By Peter Lemiska

It’s no secret that our country is deeply divided today. One side applauds our president and his efforts to keep our citizens safe and make our country stronger. But the president’s opponents despise everything about him, his administration, and his policies. They bitterly resist everything he stands for.

It’s not the first time that America’s citizens have been at odds. But many have suggested we haven’t been this divided since the Civil War.

The bloodiest war in U.S. history began roughly 165 years ago. The Civil War is usually described as a war between the states, essentially a conflict between the North and South. But it wasn’t a territorial dispute, nor was it fought over natural resources. The war that tore our country apart was fought over ideology. The Confederacy, consisting mostly of Southern Democrat states, was led by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, also a Democrat. The fact is, it was mostly Democrats who fought ferociously to preserve the scourge of slavery in America.

Of course, ultimately it was Republican President Abraham Lincoln who forever ended the practice of slavery in this country.

But after his Emancipation Proclamation, there was still a long way to go in the struggle for racial equality. For decades after the Civil War, racial hatred was intense, and tensions remained high. Determined to suppress Republican Reconstruction policies by any means necessary, former Confederate officers formed the Ku Klux Klan, notorious for its violence against black people. Even as late as the 1950s, black Americans were still struggling against racist policies, Jim Crow laws, and segregation.

Prominent segregationists of the early 1900s are still remembered today. Most were Democrats, like “Bull” Connor, Lester Maddox, and George Wallace. As the Democrat Party began to moderate its views on segregation, some of those members split away to create the short-lived segregationist Dixiecrat Party.

“But that’s all ancient history,” you say.

Not exactly. It was during a 2019 presidential debate that Kamala Harris castigated Joe Biden for his earlier opposition to school busing, one of the tools used to advance integration.

Of course, today’s Democrat Party shows no hint of racial bias. In fact, Democrats now see themselves as champions of black Americans. What caused the reversal?

Maybe they’re suffering from white guilt — the same guilt every white American is supposed to share with them. Or maybe they just came to realize they need the support of minority voters for political power.

Regardless, Democrats have become consumed with their new role as warriors of social justice.

So after George Floyd, a black man, was killed while resisting arrest, they decided that the police department — all police departments, in fact — needed to be punished. They came up with an utterly insane idea, something never before considered: Defund the police. Some Democrat-run cities actually tried it, until the resulting explosion of crime opened their eyes to the foolishness of their experiment.

Then came Biden’s presidency, and for the next four years, Democrats droned on about systemic racism, gender dysphoria, and the so-called January 6 “insurrection.” From their perspective, they had one major accomplishment, though. They managed to acquire a bonanza of likely Democrat voters — 10 to 15 million illegal immigrants. To Democrats, the cost to our country — the safety and security of our American citizens — was inconsequential.

Today, they’re doing everything they can to keep those illegal immigrants here, and they still haven’t developed a shred of compassion for their countless victims. In cities across the country, self-appointed warriors of justice are forcefully resisting efforts to remove these people. And in the halls of Congress, Democrat lawmakers are banding together to oppose laws intended to make our country safer and our elections more secure. Once again, Democrats are trying to cripple the very agencies dedicated to keeping us safe. Their contempt for law enforcement has positioned them to support illegal aliens and criminals over decent, law-abiding American citizens.

Polls show that the SAVE America Act, a Republican proposal that would require voter ID, is universally supported by Americans across the country. But nearly 100% of Senate Democrats oppose it. They oppose it for the same obvious reason that they’re trying to defund ICE, for the same reason they welcomed those millions of interlopers in the first place.

Maybe Democrat leaders are misguided, obtuse, or just corrupt, but they always seem to be on the wrong side of history, dragging their constituents along in one bizarre direction after another.

More than 60 years ago, Democrat President John F. Kennedy made this simple, but prophetic, observation: “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.”

Democrats today seem to believe that nothing is too much to ask.