Well, yes, but that’s in your head, where it would be hard to fit very many soldiers.
It’s quite easy to simply say “There could be a civil war if, years from now, everything is very different,” but as it stands it isn’t. There’s no dynamic right now likely to lead to such a thing.
The state fell apart first.
Little Nemo’s scenario, now, there’s a scenario that would actually work. Civil wars take place where more than one viable option to sovereign authority exists.
Granted. In my admittedly fantastic scenario, the idea is that one side chooses to continue to acknowledge the Gov’t, while one side does not. It wouldn’t be a WAR, per se, until and unless leadership coalesced around a new authority figure.
Everything up until then would be acts of disobedience or treason.
If only!
Interesting hypothetical, but, I regret to inform you, it’s been done.
It’s also not likely to happen. Civilian firearms ownership is still legal in Australia and the UK, despite what the misinformed might tell you. If it’s still legal to own firearms in Australia and the UK despite the best efforts of the Governments there, then it’s not going to happen in the US.
For what it’s worth, If they ever outlaw private firearms ownership here, I’ll hand in my guns for the obscene amount of money the Constitution requires that they pay me in compensation, then get on a plane and leave the country. I just can’t get as worked up about the whole thing as a lot of people- especially in the US- seem to.
Although, come to think of it . . . In Tristan’s scenario, war breaks out over gun control as such. In The Turner Diaries, gun control was a side issue; the civil war was actually about “race” – something which might or might not have any objective existence, but which has been important enough as a social construct that we know people are willing to kill over it. Andrew McDonald’s/William Pierce’s scenario is actually far, far more plausible than Tristan’s.
Why? What’s so horrible about the prospect of being an unarmed Australian?
Spiders, mostly.
Best, answer…ever.
I don’t see any realistic concept leading us to civil war right now. Tristan’s fantasy notwithstanding the simple fact is that the military is unlikely to split against legal orders in event of revolt.
What I do see happening, and this concurs with Rick’s statement upthread is that a governor or legislature attempts to secede. They vote for it, the Governor signs it, then they wait for the fireworks. I don’t think there’s sufficient political will to enforce membership in the Union against a state’s wishes anymore. Certainly there’d be a great deal of media sympathy for the ‘if they want to go let them go’ idea.
You won’t see a civil war, because the political divisions that exist aren’t regional. Even in the ‘blue states’, the real divide is more along urban/rural lines. California is a liberal state only because a large percentage of the population is located in large cities. Go out to the suburban/rural areas, and you find a lot of Republicans.
A lot more likely (but still not very likely) is the rise of an insurgency. The Black Panthers in the 70’s could possibly have started one. You have groups on the left like the ALF. On the right, you have the Timothy McVeigh types. If political polarization continues to increase, that’s the kind of thing you could see. The 60’s had race riots, campus riots, and other civil order issues. How much more stress would American society need to be placed under before it might start to crack along political division lines?
Ehhh… CA has 34 Dems and 19 Reps in Congress, while TX has 19 Reps and 13 Dems. Granted there’s some gerrymandering going on, but still…
Molly Ivins, on the Texas legislature: “The Texas Legislature will soon be in session, God forbid, leaving many a village without its idiot.”
Had to throw that one in.
I don’t know about civil war here in the US, but in a book I’ve mentioned before, the highly entertaining Strange Death of Liberal England, 1910-1914, has a long section on how the Ulster Protestants, with the connivance of a decent part of the British military and a large section of the Tories, was ready to go to war to prevent any kind of Irish home rule. The crisis was averted by the start of WWI, of all things, and was promptly forgotten by one and all as a result. Very surprising to read about.
So, given the right set of combustible circumstances, even a supposedly stable, advanced country can suddenly find itself staring down the barrel of a gun.
Can’t see any circumstance where it could happen again here, though. I concur that if it does, the only possible real spark would be race. You can see that in Yugoslavia and Iraq, both of which fell apart along fault lines of either race or religion once a strong central government was no longer there. Religion isn’t strong enough here, so if it ever does happen again, it would have to be race.
I disagree completely. I can’t envision any set of circumstances that would allow for the US to have a civil war based on race. Whites fighting blacks…and whats the army doing during this? The Marine Corps? Navy? All of those services are fully integrated racially. In order to have a racially motivated civil war the US military would have to basically be gone…not just fragemented. I’m not seeing it…at least not in any real world scenerio I can envision.
No, I think that IF we were going to have a civil war the only way it would happen is if it was along political lines with the government itself fragmenting and capturing a fragmentary loyalty of the military…and creating sides that a serious percentage of the CIVILIAN population comes down on. Oh, I have no doubt that the majority of US citizens would just be keeping a low profile and hoping it would all just go away…but if enough citizens were riled enough, and if the political forces were at odds enough, and if the military split its support (with, perhaps, some high level officers going one way, and others another, all feeling it their duty to do as they are), then yeah…I could see the possibility of a real civil war even here in the US.
My own scenerio would be something like this: 2008 another conservative Republican is elected president. Meanwhile the Democrats continue to control congress. Increasing pressure in Iraq continues to divide the country on what we should and can do there. While all this is happening, the terrorists, who are still out there, have managed to plan attacks against the US that are more than just symbolic. Perhaps they manage to detonate a ship or some other device causing a large loss of life. The split in the country continues to grow as some want to crawl back into our shell and let the world hang. Others want to beat our collective chest and shout mea culpa at the top of our lungs, begging ‘The World™’ for forgiveness for our copious sins. Still others want to lash back out at something…anything, as long as the body count is high.
And then the unthinkable happens…the terrorists (or someone) manages to get a nuke into the country and takes out DC…with the President, VP, much of Congress and the Senate. IOW, they throw the very succession into chaos, and essentially decapatate the country, even if only for a while. Tossing this in, with a country already divided (as it is even today), with powerful groups (with large numbers of citizens behind each, and even factions of the military supporting both positions/sides) and all it would take is one group or both to decide IT knows whats best…and is willing to do what it takes to ‘save the country’.
I think it could certainly happen under the right sent of extreme circumstances…and the divide, the point of fracture IMHO would be POLITICAL. Not regional, not racial, not ethnic, not religious…but political.
Left vs Right, Conservative vs Liberal, US oriented response vs US response based on world opinion/permission/(whatever its called…I’m trying to be non-offensive but can’t think of the right term for the US working and playing nice with the powers that be, a.k.a. Europe).
-XT
Alberto Gonzales has gone on record saying that American citizens do not have the right of Habeas Corpus.
Civil War seems impossible, but I would also have said it was impossible for an Attorney General to rip up the constitution as Gonzales has.
If despicable men such as Gonzales remain in power in the Republican party, there is no telling what they will attempt to do, or what will have to be done to keep some semblance of the constitution in place.
I don’t think a new American Civil War is all that likely either, but not just because we don’t have distinct blocs of states lining up against each other–civil wars don’t have to follow the pattern of the “War Between the States”. Civil wars don’t have to be particularly regional in character, and will probably be much nastier if they aren’t. (No nice safe areas behind the front lines for civilian populations to hunker down in.) The English or Spanish Civil Wars didn’t have the clear-cut demarcation of “Union states” and “Confederate states” that Americans associate with our Civil War, but that didn’t stop them. (The factions in those wars had their geographic areas of relative strength, but we have our "blue states"and “red states”.)
Of course one man’s insurgency is another man’s civil war.
I forsee an economic conflict in the future at some point. The economy in the United States continues to require more education to be truly successful. Couple that with a growing underclass that is openly hostile toward education and decent behavior, and you have a conflict between the haves and the have-nots.
A large amount of money is transferred by the federal government from those who earn a lot of money to those who don’t…including a large number who think that legal behavior is optional. If the stratification continues, it will put a strain on the social service system similar to the one being expereinced by the Social Security and Medicade systems. What happens if this system is disrupted? It is a scenario ripe with justifications from both sides to feel hostile toward the other.
I don’t see organized armies under arms…but I do see conflict. Calls for cutting social services or “making them earn it”. Responses about “the man telling us how to live”. Prisons fill up. Some people refuse to pay their taxes. Further stratification of neighborhoods. It will be interesting to see how things are going in 20 or 30 years.
Obviously, you’re not a golfer.
It’s not so much the “unarmed” aspect as it is the fact that if a Government which bans all guns in civilian hands- not even allowing ownership of shotguns or .22s- clearly has nothing but contempt for the populace, or else believes that they’re all untrustworthy. I don’t want to live in a country where the government has that attitude.
You only need a minority of about 1% who are thoroughly untrustworthy to have a thoroughly unstable environment.
At present we have a problem in the UK with young gang members shooting each other - presumably turf wars and dope deals gone wrong.
The more guns you have in private hands, the more likely nutters will get their hands on them.
And the fewer guns you have in private hands, the more likely that nutters will be the only ones to get their hands on them.
Almost all those guns in the UK that criminals are using are illegal, including how there originated in the country.
There is more than 1% of unstable people with legal firearms in the US, not too mention illegal arms.