All right, so we know that we need to divide the country. What's holding us up? What are we afraid of? The answer is that informed people know that a revolution, a reformation, or reorganization all develop a momentum of their own. Once the revolution-bug bites, the virus infects the thinking of normally reasonable people. The German Reformation initiated by Martin Luther, for instance, led as often to visions of hell as it did to visions of heaven.
It ignited the Bundschuh Rebellion—brutally supressed with the encouragement of Luther himself. Thomas Müntzer, a Lutheran pastor himself, started his own rebellion, in conjunction with the men of the Bundschuh. Many of the participants in the defeated movements, who survived the conflicts, went on to create yet another movement, which has endured better than the others—the Anabaptists, the forebears of the Amish and the Mennonites.
Today, the spiritual descendants of Martin Luther pursue their religion in no less than five Lutheran denominations: The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), Lutheran Wisconsin-Synod, the Lutheran Missouri-Synod, as well as the Apostolic Lutheran (mostly for descendants of Finnish and Norwegian immigrants), and many other minor entities.
The Reformation also led to many split-ups in America's other Protestant denominations—Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Pentacostal. Their religious vitality, restlessness, or priggish doctrines fuel a chronic divisiveness that causes incredulous laughter anong non-believers—at the quixotic, "Army of One" mentality.
If the Republicans split from the Democrats, wouldn't Ultra-Republicans, Trumpists, or some other zany splinter-group want to go it alone? "Why water down the Gospel?" they might ask. Don't you want to join the Chosen People—to live among the Elect?
The Winchester Star article can complain about Republicans willingness to "go to war" to achieve independence, but the truth is more complex. Republicans realize that Democrats will not willingly let the Republicans go. They can expect plenty of push-back.
The Star refers to a Washington Post article that talks about the threat of Republican violence—an allegation that I do not see backed up by statistics. The article cites numerous mass-shootings in the U.S., but does not say directly that rebellious Republicans committed them.
The liberal blogger Occupy Spokane shamelessly borrows a Norman Rockwell painting to make a case against the National Rifle Association. I see such borrowings frequently on Facebook. Too bad that the deceased Rockwell cannot prevent this. Too bad also that the creator of the Peanuts cartoon Charles Schultz can no longer protect his work either. The author of Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, made no secret of his anger at Michael Moore for borrowing the title of Bradbury's masterpiece for his own film Fahrenheit 9-11.
At least, informed people express their views of this issue, but their public pronouncements do not show much of the steel that backs up their points-of-view. We need for the opinionaters to let their steel show, in order to convince average Americans of their determination and the high-stakes of the issue.
