they have the legal and moral right to silence others, to void the First Amendment rights of others, and they claim [and this was done literally by former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who also was the Chairman of the Democratic Party and ran for their presidential nomination] that there is a “hate speech exemption” in the First Amendment. They claim that public expressions of religious faith are offensive to those not of the faith, and must be suppressed. Unless, of course, the faith is Islam. And they believe that they can silence assemblies of people they do not agree with and bar them from petition for redress of grievances if the Leftists are the cause of those grievances.

They act on those beliefs. Their street thugs under whatever name, or under the umbrella name of Antifa, physically attack those who legally try to speak out in opposition to the Democrats and the Left. They vandalize businesses. They start fires. They use clubs, pepper spray, bottles, and sap gloves on those they disagree with. And they do so with impunity.

Time and time again, most recently and regularly in Berkeley, California; they commit crimes against persons and property while the police watch and do nothing under the admitted instructions of their Democrat political bosses. In the Clinton Archipelago, it is not a crime to assault a non-Leftist. Democrat controlled polities protect the street thugs’ violence just as the Democrats in the 1960’s protected the KKK’s.

The First American Civil War began at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. If the rule of law and the American Constitution is not re-imposed in this country by the courts and if necessary by the same point of the bayonet that has held back the forces of nullification before; then Berkeley may be the Fort Sumter of the Second American Civil War.

18 thoughts on “FORT SUMTER,CALIFORNIA”

  1. Good post. If there should be a new American Civil War, it would be more like the Spanish Civil War than it would be like the War Between the States…within, rather than across, geographies.

  2. I wonder if the Beserkley Police will join the “Antifa” bunch when the Pro Trump folks fight back at the next protest. They and their mayor were really embarrassed by their lack of action at the last one, and I am betting that idiot mayor will double down on his lunacy just like the lefties everywhere else are.

  3. To minimise bloodshed you should aim to hang a few tens of thousands of scoundrels rather than kill people by the million.

    But what if the scoundrels control the nukes?

  4. The left is seeing a trickle of the young population leaving the “Clinton Archipelago” as they seek better living conditions.

    Despite all the hype about a massive “back to the city” movement and the supposed superiority of ultra-expensive liberal regions, people are increasingly moving to red states and regions, as well as to suburbs and exurbs.

    This is the basic takeaway from the most recent IRS data and Census Bureau estimates, which have been widely ignored in the established media. Essentially, Americans are rejecting what Walter Russell Mead has labelled “the blue model,” and relocating to cities, states and regions that are less dense, less heavily taxed, and less regulated.

    This suggests not an intrinsic political calculation so much as a series of very personal decisions by individuals and families. People move for varied reasons — cheaper homes, lower taxes, employment opportunities, better schools, more value to the paycheck — but the upshot is that they are settling in states that tend to be red or, at least, purple in political coloration.

    Increased violence in cities may accelerate this trend. I sent the link to my daughter, who is a lefty but is considering her future.

    Critically, since 2010 more than 80 percent of all new jobs in our 53 leading metropolitan regions have been created in suburban locations. Many of the leading tech areas of the country –from Silicon Valley and Raleigh-Durham to tech centers surrounding the big Texas cities — are primarily suburban. The economic future, contrary to the common media memes, will be primarily occurring in the periphery of the hip urban cores.

    This trend may accelerate as millennials begin to enter their 30s and look for safe, affordable places to live.

  5. I gave up on WOTR when they went full Liberal Fascist and threatened to destroy the reputations and livelihoods of anyone who supported Trump

    https://warontherocks.com/2016/07/a-letter-to-a-republican-friend-about-to-help-team-trump/

    there will be an accounting, and those who sacrificed principle will bear the “Scarlet T.” If Trump loses, the long-term consequences to your reputation won’t quickly wash away. There will be a lingering stench. If he wins, your reputation will suffer even more as you will be a willing accomplice in what happens next.

    Right off the bat we see where anyone who writes for this website will be required to stand, or else.

  6. From JM Berger’s column, “Around the edges, it is expanding—for instance, with the recent wave of anti-Semitic threats and vandalism, passively endorsed by an administration that attacks reporters for even asking about the issue.”

    Trump wasn’t passively endorsing anything. He was impatient with the veiled threats from the media that he was somehow responsible. He wasn’t about to say too much about it because he had already sent the FBI to Israel to catch the real perpetrator who was doing it not out of hatred but for blackmail and extortion.

    I wonder how such an esteemed terrorism and security expert like Mr Berger missed this in the news?

  7. I wonder how such an esteemed terrorism and security expert like Mr Berger missed this in the news?

    Maybe he was getting his information for PenGun.

  8. I wonder how such an esteemed terrorism and security expert like Mr Berger missed this in the news?

    Maybe he was getting his information for PenGun.
    *snicker”

    (Yes, I’m still here. Have a client project to work on, and the next Luna City book to complete.)

  9. This is a great political perspective, and thinks for going through the history. It helped me see that history in terms of the civil rights movement – something someone from the midwest was less likely to use as markers, but are important.

    The division is also the old one – between the cavaliers and roundheads, Brits and Americans, north and south. I thought enough people died in the 1860s to end it – but the south kept that hierarchical, Anglican tradition and in many ways New England lost its bearings.

    It is now, perhaps, more a flyover/coasts, urban/midwestern division. It is true this is not unlike the country/elite division. The old American passion for the common law, property rights (I did think as I watched the fire reach two stories at Berkeley that these antifascists besides being fascistic had the old strong state lack of respect for private property, one so ad odds with that respect for their own and others property that was displayed so beautifully by the Tea Party. It was a movement that was civil, respected common law, property rights, would have been on the side of a Parliament over a king and still believed in strong local bonds. These were people who didn’t want to pay taxes when they felt unrepresented but who I suspect never shirked jury duty and always voted. They cherished and encouraged civic organizations, etc – the traditions Hannan sees as an American expression of those core beliefs that brought us here. Mostly, I think, we don’t want anybody to tell us what to do.

    Oh, well, I rambled off – thanks for your post and for helping give me a new perspective (one that somehow also helps me understand my grandfather from the south, and his differences with his midwestern daughter and son-in-law and this granddaughter).

  10. I am wondering if we will see the Federal arrest of some prominent CA politician(s) who defy Federal law.

    Unlike Ft Sumter, I do not see millions of people ready to take up arms against the Federal govt.

  11. I think California will see increasing law breaking by the radicals as in the Oakland flash mob raid on a BART train.

    An Oakland mob of teenaged thugs numbering 50 to 60 invaded a BART subway train, robbed and assaulted passengers and fled

    On Monday, the Police Department was gathering surveillance video of the train robberies, Trost said. The video footage will be shared with Oakland Police Department, Oakland Unified School District and Oakland Housing Authority to help identify the minors, she said. Photographs of the suspects will not be released because they are minors, Trost said.

    The assumption by everyone I know is that the video will not be released because this mob was all black. That area of Oakland is black and violent.

    The police are unlikely to do much since a black man was shot by a BART policeman in 2009 and the case became a pre-BLM cause celebre.

    The black man was uncooperative and the policeman was trying to restrain him. He said that he was trying to use his TASER but grabbed his pistol by mistake.

    On January 30, 2010, Alameda County prosecutors charged Mehserle with murder for the shooting. He resigned his position, and pleaded not guilty. The trial began on June 10, 2010. On July 8, 2010, Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and not guilty of second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter.

    No, the mob will not be found or a few might be arrested but there will be demonstrations.

    Cutting off federal aid would be an appropriate response to refusal to obey the law. No doubt lawsuits will follow and the case may go on for years.

    In the mean time, crime will rise and middle class residents will leave. As I have.

    We are settling in Tucson and have no regrets.

  12. “The leftist Intifada is coming.”

    LOL. The Heritage Foundation, they could have at least attacked some useful organization. ;)

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