Book review: "Cold Civil War," by Jim Belcher
A promising book that falls victim to what it criticizes
I recently finished Cold Civil War: Overcoming Polarization, Discovering Unity, and Healing the Nation, by author, pastor, and scholar Jim Belcher. Motivated by increasing polarization in American politics and society, Belcher promotes an interesting framework for understanding our country’s divisions, while also suggesting a possible way forward rooted in “the new vital center.”
I was excited to read this book. As a political scientist who is concerned about the implications of polarization for American political institutions and the voters who evaluate them, Belcher—who earned a PhD in political philosophy from Georgetown—seemed like he would be a helpful voice to shepherd Christians through a difficult and often confusing moment.
And in some ways, he is. Belcher clearly cares deeply about the American political experiment. He would not have written this book otherwise. The book is at its strongest when Belcher is bringing the work of Alexis de Tocqueville and natural law theorist J. Budziszewski to bear on our current situation. Where we are today, Belcher believes, is in many ways a result of changes to our foundational culture and creed. We can dispute whether or not this is a net negative or positive, but it’s hard to argue that we haven’t seen changes at all.
At other times, though, Cold Civil War is deeply frustrating. The primary reason for this frustration is that, while framed as critiquing every element of the political divide, Belcher cannot keep his personal biases from clouding the book’s argument. The result is a work that critiques Democrats and some Republicans, while expressing sympathy and even admiration for the populist elements of the GOP currently guiding that party’s direction.
Belcher, of course, is allowed to have biases; we all do. And it would be unfair to expect Belcher to keep these biases from influencing his work — in fact, early in the book he acknowledges that he is coming from a particular perspective. But these biases are downright distracting at times, and in some instances lead to head-scratching observations and claims. A selection:
After acknowledging hypocrisy among Democrats and Republicans when it comes to the moral failings of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Belcher draws a serious false equivalency between Trump and Joe Biden:
For the past four years we heard nonstop about how Trump was a danger to the institutions of democracy, and now progressive evangelicals say nothing about Biden, who in his first one hundred days has signed more executive orders, bypassing Congress, than any president in history (p. 22).
Say what you want about the nature of executive orders being good or bad for our constitutional system, but Joe Biden did not invent the practice. For decades presidents from both parties have used them to fill the gaps in enforcing increasingly vague and ambiguous laws passed by Congress. To suggest that Biden’s executive orders are on par with the post-2020 rhetoric and behavior of Donald Trump, in terms of attacking our country’s institutions, is simply wrong.
Similarly, in multiple instances Belcher downplays the seriousness of the violence that took place on January 6, 2021. After equating Trump and Biden for their respective language on January 6 and in Biden’s inaugural address (p. 5), Belcher later referenced the “bad optics” of the Capitol violence, before adding that those involved “pose almost no threat to the survival of the US government” (p. 190). He also claimed Trump’s second impeachment trial, following the violence, was “actually conducted not for unity, but to further divide us” (p. 56).
While Belcher is right in a sense that the number of people involved in the January 6 violence represents a small sliver of the population (and nowhere near the entire coalition that voted for Donald Trump), it is a mistake to say these actors “pose almost no threat.” After all, the constitutional process of certifying a presidential election was interrupted for several hours, an unprecedented event in American history. People broken into the Capitol and occupied the House chamber, sending lawmakers scrambling for cover. Given Belcher’s various (and legitimate) critical references to the rioting that took place in American cities during the summer of 2020 (e.g., pp. 25, 95-98), it’s bizarre for him to essentially excuse the events of January 6 as relatively harmless.
Belcher’s regular focus on “bipartisan ruling elites” committed to “mass immigration and eventually open borders” in order to “transform America economically, politically, and culturally” (p. 227) better resembles a Tucker Carlson monologue instead of a serious attempt to propose an alternative framework to our polarization problem. Indeed, it is when Belcher is discussing immigration (something he does throughout the book) that his sympathy for populist Republican policy is clearest. It’s hard to take Belcher’s mission particularly seriously when these sections effectively mimic content from right-leaning media sources.
Belcher occasionally makes odd choices about describing certain people and groups. In particular:
James Lindsay, the writer and Twitter provocateur, is described as a “professor” (p. 83) and “liberal” (p. 92), despite being neither.
The Center for Immigration Studies, a right-leaning think tank advocating restrictions on immigration, is described as “bipartisan” (p. 228), but nothing else.
I suppose my biggest criticism of Cold Civil War is that it doesn’t seem to know what it is. At times, it is a thoughtful and clarifying reflection on the American political experiment; pp. 256-264 is an excellent example of this. Further, his framework of categorizing our political divides—novel, though not unique—is helpful in thinking about the complexities that exist within our political discourse.
But at other times the book falls into rhetoric and writing you’d expect from Carlson, Lou Dobbs, or other popular conservative commentators. It rails against “ruling elites,” immigration and open borders, the welfare state, globalization, and popular punching bags like Critical Race Theory and “Big Tech.” It’s whiplash-inducing to read work from a thoughtful political philosopher that occasionally transforms into a column for The Federalist.
I do appreciate Belcher’s attempt to deal with our culture of polarization. His framework, outlined in the book’s first and second chapters, really is insightful in explaining how various elements of our political divide relate to and oppose one another. Moreover, this framework is precise in highlighting the various elements within political perspectives, reflecting a complexity that is often lost in too many accounts.
This is why I was ultimately disappointed in Cold Civil War. It is a promising book that falls victim to the polarization and divisions it effectively identifies and critiques. For Christians searching for a path through our polarized era, Belcher’s framework is a good start. But readers should be aware of the biases at the heart of the book, lest they mistake one Christian approach for the Christian approach.
The author advances a new "Lost Cause" principle. A principle that has grown out of the Southern explanation of the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. He looks at names only and not the history of the migration of southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) to the Republican Party. The Republican Party of today ignores the possibility of discrimination and focuses on the disruption people who see inequality not behaving as he would like and ignores the actions of whites doing the same thing. He also fails to note Republican party before Ronald Reagan was elected, still stood for Civil Rights and also abided by the precedents created by the Crash of 1929. Then banking "reforms" between 1986 to 2000 resulted in the housing and banking crisis of 2008 where phony assets of Mortgage Derivatives and Junk Bonds came crashing down like a house of cards.
This is very insightful. I gained a sense early on that he was writing his story around the current "right-wing" party without explaining Trump, who is a force of his own. The lack of center in our politics will not change if Americans fail to notice the clear "divide and conquer" politics of today.