Confederate Cabinet of the Civil War reflected political positions similar to today's Tea Party.[/caption]Carol Forsloff--As the United States presently struggles with the debt ceiling and the government shutdown, is this newest civil war, becoming increasingly uncivil, a continuation of the first?
Scholars now tell us that the demographics of the argument over the nation's financial issues and the choices between local control vs federal domination, the same arguments existed prior to the first American civil war.
And those who initiated and maintain the arguments continue to represent the familiar demographics, with similar arguments about who is in charge and what should be the relative relationship between local and Federal control. Furthermore the controversies also mirror similar arguments about the role of government to take care of its poorest and most oppressed.
Fareed Zakaria of CNN is one of the foremost international journalists who has maintained that the demographics of the American Civil War are consistent with those today. The geographical boundaries of the rebel states, including those within them, are reminiscent of the same ones that existed prior to the first Civil War. Furthermore, the resistance to complying with Federal mandates following the Civil War and the demonizing of those who tried to comply, or forced compliance, has been maintained for generations.
In 2008, Dr. John Fleming, an M.D. and entrepreneur with a number of Subway restaurants in Louisiana, was running for the House against what some might call a more moderate opponent, if moderate defines any politician in the State. His opponent, however, was Barack Obama, at that time running for President of the United States. Instead of displaying the opponents positions and taking aim at those, Dr. Fleming chose to highlight his opposition to Barack Obama's Presidency with many of the same arguments now being used in his opposition to the President's policies now. However, at the time of that original opposition, many of Obama's political opinions were somewhat different on the matter of gay rights and even health care. So the opposition was likely influenced more by the culture of the region represented by Fleming, and his appeal to that culture, instead of current legislation.
That pattern of opposing Federal intrusion into State's authority came up at a political rally for Dr. Fleming that following year, after Barack Obama's election as President, When Dr. Fleming answered a question about national banking, one of the members of the audience spoke of how it should be possible to oppose the intrusion of the national government in some important way and pointed to the Federal banking system. By localizing banking, the audience member said, one would not have to rely on the Federal government in managing economic issues. Dr. Fleming agreed and spoke of secession as a possible option for negating national control over banking as well as social and political issues as well.
This had been the South's core argument about national banking that spilled over into slavery. Today the argument about the Federal government's rights vs. local ones continues to vacillate among a number of different areas from gun control to health care as well as gay rights and marijuana distribution. The intractability of the positions against the Federal government's growth and control has been a pattern of the same group, now called the Tea Party and at the time of the Civil War, the Rebels.
Despite these conflicts, there have always been those within the borders of the resistance, that Tea Party - Rebel group, who have opposed extremism, just as it is opposed in other parts of the United States, outside of the South. The problem, however, is that opposition and the more extreme views of the region find more dramatic play in the media then those who quietly go about the business of the day, hoping, like every other American, that the conflicts might end without a worst case scenario.
During the America's first Civil War that conflict ended in war. Many hope that today's conflict might not end in a way of a different kind that may have far more reaching effects.
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