It’s Christmas Day, and I’m disinclined to write at any length, especially because I suspect most of you are doing something more pleasurable with your time than getting depressed about the state of politics in America today.

Having said that, I didn’t want the day to end without sharing with you a remarkable tweet that Victor Davis Hanson published yesterday, discussing the parallel behaviors of Democrats in 1861—behaviors that led to an extraordinarily violent civil war—and Democrats in 2023 who seem cavalierly unaware that it is possible to break a country and to do so quite badly.

Here’s the tweet:

Ballot Banishing And Our New Leftwing Confederates

In the election of 1860, southern Democrats in 10 states of the soon-to-be formalized Confederacy made it almost impossible for their own voters to cast ballots for Abraham Lincoln for President.

In that sense, the Left in…

— Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) December 24, 2023

The takeaway: The Confederates used the concept of state’s rights to sidestep the Constitution and impose totalitarian rule on their states. Today’s Democrats use the concept of “democracy” to sidestep the Constitution and impose totalitarian rule not only on their states but on America as a whole.

Image: Internet meme by @APOCTOZ

(While I've got your attention, I'll be off for two weeks, but I'm incredibly happy to report that Mike McDaniel, who blogs at Stately McDaniel Manor, will be helping out in my absence. I've known Mike for almost two decades and consider him one of the smartest conservative thinkers and writers around.)