{"id":1585,"date":"2025-02-17T18:08:05","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T22:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jamcclure.com\/?p=1585"},"modified":"2025-02-19T22:48:50","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T02:48:50","slug":"the-confederates-are-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jamcclure.com\/?p=1585","title":{"rendered":"The Confederates are back"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve been a Civil War buff for years. I spent childhood summers with grandparents in Corinth, MS, visited the Shiloh battlefield and briefly wore a Confederate cap as a kid. Since I retired to New Mexico I\u2019ve enjoyed reading about that state\u2019s bizarre little Civil War campaign<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never thought I would live through anything like the American Civil War. But history often repeats, or at least rhymes. The news lately has been dominated by governors and mayors pledging to nullify federal law and shield illegal-immigrant criminals from deportation. The last time states defied the federal government it did not end well. Yet California, Illinois and New York are scrambling to be South Carolina in 1861. A Marist poll<\/a> last year found that nearly half of Americans think they will see a second civil war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An antebellum divide has been building for a while. Historian Victor Davis Hanson compares Democratic states <\/a>to the Old South, hampered by racial and economic ideology that saps their vitality and growth. California has been flirting with secession <\/a>for years. Sanctuary cities and states are effectively nullifying federal immigration law. We\u2019ve seen an economic shift<\/a> in recent years as Democratic states have lost residents and businesses to Republican states. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2024 election did not heal the divide. The Democratic news media\u2019s tearful reaction<\/a> to Trump\u2019s election was similar to this Southern news account in 1860: “Let the consequences be what they may — whether the Potomac is crimsoned in human gore, and Pennsylvania Avenue is paved ten fathoms deep with mangled bodies, or whether the last vestige of liberty is swept from the face of the American continent, the South will never submit to such humiliation and degradation as the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My adopted home state, part of the new Confederacy, is starting its 2026 campaign for governor. In a state beset by rising crime, rampant poverty and failing schools, the leading candidate\u2019s first campaign promise was to oppose everything Trump does. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of firing on Fort Sumter, today\u2019s insurrection uses lawyers. State attorneys general, public employee unions and Democratic nonprofits have filed the expected flurry of lawsuits <\/a>against everything the Trump administration is doing, from going after government waste to deporting illegal immigrants. Trump & Co. are returning fire by taking state officials to court for shielding criminals from deportation raids. Can we get the opposing teams of lawyers to wear blue and grey suits? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Since I live in a Confederate state, I’m wearing my John Bell Hoodie. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The lawfare campaign may deal a few setbacks to the Trump administration. He probably cannot annex Canada, but it\u2019s likely the courts will decide that the federal government is entitled to deport illegal immigrants, and that the President has authority over the executive branch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the new administration will continue laying off bureaucrats and deporting illegal immigrants. Tom Homan, Trump\u2019s border czar, will move faster against illegals than Gen. George McClellan<\/a> did against Richmond in 1862. Rep. Maxine Waters is no Stonewall Jackson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Civil War, the Confederate states defended slavery with the support of their population. Today\u2019s neo-Confederates are urging their constituents to fight in the streets<\/a> to defend government waste, a bloated federal workforce, trans athletes in women\u2019s sports, unrestricted immigration and antisemitic campus demonstrations. Unlike the Old South, Americans overwhelmingly oppose all of these fringe positions. Blind hatred of Trump and Elon Musk may not be enough to fuel a popular uprising. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The federal employees singing union protest songs<\/a> in Washington (on a workday) do not represent the record percentage of the American public that now believes the government is on the right track,<\/a> and the 50% who approve <\/a>of Trump\u2019s leadership. Nor do the cries of \u201cconstitutional crisis\u201d from the legacy news media the majority of Americans no longer believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if it comes to civil war, we are unlikely to see today\u2019s neo-Confederates standing like a stone wall at Manassas. They are more likely to resemble the Japanese soldiers who held out for years because they didn\u2019t believe World War II was over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been a Civil War buff for years. I spent childhood summers with grandparents in Corinth, MS, visited the Shiloh battlefield and briefly wore a Confederate cap as a kid. Since I retired to New Mexico I\u2019ve enjoyed reading about … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-idleruminations"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.jamcclure.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/IMG_0670.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1E7El-pz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamcclure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamcclure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamcclure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamcclure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamcclure.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1585"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamcclure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1593,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamcclure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585\/revisions\/1593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamcclure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamcclure.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamcclure.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamcclure.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}