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A Nation Divided (Conservative Roundheads vs liberal Cavaliers – who will win the war?)
The Seattle Times ^ | January 9, 2004 | Joel Kotkin [The Washington Post]

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 ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News
KEYWORDS: culturewar
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To: ItsonlikeDonkeyKong
but who fired the first shots at Ft. Sumter. Hmmm?

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.

61 posted on 05/09/2004 7:59:44 PM PDT by GOPcapitalist
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To: GOPcapitalist
Thank you for the correction.
62 posted on 05/09/2004 8:00:51 PM PDT by billbears (Deo Vindice.)
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To: A.J.Armitage
You're an ignoramus.

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?

63 posted on 05/09/2004 8:01:22 PM PDT by GOPcapitalist
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To: Zionist Conspirator
Which religion does Kerry belong to, eh?

He was for Catholicism before he was against it.
(During his last senatorial election, he was Jewish.)

64 posted on 05/09/2004 8:01:43 PM PDT by concerned about politics ( Liberals are still stuck at the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy)
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To: GOPcapitalist
LOL. Hell, John Kerry is even related to Winthrop.
65 posted on 05/09/2004 8:02:14 PM PDT by Dan from Michigan ("There's no points for second place")
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To: billbears
Then what was the debate over the Articles of Confederation about? What were the endless debates occurring throughout the nation from 1787-1789 meant to be; merely a pointless debating exercise? Huh, got you there, didn't I?
66 posted on 05/09/2004 8:02:56 PM PDT by The Scourge of Yazid (Where did they get all those American Flags to burn? Is there a store or something over there?)
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To: quidnunc
Well, I don't know, but if there were a revolution, it would be over in about 10 minutes. We're the ones with the guns :o)
67 posted on 05/09/2004 8:04:54 PM PDT by McGavin999 (If Kerry can't deal with the "Republican Attack Machine" how is he going to deal with Al Qaeda)
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To: GOPcapitalist
Ooooh, logical principles quoted in Latin. I must be wrong after all.

You've failed to notice that it actually supports my post.
68 posted on 05/09/2004 8:06:01 PM PDT by A.J.Armitage (http://calvinist-libertarians.blogspot.com/)
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To: concerned about politics
Kerry is some type of Arian neo-Gnostic Albigensian who has more in common with the antinomian, millenarian Anabaptists than with the nominal Catholicism his Jewish grandfather adopted, along with the Kerry name, before committing suicide.
69 posted on 05/09/2004 8:06:39 PM PDT by HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity
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To: A.J.Armitage
I never understood the point of the Libertarian Party in the United States. Wouldn't it make more sense to shape/influence the policies of one of the two major parties? The best they've ever done-and likely the best they'll ever do in the future-was way back in 1980, which was an anomalous situation, you have to admit.
70 posted on 05/09/2004 8:06:40 PM PDT by The Scourge of Yazid (Where did they get all those American Flags to burn? Is there a store or something over there?)
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To: quidnunc
"something more than dueling hyperbole"

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?

71 posted on 05/09/2004 8:07:49 PM PDT by JasonC
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To: GOPcapitalist
The puritans were hypocritical freedom-hating heretics. They attempted to create a kingdom of God in this world and ended up only creating the very worst elements of a kingdom of man. That is why they resemble the liberals, only they supplant their ancestors' religious claims (and I do mean ancestors in both the literal and ideological sense) with the false idols of today - "diversity" and "multiculturalism" and "social justice" and "liberation theology."

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?

72 posted on 05/09/2004 8:09:12 PM PDT by Zionist Conspirator (Are the Ten Commandments an appropriate "multicultural" decoration for Shavu`ot?)
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To: Dan from Michigan
LOL. Hell, John Kerry is even related to Winthrop. 65 posted on 05/09/2004 8:02:14 PM PDT by Dan from Michigan

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.

73 posted on 05/09/2004 8:09:40 PM PDT by HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity
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To: ItsonlikeDonkeyKong
"The secession of a state from the Union depends on the will of the people of such state....To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases, a right to determine how they will be governed."--A View Of The Constitution Of The United States Of America, William Rawle, 1826

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?

74 posted on 05/09/2004 8:12:00 PM PDT by billbears (Deo Vindice.)
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To: A.J.Armitage
I propose continuing this thread in Phoenician. No wait, classical Greek. No wait Aramaic. Yeah, that sounds better.
75 posted on 05/09/2004 8:13:10 PM PDT by The Scourge of Yazid (Where did they get all those American Flags to burn? Is there a store or something over there?)
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To: GOPcapitalist
I see you are quite the mature debator.

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.

76 posted on 05/09/2004 8:14:51 PM PDT by A.J.Armitage (http://calvinist-libertarians.blogspot.com/)
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To: A.J.Armitage
You've failed to notice that it actually supports my post.

Seeing as your post ammounts to nothing more than gratuitous namecalling, that is doubtful.

77 posted on 05/09/2004 8:15:15 PM PDT by GOPcapitalist
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To: billbears
I don't think the question is whether they "entertained" secession, but whether they actually seceded. If I were to list every elected official that "entertained" an illegal measure, we'd be here forever. The list would probably start with Gavin Newsome, but I seriously doubt that it would end there.
78 posted on 05/09/2004 8:15:38 PM PDT by The Scourge of Yazid (Where did they get all those American Flags to burn? Is there a store or something over there?)
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To: ItsonlikeDonkeyKong
I've never been a member of the LP.
79 posted on 05/09/2004 8:16:18 PM PDT by A.J.Armitage (http://calvinist-libertarians.blogspot.com/)
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To: quidnunc
Some describe the conflict as one between the "red" and the "blue" states

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.

80 posted on 05/09/2004 8:18:18 PM PDT by Lancey Howard
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