In my last post I discussed the likelihood that the US would have another civil war in the near future. Later reading the blog Instapundit I ran across a discussion of this issue by James DeLong. He is better qualified to discuss this than an engineer like me, and is a better writer. His thesis is that we are now living in the Third American Republic. The first ended with the Civil War, the second with the Great Depression and the New Deal, and the third is now long in the tooth and basically dysfunctional. The election of Obama is probably the last straw for the current "special interest" government, as government literally is biting off more than it can chew. The important question now is how the Third American Republic will end and the Fourth American Republic will start: will it be peaceful or violent.