There is a civil war in progress in Summit County and across America. No gun shots have been fired, yet, but there have certainly been endless daily volleys launched from the left and the right raining down their verbal powder on unsuspecting citizens on the ground.

It’s not a war for physical territory; it’s a war for the hearts and minds of voters. The ammo is the media newscasts, and the goal is the control of our government for the next generation and beyond.

We have always had this battle raging between conservatives and liberals, even from the very beginning of our republic when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson wrestled with federalism versus aristocratic nationalism or when Alexander Hamilton called for more national control of the banking system over the states.

The battles persisted from 1776 up to the current ideological conflict in 2021. The difference now is that the winner of the current battle will control our government, our culture and our freedoms into the foreseeable future.

The Keynesian model of central planning is warring against the small government model of Friedrich Hayek. One group of thinkers is convinced that a relatively small set of elite statists can make better decisions about how to run our daily lives. The other group of thinkers subscribes to a laissez-faire philosophy that believes we as individuals can adequately govern ourselves on a daily basis.

The two groups are diametrically opposed to one another. Simply put, it is socialists versus capitalists with the former advocating control and later seeking prosperity.

Let’s let a quick review of recent economic and political history be our teacher. Every Democratic president since Carter has presided over a prosperity-crushing recession, and Biden is on track to make sure history repeats itself. Republican administrations under Reagan, Bush I, Bush II and Trump cut taxes and reduced onerous government regulations, allowing the middle class to prosper.

Democrats Carter, Clinton, Obama and Biden then came in and knocked the pins out from under GOP-inspired prosperity with higher taxes and repressive anti-business regulations imposed on the producers causing prices to increase and wages to decrease.

This is the battleground that is on fire in our nation and locally in Summit County. Our town councils and the Summit Board of County Commissioners are dominated by the big government central planning advocates who now exert control over us in the areas of personal property ownership rights, public education directives and individual versus collective health care decisions.

The battle lines are drawn, the propaganda machines are firing incessant rounds and the only way to decide the winners is at the ballot box in every election from school board up to president.

But for now, let’s take a cease fire while we contemplate the goodness, the generosity and the liberty of the most benevolent society in human history. Let us consider the Christian foundation of our great republic and the birth of the only perfect human being in the Bethlehem manger 2,000 years ago.

Let us all be brothers and sisters in the annual celebration of that holy birth and seek to let Jesus Christ be our guide, our mentor, our teacher and our friend as we battle life and one another. Let us seek peace on earth and goodwill toward men. Let us pray for our enemies that we may all find common ground in the love of our savior.

Merry Christmas!

Kim McGahey’s column “Conservative Common Sense” publishes biweekly on Tuesdays in the Summit Daily News. McGahey is a real estate broker, tea party activist and former Republican candidate. He has lived in Breckenridge since 1978. Contact him at kimmcgahey@gmail.com.