Posted on 05/09/2004 6:38:43 PM PDT by quidnunc
America 2004? Actually, no. This was the lamentable state of affairs in mid-17th century England, as it teetered on the brink of civil war. But there certainly is something disturbingly familiar about this description of a body politic dividing into two unbreachable camps.
Like England under Charles I, when the Cavaliers — the royalist supporters of the king — and the Roundheads — Puritan upstarts led by Oliver Cromwell — went at it for seven years of war, the United States today is becoming two nations. This is not merely the age-old split between income groups, as Sen. John Edwards kept suggesting in his unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, but something even more fundamental — a struggle between contrasting and utterly incompatible worldviews.
Some describe the conflict as one between the "red" and the "blue" states, the right and the left, conservatives and liberals. But even though no one is about to behead our ruler and overthrow the government, as Cromwell's forces did when they captured Parliament in 1649, I find the parallel of the Cavaliers and the Roundheads to be the most apt. They grew to hate each other so much that they could no longer accommodate a common national vision. "I have heard foul language and desperate quarrelings even between old and entire friends," wrote one Englishman on the eve of conflict, and much the same could be said of us today.
The questions in our own uncivil war are: Is anyone winning? Which America most likely represents the future of our country?
The political division has grown wider in recent years. Now a clear geographic and cultural divide is emerging as well. Demographic studies show that Republicans and Democrats are less likely to live next door to each other, attend the same churches or subscribe to the same media.
America's Roundheads cluster in the South, the Plains and various parts of the West, while the Cavaliers inhabit the coasts, particularly the large metropolitan centers of the Northeast and Pacific Northwest. Each side has its own views, confirmed by its favored media. Fox TV, most of talk radio, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Sean Hannity speak for the Roundheads, supporting President Bush and America's global mission. The mainstream media, the universities and the cultural establishment, including most of Hollywood, are the voices of the Cavaliers, whose elites, like many of England's Cavaliers and Charles I's French wife before them, are most concerned with winning over continental opinion and mimicking the European way of life.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Technically speaking it was the USS Harriet Lane, a federal warship that Lincoln sent to the fort with orders to reinforce it. The Lane arrived at a fleet rendevous point off of Charleston the night before the fort was bombarded and fired a shot upon a civilian steamer attempting to enter Charleston harbor.
I see you are quite the mature debator. So what's next? Are you gonna call me a "poo poo head" and tell your teacher that I made a mean face at you?
He was for Catholicism before he was against it.
(During his last senatorial election, he was Jewish.)
I know! Let's call all conservatives puritan fanatics ready to chop off our heads for being enlightened! That will get rid of all that distracting hyperbole, won't it?
You should also take note that the direct theological heir of New England puritanism today is the unitarian church - a fringe leftist denomination that emerged out of new england and is enamored with all of the aforementioned "causes."
Okay Goldwater Dixiecrat, I've read some of your other posts but rather than respond to them one at a time I'll just try to do so here (and the above quotes pretty much encapsulate the "palaeo"/Dixiecrat hatred of Puritans).
First, the Fundamentalist Protestantism of the South is more a desdendant of New England Puritanism than it is of loose-living, liquor-swigging, prostitute-visiting William Byrd Anglicanism. The Southern Baptist Convention of today adheres more closely to the "New Hampshire Confession of Faith" than do the Northern ("American") Baptists. It is an undisputed fact that today's "Unitarian Universalists" are the lineal descendants of the New England Puritans, but that is because at a certain point there was a rebellion against the strict Calvinist theology. A similar change occurred in the South, though there it was to orthodox Arminianism rather than to liberal chr*stianity. But some Calvinist pockets remain. Why don't you go to Bob Jones University and tell them the high church Anglicans were the good guys? Or that Jonathan Edwards was a proto-liberal? Or that Prohibition was a violation of the principals of conservatism? C'mon . . . I dare you!
You have refused to say a word about the undeniable fact that Southern Fundamentalists, like their New England forebears, wanted to outlaw liquor, gambling, prostitution, etc. Today's Bible Belt has far more in common with Puritan New England than it ever did with the mint-julep swigging, gambling, cigar smoking, morals-of-the-French-Quarter nobleman of the Old South.
Anyone who complains about legislating morality or outlawing liquor has no business claiming to adhere to a movement that wants to outlaw homosexual activity, adultery, etc. That is what you want to do, isn't it? Or is that to Puritan (or at least too Horace Greeley) for you?
Ditto. From Massachusetts, attended Yale and joined the millenarian secret society there. Cries about the need to tax the rich and raises the specter of Rome's interference in matters of Church & State. He's definitely in the weirdo Waldo territory.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.--Tenth Amendment
Why, if your premise holds, would the state of Massachusetts, and on a greater scale the New England states during the War of 1812, entertain secession as an option if they knew such an act was illegal?
I am persuaded that speaking to you as if you had anything worthwhile to say would answer a fool according to his folly (in the "bad sense"; therefore I do it in the "good sense"). You think the unitarians are "the direct theological heir" of the Puritans. I can't add to that. You already look as ignorant as you possibly could to anyone who knows about Puritan theology.
Seeing as your post ammounts to nothing more than gratuitous namecalling, that is doubtful.
This is to some extent a red herring. It is far more instructive to view the red-blue, county-by-county post-election map. That map more clearly demonstrates that the "blue" (Democrat) side of the culture war is concentrated in the nation's parasite nests (cities). It is in these parasite nests that there tends to be a preponderance of welfare parasites, athiests, abortion enthusiasts, condom throwers, screeching feminists, lazy socialist malcontents, losers, goofballs, and bums, as well as most of the other loyal components of the Democrat base.
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