RACISM, POLITICS OR CIVIL WAR?

Racism Politics or Civil WarMatt Murdock Esq.

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Echoes of the Antebellum Era in the 21st Century

Matt Murdock Esq.

The idea that this country, the United States of America, is balanced on a knife’s edge, a position chillingly familiar to anyone who has studied the 1850s, is no longer a fringe theory whispered in academic circles. It is the ambient noise of our time. I can hear it in the frantic pulse of the city, a low, persistent thrum of anxiety that vibrates up through the concrete and steel. It is the dominant chord in the cacophony of cable news and the strained subtext in conversations I overhear on the subway, in the courthouse hallways, and in the late-night diners of Hell’s Kitchen. The phrase “civil war,” once a relic confined to dusty history texts, has escaped its cage. It now stalks the public consciousness, a specter whose footfalls I feel not as a distant historical echo, but as a sickening, seismic tremor beneath my feet, a warning that the very foundations of this republic are cracking.

Before we proceed down this dark analytical road, we must erect a monument to a singular, terrible, and morally absolute truth. The first American Civil War was fought over chattel slavery. Period. It was not an abstract debate over economics or states’ rights; it was a war born from the nation’s original sin, an institution of human bondage so monstrous, so deeply woven into the legal, economic, and social fabric of the South that its preservation demanded the dissolution of the Union and a baptism of blood. There is no contemporary issue, no matter how venomous or profound, that carries the moral weight of the Slave Power’s demand to perpetuate and expand an empire built on the buying and selling of human beings. To draw a direct moral equivalence is not just a failure of historical analysis; it is an act of obscene moral negligence. It is to sanitize the greatest crime this nation has ever committed against itself and against humanity.

And yet, to dismiss the comparison entirely, to plug one’s ears to the dissonant rhymes of history, is an act of willful blindness. It is to ignore the recurrence of specific, alarming patterns of political fracture, institutional rot, and societal decay that echo across the 170 years that separate their time from ours. I can feel the change in the air, the way the static of public discourse has sharpened, the way the hum of civic trust has flatlined. The United States is in the throes of a crisis of national cohesion. It is defined by a depth of partisan hatred not seen since the bitter days of Reconstruction, a catastrophic collapse of faith in our foundational institutions of government, a bold resurgence of open state-level defiance to federal law, and a creeping normalization of political violence that would have been unthinkable to the generation before us. The causes of our current maladies are more diffuse than the singular cancer of slavery, but the symptoms, the high fever of rage and the violent trembling of the body politic, are hauntingly familiar. They are the vital signs of a republic in systemic distress.

This report will not indulge in the lazy axiom that history repeats itself. It does not. The past is a wound that scars, not a tape that rewinds. Instead, the purpose here is to use the patterns of fracture from the nation’s last great crisis as a diagnostic tool, a lens to examine the severity of the pathologies afflicting the republic today. As a lawyer, I know that a correct diagnosis is the prerequisite for any remedy. By dissecting the echoes of the 1850s, we can better understand the discordant symphony of the 2020s and assess the very real potential for a future rupture. This analysis will proceed across five critical domains: the nature of political polarization, the legitimacy and role of the Supreme Court, the escalating conflict between state and federal authority, the rhetoric of disunion and challenges to federal legitimacy, and finally, a sober assessment of the risk of widespread civil conflict.

Section I: The Anatomy of a Divided Nation: Polarization Then and Now

The character of a nation’s divisions is the primary determinant of its resilience. A healthy republic can absorb and even thrive on fierce, passionate disagreement. A sick one turns disagreement into a blood feud. A comparative analysis of the schisms that cleaved the United States in the mid-19th century and those that threaten its cohesion today reveals a fundamental transformation in the very nature of American polarization. The antebellum era was defined by a singular, geographically contained conflict over slavery that created two distinct societies within one nation. The contemporary era, in contrast, is marked by a multifaceted, nationalized, and deeply personal polarization, driven less by a single policy dispute and more by a visceral, identity-based animosity that has turned neighbor against neighbor. This shift has created a political environment that is not just different, but arguably more complex and resistant to traditional forms of resolution than the sectional crisis that led to the Civil War.

The Antebellum Divide: A Singular, Sectional Conflict

The political conflict of the 1850s was, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, a house divided against itself over the institution of slavery. While other issues existed, tariffs, infrastructure, and westward expansion, they were all subsumed by, and refracted through, the prism of this one overriding, “irrepressible conflict.” Slavery was not merely a policy preference. It was the economic engine of the South, the bedrock of its social hierarchy, and a source of profound moral revulsion in the North. This singular focus created a stark and increasingly unbridgeable chasm between two sections of the country, a fracture line that ran clean and deep.

The conflict was, at its core, sectional. Political identity was almost entirely determined by geography. The industrializing, free-labor North and the agrarian, slave-holding South evolved into what were, in effect, two separate civilizations with divergent economies, social norms, and political ideologies. The great political battles of the era, the admission of Kansas and Nebraska, the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and the constant struggle for the balance of power in the Senate, were all proxy wars in this larger sectional struggle. This geographic containment, while making the lines of conflict brutally clear, also allowed for the consolidation of two opposing political and cultural blocs, each viewing the other as an existential threat to its way of life. Compromise, once the art of American politics, became a dirty word. This dynamic led to the collapse of national political parties, like the Whigs, and the emergence of a purely sectional Republican party, whose victory in the 1860 presidential election was the final trigger for secession.

Contemporary Polarization: A Multifaceted, Nationalized Phenomenon

The divisions of the 21st century have no single Mason-Dixon Line. You cannot point to a river or a mountain range and say, “Here is where one America ends and the other begins.” Instead, modern polarization is a complex, nationalized phenomenon characterized by the alignment of multiple social, cultural, demographic, and geographic cleavages with partisan identity. This has produced a schism that is both broader in scope and more intimately woven into the fabric of daily life.

Ideological and Affective Polarization

To understand the current crisis, one must grasp the distinction between two forms of polarization. Ideological polarization refers to the divergence of the political parties on policy issues, the growing distance between the median Republican and the median Democrat on the ideological spectrum. Affective polarization, in contrast, is the growing tendency of partisans to view members of the opposing party with fear, distrust, and outright animosity. See Shanto Iyengar & Sean J. Westwood, Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines: The Emotional Underpinnings of Political Polarization, 62 Pol. Psych. 667 (2015). While both have increased dramatically, it is the venomous rise of affective polarization that poses the most acute danger to the republic. It is the difference between disagreeing with someone’s tax policy and believing they are an immoral, un-American enemy who threatens the nation’s very existence. The former is the noise of a functioning democracy. The latter is the sound of its cardiac arrest.

The data, cold and impartial, paints a grim picture. The Pew Research Center has tracked this trend for decades. In 2014, a Pew study found that 27% of Democrats and 36% of Republicans viewed the other party as “a threat to the nation’s well-being.” See Pew Rsch. Ctr., Political Polarization in the American Public (June 12, 2014). By 2024, those numbers had exploded. A more recent Pew survey found that approximately 60% of partisans on both sides now hold a “very unfavorable” view of the other party, and a staggering 72% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats believe the other party’s policies “are so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being.” See Pew Rsch. Ctr., Deep Divisions, Growing Animosity: How Americans View the Political Parties (July 18, 2024). This is not the language of political competition. It is the language of existential conflict, a zero-sum struggle where compromise is tantamount to surrender.

The Drivers of Modern Division

Unlike the singular focus on slavery, contemporary polarization is a toxic cocktail brewed from a confluence of mutually reinforcing factors that have sorted the American people into two hostile tribes.

First, the dynamic is heavily elite-driven. Political elites, such as elected officials, media personalities, and party activists, consistently hold more extreme ideological positions than the average voter. Institutional mechanisms like partisan gerrymandering and closed party primaries, where turnout is low and the electorate is composed of the most committed partisans, systematically reward more ideologically extreme candidates and punish moderates. This process ensures that the people sent to Washington are often the least capable of and least interested in finding common ground.

Second, the modern media ecosystem acts as a powerful accelerant. The collapse of a shared, trusted news source and the rise of partisan cable news and social media have created what scholars term “echo chambers” or “filter bubbles.” Citizens are increasingly walled off within information ecosystems that reflect and reinforce their own biases, shielding them from opposing viewpoints and frequently exposing them to disinformation. Social media algorithms, designed not to inform but to maximize engagement through emotional arousal, push users toward more extreme and incendiary content. This dynamic has created divergent factual realities, where partisans cannot even agree on a common set of facts, let alone how to address the nation’s problems. We are no longer having a national conversation; we are having two separate, mutually unintelligible monologues shouted across a digital abyss.

Third, a process of geographic and social sorting, what author Bill Bishop famously termed “The Big Sort,” has deepened the divide. Americans are increasingly choosing to live in communities surrounded by people who share their political views. See Bill Bishop, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart (2008). This self-segregation extends beyond politics into fundamental lifestyle preferences, creating “ideological silos” where individuals have fewer and fewer meaningful interactions with those from the other side. This lack of contact reinforces in-group solidarity and makes the “other” seem more alien, more abstract, and more threatening.

Finally, a demographic realignment of the two parties has overlaid partisan identity with our most fundamental tribal identities: race, religion, and geography. Over the past half-century, the Republican Party has become more uniformly conservative, white, Christian, and based in rural and exurban areas. Simultaneously, the Democratic Party has become the home of a more liberal, multiracial, and secular coalition centered in the nation’s cities. When party affiliation becomes a proxy for these deeper identity cleavages, political conflict ceases to be about policy and becomes a zero-sum battle between competing cultural tribes for the soul of the nation.

The fundamental nature of the schism has thus been transformed. The antebellum conflict, for all its ferocity, was geographically contained. It was a dispute between two distinct regional entities over a single, overriding issue. Today’s conflict, however, has no clear geographic boundary. The divides run through states, through counties, through communities, and even through families. There is no Mason-Dixon Line upon which a grand compromise could be built. The conflict is primarily emotional and tribal, a phenomenon of “negative partisanship,” where loyalty is defined less by affinity for one’s own side and more by hatred of the other. In such an environment, the core mechanisms of democratic governance, negotiation, bargaining, and consensus-building, begin to seize up and fail. The modern schism is therefore less like a formal dispute between two parties and more like a systemic, low-grade infection coursing through the entire body politic, making it far more difficult to isolate and treat.

Section II: The Supreme Court: From Dred Scott to a Modern Crisis of Confidence

In a constitutional republic, the judiciary is supposed to be the anchor in the storm, the one institution designed to stand apart from the turbulent tides of politics and serve as the ultimate arbiter of the law. Its authority, however, rests not on the sword or the purse, but on a fragile foundation of perceived legitimacy. When the Supreme Court is seen as abandoning its role as a neutral interpreter of the Constitution to become a partisan actor, it ceases to be a resolver of national conflicts and instead becomes a potent catalyst for them. The 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856), stands as the starkest example of such a failure, a judicial thunderclap that shattered the Court’s legitimacy and pushed the nation inexorably toward war. A comparative analysis reveals that while the circumstances are different, the contemporary Supreme Court faces a similar, and similarly perilous, crisis of confidence, with its actions increasingly viewed through a partisan lens that erodes its institutional authority and deepens the nation’s wounds.

Dred Scott: The Court's "Greatest Self-Inflicted Wound"

The case of Dred Scott v. Sandford began as a simple lawsuit. An enslaved man, Dred Scott, argued that he and his family were entitled to freedom because their owner had taken them to reside for years in a free state (Illinois) and a free territory (Wisconsin), where slavery had been prohibited by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The case presented the Supreme Court with a narrow jurisdictional question: could a person of African descent be considered a “citizen” with the right to sue in federal court? A narrow ruling would have been the path of judicial prudence. Instead, the Court, under the leadership of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, chose to issue a sweeping, catastrophic decision intended to settle the slavery question once and for all.

The 7-2 majority opinion, delivered in March 1857, made three explosive declarations that set the nation on fire:

• Citizenship Denied: The Court ruled that people of African descent, whether enslaved or free, were not and could never be considered citizens of the United States under the Constitution. Taney’s infamous words still carry a vile stench. He argued that at the time of the Founding, Black people were regarded as “beings of an inferior order… and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Dred Scott, 60 U.S. at 407. This finding, which attempted to permanently exclude Black people from the American body politic, remains a monstrous stain on the Court’s history. It was a declaration that my existence, and the existence of millions like me, was a legal nullity.

• Missouri Compromise Unconstitutional: The Court went further, declaring the Missouri Compromise of 1820 unconstitutional. It reasoned that Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in the federal territories, as such a ban would deprive slave owners of their property without the due process of law guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. Id. at 452.

• Slavery as a Protected Property Right: By invoking the Due Process Clause to protect a slaveholder’s right to his human property, the Court effectively nationalized slavery, suggesting that the Constitution affirmatively protected the institution and that it could not be barred from any federal territory. Id. at 450.

The impact was immediate and devastating. The decision was correctly viewed in the North not as a good-faith legal interpretation but as a partisan power play by a Southern-dominated Court to impose the will of the Slave Power on the entire nation. It obliterated the central platform of the new Republican Party, which was the prevention of slavery’s expansion, and it eviscerated the fragile political compromises that had held the Union together. By attempting to resolve a political crisis through judicial fiat, the Court destroyed any remaining space for a political solution. It radicalized Northern opinion, strengthened the abolitionist movement, and was a direct cause of the Civil War. It is universally condemned as a “legal and practical mistake” and the Court’s single “greatest self-inflicted wound.” See 2 Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History 335 (rev. ed. 1926).

The Contemporary Court: Politicization and Eroding Trust

While no single modern decision carries the same immediate revolutionary impact as Dred Scott, the contemporary Supreme Court is grappling with a profound crisis of public confidence rooted in the perception that it has become an increasingly political institution. This crisis is fueled by a series of polarizing landmark rulings, the controversial use of novel judicial procedures, and a quantifiable collapse in public trust.

Landmark Rulings as Flashpoints

The most significant modern parallel to Dred Scott’s disruptive power can be found in the 2022 decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022). In Dobbs, the Court’s conservative majority overruled nearly five decades of precedent established in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), and Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), eliminating the constitutional right to abortion and returning the authority to regulate or ban the procedure to individual states. Like Dred Scott, the Dobbs decision did not resolve a contentious national issue but rather detonated it, opening the floodgates to a chaotic patchwork of state-level abortion bans that has had devastating consequences for reproductive healthcare across the country.

By removing a long-standing federal right and throwing the issue back to the states, the Dobbs decision, like Dred Scott, acted as a powerful accelerant of political polarization and created starkly different legal realities for citizens depending on where they live.

The "Shadow Docket" and Procedural Legitimacy

The Court’s perceived politicization has been compounded by its increasing reliance on the “shadow docket,” a term for emergency orders and summary decisions issued without the benefit of full briefing, oral argument, or, in many cases, any public reasoning. The Court has used this docket to rule on consequential matters ranging from immigration policy and environmental regulations to voting rights and public health mandates.

Critics, including some of the justices themselves, argue that this practice subverts the Court’s normal deliberative process and undermines the core judicial norm of reasoned decision-making. Issuing major rulings without explaining the legal reasoning creates an impression of arbitrary power. When these unexplained rulings consistently favor one political party or ideological agenda, it reinforces the public perception that the Court’s decisions are driven by political alignment rather than legal principle. It is law made in the dark, and it erodes the very transparency and accountability that undergird judicial legitimacy.

Quantifiable Decline in Public Trust

This perception of politicization is not merely anecdotal. It is reflected in a stark and sustained collapse in public confidence. In September 2024, a Gallup poll found that only 41% of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing, a figure hovering near historic lows. See Jeffrey M. Jones, Supreme Court Job Approval Remains Low at 41%, Gallup (Sept. 26, 2024). This collapse is sharply partisan. In the wake of Dobbs and other controversial rulings, a strong majority of Republicans (71%) view the Court favorably, while an overwhelming majority of Democrats hold an unfavorable view, with only 26% expressing a positive opinion.

This partisan split extends to perceptions of the Court’s ideology. A majority of Americans now believe the justices allow their political views to influence their decisions, even though an overwhelming bipartisan majority agrees they should not. This data paints a clear picture of an institution whose reputation for impartiality has been severely damaged.

The essential parallel between the Taney Court of the 1850s and the Roberts Court of the 2020s is not found in the substance of any single ruling. It lies in the widespread and growing perception that the Court has abandoned its post as a neutral arbiter of law to become an active combatant in the nation’s political wars. A functioning democracy depends on a final arbiter whose decisions, even when unpopular, are broadly accepted as the legitimate products of a legal process. The judiciary’s power is, as Alexander Hamilton wrote, one of “merely judgment,” deriving its strength from public trust. The Federalist No. 78 (Alexander Hamilton). The Dred Scott decision annihilated that trust. The contemporary polling data suggests a similar, though perhaps not yet as complete, erosion of legitimacy is underway. When the Court is viewed as just another political branch, its rulings lose their unifying force. Instead of settling a question, a decision like Dobbs becomes a permanent mobilizing grievance, deepening polarization and encouraging defiance. The ultimate danger is not that the Court makes unpopular rulings, but that it loses the very institutional authority that makes its rulings law.

Section III: The Resurgence of States' Rights: From Nullification to Modern Defiance

The tension between federal power and the rights of states is a foundational argument in American history, a deep-seated structural conflict that has never been fully resolved. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, this tension manifested in formal constitutional challenges to federal authority, most notably the doctrine of nullification, which posited that states had the right to invalidate federal laws they deemed unconstitutional. This doctrine was the direct intellectual ancestor of secession. In the contemporary era, this conflict has reemerged with a new and dangerous intensity. While modern state defiance rarely uses the formal language of nullification, its practical effect is a “functional disunion,” where states across the political spectrum are carving out spheres of policy in which they actively resist or supplant federal authority, creating a balkanized legal landscape that erodes the principle of a single, supreme national law.

Antebellum Precedent: Nullification and Secession

The constitutional theories that underpinned Southern resistance in the antebellum period were rooted in a compact theory of the Union. Proponents, most famously South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun, argued that the Constitution was a compact, or contract, among sovereign states. From this premise, they derived the doctrine of nullification, the supposed right of a state to “interpose” its sovereignty and declare a federal law null and void within its borders. According to Black’s Law Dictionary, nullification is “[a] state’s or locality’s refusal to recognize or enforce a federal law, based on the legal theory that the U.S. Constitution is a compact of the states and that a state may decide for itself whether a federal law is constitutional.” Nullification, Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019).

This theory was put to its most significant test during the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33. In response to federal tariffs that it argued disproportionately harmed its economy, South Carolina passed an Ordinance of Nullification, declaring the tariffs unenforceable and threatening secession if the federal government attempted to use force. President Andrew Jackson responded with a thunderous defense of federal supremacy, threatening to use military power to enforce the law. The crisis was averted through a compromise tariff, but the underlying constitutional question was left to fester. The episode served as a dress rehearsal for the 1860s, establishing the ideological framework that Southern states would use to justify secession following the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Contemporary Conflicts: A Multi-Front War on Federal Supremacy

Today’s federal-state conflicts are not centered on a single issue like tariffs but are fought across a wide range of policy domains, with states on both the left and the right challenging the authority of the federal government.

Immigration and Border Security: The Texas Standoff

The most acute and confrontational modern example of state defiance is the escalating conflict between the state of Texas and the federal government over immigration enforcement. Under a state initiative known as “Operation Lone Star,” Texas has deployed its own National Guard and state troopers to the border, creating a parallel and often conflicting immigration enforcement apparatus. The state has taken actions in direct opposition to federal authority, including installing miles of concertina wire and a floating barrier of buoys in the Rio Grande, which have physically impeded federal Border Patrol agents in the performance of their duties.

The conflict reached the Supreme Court, which in a 5-4 ruling ordered Texas to allow federal agents access to the border. Garland v. Texas, 601 U.S. 235 (2024) (order granting application to vacate injunction). In defiance, Texas officials have continued to assert what they claim is their right to self-defense under the U.S. Constitution’s State Invasion Clause, arguing that the influx of migrants constitutes an “invasion” that grants the state the power to engage in its own defense, superseding federal authority. This legal theory is a fringe interpretation that would effectively nullify federal immigration law, but it has proven to be a politically powerful tool for justifying the state’s defiance.

The Counter-Resistance: Sanctuary Jurisdictions

On the opposite side of the political spectrum, the “sanctuary city” and “sanctuary state” movement represents a widespread form of blue-state resistance to federal immigration enforcement. Dozens of states and hundreds of localities have adopted policies that limit the cooperation of their law enforcement agencies with federal authorities like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These policies range from refusing to honor ICE “detainer” requests to prohibiting local police from inquiring about a person’s immigration status.

The legal foundation for this form of defiance is the Tenth Amendment’s “anti-commandeering” doctrine, which the Supreme Court affirmed in cases like Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997). This doctrine holds that the federal government cannot compel state or local officials to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program. While sanctuary policies do not prevent federal agents from enforcing immigration law themselves, they represent a significant practical obstacle to federal efforts, creating zones of non-cooperation.

A Patchwork of Rights and Regulations

This pattern of state-level defiance extends to numerous other areas. Following the Dobbs decision, states have moved in radically different directions on abortion, creating a landscape where reproductive rights are entirely dependent on one’s zip code. As of 2024, 14 states have near-total bans on abortion, while 20 other states have enacted robust legal protections for abortion access. Similarly, states have enacted a vast array of conflicting laws on gun control, with some states tightening restrictions while others pass “Second Amendment Preservation Acts” that purport to invalidate federal gun laws within their borders.

The legal principle of federal supremacy, established in the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and seemingly settled by the Civil War, is facing a death by a thousand cuts. While modern states are not formally seceding, they are engaging in a form of “soft secession” by carving out vast policy domains where they operate under their own rules, often in direct contravention of federal law. This “functional disunion” is a direct consequence of the hyper-polarization gripping the nation, as states become the primary vehicles for enacting the starkly different ideological visions of their dominant political tribes. The long-term implication is the balkanization of American law, a process that weakens national cohesion and creates constant, grinding friction points between state and federal power, mirroring the escalating state-federal tensions that defined the 1850s.

Section IV: The Language of Disunion: Secessionist Rhetoric and the Question of Federal Legitimacy

The health of a republic can be measured not only by its laws but also by its language. Words are not just sounds; they are tools that can be used to build a nation or tear it apart. In the antebellum period, decades of debate over states’ rights culminated in an explicit, constitutionally-argued case for secession. Today, the challenge to the American union is more complex. It manifests in two distinct but related forms: a populist resurgence of secessionist rhetoric that has moved from the fringe to the mainstream, and a more systematic, elite-driven project to fundamentally transform the nature of federal power from within. While the former is a loud symptom of popular discontent, the latter represents a quieter but more profound challenge to the constitutional order itself.

The Resurgence of Secessionist Rhetoric

For most of the 20th century, the idea of a state seceding from the Union was considered a settled historical question, legally foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s 1869 ruling in Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869), which declared that the United States was “an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States.” Id. at 725. In the 21st century, however, interest in secession has resurfaced, fueled by deepening partisan animosity.

Modern secessionist movements are active in several states, most prominently the “Texit” movement in Texas and the “Calexit” movement in California. What is most notable is the migration of this language from the fringe into the political mainstream. In 2023, U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly called for a “national divorce,” suggesting the country should be formally separated into red and blue states. Polling indicates that while a clear majority of Americans oppose secession, a significant and growing minority expresses sympathy for the idea. One 2024 poll found that while 67% of Texans would vote to remain in the U.S., a full 33% would support seceding to become an independent republic. The principle finds even broader support, with a plurality of Texans (45%) agreeing that a state should be allowed to secede if a majority of its voters choose to do so.

Project 2025 and the Unitary Executive Theory: A Revolution from Within

Parallel to the populist calls for separation is a more sophisticated and systematic effort to achieve a form of disunion not by leaving the federal government, but by capturing and fundamentally reshaping it. This effort is most comprehensively articulated in Project 2025, a nearly 1,000-page blueprint developed by the Heritage Foundation and a coalition of conservative organizations to prepare for a future right-wing administration.

Project 2025 is not merely a collection of policy proposals; it is a plan for the radical consolidation of executive power. Its core tenets include a plan to fire tens of thousands of career civil servants, who are viewed as an illegitimate “deep state,” and replace them with political loyalists vetted for their ideological commitment, a scheme known as “Schedule F.” It calls for taking direct partisan control of or dismantling agencies designed to have a degree of independence, including the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Federal Reserve.

The constitutional justification for this vast expansion of presidential power is a maximalist interpretation of the “unitary executive theory.” This theory posits that Article II of the Constitution, which states that “The executive Power shall be vested in a President,” gives the president sole and complete control over the entire executive branch. In this view, independent agencies, civil service protections, and any statutory limits on the president’s power to hire and fire are unconstitutional infringements on his authority. It is a legal framework for what President Donald Trump articulated more plainly: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” This theory represents a direct assault on the system of checks and balances and the entire post-Watergate architecture of American governance, which sought to depoliticize law enforcement and the civil service.

The contemporary challenge to the American union is thus bifurcated. On one hand, there is a loud, populist movement for external separation through secession. On the other, there is a quiet, systematic, and legally sophisticated movement for internal capture and transformation. The populist secessionist rhetoric is a powerful symptom of the extreme affective polarization gripping the nation. However, its practical path to success is virtually non-existent, barred by established Supreme Court precedent. The “revolution from within” envisioned by Project 2025, however, poses a more fundamental and plausible threat to the constitutional order. It does not seek to break the country apart geographically but to dismantle the separation of powers and transform the government from a constitutional republic into a system of executive supremacy. While secession would shatter the Union, the full implementation of a maximalist unitary executive theory would effectively end the American system of government as we know it. The true “disunion” being pursued by this latter faction is not a separation from the United States, but a separation from its foundational constitutional principles.

Section V: On the Brink? A Comparative Risk Assessment of Civil Conflict

Synthesizing the parallels and divergences between the antebellum era and the present day allows for a nuanced assessment of the contemporary risk of civil conflict. A direct repeat of the 1861–1865 war between organized state armies is highly improbable. However, the United States exhibits numerous pre-conflict indicators that mirror the 1850s, suggesting a severe and growing risk of sustained political violence, democratic backsliding, and state-sponsored civil disobedience that could constitute a uniquely 21st-century form of civil strife.

Defining "Civil War": 1861 vs. the 2020s

To assess the risk accurately, we must first define the nature of the potential conflict. The American Civil War was a conventional, state-on-state conflict fought between formal armies over the control of territory. A modern American civil conflict, should one occur, would almost certainly not take this form. The United States military possesses a monopoly on overwhelming conventional force that no state or combination of states could challenge.

Instead, contemporary analysts suggest a more likely scenario would be a turbulent era of decentralized, asymmetrical conflict. This would be characterized by acts of political violence such as assassinations, armed confrontations between non-state actors like militias and law enforcement, targeted attacks on government officials and infrastructure, and widespread civil disturbances, rather than uniformed armies clashing on a battlefield. It would be a “low-intensity” but potentially protracted struggle over political control and the legitimacy of the government itself.

Comparative Analysis of Risk Factors

A systematic comparison of key indicators reveals both alarming parallels and critical differences. In the 1850s, the primary division was a singular, sectional conflict over slavery between two largely separate economic systems. Today, the divisions are multiple, nationalized, and identity-based, cutting across a deeply integrated national economy. The level of partisan animosity is similarly extreme in both eras, with modern affective polarization mirroring the vitriol of the antebellum press. A key difference lies in the shared factual reality; while the 1850s had a partisan press, it operated within a largely shared set of facts. Today, ideologically segregated media ecosystems have created fractured and competing realities.

Disturbingly, the parallels are strongest on the indicators of institutional decay. The Supreme Court’s legitimacy was severely undermined after Dred Scott; today, its public trust is near historic lows. State defiance of federal authority was a hallmark of the 1850s, culminating in secession; today, states like Texas and California engage in open legal and practical defiance on core issues. Finally, the acceptance of political violence is a terrifying point of convergence. The organized violence of “Bleeding Kansas” and John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry have their modern echoes in the January 6th Capitol attack and polling that shows a shocking number of Americans believe violence may be necessary to “save the country.”

The most significant deterrents to a conventional, 1860s-style civil war are the very features of modern society: its deep economic integration and the absence of a clean geographical line of division. Red and blue America are not separate territories; they are neighbors. A clean geographical split is logistically impossible and would be economically suicidal. These same factors, however, make the nation more vulnerable to a protracted period of decentralized, low-intensity conflict. The very conditions that prevent a formal war create endless potential flashpoints for localized violence.

Expert assessments have sounded the alarm. Barbara F. Walter, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and a leading expert on civil wars, has argued that the United States now exhibits several key warning signs, particularly the presence of “anocracy” (a state between democracy and autocracy) and the rise of identity-based political factions. See Barbara F. Walter, How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them (2022). Polling data reveals a shocking level of support for violence. One recent survey found that a majority of Republicans agree that “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast” that they “may have to use force to save it.” Another found that millions of Americans believe that “patriots” might have to resort to violence.

Therefore, the answer to the question of whether the nation is on the brink of civil war is not a simple “yes” or “no.” The United States is exhibiting many of the key political and social pathologies that preceded its first Civil War. However, modern societal structures will likely channel the resulting conflict into a different form, one less like the organized carnage of 1861 and more like the chaotic, prolonged political violence and institutional collapse that has plagued other deeply divided nations in the modern era.

Conclusion: Divergent Paths from a Shared History

The United States of the 2020s is not the United States of the 1850s. The nation is not poised for a repeat of the cataclysm that nearly destroyed it. The central, morally absolute cause of chattel slavery is gone. The country is bound by a deeply integrated economy and a powerful national military that make a conventional, sectional war between states all but impossible. And yet, the echoes of that dark period are undeniable. The current political environment exhibits an alarming number of parallels to the antebellum era in its patterns of institutional decay, extreme partisan animosity, and the normalization of disunionist rhetoric.

The analysis reveals a nation fractured along multiple, overlapping lines of identity, where political disagreement has curdled into personal contempt. This affective polarization has created two Americas that increasingly occupy different social and factual realities. This schism is mirrored in and exacerbated by the nation’s core institutions. The Supreme Court is suffering from a crisis of legitimacy, with a growing portion of the populace viewing it not as a neutral guardian of the law but as a partisan instrument. The foundational principle of federalism has become a battleground, with states engaging in a “functional disunion” that creates a balkanized nation where the law is dangerously contingent on geography. This institutional decay is given voice by a political discourse that increasingly questions the legitimacy of the Union itself.

The United States is not teetering on the brink of a second Civil War in the mold of the first. It is, however, facing a profound crisis of legitimacy that threatens the foundations of the republic in a new and insidious way. The risk is not of uniformed armies marching on Washington, but of a protracted era of political violence, democratic backsliding, and institutional collapse fueled by a populace that has lost faith in its common enterprise. The path forward is not preordained, but the warning signs are clear. I can hear the tremors in the ground. The nation may have escaped the specific historical circumstances of the 1850s, but it has not proven immune to the timeless forces of division and decay that, if left unchecked, can unravel even the most resilient of republics.

By Matt Murdock, Esq.