This is NOT a post advocating racial segregation or white supremacy - it is commentary designed to generate thoughtful conversation through real world examples. That said, here we go:
"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
That’s Herb Stein’s Law. Stein was, of course, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, on the board of contributors of The Wall Street Journal, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and from 1974 until 1984, he was the A. Willis Robertson Professor of Economics at the University of Virginia.
I have to wonder if the rancor, tribalism and triumphalism ongoing in America has a stopping point – because it can’t go on forever. Where will our national wheel of fortune stop?
I see three possibilities: 1) we finally succumb to the will of the state and become a collective collection of administrative districts, 2) we break out in another civil war or massive insurgency or 3) we retreat to enclaves where the people share more commonality (like individual city-states or Galt’s Gulch).
Perhaps it will happen in stages. I find it hard to believe that there is so little independence left in the average American that Option 1 will happen, I also suspect that there won’t be enough bloodlust for Option 2, given that the trauma of one Civil War in our history is still palpable some 150 years hence and those on the right know that this is just what progressives need to declare a complete takeover to maintain “order”. Option 3 is self-segregation.
Given that we already see self-segregation in minority communities and “white” has become a slur, how difficult is it to conceive that our culture could split into separate geographical areas where certain racial or cultural sensitivities are dominant?
What sounds a little far-fetched now already exists in the predominant black South Africa. After apartheid ended, the majority took over all functions of government and a good many of the former ruling white Afrikaner class were surrounded by a culture at odds with their own. In a discussion the other evening, our own Kells reminded me of a place called Orania, a whites-only enclave in South Africa. Orania was registered as a private company and offers an alternative for those Afrikaners who felt displaced in the land their people had ruled for many decades.
Far from illegal in today’s post-apartheid South Africa, Orania is actually protected by Article 235 of the South African constitution:
235. Self-determination
The right of the South African people as a whole to self-determination, as manifested in this Constitution, does not preclude, within the framework of this right, recognition of the notion of the right of self-determination of any community sharing a common cultural and language heritage, within a territorial entity in the Republic or in any other way, determined by national legislation.
Of course, there are no such express protections in the U.S. Constitution – quite the opposite, provisions of the Constitution have been used to force associations of people who would not normally choose to associate.
Let us not forget Obama’s 2015 push to mandate neighborhood makeup through government directive. It was reported as an effort to create economic and racial diversity – but it has another purpose. Its progressive design is purposefully being crafted to prevent concentration of ideology, to break up any enclaves of resistance to progressivism by salting in traditional progressive constituencies, i.e. minorities, illegal immigrants and those on the government dole.
Who knows what the coming years will bring?
I doubt it will be any sort of reconciliation because progressivism has won this round and when progressivism wins, so does race and class envy. Civil discord eventually follows. I don't suggest the type of racial segregation as in Orania but I can certainly see communities of faith as a result - not theocracies, but just a region where common beliefs and values are shared, regardless of race.
I was highly critical of Ruth Bader Ginsberg when she said:
“I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, have an independent judiciary. It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done.”
If we can ever get to an Article V convention of the States, she might just have had a point.
“Things go on until they can’t” - I think we are reaching the “they can’t” stage - the mayors and city councils of the blue “Sanctuary Cities” are now dealing with the catastrophic realities of unlimited immigration. Several woke politicians intent on eliminating bail and defunding the police have either been knifed to death or else car-jacked by the beneficiaries of their wokeness. When the consequences of woke policy hurt the woke themselves then you can expect the pendulum to start swinging back again.
I don't fear for me, I fear for my children, grandchildren and future generations.