Colwell: Given hellish political climate, does democracy stand a snowball's chance?

A national survey by Notre Dame’s Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy finds more than half of Republicans (52 percent) and more than a third of Democrats (36 percent) believe we are on the brink of a new civil war.

And the threat of violence to democracy is cited in two recent books.

One is by Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize winning historian, who likens conditions now to divisions just before the civil war. The other is by Luke Mogelson, a journalist who maintained close contact with Jan. 6 insurrectionists and even went with them into the Capitol.

Professor Matthew Hall, Rooney Center director, warned of dangers to democracy when the Notre Dame survey results were released in November.

“Is it really as bad as it seems? The answer is yes,” Hall said.

To be clear, Hall wasn’t predicting a civil war. He was warning of the dangers to democracy when so many Americans now question democratic principles and find differences so great that they see civil war as a possibility.

Differences? Wow.

The survey found that 78 percent of Democrats thought the Jan. 6 hearings proved that Donald Trump was responsible for the riot, while 62 percent of Republicans believed they did not.

While 45 percent of Republicans said Joe Biden stole the presidential election, Democrats almost unanimously disagreed, with 75 percent strongly disagreeing.

 There also were differences on voting rights. While 89 percent of Democrats said everyone should be allowed to vote, just 51 percent of Republicans agreed.

When asked about a statement that the true American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it, 44 percent of Republicans, 22 percent of Democrats and 25 percent of Independents agreed. Scary.

In his bestselling new biography of Abraham Lincoln, “And There Was Light,” Meacham describes angry divisiveness as Lincoln became president. He expresses concern for democracy now and says lessons can be learned from what happened back then.

He tells of the fear then that outgoing Vice President John Breckinridge, sympathetic to the Southern cause, might not carry out his constitutional duty of accepting electoral votes from the states for the presidential winner. But Breckinridge opened the certificates and declared the results showing Lincoln’s victory.

There also were fears then that a mob might attack messengers carrying the electoral results for the proceedings. A hundred plainclothes police were stationed along the route of the messengers from the Senate to the House.

Mogelson, normally a war correspondent, covered the violence in America leading up to and during the Jan. 6 insurrection. The writes about it in his book, “The Storm Is Here.”

He developed contacts with leaders of the Capitol insurrection and went in with them as they stormed the building, recording the events of that day.

In interviews afterward, Mogelson followed up with questions about future plans for other actions. To a question of what happens if Trump runs for president again in 2024 and loses again, an insurrection backer depicted a scene where “blood runs knee-high in the streets.”

In wars he covered abroad, Mogelson found real, understandable reasons for conflict over atrocities and land conquest. Here, he fears it would be “a war fueled not by injury but by delusion.”

 Hall, Notre Dame professor of political science and law, isn’t predicting bloody civil war. But he warns of divisions posing a grave threat to American democracy. Democracy is neither inevitable nor easy, he says. It’s like a snowball that has to be pushed up the hill. “It’s effortful, its tiring, it demands a vigilance. And you take a break or you assume you are already up the hill, and it will roll down back on you.”

If there is no change in the hellish climate of myriad conspiracy theories and political hatreds, will democracy stand a snowball’s chance?

Jack Colwell is a columnist for The Tribune. Write to him in care of The Tribune or by email at jcolwell@comcast.net.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame study finds bipartisan belief: we're on brink of civil war