pch1013,
“Civil wars” are fought between one side that is psychopathic and another side that is not. Lincoln recognized that he was doing a grave thing, but that it was necessary. Right now, civil war is probably not necessary. Now, I think Julius Caesar was the greatest man who ever lived in Western history and if he wasn’t afraid of civil war, why should I be afraid of one?
As Caesar said of his enemies in Rome, “They wanted this”. Well, it sure does seem like some people want it and I, taking the long view of centuries, think it might not be a bad thing in the long run to give it to them, to avoid losing what is really precious about Western civilization to the current onslaught of all the pathologies identified in the article. Sure, we would cause billions, maybe trillions, in damage, but at the end of the day, one ideology would reign, perhaps even globally, but at least within the West. The current wasted energy spent on bickering ideologically over what are essentially empirical questions (what is the best way to organize society? what is the best way to fight those who would attack us? what do we have a right to demand of those from other cultures who would live among us?), would then be put in the service of actually implementing the policies that are now stalemated by fruitless debate.
When people say “History is written by the winners”, they don’t mean the winners of debates.
