The Options, by Eric Peters

The main problem the liberty minded face as regards preserving – and recovering – their lost liberty is that they are enmeshed among those who either do not understand or want to even try to understand liberty.

And those who actively loathe it.

It is not like the Late Unpleasantness (1861-’65) which was fundamentally geographic as much as it was ideological. On the one side – of the Mason Dixon line – you had the South. On the other, the North. Both sides were clearly different, in terms of where each lived as well as their respective languages, culture and history.

Savannah was not Boston.

But how do we separate ourselves from our next-door neighbor? From the authoritarian collectivists who sit on the town council? From the Clover who believes he has a “right” to health care – and “free” education – and thus, a right to force you to provide it? Who demands you “buckle up” for “safety”?

Who insists others wear a Face Diaper or close their businesses . . . to keep him “safe”?

Even in areas that are still culturally a bit more liberty minded – i.e., the “red” states – the canker is there and it is spreading.

Many of the “red” states are purple – on their way to turning blue. Even Texas.

The process has been accelerated, ironically, by the flight of the not-so-liberty-minded from places like New York and California, where their mindset created the fouled nest they now abandon – to foul new nests, elsewhere.

How can liberty survive, given this?

There are two main possibilities.

The first is a terrifying and awful one; a literal civil war (which the Late Unpleasantness was not; it was an unsuccessful attempt at secession, very much like the successful effort of 1776-1783). A fight between brother and brother – and neighbor and neighbor. To the death, probably – as the two ideologies cannot reconcile.