Increasing Political Polorization in America?
 

An old friend sent me this. It is apparently gaining traction as it spreads through the blogosphere. Is it indicative of increasing polarization in America?

Is it evidence of an awakening of the "silent majority?"

An update from Oklahoma.

The state law passed today (April 19), 37 to 9, had a few liberals in the mix, an amendment to place the Ten Commandments on the front entrance to the state capitol. The feds in DC, along with the ACLU, said it would be a mistake. Hey this is a conservative state, based on Christian values...! Guess what..........We did it anyway.

We recently passed a law in the state to incarcerate all illegal immigrants, and ship them back to where they came from, unless they want to get a green card and become an American citizen. They all scattered. Hope we didn't send any of them to your state. This was against the advice of the Federal Government, and the ACLU, they said it would be a mistake. Guess what..........we did it anyway..

Yesterday we passed a law to include DNA samples from any and all illegals to the Oklahoma database, for criminal investigative purposes. Pelosi said it was unconstitutional. Guess what........We did it anyway.

Several weeks ago, we passed a law, declaring Oklahoma as a Sovereign state, not under the Federal Government directives. That, for your information, makes Oklahoma and Texas the only states to do so. Guess what.........More states are likely to follow. Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, both Carolina's, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, West Virginia, just to name a few. Should Mississippi act, so will Florida. Save your confederate money, it appears the South is about to rise up once again.

The federal Government has made bold steps to take away our guns. Oklahoma, a week ago, passed a law confirming people in this state have the right to bear arms and transport them in their vehicles. I'm sure that was a set back for the Kennedys and Ms Pelosi. Guess what..........We did it anyway.

By the way, Obama does not like any of this. Guess what....who cares...were doing it anyway

In my lifetime, I cannot remember when "we the people" have been so passionately divided. Will this division get even more sinister as we move away from traditional values and into a form of government that so many are so suspicious and resentful of? Where will the polarization end in the best case scenario and the worst case scenario? Is there a soft landing in middle ground or do we as a nation implode?

What interesting times we live in.

It is clear that the federal government no longer has our best interest at heart but instead their own best interest and power.


"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

Original draft of the U.S. Declaration of Indepence, written by Thomas Jefferson, 1776

"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing"
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1787

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed now and then with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1787

That is a great concept.
 

I know Michigan is not a part of the Confederacy however, would you mind if we joined up.
Seriously, that is not a huge problem in Michigan yet. But...I am sure it will be someday.
We only have a few problems.
Chrysler, GM and at least 12% unemployment:crap2:

I think the political divisons have always been there. Reading documents and commentary from the 1760-1780 period shows quite a bit of division, as not as many as the history books would make one believe were truly for revolution and cessation from England.

What we have today, absent from any other generation, is instant and global communications media which allows everyone access to everyone else. That access level just makes the obvious (political division) more available to commentary by the average citizen, and that commentary actually finding a willing audience.

States can pass all the laws they want, to include setting public flogging for littering if the states so desire. Until the laws are challenged in court, and a final decision is accepted at some level (If a constitutional challenge, the U.S. Supreme Court has finality if appealed that far), the laws are the laws.

As far as cessation of states, that's not going to happen any more here than it happened in Canada when the Quebecois pushed for it. When the solution is simply "vote the bums out," that's still the approach to take.

We don't need a revolution - we need an electorate that doesn't act like sheep.

"We don't need a revolution - we need an electorate that doesn't act like sheep. "

__________________________________________________ _____

Agree Steve....AND...

Candidates in both parties who do not espouse radical viewpoints !

well stated
 

Pogo said it best though....we have met the enemy, and it is us.

Yea!!! Cheers for Ignorance!
 

With apologies to Slidell, LA!

So let's cheer Texas and the rest of the Sovereign South. Still fighting the centuries' old game of "State's Rights" to cover over the self-destructive desire to lower the standards of living for all so that taxes don’t have to be paid.

Never mind that secessionist Texas governor Rick Davis was the first to come running back to the government to get help with swine flu.

Secession-minded Southern-states apologists seem to ignore or simply deny, that they have the lowest standard of living, have the worst health care, worst dental care, lowest rates of graduation, highest illiteracy rates lowest paying jobs, worst living conditions, HIGHEST teen pregnancy rates, HIGHEST divorce rates... on and on.

Like "Proud to be a Redneck" bumper stickers, it's as if an alcholic knows" that his lot improves everytime he takes another drink, all the while destroying his liver. With all the remarkable gifts that the South has to offer, with all the advances it receives from the allocation of money from the Federal Government, it amazes me how combative "so called" secessionists can be.

I also doubt the memo writer's conclusion about the South "rising" again. In fact, given that it's viral, there may very well be a lot of innaccuracies in it from the start. History shows that the South has been on the wrong side of virtually every social justice movement since the Emancipation Proclamation, defiantly proud that "states' rights" keeps the bulk of Dixie seething in its own hatred.

Slavery, Voting Rights, Segregation, Academies, Women's Rights, Interracial Marriage, Privacy in the Bedroom, a Woman's Right to Choice, and now the right of same-sex couples to affirm their love and dedication to each other. The South still seems to deny its culpability, and only wants to run and hide.

Every time one of these issues arise, one can be certain to hear the screams of condemnation, fear and bigotry coming from some Southern TV preacher, or some outraged southern politico.

The cultural divide does get wider, but is either side ever going to say, "We need to talk about this?" That would be the first step to smoothing out the edges. We may never be able to expect much more from that.

Apparently it's "ignorance" if it doesn't agree with the enlightened view at the far end of Cape Cod.

What you call free choice, others call feticide.

What you call worst living conditions - I've been in northern public housing projects, and pretty they aren't. I can remember the Columbia Point Housing Project in Boston which PBS once documented in a program called "Biography of a Vertical Slum." Things haven't gotten much better since.

High paying jobs in the North? Apparently the folks in Brockton, Lowell, Pittsfield, Worcester, Chelsea, Revere, Rockland, Taunton, New Bedford, and many other places within a two-hour drive from Boston need to know where those jobs are. That information may help ease the double-digit unemployment rate in those locations and provide more tax money to clean the streets.

Yes, there is a cultural divide, but it has little to do with regionalism.

Proud to be a redneck - if you only understood what "redneck" really was. The smug urbanite view is far from reality, and mostly from a little envy, which explains its need to belittle what the urbanite can't be. But I guess it's like the joy of motorcycling - If I have to explain it, you wouldn't understand....

As far as the South being on the wrong side of anything, that again is nothing but northern snobbery as seeing itself in such a know-it-all fashion that nothing else could possibly be correct.

The real ignorance is looking in the mirror and seeing the reflection as being the only correct image of an American.

When you check the demographic shifts within this nation, you will find there a lot more folk moving to the South than the North, and it has been that way for many a year. If it's so good up North, why aren't more people staying there?

Proud to a honorary "redneck."

A year ago we moved from the left coast to middle Tennessee. I was born and raised in California and my only regret was I didn't leave 30 years ago. Men still open doors for ladies and kids know the words mam and sir. When I'm out mowing my property people actualy drive by and wave instead of flashing gang signs.

I think polarization is a good thing. It means people are taking a stand.

[QUOTE=dklassen;201870]

"... that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government,..."

Yup.

Did that. It was called "an election". And it happened in Novemeber, 2009.

Real Potential for the Country to Split?
 

The idea of this country splitting may not be so far fetched, as it would seem. Igor Panarin, a well respected Russian academic and futurist has long predicted there is a 55/45% chance that the US will split apart in 2010 under demographic and economic pressures. See the WSJ article at:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html

There are definitely conflicting demographic forces pulling the various parts of the US in different directions. The New England states are in irreversible population decline for the reason’s outlined in MMC24’s post. The southwest and southern CA are growing rapidly with the influx of illegal aliens. Our soaring national debt may come crashing down on us. What happens when the Chinese and OPEC demand to be paid in Euros rather than dollars? I suspect inflation similar to that experienced in Brazil in the 80’s when people would cash their paychecks and run out to buy something/anything knowing that the same amount of money would buy significantly less next week.

[quote=Laker14;202348]:agree::agree::agree:

[quote=Laker14;202348]I beg to differ.

The US Government was not altered, abolished nor a new government instituted. What in fact happened last November and January was a peaceful and lawful continuation of the current government according to the Constitution.

This is not an insignificant point, as the fact this nation can indeed peacefully continue with periodic changes in executive administration and/or legislative direction is utterly magnificent.

"Change" occurs every four to eight years, and the government continues. What wise and fabulous men the Founding Fathers were!

God bless and protect the United States of America!

Kool-aid. Obama passed it out people stepped right up to the bar. That's what happened in Nov of 2009.

What I mean by Kool-aid is when someone tells you the way out of your difficult financial situation is to max out all your credit cards, then go get more and the person says "sounds good to me."

Steve,
I am from MA, north of Boston and now Cape Cod (not the outermost part) and hopefully to be a Villager someday. Your post was excellent. This state works for two groups of people. Those in the system and those on the system. Their machine is soooo large that voters in private industry can not vote them out. The answer to every problem is "more programs" which means more hacks and more hack relatives.
Some day I'd like to buy you one of those $1.75 margaritas.
Thanks for your service
Rich from Cape Cod (for now)

I didn't drink any Kool-Aid. Nobody told me the way out of my trouble was to max out all of my credit cards and then get more and do it again.

Someone did tell me that we could spend a trillion dollars on a war, borrow that trillion from the Chinese so we could say we didn't raise taxes, try to justify that war in part by telling me there were WMDs that didn't exist. That same someone told me the way out of our trouble was to feed our insatiable thirst for fossil fuels by blowing off the tops of the mountains in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia and plowing what's left over into what used to be rivers and streams, poisoning hundreds of square miles of watershed.

You see, not everyone who voted for Obama "drank the Kool-Aid". Some of us just looked at what GW's administration did to this country for 8 years and said, "we can't let this go on".

While the Bush administration was far from perfect, how it responded to Al Qa'ida attacks on the homeland, and how it responded to thwart future attacks on the homeland was correct. If it costs 100 Trillion to keep the homeland safe, isn't it worth it? What's the alternative?

No administration - Clinton, Bush or Obama - forced (or is forcing) any private person to load up their Mastercard, and pay the bill with a new Visa card, or to buy a car/SUV/truck that g3ets less than 20 MPG, or buy a house which the mortgage was higher than the person could afford. Yet, there seems to b e a feeling that it's the responsibility of the White House to parent the public. When does the private person accept responsibility for his/her decisions to spend or act?

There's an old saying that "you can't legislate stupidity." If private persons do stupid things, or at least actions of which constitute frivolity, then it's their responsibility to accept the consequences of their actions - not expect their frivolity/stupidity to be projected to whoever resides in the White House.

If anyone sees Pres. Obama as their surrogate parent who shall bandage their financially skinned knee, raise their allowance, or bail them out for their child-like actions, they will be in for a shocking surprise. That's not his job. I've searched the Constitution from beginning to end, and can find nowhere within it which makes the president "Daddy."

Again, right back to Bush and glossing over all the current facts. Doesn't matter to anyone what Obama is doing just as long as they can keep trashing a former Presadent to divert attention from what's really going on. Can't do it forever my friends. Obama owns the economy now. It's his budget, his bail outs, his take overs, his redristrabution of weath, his taxes, his spending, his new programs and his new mountains debt that he is creating.

Oh brother. :oops:

I am inclined to conclude the Bush bashers are media/party line educated
 

ONLY. The responses are so canned it seems like all one has to do is pull the string and they play back.
It would be a pity if they voted against Bush and not for Obama....yes there is a difference. Instead of diatribe about ending the previous administration how about enlightening us about what it is Obama did....what he did....to earn your vote.
Yes we all agree he is a good teleprompter reader of prepared speeches. When he is off the cuff he is average using uh and um just like most do. He is a great story teller and is going to fix everything....we shall see. So far the trillions being pumped out of Washington have yet to get to we the people. So far words, words words.

Some of us will get our $250 booster from SS this month. That outta help the economy:1rotfl:

BTK

As one of the television commercials states..."PRICELESS"
 

That is why pictures are worth much more than the words....it just nails it!

Thanx for the visual aid.

BTK

PS yes I do appreciate all the Bush toons/characatures/and jokes too!!!

That attitude reminds me of the old Popeye cartoon, where Popeye is taking a nap, and a bug gets in his ear. He escalates his attempts to eradicate the bug from his life, until, in the closing scene, he his demolishing his own home with a shot gun. He winds up with no home left to protect, and he never does kill the bug.

No, I daresay, it would not be worth $100 trillion dollars, because at some point our resources would be so depleted we'd have no homeland left to protect.

.

Oh Brother. That's what I said when GW undid years of EPA work with the stroke of a pen. Must not bother you, since it isn't your back yard. Of course, it is somebody's back yard. Actually, it's a lot of people's back yards.

oh brother.

That's where we differ.

Many good people have believed (and still do) there is no price, to include the ultimate one, that is too much to keep the homeland safe. So, while some consider this nation is worth dying for, others think it's only worth so much money and not a dime more.

Yes, we do have a cultural difference.

I think the State of New Hampshire got it right in 1945.

I think where we differ is in our opinion of whether or not the goal, worthy as it is, to make the homeland safe is:

a. achievable, and

b. achievable by military invasion of Iraq.

And it is normal for people of conscience to interpret facts differently. That's what makes the species homo sapiens so interesting.

Let me tell you about my Dad. He graduated 2 years early from high school at the age of 16, class valedictorian.
He is a WWII Vet.
During the war the Army sent him to LSU , where he finished #1 in his class.

After the war, while holding down a full time job, to support a wife and two kids, he resumed his education at Cornell, which had been interrupted by the war. He got his degree in Chemical Engineering, and finished 6th in his class.

When he retired he was the Division Head of International Engineering for a Fortune 500 company. He is, to this day, the smartest man I've ever known, both in terms of intellectual capacity, and "horse sense."

He voted for Obama.

I also know some damn smart people who voted for McCain.

To suggest that everyone who voted for a candidate did so out of ignorance, stupidity, or the desire to have something "handed" to him, is not only insulting, it makes you look really stupid.

I always ask people who voted for Obama to give me some specifics on his proposed policies that made you want vote for him.

More often than not I either get a blank stare or it was because they hated Bush. A few just plain liked the guy but knew very little about his actual plans. Kind of like the stimulus plan, lots of smart people voted for it but never actually read it.

A lot of the young people that voted for Obama did it because they thought it was the cool in thing to do. Most of them couldn't even give the name of our current Vice President and you know they don't have a clue about policy. Some of them were college grads.

I'm not referring to your dad but lots of big time colleges graduate highly educated people that believe socialism is truly the way to go. Well, they got their man.

Just as many "educated" people believe that free market, capitalism, limited government is the way to go. I believe a few of them even wrote our constitution.

Just as many "educated" people know that you can't get out of a financial pickle by spending money like a drunken sailor.

There is NO, ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT, in my mind that President Obama is President today because of the hate for GW Bush.

Other ingredients, of course, was the Republican candidate who I thought waged a very poor campaign and who I only supported as an alternative to Obama.

Imagine ANY candidate of any party running for President, at any time. who spent twenty years listening to a pastor preach hate and calling him his religious and personal mentor, who spent his ENTIRE career training under and with folks who believe in socialism and the downfall of captialism being elected our President.

I cannot conceive of someone like that ever getting close to even being a candidate, but the hate of GW Bush transcended everything and YES..folks wanted a new message NO MATTER WHAT THE MESSAGE, and that is what we got.

I predicted accuretly during the campaign where President Obama, AND IMPORTANTLY, in concert with the current congress would take us. He is moving that way quicker and stronger than even I expected. He say he is not about politics but meets 3 times a week with Axlerod to discuss nothing but politics...he is using the manual he learned so totally as a communtiy organizer.

Random thoughts:

1. The writers of the Constitution were all members of the Elite class. When they said "all men are created equal", they were not referring to Blacks, Native Americans, or Women.

2. They built into the document the frameworks for change, as they were evidently savvy enough to understand that the basis for our government would need to be modified as times change.

3. I have to smile a little bit when people on Medicaire and Social Security rail about "socialism."

A few more thoughts.

1. Not even sure how address that one, I don't get your point. I guess that gives Obama license to do whatever he wants?

2. What exactly is the frame work for change built into the Constitution?

3. I don't get your logic with this one. If I read my pay check correctly there are dollars confiscated twice a month against my will for certain benefits to which I did not opt-into. Did I have a choice?

How about this, Obama refunds all my SS money since I was 18 and he can keep my SS benefits when I retire.

Difference
 

As to #3, you must be self-employed (and choose not to pay in) or not/never employed at all, if you think SS and Medicare are "free". I paid SS from the time I was 16 until I retired and then worked part-time and still paid on those wages. As for the Medicare, "premiums" are deducted every month just like any other insurance and between the two of us, that's a good chunk of what you consider "socialism". Check it out, put a pencil to it and then tell us we're getting something that you alone are paying for.

I never said they are "free", nor did I mean to imply that "you", whoever "you" are, are receiving something you didn't earn, or don't deserve. They are examples of social programming, designed to ensure that a certain segment of the population that was once very vulnerable to finding itself without money, without healthcare, and without the means to support oneself.

As for me, I have been employed since I got out of school, 32 years now. I have "contributed" the max every year. The likelihood that I'll get out of the system what I've been forced, by law, to put into the system is very small.

Nevertheless, I still think this country is a better place for having done something to make sure that people too old, or too sick to work anymore, aren't left with nothing.

When FDR was pushing the program, he was labelled a socialist. And it was an accurate statement.

Pure unfettered Capitalism has, as it's endpoint, the same result as a game of Monopoly. One player winds up with everything. Along the way, before the game concludes, the more assets the player amasses, the more the odds are stacked in that player's favor. The difference of course being that when you lose at Monopoly you feel relieved because you get to go to bed, but in real life you and the kids wind up on the street.

Thanks
 

for explaining exactly what you meant, Laker14. I appreciate your reply. You apparently understand where I was coming from. I just get tired of hearing how we are somehow out to get something for nothing and that someone else is having to foot the bill. There are plenty who see it that way. You're right, none of us will ever get out what we put into it. There are also many who paid in a lifetime with that lifetime ending up being too short to ever receive anything in return. Not really a fair system, is it? I don't have a solution but I wish I did. Had those funds not been raided for years by the politicians for their own agendas, perhaps then it wouldn't be a problem needing a fix now.

They are paid for programs that have nothing to do with
 

real socialism. A more appropriate smack would be the "free" money being made available to those who are not paying their mortgages (for what ever reason).

It is very easy to identify socialism based countries just take a look at the average tax rates...the ones at the top of the percentage table are socialist entities.

BTK

gotta lot to say..but I gotta go to work.

Have a good weekend. Keep those cards and letters coming, folks.

The tax rate in the UK is 60%. Guess what, the government is broke.

Actually, so is ours..think National Debt.

Fact checking:

Maximum tax rate in UK is 40 %; blended tax rate would be somewhat lower.