Daily Verse | Leviticus 26:12
I will walk among you and be your God,
and you will be my people.

It’s Friday and we’re on our final approach to the weekend. Please lock your seat in its upright position, stow your tray and fasten your seatbelts, and we’ll have you on the ground in no time.

Well, I see we’ve achieved the unity Resident Biden called for. In a new Zogby poll, 46 percent “of likely voters believe the country will have another civil war.”

“For once, political parties–Republicans (49% likely and 40% unlikely), Democrats (45% likely and 44% unlikely), and Independents (42% likely and 44% unlikely)–were somewhat in agreement, but the fact all political stripes think a civil war is inevitable is not the bipartisanship we were hoping for. Most of the sub-groups surveyed were in line with the overall figures, especially when it came to breakdowns of intensity–very likely / somewhat likely / somewhat unlikely / very unlikely” (my emphasis).

That was mid-January. Now let’s pair the Zogby poll with a survey conducted February 5-8 by YouGov, a London-based online polling company, and the picture becomes clearer. In a poll of 2,508 U.S. adults, they found that the level of hostility between Democrats and Republicans is intensifying. The Epoch Times reported that,

The poll also highlighted the hostility between Democrats and Republicans, with the latter somewhat more likely to view the former as enemies rather than political opponents. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans described Democrats as “enemies,” with the belief that their “life or entire way of life may be threatened” if their Democratic counterparts win. Forty-three percent say the Democrats are “political opposition,” that is, Republicans “just won’t get the policies they want” if Democrats win.

By contrast, 41 percent of Democrats described Republicans as enemies and 59 percent described them as political opposition.

No wonder the left, center and right all think we’re headed for civil war. But this has been building for some time, so it’s not all that surprising. I watched warnings of preparing for civil war on some of the fringes of the internet migrate to the mainstream opinion leaders over the last several years.

The big question is how a civil war would happen. Today is not like the mid-19th century when the sides were defined by northern and southern land masses. No such distinction exists today because Democrats, Republicans and Independents all live together in every state. There isn’t the loyalty to one’s state of birth that led Robert E. Lee to decline command of the Union army and instead fight for the Confederacy because the state of Virginia was his home.

Kurt Schlichter of Townhall.com offers two scenarios in this post from a couple of years ago. Even he was predicting back then that the Left will push the country into violence.

There are two Civil War II scenarios, and the left is poorly positioned to prevail in either one. The first scenario is that the Democrats take power and violate the Constitution in order to use the apparatus of the federal government to suppress and oppress Normal Americans. In that scenario, red Americans are the insurgents. In the second scenario, which we can even now see the stirrings of in California’s campaign to nullify federal immigration law, it is the blue states that are the insurgents.

He goes on to talk in some detail why both scenarios are losers for the left. Not that conservatives should take comfort in that. A civil war would take years to prosecute and years to recover from.

As an Christian American man with a wife and family, I would join that fight on behalf of my children and their children. I don’t want them to live in an oppressive, dystopian communist state. I want them and their descendants to know what it means to be born free in one nation under God. Across our nation’s history, we’ve spent far too much money and shed far too much blood in order to preserve our freedoms to shrug our shoulders and give up now.

A civil war isn’t something to wish for—but then again, we aren’t the ones making trouble. We’re just responding to it.

Have a good weekend.

[Photo by Scott Umstattd on Unsplash]