Good point. Let’s remember an earlier example: when Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner was beaten in the Senate chamber by a southern colleague. (Good thing gentlemen no longer carry walking sticks!) The major parties must share basic values; they must disagree only over how to translate those values into policy. It follows that when Brooks assaulted Sumner and when Democrats lie and violate canons of ordinary decency to destroy an administration, it’s time to begin asking which of our historic, basic values have disappeared from not just the Congress but also from those sections of the populace that have been cheering the Congressional Left—and why.

The collapse of the Senate club atmosphere shows that the country is increasingly divided into the “Red Nation” and the “Blue Nation” and that these two peoples have little in common. Their representatives therefore have gone from collegiality to cold war. One might even stretch it a bit and say that the Civil War was concluded in a cease fire that in the end decided nothing. So politics have become war by another means.