There are now two Americas.

America is a country that is now utterly divided when it comes to its society, its economy, its politics. There are definitely two Americas.

The irony is that it is true that there is two Americas, but it is the Left that created it. A couple of examples and reasons for the divide. The unions helped in creating the situation by shifting its priority from trade unions to public sector unions. Everything from the AFL-CIO is about increasing the power and wealth of its public sector workers. They are draining the resources needed by the private sector, thus destroying their own members in trade unions.

Feminism has had a hand. Gone are the days of the young lawyer marrying their secretary or the young doctor marrying a nurse. Today, lawyers marry lawyers, doctors marry doctors. Marriage was an institution that allowed class fluidity in the US, not anymore.

Illegal immigration has locked the poor into their condition. It is illogical that millions upon millions of cheap foreign labor has no impact on poverty amongst the native poor. The upper class liberals want the votes and also want to live like feudal lords with their available nannies and gardeners on the cheap.

That’s THE difference between the right and left,
one that they rarely admit.

If the left gets their way, productive people are enslaved to the ruling class as serfs, with a few bones thrown to “the poor” to keep them pacified.

If conservatives had their way, the only consequence for leftists would be having to pay for their own behavioral choices instead of making others pay for them.

No coercion, no use of government to make them live like we want them to. Just natural consequences enforcing right behavior.

Of course, the first thought in their mind is “what about abortion - disallowing that is forcing women to have babies they don’t want”...
Of course, there’s a lot of presuppositions that happen before this question comes up, ones they don’t want to talk about.
Also, conservatism is about protecting people from harm. Even unborn people. It hasn’t been until very recent history that the unborn were dehumanized and unworthy of protection.

Right now capital has effectively purchased the government, and you witnessed it again with the healthcare debacle in terms of the $450m that was heaved into Congress, the most broken part of my government, in order that the popular will never actually emerged in any of that legislative process.

OK, David, here’s a quote that’s a leftist favorite even tho it’s not from from Karl Marx but Adam Smith:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Book I, Ch 10)
Dave, ya wanna know about the most influential “meeting” of "people of the same trade” in history? Hands down, it is the Associated Press. “The wire” is a continuous virtual meeting of all the major journalism institutions in the country. It has been going on for over a century and a half, and it is not about “merriment or diversion,” but precisely about how the major journalists will do business in their own interest.

And what is the interest of journalism? Adam Smith tells us that, too:
The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing. The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect. But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors. And as we cannot always be satisfied merely with being admired, unless we can at the same time persuade ourselves that we are in some degree really worthy of admiration; so we cannot always be satisfied merely with being believed, unless we are at the same time conscious that we are really worthy of belief. As the desire of praise and that of praise-worthiness, though very much a-kin, are yet distinct and separate desires; so the desire of being believed and that of being worthy of belief, though very much a-kin too, are equally distinct and separate desires.
The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments
Makes sense, doesn’t it Dave, that people who go into the business of writing and talking would be the ones who would be most interested in being believed, looked up to, and followed? Now you put all these journalists whose fondest hope is to be believed, and you put them in a position to conspire against the public, and what would you expect? I’ll tell you what I observe actually happens, Dave - what you get is a bunch of “independent, competitive” journalistic institutions which are in perfect accord with each other about what is important and what is true.
And you know what their agreement is as to what is important? Themselves. What’s important to journalists is that the people who get things done, who make decisions and take actions in time to matter and who therefore make mistakes and can be second-guessed, not be considered to be equal to, let alone more important than, the journalists who criticize them. And that politicians who go along with journalism's second-guessing should be made to look good, and that politicians who do not go along to get along with journalism should be embarrassed by journalists at every opportunity.
So OK, Dave - I’ll see your paltry “$450 million,” and raise you the whole editorial content of all the members of the Associated Press, seen for the in-kind contribution to the Democratic Party that it is. You will protest that what I say runs against the First Amendment - but not so. You are the one who denigrated First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and press, when you insinuated that people who were not politically allied with you did not deserve to spend their paltry $450 million.
Anyone who would deny their political opponent the right to speak is no friend of the rights enshrined in the First Amendment - and that includes you and the entire Associated Press apparat.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.