(December 1, 2018 at 9:11 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:Quote:Polarization over slavery shattered America’s still-fragile norm of mutual toleration. Democratic representative Henry Shaw assailed Republicans as “traitors to the Constitution and the Union,” while Georgia senator Robert Toombs vowed to “never permit this federal government to pass into the traitorous hands of the Black Republican Party.” Antislavery politicians, for their part, accused proslavery politicians of “treason” and “sedition.”
The erosion of basic norms expanded the zone of acceptable political action. Several years before shots were fired at Fort Sumter, partisan violence pervaded Congress. Yale historian Joanne Freeman estimates that there were 125 incidents of violence—including stabbings, canings, and the pulling of pistols—on the floor of the U.S. House and Senate between 1830 and 1860. Before long, Americans would be killing each other in the hundreds of thousands.
~ How Democracies Die
Yeah but.... Taking all of that into account, what about the fried eggs?
