Free Republic

Each of the Presidential candidates and those who support them are fighting for the soul of America. Each has a radically different world view; each inhabits a radically different culture. They listen to different music, watch different movies, read different media. Each mainly socializes only with others who are like themselves. They do not talk to those with whom they disagree and when they do, it is often with anger and contempt. I have lived in both worlds. I still do...

Check it out. United America: 2014, by Ben Maxwell, is now available on-line at both Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. Here are URLs: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/104-5043457-9654302?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=united+america%3A+2014&Go.x=12&Go.y=9 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1424152739/sr=8-1/qid=1174668532/ref=olp_product_details/002-5395432-2642427?ie=UTF8&qid=1174668532&sr=8-1&seller= http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=united+america%3A+2014&z=y&r=1&cds2Pid=9481 http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781424152735&itm=1

In the days and few weeks immediately following the election last year, the media pronounced gloom and doom for the Democratic Party and its constituents, such as gay rights advocates. Journalists and media outlets of the left and the right, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and Newsweek, among most others, announced that the Democrats were down and out, and that the evangelical Christians and the Republicans were the rising power. They divided the country into red states and blue states, and offered up glossy maps to show that most states were red and therefore Republican strongholds....

Listen closely. That silence you hear is the sound of Democrats not recriminating. We are, to be sure, post-morteming like nobody's business. It could scarcely be otherwise after the most heartbreaking defeat just about any Democrat can recall. But this year, I sense, there is a little more consensus than conflict -- and a lot more confusion than either -- Democratic ranks about what went wrong and where we go from here. To begin, there's a genuine respect for John Kerry that will spare him from the kind of morning-after rage that many Democrats directed at Al Gore four years...

A phrase from a press release struck me: "In voting for George Bush, religious Americans were duped into voting against their best interests." The operative word is "duped," and it explains, almost by itself, why the Democratic Party is in the pits and John Kerry is not the next president of the United States. Only a dope thinks these voters were duped. The press release comes from an organization called "Retro vs. Metro America," which -- par for the course nowadays -- is also a book and a Web site and soon, probably, a breakfast cereal. It is Democratic, and...