Theory 2 Action Podcast
Theory 2 Action Podcast
MM#440--A House Dividing, Again, part 1: A Cold Civil War
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A nation does not tumble into crisis overnight; it drifts, argues, hardens—and then stumbles. We open the pages of David Potter’s A House Dividing to read the 1850s not as distant history but as a mirror for today’s tensions. From the Compromise of 1850 to the Fugitive Slave Act, Potter shows how moral shocks can force ordinary citizens into a confrontation with their own values. That’s the thread we follow into 2025: when people feel conscripted into rules they reject, politics polarizes fast and rhetoric outruns prudence.
We walk through the essential parallels without forcing false equivalence. Sectionalism then was geographic; now it’s cultural, algorithmic, and mapped onto coasts and heartland. We examine federal flashpoints around immigration enforcement, debates over identity and sports, and the way governors, agencies, and local movements collide at the edge of the law. The question beneath the noise is Potter’s: how should a free people rank their values—freedom, union, morality, patriotism—when they pull in different directions? Most of us don’t want to sacrifice any of them, but refusing to choose is itself a choice that leaves events to choose for us.
Across the episode, we argue for two guardrails: hold the line on lawful order and refuse the language that turns neighbors into enemies. History warns that once rhetoric dehumanizes opponents, escalation can move faster than leaders can steer. We sketch the stakes, outline the risks of a “cold” conflict warming, and preview a series on how past “fire-eaters” used speech to accelerate crisis—and how we can avoid replaying that script.
If this conversation sharpened your thinking, share it with a friend, subscribe for the next part of the series, and leave a quick review so more thoughtful listeners can find us. Your voice helps keep the debate human—and the union strong.
Key Points from the Episode:
• why Potter’s A House Dividing still matters
• the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act as moral shock
• parallels between 1850s fracture and 2025 cultural standoffs
• modern sectionalism on coasts vs heartland
• federal authority, state resistance, and flashpoints at ICE buildings
• ranking values: freedom, union, morality, patriotism
• immigration and identity as galvanizing issues
• cooling rhetoric while enforcing law
• preview of a series on rhetoric and escalation
Other resources:
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Welcome to the Theory to Action Podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books and left time to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.
SPEAKER_01:Hello, I name David, and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. As always, let's begin with the opening quote. The guns had scarcely cooled after Appomattox when historians began debating the causes of the American Civil War. Why had North and South grown apart? Had it all been about slavery as a moral question? Or were there less visible economic interest at work? Perhaps the cultures of the two sections had finally produced irreconcilable differences. The debates continue to this day with an occasional nugget of new information to spark revised interpretations. But nowhere is the reader likely to find a more brilliant and succinct analysis than in David Potter's account of the major events that led to war. And this quote comes to us from a great little book that I believe everyone, and I mean everyone, should read. Again, by the aforementioned Mr. David Potter. That book is some 22 hours on Audible, but it's one of the best books I've ever read about the lead up to the U.S. Civil War. And I highly recommend it. Now back to this short little book, A House Dividing. Why do we recommend that everyone read it? Because our house, our own house, in 2025 is dividing. It has been dividing. And none of us want the god-awful event of a second U.S. Civil War. Now I know many people will glamorize and say that it has come to this. But let's be really real. None of us, no one, and I mean no one, wants a civil war. We just watched the assassination of Charlie Kirk, an innocent man gunned down on a college campus for merely posing the questions about and around our cultural and national situation. And essentially just asking kids to prove me wrong. That was the name of his tour, prove me wrong tour. But in the proving wrong, we have some deranged lunatic that thinks that killing the innocent man would stop the country from asking and answering those questions. And why I say the house is dividing is because all of us can feel it. The attempted assassination of then candidate President Trump just a year and a half ago. The continued assaults on federal ICE officials by what can only be described as neo-Confederates rioting and preventing those agents trying to carry out their dutiful jobs, trying to carry out federal law and rounding up illegal immigrants. These neoconfedates are surrounding a federal building and assaulting those buildings. And this just doesn't happen on a random weekend in October. It's been happening for years. And it's just now coming to a head. So you can see if you have eyes to see. There are many parallels to the events leading up to the US Civil War between then and now. And what were those events? Well, let's take, for example, the compromise of 1850. Let's also talk about the Fugitive Slave Act. You know, the Comprise of 1850 was really trying to figure out how westward expansion would happen and how states would come into the Union. So there was the free state and the slave state debate. And then the Fugitive Slave Act, we know, that proved particularly inflammatory in the North because it forced previously uninvolved citizens to participate directly in the institution of slavery. The law denied fugitives the right to a jury trial and paid commissions, paid commissioners, ten dollars for the ruling in favor of slaveholders, but also five dollars for ruling in favor of alleged fugitives. Now that at the time was just blatant corruption, combined with the moral outrage of the forced participation in the god awful state of slavery. That drove many moderate northerners at the time throughout the whole eighteen fifties towards abolitionism. And you can see very close similarities. Today's day and age, we're forced to deal with men changing their genders and playing in women's sports. Parents are forced to have their girls participate in men that are changing their genders and playing in women's sports. So just like in the 1850s, many people came to believe in the North that you can't own another person, let alone force people then to obey some law and help retrieve fugitive slaves that are running toward freedom in the North. And yes, I know there was still racism in the North, but half the country was coming around to this issue of slavery, that you can't own another human being, period. Plain and simple. Just a fundamental fact. You know, Harriet Beecher Stowe's book, Uncle Tom's Cabin came out in I think 1852. It galvanized the nation. I think there were some 200,000 or 300,000 books bought, which at the time was unthinkable. It described the horrors and the details of chattel slavery. And it provoked a firestorm in both the North and the South. Many believe that it started to galvanize and push public opinion one way or another, all about slavery. So much so that even President Lincoln was said when he met Harriet Beecher Stowe during the war, I think 1862, 1863. He was quoted as saying, So this is the little lady who started this great war. Now back to our current time period. Reasonable people looking around at our culture and saying men can't be women and men can't play in women's sports, plain and simple, is now causing controversy. And there's a major political party that are saying you're wrong. And we're not going to accept this. And you have another major political party that is saying we're wrong, that men can become women and can play in women's sports. And by the way, you will accept this. Now, a second parallel to our times in the 1850s is the extreme sectionalism. Meaning campaigning was different, certainly different back then. You had representatives who did the campaigning for you. And you would have people in various parts of the country that represented you as a candidate in that locality. Well, Lincoln didn't have very many representatives that wanted to venture into the South or war were from the South. Even some said because the violence that would be heaped upon them, they felt that they weren't even safe to utter Lincoln's name in the South, in the least bit. So what about today? Do we have extreme sectionalism in our country today? We do, but it's different. Both the left coast and the right coast, the west coast and the east coast, vote blue in large majorities. Some areas are deep, deep blue. It's been that trend since the late 1990s. And in the middle of the country, it's going red, deep red, with pockets of deep blue in these major U.S. cities. And lo and behold, where are the major flashpoints we are seeing as we look around our country in 2025? Well, the flashpoints are around the U.S. federal buildings, especially the immigration and customs enforcement buildings. Portland and Chicago, to be specific. There we are finding an extreme tense standoffs and shootings. Violence is erupting around these federal installations. We have the shooting at the Dallas Ice Building. Does all this parallel Fort Sumter 1861? Are the governors in these states of Oregon and Illinois helping the federal agents? No. Why? Because President Trump wants to enforce federal law and deport the illegals. So then the question becomes: are these governors acting like South Carolina and the lower South states in the run up to the U.S. Civil War? Are they the neo-Confederates of today? Have to realize that federal law is going to trump state laws, especially and specifically with keeping order and wanting no violence at these federal buildings. This is not going to end well for these governors. They should read our history. And the rhetoric, oh, the rhetoric is over the top from these officials. Now they will blame Trump, and Trump will blame them. But regardless, the rhetoric is over the top from elected officials. And here's where I think David Potter's short little book can help all of us in view of where all this is going. Let's go back to the book for this most important quote. The question for them, northern states, was not a choice of alternatives, antislavery or pro slavery, but a ranking of values. This is a super important point. How far ought the harmony of the Union to be sacrificed to the principle of freedom? How far ought their feeling against slavery to be restrained by their veneration for the Union? How much should morality yield to patriotism or vice versa? The difference between antislavery men and conciliate conciliationist in the North was not a question of what they thought about slavery alone, but of how they ranked these priorities. A few took the position that the Union was not worth saving unless it embodied the principle of freedom and thus they gave the slavery issue a clear priority. They agreed with John P. Hale of New Hampshire when he declared if this union with all of its advantages has no other cement than the blood of human slavery, let it perish. A few others took the clear cut view that the Union was infinitely more important than the slavery issue and must not be jeopardized by it. Like John Chipman of Michigan, where he was said when gentlemen pretending to love their country would place the consideration of the nominal liberation of a handful of degraded Africans in one scale and the Union in the other, and make the latter kick the beam, he would not have a he would not give a fig for their patriotism. But most people were profoundly unwilling to sacrifice one value to the other. So you can see that same question not posed to us as the simple are you pro-slavery or anti-slavery just before the U.S. Civil War, but of the values of 60 to 70 to 80 percent of most reasonable Americans. Now most reasonable Americans view that men can't become women and men should not be playing in women's sports, plain and simple. And I'm not making that argument that slave the slavery question, I'm not making the argument that the gender question is the slavery question of our current day. But you can see where the illegal immigration question is starting to become the slavery question of our day. One side says illegal immigrants are here and have been here. It's their right and they are entitled to becoming citizens because they got here physically, plain and simple. The other side says that is incredibly wrong. They broke the law to get here. And we have a vast and very liberal immigration system and series of laws that allow people to come to our country legally to do it the right way. And again, you can see the illegal immigration question is galvanizing both sides to go to their separate corners. And that, my friends, is a scary, scary situation. Now, one question we should ask and answer is are the current radical Democrats rightly called now Neo-Confederates? And are we in a cold civil war right now? To those questions I say yes and yes. So in today's mojo minute, let us not dismiss these vital questions. Let us pray about them and consider a pathway forward. Violence is never the answer, but breaking the law repeatedly and then violence against the people trying to enforce that law is a recipe to start the eighteen sixties all over again. None of us want that. Now, this is going to be part of what I think is going to become a three to four part series. Because the rhetoric question is where the breakdown begins to happen. And once it begins to happen, it usually happens fast, just like it did with the U.S. Civil War. In our next episode, we're going to talk all about the fire eaters of the South. Who were they? How radical were they? And how do they compare to our current radicals in speech and violence? Until then, keep fighting the good fight and pray for a pathway forward where the respect of federal law is followed.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at TeamMojoAcademy.com, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time,