ABC News: Civil War vs. Revolution: A Rhetorical Shift?
April 12, 2011 1:14 PM
PrintRSSShare:EmailMoreFarkTechnoratiGoogleLiveMy SpaceNewsvineRedditDeliciousMixxYahooThe past several years in politics have felt steeped in talk of revolution. But on this 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, there seems to have been a quiet shift in the media and around the water cooler. Revolution is out; Civil war is in.
Republicans and Tea Party activists have embraced the trappings of the American revolution in recent years. From the reading of the Constitution on the House floor after Republicans regained control to talk of how the founding fathers would view the country today to the tri-corner hats worn at Tea Party protests – their movement has been about rejecting the yoke of government, be it in the form of taxes or mandated health insurance.
Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is exploring a run for the Republican presidential nomination, released a web video this year that exemplifies the use of revolutionary rhetoric. Alongside American flags flown in the video are the yellow, coiled snake “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden flags, which have been adopted by the Tea Party. Pawlenty, in the video, riffs on the opening lines of the Constitution when he says that “We the People of the United States will rise up again. We will take back our government.”
But after so much talk of revolution, there is renewed interest in the periods after the U.S. liberated itself from Great Britain.
PBS, fighting to retain its government funding, has been replaying its seminal and epic documentary masterpiece: The Civil War by Ken Burns. An image of a beardless Abraham Lincoln, doctored to make him appear to be crying, adorns the cover of Time Magazine this week. The provocative headline: “Why We’re Still Fighting the Civil War.”
Robert Redford is out with a new movie about the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln and a Steven Spielberg biopic on Lincoln is in the works.
And there is something of a rhetorical shift among some Democrats too, as they argue in favor of supporting some government institutions. Jerry Brown, the Democratic Governor of California, during a local TV interview, compared divisions between the parties now to divisions during the civil war, though he said it is unlikely people in the U.S. will take up arms against each other.
“We are at a point of civil discord, and I would not minimize the risk to our country and to our state. It is not trivial,” said Brown. “I’ve been around a long time, I’m a student of history, I’m a student of contemporary politics. We are facing what I would call a ‘regime crisis.’ The legitimacy of our very democratic institutions are in question,” he said.
Note: There are problems of scale comparing current times to either period. The Civil War saw more than 600,000 Americans die. Even the most ardent Tea Partier does not seem to be advocating an overthrow of the entire U.S. government.
