{"id":1785235,"date":"2022-12-23T13:49:09","date_gmt":"2022-12-23T18:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1785235"},"modified":"2022-12-23T13:49:13","modified_gmt":"2022-12-23T18:49:13","slug":"christmas-bells-1864-poem-offers-hope-amid-fears-of-another-civil-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/christmas-bells-1864-poem-offers-hope-amid-fears-of-another-civil-war\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Christmas Bells\u2019: 1864 Poem Offers Hope Amid Fears Of Another Civil War"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fchristmas-bells-1864-poem-offers-hope-amid-fears-of-another-civil-war%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1785235&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Heated political rhetoric \u2014 and growing concerns about political violence \u2014 have fueled warning after warning that the United States might be headed for another Civil War.<\/p>\n<p>An <a href=\"https:\/\/today.yougov.com\/topics\/politics\/articles-reports\/2022\/08\/24\/politics-elections-economist-yougov-poll-august-20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">August 2022 poll<\/a> from The Economist\/YouGov revealed that everyday Americans worry that the country is too divided to course-correct. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deseret.com\/u-s-world\/2022\/9\/1\/23328699\/is-a-second-civil-war-likely-in-america\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">According to that poll<\/a>, 42% (half of Republicans and 39% of Democrats) believe a second civil war is at least \u201csomewhat likely\u201d within the next decade. A decisive majority \u2014 68% \u2014 believes that political violence will increase, and 86% believe that political divides have only deepened since early 2021.<\/p>\n<p>The Brookings Institute published a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/blog\/fixgov\/2021\/09\/16\/is-the-us-headed-for-another-civil-war\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">piece<\/a> in September of 2021 that outlined some of the reasons another civil war might be inevitable. Not the least of these was the sincere belief \u2014 held by most Americans, regardless of their political persuasion \u2014 that the \u201cother side\u201d was not going to play fair. Competing accusations of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/dailywire.com\/news\/democrats-georgias-record-voter-turnout-is-actually-voter-suppression\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">voter suppression<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/dailywire.com\/news\/ben-shapiro-twitter-files-show-2020-was-rigged-not-stolen-but-trump-is-hurting-himself\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">stolen elections<\/a>\u201d only serve to bolster those beliefs.<\/p>\n<p>And there are some who believe a new civil war is already underway \u2014 albeit a \u201ccold\u201d civil war absent the body count of its \u201chot\u201d counterpart. Claremont Review of Books editor Charles R. Kesler <a href=\"https:\/\/imprimis.hillsdale.edu\/americas-cold-civil-war\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">outlined<\/a> just such a \u201ccold\u201d civil war, describing it as a battle between two constitutions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnderlying our cold civil war is the fact that America is torn increasingly between two rival constitutions, two cultures, two ways of life,\u201d he said during a 2018 lecture at Hillsdale College.<\/p>\n<p>One faction, he explained, accepted the U.S. Constitution as written and amended. The other argued that the Constitution must constantly be reimagined in order to ensure that it meets the needs of a changing culture. The \u201cliving Constitution\u201d they advocate \u201cimplies that the original Constitution is dead \u2014 or at least on life support \u2014 and that in order to remain relevant to our national life, the original Constitution must be infused with new meaning and new ends and therefore with new duties, rights, and powers. To cite an important example, new administrative agencies must be created to circumvent the structural limitations that the original Constitution imposed on government.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But the fundamental problem with a second civil war in the United States \u2014 particularly one that splits Americans along ideological lines \u2014 is that there is no east-to-west or north-to-south Mason-Dixon Line along which to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2022\/01\/11\/1071082955\/imagine-another-american-civil-war-but-this-time-in-every-state\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">divide the country<\/a>. Rather, there are tiny, fragmented lines that will divide states, counties, and even individual households.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re less a nation divided into 50 states than we are two nations that are both present in each of those states. Each is dominant in its own space and certain that it is the real America,\u201d NPR\u2019s Ron Elving wrote in January of 2022.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe forces of disunity are disquieting, to say the least. But must it all come to blows? Can we still center ourselves and pull back from whatever brink we are approaching?\u201d he asked \u2014 and ultimately left the question unanswered.<\/p>\n<p>Time Magazine\u2019s Peter Coleman <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/6222633\/second-civil-war-us-how-to-avoid\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">offered hope<\/a> in a piece published in October, saying that the only way to truly lower the temperature and find common ground was for Americans \u2014 whether they be politicians and pundits or simply neighbors \u2014 to stop talking past each other and start listening to each other. He explained that when he tried this himself with a neighbor who had differing political views, he was surprised to learn first that they actually agreed on more things than he had expected, and second, that his own faulty assumptions about what \u201cthe other side\u201d believed had been a part of the problem.<\/p>\n<p>Another ray of hope as Christmas approaches comes from the <a href=\"https:\/\/poets.org\/poem\/christmas-bells\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">1864 poem<\/a> written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, penned as the nation around him was quite literally being torn to pieces: state versus state; brother versus brother.<\/p>\n<p>The first stanzas of \u201cChristmas Bells\u201d reflect on the Biblical promise of the Christmas angels, who had come to earth to herald the birth of Jesus and deliver a message of \u201cpeace on earth, good will to men.\u201d He explains that, after many hundreds of years of the church bells repeating that message, it should have resonated with all of humanity.<\/p>\n<p>I heard the bells on Christmas Day<br \/>Their old, familiar carols play,<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And wild and sweet<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The words repeat <br \/>Of peace on earth, good-will to men!<\/p>\n<p>And thought how, as the day had come,<br \/>The belfries of all Christendom<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Had rolled along<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The unbroken song<br \/>Of peace on earth, good-will to men!<\/p>\n<p>Till ringing, singing on its way,<br \/>The world revolved from night to day,<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A voice, a chime,<br \/>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A chant sublime <br \/>Of peace on earth, good-will to men!<\/p>\n<p>Longfellow turned back then to his present day and the war that threatened to consume a nation \u2014 and lamented the feeling that the Christmas message was being choked out by the hatred that drove the war to continue. His own <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nps.gov\/long\/learn\/historyculture\/christmas-bells.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">personal connection<\/a> to the war intensified when his son Charley<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heated political rhetoric \u2014 and growing concerns about political violence \u2014 have fueled warning after warning that the United States might be headed for another Civil War. An August 2022 poll from The Economist\/YouGov revealed that everyday Americans worry that the country is too divided to course-correct. According to that poll, 42% (half of Republicans &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":1785238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[6962,11482,4404,4823,11484,6922,6739,6202,4567,11481,4462,11483,6696,6195],"class_list":["post-1785235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire","tag-the","tag-11482","tag-amid","tag-another","tag-bells","tag-christmas","tag-civil","tag-daily","tag-fears","tag-hope","tag-offers","tag-poem","tag-war","tag-wire"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1785235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1785238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1785235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1785235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1785235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}