The 2018 elections swept into power a revolutionary government in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It’s revolutionary in its leaps away from the customary understanding on highly polarizing issues such as gun rights and abortion. These issues go to the heart of what it means to be a human being and a citizen’s relationship to the state. Like the French Revolution, this will be a revolution from the center, Raleigh being like Paris of 1789.
In 1793, the Reign of Terror, headquartered in Paris, leaped out into the provinces in the Vendée, much of northwestern France, the region around Lyon, etc. The Terror with its revolutionary tribunals, mass executions, and vicious assaults on the Church ignited a popular rvolt against the Revolution’s scheme of radical utopia. Suppression in the provinces took the form of slaughter and bloody class warfare. France experienced the tragedy of its own blue/red divide.
The blue/red divide may be an overused cliché to some extent but it is also very alive in Virginia. The northern urban centers and suburban districts in the shadow of DC – and heavily “blue” – have taken over the state government with the zeal to impose a whole cluster of new gun control measures on the nine-tenths of the state not so inclined. 91 of 95 counties, 13 of 38 independent cities (treated like counties), and 24 towns have already declared themselves to be Second Amendment sanctuaries in opposition to what they consider the revolution’s sweeping edicts.
How far will comrade Ralph Northam go to impose the revolution’s decrees? Maybe somewhat stunned by the opposition Northam said on Dec. 11, “If we have constitutional laws on the books and law enforcement officers are not enforcing those laws on the books then there are going to be some consequences but I’ll cross that bridge if and when we get to it.”
Virginia’s commissar Attorney General, Mark Herring, leveled an even more direct threat to the opposition districts when he declared on Dec. 20 that “they [the gun-control laws] will be enforced, and they will be followed”. Attention then shifted to the Virginia National Guard as the newly minted Army of the Revolution. Maj. Gen. Timothy P. Williams, the Adjutant General of Virginia, issued an equivocal response when questioned about the use of his troops to put down the widespread rebellion. How could he be otherwise? Nothing has happened as of yet.
Will the Army, though, allow themselves to be used as the enforcers of highly detested laws? The Army of the Revolution would be put in an awkward position when the local sheriff, DA, or jury refuses to arrest, try, or convict a parent for allowing their 17-year-old daughter access to a gun to defend herself against a couple meth-heads. Massive and passive resistance may render the revolutionaries’ dream of a gun-free utopia mute. Or will it? If history is any guide, secular political utopias have the nasty habit of becoming coercive, very coercive.
The blue/red divide is nothing new. And it seems that our modern revolutions always have a “blue” cast in their attempt to overturn a deeply-rooted and traditional ethos. Welcome to Virginia’s historical rhyming with late 18th-century France. Will it be as traumatic? I hope not.
RogerG