Law is a consensus. But the left rejects that consensus. It subjects each law to an ideological test. If the law meets the ideological test, which is based on social justice criteria entirely foreign to the American legal system, and the practical test of furthering social justice, it can stay. If not, then it will either be struck down or disregarded. They have applied that same ideological test to the nation as a whole and decided that the existence of the United States does not meet their ideological tests.

Political factions in the past may have engaged in bare-knuckle political hostilities but they all agreed that the United States in its past, present and future forms was the proper arena for their disputes and that the maintenance of an objective system of laws was the best way to ensure its perpetuation. When that consensus broke down, a civil war resulted. Now the consensus is in even worse tatters.

It’s not the Tea Party that is the new Confederacy, as popular a media talking point as that may be. The new threat isn’t secessionist, but supersessionist. The new Confederacy isn’t out to break up the Union into territorial slices, but to replace the Union with a new and different Union. Call it the Confederacy of the Community Organizers, the War between the Unions or the Supersession War.