Re: A National Divorce - A Serious Thread on Why We Should or Should not Stay Togethe Mr.Coulter: first things first, right-wing politics in the United States has always been dominated by appeals to fear and paranoia. Its the defining characteristic of American conservatism. If its not the "liberal media" or "foreigners" that are coming to take away your guns, your religion, or your money, its an "evil empire" or "evildooers" that are plotting to take over the United States. Why do you think the Republicans are so strong right now? Secondly, who gives conservatives the right to tell people what patriotism is, how it should be expressed, and what consitutes "love" for this country? You think that because you like to wave the flag and because you never want to look at what's wrong in this country that you "love it" more and that you are more "American". Get a life. The patriotism and nationalism that seems to appeal so strongly to you are simply vehicles used by politicians to simplify complex issues and cause division. The unpatriotic label is thrown on liberals because conservatives win elections that way, not because its true. Its also thrown on liberals because the reeps benefit from simplifying everything into black and white, good and evil, and the united states vs the rest of the world. I bet you consider someone "unpatriotic" or a USA hater if they criticize the president. That's a really constructive attitude. Just as taking this holier than thou attitude after the election pretending that liberals are irrational because they lost and that conservatives would act any differently. Give me a break. Explain to me the 1990s. Clinton pissed conservatives off so badly that he brought out the absolute worst in the republican party and conservative groups. Bush does the same with liberals, but that doesnt mean they dont have a right to express their opinions. Some might even say that it's patriotic to do so.
Re: A National Divorce - A Serious Thread on Why We Should or Should not Stay Togethe When Clinton won twice, how many Republicans moved or proposed dividing the nation?
Re: A National Divorce - A Serious Thread on Why We Should or Should not Stay Togethe Why would they do such a thing? Clinton was the greatest post-war conservative president.
Re: A National Divorce - A Serious Thread on Why We Should or Should not Stay Togethe So the left never fearmongers? I think scaring seniors that the GOP will take you SS away is fearmongering. I think what Michael Moore does is fearmongering. Calling people bigots and closet homos for being against gays marrying is fearmongering. In short, each side, because of the nature of politics thinks the other side is genuinely fearmongering. By consulting a dictionary. Apparently you thnk the 1st Amendment covers getting to invent your own personal definition of words. Patriotism has a definition. pa·tri·ot·ism n. Love of and devotion to one's country. patriotism \Pa"tri*ot*ism\, n. [Cf. F. patriotisme.] Love of country; devotion to the welfare of one's country; the virtues and actions of a patriot; the passion which inspires one to serve one's country. --Berkley. patriotism n : love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it [syn: nationalism] Not much gray area there.
Two words: West Virginia. Why is this important? Because it was created in 1862 out of Virginia counties loyal to the Union government. Why would anyone assume that the country would break up along the lines of the red states vs. blue states when it's a lot more likely that it would break up along the lines of red v. blue counties? Why is an upstate New York farmer going to follow a bunch of Manahattanites into quitting its long-lasting allegiance to the union and into an political affiliation that he doesn't agree with politically?If that more likely scenario happened, then then the proposed new nation is a small collection of city states with no natural resources, little agriculture, no lines of communication, surrounded by a hostile nation that will retain control of the military. How do LA and NY form a common government if its representatives aren't goingto be allowed to fly over the land in between.how are they going to participate in mutual defense? why would the corporate HQs in New York really want to break up with the place where so much of its investment is located? It's a ridiculous idea that would harm both parties. Why don't you all try growing up and working on your political message.
Blue States are usually northern ones. I guess the Red States(Southern) are looking for a chance to avenge an earlier loss. Who said the Civil War was over. Stop this nonsense about leaving.
Aaaah, but this time it's the Blues making the noises about leaving. Had we known this in advance all that bloodshed 145 years ago wouldn't have been needed.
Um, yeah, that was the whole point of secession. If my wife and I get divorced, our marriage could not survive that.
Re: A National Divorce - A Serious Thread on Why We Should or Should not Stay Togethe Zenger defense.
Re: A National Divorce - A Serious Thread on Why We Should or Should not Stay Togethe i·ro·ny n. pl. i·ro·nies 1a. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. b. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning. c. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See Synonyms at wit1. 2a. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: “Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated” (Richard Kain). b. An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity. See Usage Note at ironic. 3a. Politicians and others who use the word "patriotism" at the drop of a hat, yet did not serve their country when given the opportunity. See also those that are all for sacrificing for their country, yet advocate tax cuts.
Is This the Beginning of the End for America? by Leonard Pitts Jr. Maybe this is where America ends. A reader raised that notion in an e-mail to me even before last week's election. Dismayed at the fractures and fissures exposed by an acrimonious presidential campaign and despairing of ever putting this Humpty Dumpty together again, he advanced a radical thesis. We are, he pointed out, a nation founded not on common ancestry but shared ideals: liberty and justice for all. Maybe, he said, that sort of bond ultimately cannot hold. It would be no surprise to him, he wrote, to see the United States split into two or more separate countries in his lifetime. He is 32. I intend no endorsement of his prediction when I say that it struck me hard - mainly because I could not airily dismiss it. Could not say with certainty that it will not happen. If and when it does, some observers will be primed to blame so-called hyphenated Americanism. But it seems apparent that the fissure that divides us most dramatically is less about race or ethnicity than something larger: culture, an unresolved clash of world views, mores and norms. It's the morality, stupid. Indeed, CNN reports that more exit poll respondents called that the most important issue of the election than cited Iraq, the economy or terrorism. Morality is, of course, a code word for antipathy toward gay rights and abortion. Those who shared that antipathy voted overwhelmingly for President Bush. To say I am merely depressed that he was re-elected is to say the Titanic sustained a little paint damage...
OTOH... Even as the work goes on (for a look at an interesting analysis of Florida, check out http://thesquanderer.com/votingmachines.html), it's also important for us to keep last week's events in perspective. Take heart. Democracy has come under assault in America before, we've survived, and the nation actually became stronger for the struggle. The year 1798, for example, was a crisis year for democracy and those who, like Thomas Jefferson, believed the United States of America was a shining light of liberty, a principled republic in a world of cynical kingdoms, feudal fiefdoms, and theocracies. That year President John Adams pushed through Congress - by a single vote - the Alien and Sedition Acts, and was aggressively putting into jail newspaper editors who disagreed with him and supported Jefferson. Benjamin Franklin Bache - Ben Franklin's grandson - had been one of the first, as he had just published an editorial referring to the President as, "old, querulous, Bald, blind, crippled, Toothless Adams." Then-Vice President Jefferson was wretched. He'd left town the day Adams signed the acts, as a symbolic act. He would have nothing to do with their implementation. The abuses were startling, and, as I documented in an earlier article in these pages, "How An Earlier Patriot Act Brought Down A President," Adams was moving America quickly into the direction of an authoritarian, single-party rule. Over Jefferson's angry objections, Adams had even imprisoned a member of the U.S. House of Representatives - Matthew Lyon of Vermont - for speaking out against Adams's Federalists' favoritism of the rich over working people. Two weeks before the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed, June 1, 1798, as Adams was already rounding up newspaper editors and dissidents in anticipation of his coming legal authority, Jefferson sat down at his desk and, heart heavy but hopeful, put quill pen to paper to share his thoughts with his old friend John Taylor, one of his fellow Democratic Republicans and a man also in Adams cross-hairs. (Two decades later, Taylor would write down his thoughts on the issue of government in a widely-distributed book, "Construction Construed, and Constitutions Vindicated," noting that: "A government is substantially good or bad, in the degree that it produces the happiness or misery of a nation...") Several states had gone completely over to Adam's side, particularly Massachusetts which was filled with preachers who wanted theocracy established in America, and Connecticut, which had become the epicenter of the wealthy who wanted to control the government's agenda for their own gain. It was red states and blue states, writ large. There was even discussion of Massachusetts seceding from the rest of the nation, which had become too "liberal" (to use George Washington's term) and secular. "It is true that we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut," Jefferson wrote to Taylor, his friend and compatriot, "and that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings, as well as exhausting our strength and subsistence. Their natural friends, the three other Eastern States join them from a sort of family pride, and they have the art to divide certain other parts of the Union, so as to make use of them to govern the whole. "This is not new," Jefferson added, "it is the old practice of despots; to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order. And those who have once got an ascendancy and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantage. "But," he added, "our present situation is not a natural one." Jefferson knew that the theocrats and the rich did not represent the true heart and soul of America, and commented to Taylor about how Adams had been using divide-and-conquer politics, and fear-monger about war with France (the infamous "XYZ Affair") with some success. "But still I repeat it," he wrote to Taylor, "this is not the natural state." Our nation's wisest political commentator noted the problem of politics. "Be this as it may, in every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time. Perhaps this party division is necessary to induce each to watch and delate to the people the proceedings of the other." "But," Jefferson asked rhetorically, "will the evil stop there?" Apparently he thought so, and his next paragraph to Taylor gives progressives a reminder for these times. This must be our mantra, even as we work harder every day: "A little patience," Jefferson wrote, "and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolved, and the people recovering their true sight, restoring their government to its true principles. It is true, that in the meantime, we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war, and long oppressions of enormous public debt. ... If the game runs sometimes against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost. For this is a game where principles are the stake..."
Re: A National Divorce - A Serious Thread on Why We Should or Should not Stay Togethe None.. they were too busy putting all their efforts into trying to bring down the president of the United States. That's hard work, and it can't be done from abroad.
Re: A National Divorce - A Serious Thread on Why We Should or Should not Stay Togethe Here - have a big ol' heaping pile of "fvck you". What have you "done for your country"? Me? I've come to work every day for the past 4 years at the largest Air Force base in the world, working on technologies to make our warfighers more effective. My dad - someone else you would undoubtedly label as an unpatriotic liberal scumbag - has been doing the same for 33 years. Enjoy life on my ignore list, **************.
No Mel... morality is a code which lots of Americans base their conduct! You, no doubt, couldn't care less, which for yourself, is just a selfish characteristic, however, for the next generation: a bad example. Morality, for those that do care, is a set of core beliefs, common sense behavior, that guides social interaction and gives adults some guidance for progeny. The immoral hoard of which you yourself figure so prominently have abused and rejected the moral precepts developed through thousands of years of civilized society. The repugnance which you crawl, and the immorality which your squirm, lend credence to the overall critical importance of certifiying the moral codes and making them readily available for the next generation, even if it means letting these moral codes and guiding actions come down like a ton of bricks upon the social abusers: you yourself. The United States is a moral nation founded upon traditional ethical and moral guidance handed down generation to generation. Unfortunately, as of late, there is a segment of society, repugnant in its means and methods, that has not ascribed to society's traditional guidance. As a snake in the garden, this segment needs to be terminated in order for the garden to be prolific and productive, as society. IntheNet
Re: A National Divorce - A Serious Thread on Why We Should or Should not Stay Togethe If you want to leave, leave. No-one's stopping you. But you can't take the parts of the country you like with you.
Your reasonable points have no place in a thread like this. You must overreact. You have been warned.
Terminated? Is that a code word for "kill?" Are you suggesting killing Americans because they stand for individual rights?
Re: A National Divorce - A Serious Thread on Why We Should or Should not Stay Togethe This post is bull$hit. Right wing pundits have been declaring parts of America the enemy. Hannity went so far as to equate liberalism with terrorism. InTheNet just proposed "terminating" Americans, based on some bizarre moral code that he is plugged into. This has nothing to do with patriotism.
My only contribution to this thread will be the words of Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention this summer: So in other words, I disagree with the entire premise upon which this thread was started.
So what would your, uh, final solution be? (OK, I was wrong. That earlier post wasn't my only contribution to this thread.)
El Jefe => I don't have a "final solution" but the politics of slash and burn cannot continue... both parties need to seek, and be forced to seek, common ground. Just as the polarizing elements within the conservative party need to be silenced, so too the polarizing elements of the liberal party need to be muted! The "Snake" of division and divisiveness needs to be terminated. What Can Dems and Repubs Do? Seek those issues where common ground now exists! Both parties seem to agree, in principle, that Social Security is broken... let's fix it together! That's a start! Then, after common ground is achieved, politicians can move to difficult issues where polar differences can be overcome! IntheNet
GT might be part-Aggie, but he's not that dumb. All you have to do is get one of the tribes up there to put a sports book into their casino.