Posted on 10/13/2008 10:09:17 PM PDT by goldstategop
It is time to confront the unhappy fact about our country: There are now two Americas. Not a rich one and a poor one; economic status plays little role in this division.
There is a Red one and a Blue one.
For most of my life I have believed, in what I now regard as wishful thinking, that the Right and Left wings have essentially the same vision for America, that it's only about ways to get there in which the two sides differ. Right and Left share the same ends, I thought.
That is not the case. For the most part, Right and Left differ in their visions of America and that is why they differ on policies.
Right and the Left do not want the same America.
The Left wants America to look as much like Western European countries as possible. The Left wants Europe's quasi-pacifism, cradle-to-grave socialism, egalitarianism and secularism in America. The Right wants none of those values to dominate America.
The Left wants America not only to have a secular government, but to have a secular society. The Left feels that if people want to be religious, they should do so at home and in their houses of prayer, but never try to inject their religious values into society. The Right wants America to continue to be what it has always been -- a Judeo-Christian society with a largely secular government (that is not indifferent to religion). These opposing visions explain, for example, their opposite views concerning nondenominational prayer in school.
The Left prefers to identify as citizens of the world. The Left fears nationalism in general (this has been true for the European Left since World War I), and since the 1960s, the American Left has come to fear American nationalism in particular. On the other side, the Right identifies first as citizens of America.
The Left therefore regards the notion of American exceptionalism as chauvinism; the United Nations and world opinion are regarded as better arbiters of what is good than is America. The Right has a low opinion of the U.N.'s moral compass and of world opinion, both of which it sees as having a much poorer record of stopping genocide and other evils than America has.
The Left is ambivalent about and often hostile to overt displays of American patriotism. That is why, for example, one is far more likely to find American flags displayed in Orange County, Calif., on national holidays than in liberal neighborhoods in West Los Angeles, Manhattan or San Francisco.
The Left subscribes to the French Revolution, whose guiding principles were "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." The Right subscribes to the American formula, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." The French/European notion of equality is not mentioned. The Right rejects the French Revolution and does not hold Western Europe as a model. The Left does. That alone makes Right and Left irreconcilable.
The Left envisions an egalitarian society. The Right does not. The Left values equality above other values because it yearns for an America in which all people have similar amounts of material possessions. This is what propels the Left to advocate laws that would force employers to pay women the same wages they pay men not only for the same job but for "comparable" jobs (as if that is objectively ascertainable). The Right values equality in opportunity and strongly believes that all people are created equal, but the Right values liberty, a man-woman based family and other values above equality.
The Left wants a world -- and therefore an America -- devoid of nuclear weapons. The Right wants America to have the best nuclear weapons. The Right trusts American might more than universal disarmament.
The Left wants to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples for the first time in history. The Right wants gays to have equal rights, but to keep marriage defined as man-woman. This, too, constitutes an irreconcilable divide.
For these and other reasons, calls for a unity among Americans that transcends Left and Right are either naive or disingenuous. America will be united only when one of them prevails over the other. The Left knows this. Most on the Right do not.
Wrong. I want PEOPLE to have equal rights.
I’d like to think there is still a Center (maybe Center-Right) in the USA. The left-leaning MSM has so mis-behaved to trample the meaning of a “free press”. The so-called Left’s tolerance of dissent has been shown to be a sham, they have no scruples, except to use vile tactics to shutdown debate. The RINOs haven’t helped either, they’ve been co-opted by Government’s power. I wish we really could find a way to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” and “We the People, ...” to re-invigorate the American brand of individual responsbility with minimal Government intervention.
The military is disproportionately composed of people from the Red/Gray states. Each of them has taken an oath to defend the US Constitution. Not the president, not the congress, not the supreme court. Every man and woman that has ever served has taken that same oath. For me that oath did not expire when I left the military. Every branch of the government has trampled the Constitution and must be stopped. That is not overthrowing the government. That is restoring the government. Every member of the government that has voted to usurp the Constitution is guilty of treason! Perhaps it’s time for the military to do it’s duty and secure the country so we can have fair elections and restore the authority of the Constitution.
I wonder if the left would demand that the wealth of the Hollywood glitterati, the media talking heads, the George Soroses of the world, and the labor union bosses be forcibly distributed among the proletariat.
Good article. It’s the same reason Sarah Palin has been attacked unmercifully by the left.
“...they seem to miss the hardcore threat of an Obama.....Or maybe they do see it, but think it’s imprudent to say so.”
I suspect that that’s the case. Or maybe they feel it just goes without saying. Just like the Obamas of the world , or any other totalitarians, the left wing base of the Democrat Party, or the European “democracies” believe that governmental power should be limitless. Their goal is “fairness”, NOT freedom and the pursuit of happiness.
The thing is that once things go sour people stop cooperating with governmental “reforms” in order to protect their property or whatever other natural rights. At that point the mask is off, and the governmental apparatus in these “democracies” will come down on them with whatever it takes. So once we get Obama and a Democrat congress and left wing domination of the Supreme Court, we’ll just be a temporarily wealthy version of North Lorea and Cuba.
Bureaucratic tyrrany (how do you spell that?) is already here in its early stages, with liberal state government beauracracies refusing to investigate massive voter fraud (even in the face of massive evidence), or Democrats in Bush’s Justice Dept railroading Cheney’s chief of staff, or low level operatives in the CIA leaking defense secrets to the NY Times. Or how about those “Human Rights Commissions” in Canada?
Well, if you look at the “sex education for Kindergartners” thing, that is the perfect example of one of those “we’re going to lie to your face so you don’t reject us” things.
Barack Obama has a clear vision of what he wants for education. When he spoke to Planned Parenthood, he said what he really believes, “but it was the right thing to do”, with regards to this subject. It’s simple. He believes it’s the right thing to do and he knew that the mainstream wouldn’t swallow that, so he’s hid it and tried to get his synchophants to bury it. They deny it was what he meant. Despite what he says. Because they knew that the right would look at that in horror. It’s kinda like NAFTA. He rails against it and then in a wink he says to the people who would be most hurt by changing it, don’t worry, I didn’t really mean it.
He knows his views on a lot of things are repugnant to most of America and so he continues to lie about them until he can win. And Lord help us if he does. He’s proven to be nothing but an empty suit socialist.
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