The nation dodged a bullet in the response to the Chauvin verdict. Most cities did not turn to looting or have massive riots. I said they probably would. I was glad to be very wrong. But, as both the president tried to influence the verdict and others threatened violence, the verdict may have been politically coerced. Thus, the national scene is still very perilous, as justice comes from the howling leftist mobs, not from a fair legal process.

We have been here, at a time of intense domestic crisis, three other times in our national existence. We are again close to the brink of serious conflict. The question is, how close? Will Donald Trump say one day, as did Louis XV centuries before, “Apres moi le deluge” : After me, the deluge.

In our past the Civil War, the Depression, and the late 1960s challenged the very basis of our society. The Civil War split the nation in two and it took 600,000 American dead to put it back together. The reason? Irreconcilable differences on states’ rights and slavery. The Depression set the intelligentsia against capitalism and the Communist Party USA made inroads in the Democrat Party. There were times in the 1930s and 40s when Communists like Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and Henry Wallace had infiltrated government. Between 1941-45, Wallace was the vice president. Our national security was in danger. The brink was close. Then Harry Truman became president and thoroughly dealt with it. But it wasn’t over.

In the late 1960s what was then the New Left took over the popular culture and the Democrat Party. They still control both. They pushed society to the breaking point, even past it. But the country was run at that time by WWII and Korean War veterans who were, in the words of JFK, “tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage–and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.” Thus, because our people were made of sterner stuff than they are today, the Left was thwarted.

However, that generation is pretty much gone. In its place we have the hard left, heirs to the New Left, who have cast off traditional values for trendy Marxism. And it’s worked with about the half of the population based around the coasts and the major cities. The hinterlands, fly over country? They still adhere to the values and mores of the old Republic. So again, we are at a crossroads, we are on a brink.

This time, considering the possible passage of HR1 and court packing, we could be pushing through dangerous margins to the point of irreconcilable differences. We may be at the point when sane reasonable people, in defense of their traditional liberties and values, are considering alternatives to the present system. Serious alternatives. How close to the brink are we? One small step, and we topple over into an abyss.