Wake up a pi$$; the world's on fire!
The growing animosity between the Dims/victims and the Pubbies is obvious to me. Civil war may be stretching a bit, but it appears to me that both sides are fast approaching irreconcilable positions.
FGS
Probably the most significant things that are obvious to many are the methods used in politics these days, as compared to the pre-80's. My view might be tainted somewhat, as I tend to lean towards the conservative side of the marker, but the REPUBs seem to try to handle things more fairly and business-like. The DEMs on the other hand have resorted to out and out lies and distortions of facts in order to accuse someone of something, they want to voters to think is wrong.
For instance...
Should the USA have gone to war against IRAQ?
The obvious answer that uses the most of common sense, says yes we should have. We know the outrageous activities of Saddam Hussein and for no other reason than to free the Iraqi people of his terrorist government, he should have been overthrown.
But the DEMs, would rather not look at something as trivial as the lives of a people such as Iraqi's. They rather point fingers and tell how President Bush has made the world hate America. Or how he distorted the facts on Iraq to get support to go to war against that country.
The obvious most common sense answer to those claims are quite simple, but no one seems to look at them.
There are always a group of countries in the world that want nothing more than the USA to take a beating over any issue. Whether European, Asian ir the Arab states. It doesn't matter some countries have always had a thing for newby America being so free, powerful and prosporous.
Some love us when we are a benefit to them, then want nothing to do with us as soon as that benefit goes away. It's called national pride. We have it, they have it. Nothing wrong with it either. We all just need tough skins and a hell of a state department to keep a grip on things. We'll survive with or without some of those countries. Most don't have much of an effect on our daily lives anyway. Unless you count all of the crap good Walmart is selling from China. Speaking of which, want more jobs in the USA? Then buy American made goods.
If the DEMs were fooled and taken in by a White House plan to get their support for a war with Iraq, then where the hell have the DEMs in the Congressional Committee's involving security and foreign relations been for the last 20's years? There's nothing new in what Bush said about Iraq, Clinton, George H.W. Bush said the same things as well. What it amounts to is a continued distortion of facts to disorient the voters of America.
A second Civil War is quite possible and maybe the author is correct in that we are already in it. Personally, I think the division lines are just being draw and the voters will come awake and solve the mess before it gets out of hand. California voters (of whom the DEMs are in the majority) at least came to their senses enough to oust Davis before he totally destroyed the state. I know that doesn't say much, but it's a start.
I have a suggestion about the whole thing though...
Let's give the liberals all of the coastal states on the west coast. I know, at first it sounds crazy, but I'd be willing to bet for that deal, they'd give us all of the states like, Utah, Idaho, Nevada and Arizona. When that damn big earthquake hits, we'll now own the coastal states, cause there won't be any California, Oregon or Washington State. What a plan huh?
Or better yet, let's just all keep an eye on each other and not let the looney's get out of hand.
Yeah, I agree with you. We killed over 600,000 of our fellow countrymen during the Civil War. The bad feelings ran for decades until the turn of the century when most of the Civil War generation died off and new immigrants came to America and did not have the vendettas others had.
However, similarly there is a Culture War going on since the 60's and the radical left had sewn bad feelings that last until today. I believe that this will only be remedied when the radical 60's generation passes on as well.
This is still not even in the same league as the Civil War.
In 1994, they lost absolute control of the House of Dipsticks. Subsequently, they lost absolute control of the other house, in the figurative commissary of which waitress sandwiches were occasionally served (or should that be ''serviced''), and possibly still are today. Later on, because their well-honed tactic of electoral fraud failed them, the Left lost the Presidency.
These events were entirely contrary to the Left's perception of the natural order of things, and so, today, they pout, they cavil, they whine, they pettifog, they obstruct, and -- most of all -- they betray, consistently and every time, the Constitution to which each elected member of the Left (the very number of which speaks poorly for the existence of representative gov't) has, putatively, pledged and sworn an oath.
Orwell understood, and explained in full and in writing in his most famous dark satire, all our Clintons and Kennedys, Nixon (if you believe he was anything other than a Leftist, a totalitarian-wannabee, you're either historically illiterate or smoking ciggies w/o any lettering), the abominations and treachery of L B Johnson and Jimmuh, that one-worlder hypocrite G H W Bush, the assorted decades-spoiled garbage infesting the Dep't of State and the CIA, and the cooptation and practical ruination of that once classically American institution, the FBI. Orwell put it this way, in the words of his character O'Brien:
''The object of persecution IS persecution. The object of torture IS torture. The object of power IS power. Now do you begin to understand me?''
Nine years after the publication of ''1984'', Ayn Rand re-described this entirely parasitic philosophy, and its practitioners' presumption of its permanance as part of the natural order of things, in even more detail, most specifically in Floyd Ferris' speech to Henry Reardon (p. 411 of the Pocket Books edition of ''Atlas Shrugged'').
While I do not and would never pretend to belong to or even to aspire to the company of these two giants, I will add just a thought here: they were optimists, purely, simply, naively, and...sadly. They described the truth, but never the extent of its consequences, and only approached describing the explicit evil of the Left, these would-be controllers, these macromenaces to liberty, these Stalins-in-waiting. There is no describable depth of deceit, depravity, or dishonour to which the Left, of whatever nominal ''political'' or ''philosophical'' orientation, will sink in order to attempt to quench their craving and their lust. These filth never quit, and so also never will they acknowledge the advantages of liberty -- not to be confused with the misbegotten notion of universal license, anything goes, how dare one be ''judgmental'' -- to every person.
The only question that remains is whether there is a sufficient quantity of citizens, whether actually American or American in spirit, of whichever nation or nations by birth, to stand together and say to the tyrants of the Left, "Leave us. Leave us alone to prosper among ourselves, and if you refuse to do so, the consequence will be yours to ponder, and to suffer.''
The tyrants and their syncophants will not do so voluntarily, of course, and the next question will then become: at what point will Americans say to these thieves and murderers, in so many words, ''You refuse to leave us to our own lives -- we refuse to surrender our lives to you, any longer or any further. Draw your weapon.''
Privately, I would rather that matters not come to such event, but, I see no alternative, ultimately.
With best wishes to you and to all, ... FReegards!
What planet did you just arrive from?
Dennis is not talking about anything new in the way of dissent.
It's the way that this dissent is now expressed that is scary, irrational and ultimately explosive.
It's normal for there to be a great deal of political hatred and conflict; cooperation and consensus is ABNORMAL in US history.
Really sort of odd in the last 10 years or so that people are suddenly getting their panties in a bunch over any sort of political conflict or disagreement at all.
Very true. The country was quite divided during the 60's and 70's on into the 80's. During the 90's it became clear that those divisions weren't going to tear the country apart. The Cold War ended. Markets had by and large vanquished socialism. And as the sixties generation grew older we became aware that the alternatives in the culture war weren't as stark as people thought in those days.
The "two cultures" of traditionalists and modernists were more mixed. Communities, families, and individuals were rarely all one or all the other. The poles of continuity and change and the tensions between them are found in all of us, and the resolution of such conflicts has to be worked out with intelligence, resourcefulness and resolution, not taken from some ideological recipe.
But we are an affluent society that uses all manner of media and supports all manner of activists. So it was almost inevitable that people would come to obsess about our divisions at a time when they were milder and more modest than they were in the past. Seen from one extreme or the other, it may look like we are on the verge of civil war, but seen from the middle it looks like we are muddling along as usual.
In ordinary times, our political system rewards politicians for appealing across social fault lines, and controversies in various areas -- social and cultural affairs, foreign policy, the economy -- don't all run in the same direction. As disputes in one of these areas become more venomous, those in the other areas are allowed to rest, if not to heal completely.
A democratic political order will always have political conflicts. Today, in contrast to the past, those conflicts are based more on religion, morality and social roles than on economics. There are dangers associated with such conflicts, but conflict won't go away. Our country has survived disagreements in the past and it's not likely to be ruined by them any time soon.
One of the glories of our country has been that we've avoided the "all or nothing" of European politics: either "throne and altar" absolute despotism or revolutionary dictatorship. Our politics have generally been mixed and moderate. We've always had room for faith and freedom, for a bedrock of principle and openness to changing popular sentiments.
It would be a mistake to lose that now and embrace the doctrine of irreconcilable and "irrepressible conflict." Those who do so have generally been losers if not dangers. Those who prevail have been those who were able to make their opinions look reasonable and natural to the broad spectrum of society, not those who wrang everything they could get out of stark polarities and bitter enmities.
Yes, but you're missing the title of the thread: The second American civil war. In other words, we've had high points of diagreement in the past, leading to open warfare. The American Revolution and the Civil War were the two pre-emminent examples in our history. Perhaps we are heading toward another high point. History shows that high levels of hatred and conflict do lead to violence and bloodshed. Nothing is new -- and that's why the current situation is of concern.