There has been a lot of talk about the possibility of a second American civil war lately, and we can and do certainly hope it won’t come to that, although it’s certainly not impossible at this point. But the question is this: Who would win?
Bear in mind that this second Civil War won’t be like the first. The 1861-1865 war was a war of secession, where one portion of the country tried to break away and form a new government, a new country. They failed, but we won’t litigate that here. The second, if it were to happen, would be largely rural v. urban, or if you like, red v. blue.
Here’s the tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) version: In a civil war between red and blue, as we understand the terms in American politics today, the reds would win. Quickly, and decisively.
Here’s why.
Civil War and Demographics
Look at who is having babies. It’s not the left. People in red states have more kids, and while that’s not a one hundred percent correlation to “people on the political right have more kids,” it’s a pretty good broad indicator. Utah is (perhaps unsurprisingly) the state with the highest number of kids per household, with our own Alaska (a tad more surprising) coming in second. Texas is fourth; New York, forty-second.
Why is this important? Because a higher birthrate translates into more young men of military age. If we are to have an armed conflict, this is the single most important demographic, as these are the people who will do the bulk of the fighting, whether in the regular military or in more-or-less organized militias. While blue states have higher populations, red states are more adept at sustaining those populations. That’s important, mind you, in a protracted conflict; in a quick, sharp, short action, those demographics are less important than the existing population, which you would think meant an advantage to the blue side in their populous cities. But aside from numbers, a state must have the right attitude for victory, and that’s largely cultural.
Civil War and Culture
Look through the history of humanity, and you won’t see many wars fought over pronouns. Young men – the demographic described above – are generally more motivated to fight for the love of home, hearth, and country than for ‘social justice’ or other nebulous terms. Denizens of the red states, people on the right of center, are more likely to hold attitudes th at would serve well in conflict: Self-reliance, thrift, courage, mental and physical fortitude.
The rank-and-file military would be key players. The rank-and-file military has historically leaned right, except for some senior officers who are often as much politician as soldier; it’s likely, though, that most ordinary soldiers, especially combat arms soldiers, would side with the right, in many cases even taking their weapons and supplies with them. The Obama-era purge of flag officers, granted, left a leadership vacuum at the top, and the Biden-era wokeness initiatives have begun a purge of the rank-and-file. But the American people are still an armed people, especially in the hinterlands, and while a few geniuses in government dismiss the idea of taking on a military that has F-15s, they should remember an old saying: A wolf’s strength is not in its teeth but in its pack. The red side’s armed forces would be a potent combination of regular military who have gone over to the red, and armed civilians, many of them veterans – and after three decades or so of Forever Wars, many of them have already seen combat. And if the blue side dismisses the red forces’ lack of heavy weapons, armor, and aircraft, I would ask them to take it up with Ho Chi Minh.
Add to that the fact that the left, especially the radical progressive left, tends to badly overestimate the popularity of their policy positions. Most of the population does not want drag queens wiggling their crotches in front of children or allowing twelve-year-olds to make decisions to undergo life-changing “gender-affirmation” surgeries and treatments. The very lunacy of the progressive left will tip a lot of fence-sitters, people who would otherwise support liberal positions like same-sex marriage, into supporting the red if things come to open conflict.
Honestly, look at the progressive left’s track record. Every time they have attempted to run a society, even on a small scale, the result has been an abject failure. Example: Seattle’s “CHAZ” attempt, where leftist radicals seized control of several blocks of a major city. Within days, they were out of food; within weeks, the zone had devolved to a dictatorship led by a warlord, backed by a gang of armed thugs. Look today at Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, and you see the results of leftist governing writ larger. This is not a formula for the kind of cohesive society that wins wars.
Civil War and Geography
By and large, the left is concentrated in a few small geographic areas. For the most part, these areas are heavily urban and dependent on the outskirts – red country – for electricity, gasoline, food, and clothing, indeed most of the requirements of a modern lifestyle. It would not be terribly difficult for a military force or even a well-organized militia to shut down imports into even a large city. The blockage wouldn’t have to be leak-proof, but even preventing fifty percent of a major city’s food and energy imports would have that city melting down within a matter of days.
Indeed, in any hypothetical second civil war in the United States, that’s the main advantage the right would have; penned into their cities, deprived of internet, electricity, and food, the big blue cities would very rapidly destroy themselves; all the right would have to do surround the cities, close off the highways, power supplies and railroads, and wait.
Civil War and Summations
Now, I’m not advocating the idea of a civil war. The likely result of this, regardless of which side wins, would be deaths in the hundreds of thousands at a minimum, more likely in the millions. It would mean trillions in economic losses because of the infrastructure loss and the collapse of the big cities, which in all honesty remain centers of economic activity and innovation. It would engender hatred and ill will that will last for generations and may very well damage the Republic beyond repair. America as we know it would almost certainly be no more, and there’s no predicting what might arise in its place. This is something nobody should want and an outcome that we should take great pains to avoid. And as to whether it ever comes to outright war, the signs are troubling. RedState’s own Becky Noble described this very well.
But for all the things the left assured us Donald Trump would do, Joe Biden has done all that and then some. His administration and Biden himself are among the most corrupt American leaders in our history. We have never seen government overreach and all-out attempts to erase Americans’ freedom of speech and expression, in addition to other constitutional rights, like this before. And it has divided Americans like no other time since, well, before the Civil War. Americans are languishing in jail because they went to the Capitol to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Many Americans feel they are being forced to comply with social and secular issues like gay pride, transgenderism, and climate change. The pandemic brought us mandatory lockdowns, vaccines, and censorship of vital information, all initiated by the government. They see the rights of fringe groups, often those that comprise less than one percent of the population, being placed above their own rights. They see, more and more, a government that has nothing but disdain and hatred for them and views them as the enemy that must be squashed.
But if it comes down to it – these are the reasons that the right would win, and quickly. Agitators on the left, some of whom have been calling for “economic civil war” should take this into account.