Barbara F. Walter is a political scientists from UCSD who has been studying civil war around the world for many years, and has a new book out, How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them. She concludes that we are closer to civil war than people might want to think.
Walter says that civil wars have predictable patterns. They are most common in "anocracies," countries that are neither full autocracies nor democracies, but somewhere in between. If you have looked at studies of the U.S., and it's position in the world of democracies over the last decade, you will see a sharp decline. We are ranked 27th in the world in terms of the strength of our democracy. In fact, we are no longer called a full democracy.
Warning signs of civil war include the rise of intense political polarization based on identity rather than ideology. Instigators of civil violence tend to be previously dominant groups who see their status slipping away. (check that box).
When asked what the chances are that we might face a civil war (started by right wing extremists she believes), she says the chance is about 3%. That doesn't sound like much, but when she makes the analogy to smoking, it does. If you smoke, your chances of getting lung cancer the first year are very small. As years go by and you continue to smoke, your chances of cancer increase dramatically. If we do nothing to fix our democracy, each year that goes by will increase the chances of civil violence.
Failure to fix the flaws in our democracy make us weaker in so many ways. Divisions of race and class are bad for democracy. Keeping certain groups from voting, making it hard for certain groups to move up the economic ladder (not providing equal educational opportunities to all) make us weaker. Let's try to fix the problem. Passing laws making it hard for minorities, seniors and young people to vote may be a temporary fix to those trying to stay in power, but in the end, the voice of the majority will be heard, if we are to stay a democracy.
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