Star Parker asserts that ‘shared values and principles’ in America are nearly nonexistent
I wrote a column in 2011, as the presidential politics of the upcoming year were starting to unfold, with the headline “Why 2012 looks a lot like 1860.”
The deep fracturing of the American electorate – remember the Tea Party? – leading up to the 2012 presidential election was starting to look like what happened in the presidential election in 1860, which occurred amid another massive splintering of the American electorate.
The issue of slavery in the 1850s – whether or the extent to which it should or could be tolerated in America – tore apart the fabric of common values in the nation, and the result was collapse.
There were presidential candidates in 1860 running on four different party tickets – the newly formed Republican Party, the Constitutional Union Party, and Northern and Southern parts of a split Democratic Party.
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