67 Comments

1. richard mcenroe:

Roger ó The problem is that this time around, the people who were on the most combative fringes in the 60’s are now the mainstream leadership, having worn down/outlived the older leadership who thought party politics should be about something beyond politics. This is likely the case on both sides of the aisle, though I have to think it’s particularly malignant among my own party, the Democrats.

But you talk about dialogue and positions changing in the debates during the 60’s; I look across the street at every rally and it seems to me the positions haven’t changed an inch since then, in fact, the imagery and slogans of that decade are being recycled again and again and again for each change in the world order, as though nothing in the world is different after thirty years.

All we are left with (no pun intended) is, “I screamed and snarled my way into power and I’m gonna scream and snarl to keep it.”

I will vote for Bush in November as much to vote against that mindset as for my candidate.

Oct 21, 2004 - 8:24 am 2. skeeziks:

It’s all about the baby-boomers. It’s ALWAYS been all about the baby-boomers. Richard is dead on the money.

Oct 21, 2004 - 8:39 am 3. Byron00:

I also don’t quite know what to make of the still undecideds. It is tempting to decide that they are primarily the apathetic and uninformed, the carefree and brain dead.

On the other hand, it may be that this kind of highly polarlized, vituperative climate will itself produce some late undecideds. It could do that by making it very hard for a person with genuine and principled mixed feelings to commit to one of those extremes. It’s avoidance-avoidance, leaving them standing paralyzed in the middle; they know that either way they go, they’re going to feel bad about it.

It might be argued that the issues this time are such that a moderate position simply makes no sense, a cop-out when the stakes are this high. But perhaps that argument itself only exemplifies the problem faced by genuine moderates, in which case it is not helpful even if valid.

I find it very hard to guess which way these folks will finally go. Of course, if they stay home on Nov 2, or if they split 50/50, then they won’t matter. Such may be the typical fate of moderates in interesting times.

Oct 21, 2004 - 8:43 am 4. photoncourier.blogspot.com:

“Almost no one changes their mind”…I keep thinking that this election is not so much about *issues* as about *meta-issues*…overall worldviews.

Oct 21, 2004 - 8:47 am 5. David C:

Exactly, photoncourier! And that’s why it’s so vitriolic – it’s a clash of parallel universes. One that matches closest with what we might term “fact-based reality,” and the other? Bush, that moronic evil genius, ordered the Supreme Court to steal the election for him, cooked up a plot in Texas to start a war so he could steal oil for Halliburton, lied about WMDs because he’s Hitler and neglected to plant false WMDs because he’s a stupid illiterate chimp who can’t even speak English, and has an evil genius plan to turn America into a theocracy, and you never hear about any of this because mainstream media outlets like CNN and the New York Times are controlled by evil corporate fascists who do the bidding of Hitler and hide the truth so skillfully that only giant puppets can ferret it out….

This stuff, or admittedly, usually lesser variations on it, is so widely believed on the other side that there’s not even the *possibility* of finding common ground to start debate from. It’s like having an argument over NASA budgetary priorities with the president of the Flat Earth Society. You want to talk about all sorts of issues – manned vs. unmanned exploration? Lunar base? Straight to Mars? Focus on Earth Orbit? Spend less money? More money? Private vs. Government?

But to the opposition, he doesn’t even buy your underlying premise, because space exploration is impossible, and any attempt would just result in bonking your head on the ceiling that hangs over our earth, which is flat!

Oct 21, 2004 - 9:12 am 6. shel:

This topic hits a nerve with me; just been over on Tim Blair’s, and it usually does seem to end up being an argument over different world views (this was in regard to the Guardian debacle). Some get it, some don’t, and of course those who I think don’t get it, think I don’t get it! But I’ve been asking myself the same questions: how far is this going to go, when/where does it end? I’ve never been this polarized; I’ve never felt this way in my life.

And I am a baby boomer, and I have to agree–it’s all about the baby boomers. It’s like “if you keep blaming Daddy, you won’t ever have to get old.” My ex used to be a musician, went senior-vice-president-type corporate, and is an ABB-er simply because (I think) it still lets him feel like a young, hip, anti-establishment guy. Same with a Brit that I’ve been corresponding with for several years; he’s 51, has 4 kids over age 16, and still is nostalgic about his Che Guevara poster, and reads the Guardian. He advised me once not to read the Telegraph, it’s a stuffy “old boys” newspaper! I felt like saying, “What are you?!” We talk music, not politics, but I know what “side” he’d be on. He probably never dreams that I am voting for Bush, although I’ll tell him if he ever asks.

Yes, it’s all very upsetting.

suellen

Oct 21, 2004 - 9:18 am 7. Matt Evans:

Roger- Im not sure if its germaine to your rant but I’ve never in my life experienced a political season like the one we’re having now. The “rules” have been thrown out the window and there is no discussion about the issues because there are no facts upon which both sides can agree. I blame that jackass Terry McCauliffe for alot of this- he decided that the reasons the democrats lost ground in 2002 was that they agreed with Bush far too much and the only way to change the dynamics was to disagree with Bush on everything (and then demonize bush on everything). The McCauliffe plan has turned into almost a religious crusade against the Bush administration- its almost jihad, where anything goes and damn the collateral damage, full speed ahead. The dems put discourse on the back burner in order to gain political momentum and this election is all about whether that strategy was sound or not- my biggest fear is that if the democrats win, it will end up justifying McCauliffe’s take on how to change the political spectrum and the LAST thing I want is another 4 years of untruths, halftruths and outright lies.

The democratic attack machine has affected the right too – I was distressed to see Kerry’s nuisance comment being taken out of context regularly- its clear Kerry didn’t mean terrorism WAS a nuisance but that he wanted it to go back to BEING a nuisance. Kerry should have been slam dunked on what he actually said- ie, Senator Kerry, terrorism should never have been a nuisance but for 8 years, the democratic president treated it like one- instead, the right has tried to spin it into a “Kerry thinks terrorism is a nuisance”, which is wholly inaccurate.

Maybe I’ m just naive- I think truth in politics should be paramount. My utter contempt for the democrats is they’ve thrown truth out the window in the last two years and truth is what we need the most when picking our president.

Richard McEnroe hits the nail on the head- he’s voting against the snarling, as am I. But will the snarling stop after the election? I don’t think it will, because in all honesty, unless Kerry is utterly trounced in November (I’m talking Dukakis trounced), the left will take heart in the fact that their underhanded tactics and inability to tell the truth took a terrible candidate and made him a contender. I suspect our opponents will spend a year contesting the election results and the remaining three doing everything they can to bring impeachment proceedings against the president (the justification, of course, will be that the republicans did it to clinton).

Oct 21, 2004 - 9:25 am 8. craig mclaughlin:

Roger,

I often feel the same way. But when I stop butting my head against the electronic wall and get out and talk to real folks out in the world…Well, they can’t be bothered. They’ve got lives to live, don’t you know.

There’s a happy medium in there somewhere I suppose…

Still looking,

Craig

Oct 21, 2004 - 9:32 am 9. gb_in_ga:

David C:

I find your comparison of the Flat Earthers and the Rabid Left to be particuarly apt. Neither of them can be reasoned with, and there is no common ground for discussion. Both groups have amply proven themselves to be subspieces of Barkus Moonbattus. The only real differences between the groups are what they are barking about and their relative numbers. Oh, and Rabid Left ones have MSM support, and membership.

Another subspieces of Barkus Moonbattus is that group that claims that since the Earth was created in 7 days, it can only be 6000 or so years old. There’s no reasoning with them. Even when you show them, with their own texts, that it ain’t necessarily so, so quit being so dogmatic about it. I’m talking about those moonbats, that is.

I mean, it’s so EASY to prove them wrong — in all 3 cases. And yet in all 3 cases they are “True Believers”, and as such can’t be reasoned with.

Oct 21, 2004 - 9:34 am 10. Johan Amedeus Metesky:

I think things have become much more partisan since the Clinton impeachment but it’s a trend that started in 1972 when the left wing of the Democratic party became dominant.

Remember, involvement in Vietnam was started under a Republican administration and that effort was later supported by two Democratic presidents and a Republican. Likewise, until 1972, fighting the Cold War was a bipartisan effort. It was only when the Democrats became the party of the left as opposed to the party of moderate classical liberalism that things started getting more partisan.

Oct 21, 2004 - 9:36 am 11. David C:

I’m actually somewhat optimistic about the mid-to-long term. The thing about delusional worldviews is that they *are* delusional. And eventually, exposure to reality will dispel the delusions. I’m hoping Bush wins this election, and wins it *big*, where it’s not even close, in the hopes that the shock of reality might bring a lot of people out of their irrational conspiracist mindsets.

If it *is* close… yeah, things might get a lot uglier before they get any better. But I still believe that a large majority of the American people does *not* subscribe to the insane-Left worldview, and will rightly see a vote for Kerry as horribly dangerous for a nation at war.

Oct 21, 2004 - 9:40 am 12. mrp:

The next Democrat to be elected (and I believe that person will not be John F. Kerry) will appoint an Attorney General so blind and obsequious that in comparison, Janet Reno would seem the very embodiment of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Close your eyes and imagine that.

Oct 21, 2004 - 9:55 am 13. Old Dad:

“World view” is too kind a word to describe the silly nostalgia that lefty boomers mistake for a political philosophy. Several years ago at a Christmas party, several aging and tipsy boomers started to wax nostalgic about the 1960s. I won’t bore you with the details, but let’s just say I was never invited back.

Pretty good popular music does not define a movement. Hell, 50s cool jazz is much better than 60s rock and roll, but the boomers were just babies then and so it doesn’t count.

I think that much of the bitterness of this campaign comes from a relatively small percentage of lefty boomers who see but will not admit that “the movement” was a fraud. Viet Nam was a noble cause. Communism was evil. The Great Society never worked. Ronald Reagan was a great man who lead us to victory in the Cold War. The UN is a joke. Bubba is a narcissistic child. That’s a hard reality if you still treasure your Bob Dylan albums.

Oct 21, 2004 - 10:00 am 14. Jamie Irons:

Roger and almost everybody else:

Take a deep breath.

In the Fox Opinion Dynamics poll posted (IIRC) two days ago, the most stunning of the “internals” (am I using the term correctly, Rick?) was that 69% of respondents believed the “War on Terror” was a real war, and not just a figure of speech, and only 24% replied affirmatively to the contrary position.

I find this immensely reassuring, as I think an individual’s view of the WoT is a touchstone for his contact with reality.

I am certain that the unifying deep principle of Bush Derangement Syndrome is a refusal to see that the WoT is a real war.

And with all respect to one poster above, it was not at all a distortion of what Kerry meant, or what he “really thinks,” (assuming such a chimaera truly exists), to characterize his nostalgia for terrorism as a mere “nuisance” as the Rerpublicans characterized it.

Jamie Irons

Oct 21, 2004 - 10:01 am 15. Rick Ballard:

“It’s ALWAYS been all about the baby-boomers.

Skeeziks, it’s realy not. The definitional shorthand used to frame various arguments appears to come from the babyboomers but it actally comes from the political language of the Depression. The babyboomers account for about 38% of the VAP (Voting Age Population) and will account for about 41% of the actual vote. If the election were about them, Kerry would win by about 3-5% because that’s the way they skew in party identification and that’s the way they vote. This election is about the GenX and younger voters who skew Republican and the independents (especially women) who will vote familial interest above all else.

The bitterness of the current season is a reflection of the fear that the Dems feel when they look at the demographic tables showing more voters 40 and under identifying themselves as Republicans than as Democrats. The doors to the corridors of power are being rekeyed – and the locksmith won’t be back for twenty years.

If Kerry could “close the deal” with independent women he would win. Of course, if he had big enough wings, he could fly. As it is, he and the ditz are scheduling which houses they will be staying in over the next year. The White House isn’t on the list.

Oct 21, 2004 - 10:04 am 16. Skookumchuk:

On my more optimistic days, I don’t think that Americans really want a cultural civil war. People ultimately will vote “to stop the snarling” as Richard McEnroe says. And one or two positive things may come out of this in a decade or so, especially as GenX people enter their 40s. The first would be the marginalization of whichever side seemed the most strident and divisive, almost certainly the Democrats. The second might be a weakened Federal government with greater limitations on the judiciary and some sort of new States Rights movement allowing a variety of government roles in society. Well, a guy can hope.

Oct 21, 2004 - 10:14 am 17. WichitaBoy:

“What causes wars?” is an age-old question. I am increasingly of the view that bifurcating world-views–irreconcilable narratives–is the cause of wars.

Have we seen this before?

During the Civil War there was violent disagreement between the two sides, disagreement so deep that it literally rent families, with some families famously producing generals on both sides of the war. But the key point is to understand the nature of that disagreement. Fundamentally, the disagreement was over what the war was about; there was a starkly bifurcating world-view. Those of us educated in the North learned that the war was about slavery and we find it nearly impossible to understand why the Southerners were fighting to preserve slavery. But history is written by the victors and the Southerners saw it quite differently: they were fighting to preserve their rights, their freedoms. That’s why they called it the “Second American Revolution”. Toward the end of the war both Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were calling for emancipation, an inconvenient fact which doesn’t quite fit in with the standard Northern narrative.

Things are not going to go back to normal after this election because the loss of one single election is not sufficient evidence that a world-view is completely at odds with reality. Think about it for a minute. There are masses of people who really do believe “it’s all about oil” and that the last election was stolen for this purpose. Why would they believe any differently about any future election, regardless of the percentages? If Bush wins this election it will be because he stole it and because the Democrats weren’t dirty enough and because Americans were too easily duped once again. Those are articles of faith in the Church of the Left. Why would a single election result convince anyone, for example, that Bush is not the puppet of Halliburton?

The idea that an election is a legitimate way to solve a problem is a key belief in what Catherine has called the “civic religion” of America.

But, if the core truth is instead that the United States really is the preeminent fascist state then it doesn’t matter what harm is done to the body politic in tearing it down.

One side believes that it is fighting to preserve an idealized democracy against rampant corporate fascism; the other side believes it is fighting to preserve and expand the ideas of democracy and human rights for all, themselves.

I think we have to adjust our thinking to the fact that we are at war now, at war with our own people. We have two vast “armies” fighting it out, approximately the same armies that were fighting it out over Vietnam. At the moment the war is being fought on the battleground of ideas. That could change.

Oct 21, 2004 - 10:25 am 18. Syl:

I don’t know about anyone else but I’m finding it extremely difficult to cope with MSM covering for the Dems as much as it does. It’s frightening and nauseating to me. It feels, frankly, unfair.

Especially so since I used to be on the ‘other side’ and never faced media antagonism before. I know that a huge segment of the population never hears the opposition view because I, myself, never really heard it over the decades I was a Democrat.

The situation is slowly changing, I’m sure, but too slow for my tastes. If it weren’t for the internet I’d probably still be on the ‘other side’ though Fox has had its share of influence with me simply because it doesn’t accept the MSM view as the only one there is.

I’ve wondered how I would react to a Kerry win since I feel it would be disastrous for the country. I feel anger and resentment and almost hope for a civil war of sorts. But I won’t go that far, really, because I think of the Iraqi people. If Kerry should, God forbid, win we should be an example for the Iraqi’s on how to peacefully deal with an opposition holding power.

I suspect I might just turn it all off. I don’t know. I do want to find a balance between online knowledge and opinion gathering and my more private world of my art in any case. And to that end I’ve actually done nine new pictures which has heartened me a bit and I’ve put them up on my site.

Though, whatever happens, I’m sure I’ll still follow the news because I never ever want to be blindsided by a 9/11 again.

Oct 21, 2004 - 10:28 am 19. DeanT:

I think people are changing their minds quite a lot. Folks don’t report themselves as undecideds during polling very much now. But many more of them are swayable than just those who do report themselves as undecided.

Like many others, I was planning to vote for Kerry after the Democratic convention. (IIRC, at the time, it was considered his election to lose.) During his two terrible months after that, I first put our family “Kerry/Edwards” sign on hold, and then decided to vote for the other guy. Like many other people did. And if Bush had been much worse during the debates, without shame, I would have flip flopped again.

But during this whole time period, while supporting Kerry and while supporting Bush, I never considered myself undecided.

There is a fight for the apathetic, apolitical undecideds. And it is important. But please don’t think that they are the only opinions (and votes) that can be changed.

Oct 21, 2004 - 10:28 am 20. Atlanta Lawyer:

Roger,

See this article in the Christian Science Monitor that puts the nasty politics in perspective:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1021/p09s01-coop.html

The conclusion of this article is that, from a historical perspective, American politics have tended to be nasty, yet end up generally producing decent leaders.

Oct 21, 2004 - 10:32 am 21. Syl:

Actually, this election is not about the undecideds. It’s about turnout.

Contrary to the CW, in a presidential election the undecideds do not majorly break for the challenger. Out of 18 elections, undecided voters broke for the incumbent nine times and were evenly divided seven times. Of the two cases where undecideds broke for the challenger, only one was decisive as to the outcome of the election.

The new registrations can make a big difference in the outcome since traditionally more vote Democratic than Republican. Turnout among new registrants is probably going to be higher this election than four years ago, but it will be offset by the pumped up Bush supporters.

It’s a ground game in the end.

Oct 21, 2004 - 10:42 am 22. Bruce Badger:

Some really perceptive comments. Helped me cement my thinking, thanks.

This is both a clash of world views and a reprise of the ’60s. And it scares the HELL out of me. We are shaping the world my kids will be stuck with, and the wrong choices will make that a bleak future indeed.

I expect riots if the Dems loose the election. There has already been violence in the service of Democratic party. The pushins at the campaign headquarters, destruction of campaign signs, vandalism of vehicles with the “wrong” stickers, assaults at rallies (Frankens tackle, attacks on the Protest warriors, etc.), drivebys of campaign offices all indicate a refusal of the opposition to “go softly into that good night”.

But when I despair for the future of our great country, I remember how much worse the ’60s really were. Wide spread riots, guerilla groups that not only advocated violence, but used it as a political tool. Remember the SDS, SLA, Black Panthers? Openly advocating armed revolution. Kidnappings, robbery, bombings, assassinations. Just think of the beloved leaders lost to violence. John, Robert, and Martin – I’m quite sure I’m leaving out some.

And the result of all their outrage? Ultimately their excesses lead to a discrediting of their world view. Young people cut their hair and left the communions to conquor Wall Street. Altamonte proved that we needed a bit more than love. We needed adult supervision and adult attitudes. Much as I LOATHED the whole disco shtick, it could be viewed as a wholesale rejection of the entire decade of the ‘60. They sure don’t have much in common.

And I have some hope that the extremes of the left will lead to a correction of the pendulums swing. I thought Dukakis had taught the Democratic party the necessary lessons. Much as I was disgusted by Clinton, he was forced to assume moderate positions in some areas by the spector of Dukakis’ humiliation. For the first time in my life, I’m voting a straight Repulican ticket. In my state that means swallowing hard and voting for that lunatic Keyes! One madman in the Senate will not effect the course of the country in any meaningful way, but a political party lead by delusional Utopians will ruin us. Perhaps an overwhelming defeat will cause a course correction by the Democrats and we will once again have a “loyal opposition”.

(Crossing fingers while rubbing a rabbits foot with a four leaf clover clenched between my teeth, knocking on wood and throwing salt over my left shoulder with the other hand. Hail Marys to follow.)

Oct 21, 2004 - 11:01 am 23. ms anne:

i was reading a column by mattmilleronline.com/ which gave a different view of the political war we are experiencing:

“THE MYTH OF THE GREAT AMERICAN DIVIDE

With polls showing the presidential race near 50-50 as we head to the finish, we’re set for the latest episode of one the media’s favorite political narratives. You’ve heard the story line before: America is deeply polarized and divided, caught up in a culture war in which angry citizens of Red and Blue states gaze uncomprehendingly across the chasm, each side gripped by such fundamentally different values and visions of the world that any notion of common ground is unthinkable.

Don’t believe a word of it.

The antidote to this misleading rubbish is “Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America,” a new book by an uncommonly sensible political scientist at Stanford University named Morris Fiorina. His persuasive case is that the whole culture-war narrative is trumped up by political and media elites, who find it in their self-interest to shape the terms of debate this way in order to win elections, raise money for activist groups or drive ratings.

Fiorina begins with a deceptively simple insight: The fact of close elections is not proof of deep division or polarization.

Why not? For starters, recast the famous maps of Red and Blue states to add a third category for states in which neither presidential candidate in 2000 won by greater than 55-45. Presto! You suddenly find that 23 states are actually Gray.

Put another way, when 49 percent of voters in a Red state voted Blue, how Red is it really – and vice versa? ”

I agree that many of the fulminations and choke-holds we suffer come from deliberate agitation by politicians and msm–for their own interests in money/circulation/viewers/fame/and pure meanness. is it possible that a majority of voters are not sunk in this fever swamp of

manic hatred? frankly, i’m not sure.

Oct 21, 2004 - 11:04 am 24. Jamie Irons:

ms anne

Why not? For starters, recast the famous maps of Red and Blue states to add a third category for states in which neither presidential candidate in 2000 won by greater than 55-45. Presto! You suddenly find that 23 states are actually Gray.

Put another way, when 49 percent of voters in a Red state voted Blue, how Red is it really – and vice versa? “

Great point and great post!

Jamie Irons

Oct 21, 2004 - 11:14 am 25. chris_m:

You know, I am a programmer by trade, and at some of the message boards, there is a lot of talk to vote for Kerry bc of the concern of outsourcing.

My perspective is this: yes with outsourcing (aka offshoring) this puts downward pressure on wages and jobs in the IT field, but the alternative is having no job. If we lose the war on Terror, (God forbid!) do you think your job will be worth squat? Do you think your 401k will have any value? At least if we fight it we can then petition to change other policies we do not agree with. But to lose this battle, it is such a big issue, nothing else compares.

Imagine Kerry winning, and reinstating Saddam to his previous post amid the applause of the United Nations. George Bush called up before the world court and tried and his traitorous nazi party (aka republican) would be disbanded.

Maybe then the Terry McAuliffe’s and Michael Moore’s of the world would be happy….

Oct 21, 2004 - 11:14 am 26. Goof®:

Three things:

The 1968 election would have been far worse (in international and national affairs 1968 was a truly confidence-shaking year) had Eugene McCarthy somehow managed to win the Democratic Party nomination.

What we will learn is whether a “liberal”, a Senator, and a legal resident of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts can overcome all those disadvantages and be elected President of the United States of America.

My wife still thinks there will be a terrorist attack on U.S. soil prior to 11/2. Might she change her vote if no such attack occurs?

OT — I’d like to watch the Colt .45s, er Astros, and the Red Sox next week. Perhaps Bush and Kerry will make a small wager regarding the outcome.

Oct 21, 2004 - 11:24 am 27. Rick Ballard:

“I expect riots if the Dems loose the election.”

I expect gazillions of pixels to be mercilessly slaughtered in the chat rooms of the usual suspects. Some servers may go down under the onslaught of brainless angst expressed as “We wuz robbed” by the denizens of DU, Atrios and Kos. Mocha latte sales will probably spike heavily and the MSM will run a thousand stories on how “many pollsters were fooled”.

Actual violence? Minimal. The cadres of trained agitators that drove most of the violence of the late sixties simply don’t exist. Who’s going to riot? Do you really think that the trustafarians and kids impatiently waiting for dad’s next check are going to take to the streets and risk jail time?

Certainly, a great howling and gnashing of teeth will occur and the MSM will blow it out of proportion but these folks aren’t geared for violence – other than verbal, of course.

Oct 21, 2004 - 11:29 am 28. gb_in_ga:

Goof:

As an ex-pat Houstonian I say “Go ‘Stros!”

Now, all they’ve gotta do is get past that game tonight…

Oct 21, 2004 - 11:31 am 29. Occam's Beard:

Boomer nostalgia may drive some of the acrimony, but not just in the obvious way discussed above, viz., real boomers looking to break out their bellbottoms and beads.

Second-hand boomer nostalgia by boomer wannabes may also be a factor, since not all of those on the left are boomers. Boomer wannabes regret having missed the 60s and 70s, seeing it as a romantic time. This crew is most painfully in evidence on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, which exudes a peculiar time warp feeling (right down to head shops) for those who were around the first time.

I suspect some of these 20-something boomer wannabes see this as their Vietnam, their chance to strike a romantic pose a la Che, and by God they’re not going to miss it.

Oct 21, 2004 - 11:33 am 30. kholvoet:

I am trying to rationalize this as the really bad time right before the fever breaks. We have been infected with a lot of issues for the last 3 decades.

Maybe it is the baby boomers, I don’t know. I blame Hitler. Seriously. Pulling 6 million men out of the tradational head of household role, and bringing millions of mothers into the workforce did more to undermine American families and broke the generally effective cycle of child rearing and education.

Hoperfully, this is not scarlet fever, but something that even if it hits 103F or 104F, doens’t leave any lasting damage.

Oct 21, 2004 - 11:47 am 31. Brown Line:

I’m 52 years old (yeah, a Boomer). I remember vividly the election of 1968 – living in Chicago, as I do, it was hard to ignore. In terms of violence, in terms of divisiveness, this election doesn’t hold a candle to that one. If you weren’t there, it’s hard to grasp just how deeply LBJ was hated; in fact, he was driven to withdraw from the election, which I can’t imagine the Moore/Dean folks doing to Dubya.

As to possible violence afterwards, I don’t see it – if either party wins decisively. However, if there’s a reprise of 2000, with the presidency hanging by a chad, then it could turn very ugly very quickly.

BTW, this Cubs fan is pulling for the Astros also. The Cards are a great team, but this probably is the last shot for the Killer B’s, and both Bagwell and Biggio deserve a shot at a ring: they’re truly classy players.

Oct 21, 2004 - 12:19 pm 32. sammy small:

Goof,

Which way would she change her vote. The way I see it, no attacks mean one of two things; either terror networks are running on empty, or they are biding their time planning some future massive strike which will come some random day in the future. It may be a combination of both to a large degree.

Then again, if there were an attack of some lesser significance, Kerry would have to jump on it quickly and fan the flames as evidence that Bush hasn’t done near enough on the home front with security and is an incompetant failure who needs replacing.

Oct 21, 2004 - 12:56 pm 33. jerry:

gb:

I am from the Land of Lincoln and I agree with you about the Civil War. It was all about Southerners’ rights versus the Federal Government … the right to own slaves. I don’t want to hear about how racist Northerners were. Racist as they may have been they still granted blacks the status of human beings and did not think they were property like the secessionists did.

Brown line:

I too am from Chicago and was there in 1968. The riots were an artifact organized by the Chicago seven. There was nowhere near the partisan acrimony that we see today. And by the way McCarthy was a lot more mainstream then Kerry. I saw him in 1970 at campus speech at the University of Minnesota. The lefties booed him off the stage because he defended the military.

Oct 21, 2004 - 1:21 pm 34. jerry:

oops that was to WichitaBoy but I suspect gb thinks the same way too…

Oct 21, 2004 - 1:23 pm 35. Kevin P:

Roger:

I share almost every feeling and thought that you wrote this morning. I also know that although the particulars are different this is just another variation of the problems inherent in both Democracy and Human beings this wonderfull political system produces. This system stinks until you try to replace it with something else.

As some have noted the glorious past was not so glorious. Go back to Adams and Jefferson and you see two brilliant men who helped produce the form of government we have today and and when it came to running for president they sunk to every dirty trick and partisan political tactic that we see today. They used the press to spread false rumours and slanders and they used the press to distort real human foibles. They schemed behind each others backs while making nice with each other face to face. And in the end of their lives they found enough in common to keep writing to each other in friendship despite what they did to each other.

The Bush is an idiot meme is nothing new. Lincoln was portrayed in his own cabinent and in the press as the Original Ape. Truman was also often portrayed as a mental midget. And presidents that were considered wise and astute in their own time have been shown by history to be less then we thought they were.Remember when Reagan was elected is was the CW that we had traded a troubled but wise and genuine statesman (Carter) for an idot actor who couldn’t tie his shoe unless he was told how. Today’s CW is often shown to be false with time and distance.

I am not a pollyanna and I rage at the thought that we might exchange a President Bush for a President Kerry. I foam at the mouth at the blatant bias of the MSM and I often feel dispair at the state of the World.But I feel it has always been this way because our system of government does allow all the people to participate in self government, the smart, the lazy, the good and the bad. Just as we will never achieve perfection in our own personel lives we will never get their in our government.This is cold comfort when we see what is going on today but we have been through crisis and evil and I think we could even survive a President Kerry. Of couse I will go into deep mourning and I think we will pay dearly for it but sometimes suffering brings changes that will improve and eventually improve things. Keep raging on !

Oct 21, 2004 - 1:25 pm 36. Kevin P:

Roger:

I share almost every feeling and thought that you wrote this morning. I also know that although the particulars are different this is just another variation of the problems inherent in both Democracy and Human beings this wonderfull political system produces. This system stinks until you try to replace it with something else.

As some have noted the glorious past was not so glorious. Go back to Adams and Jefferson and you see two brilliant men who helped produce the form of government we have today and and when it came to running for president they sunk to every dirty trick and partisan political tactic that we see today. They used the press to spread false rumours and slanders and they used the press to distort real human foibles. They schemed behind each others backs while making nice with each other face to face. And in the end of their lives they found enough in common to keep writing to each other in friendship despite what they did to each other.

The Bush is an idiot meme is nothing new. Lincoln was portrayed in his own cabinent and in the press as the Original Ape. Truman was also often portrayed as a mental midget. And presidents that were considered wise and astute in their own time have been shown by history to be less then we thought they were.Remember when Reagan was elected is was the CW that we had traded a troubled but wise and genuine statesman (Carter) for an idot actor who couldn’t tie his shoe unless he was told how. Today’s CW is often shown to be false with time and distance.

I am not a pollyanna and I rage at the thought that we might exchange a President Bush for a President Kerry. I foam at the mouth at the blatant bias of the MSM and I often feel dispair at the state of the World.But I feel it has always been this way because our system of government does allow all the people to participate in self government, the smart, the lazy, the good and the bad. Just as we will never achieve perfection in our own personel lives we will never get their in our government.This is cold comfort when we see what is going on today but we have been through crisis and evil and I think we could even survive a President Kerry. Of couse I will go into deep mourning and I think we will pay dearly for it but sometimes suffering brings changes that will improve and eventually improve things. Keep raging on !

Oct 21, 2004 - 1:26 pm 37. Kevin P:

Roger:

Delete forever that last sentence. Their is a purpose for preview, someday I will learn.

Oct 21, 2004 - 1:28 pm 38. lindenen:

I got this link from AmericanThinker.com:

“Now here’s the sobering reality: Defeating “angry leftists” at the polls does not solve our problem any more than disarming a crazy person makes him a safe roommate. If I am right that the Democrats (under current leadership) are no longer an American party in any traditional sense, then this has massive implications for our two-party system ñ which depends on mutual respect and common goals. It’s as if Israel were forced to accept radical Palestinians from Gaza as voting members of the Jewish state. Needless to say, shared power combined with radically opposing agendas would spell disaster.

Democracy is too vulnerable a system to withstand an entrenched and determined hostility, serving no higher purpose than itself. Whether or not you call this treachery hardly matters. The end result is the same ñ conflict, not compromise.

Everyone is talking about the growing red-state /blue-state divide in America. The words “parallel universe” have even been used to describe the two ethics that dominate our political scene. To put it simply, the red side believes in “one nation, under God,” and the blue side doesn’t. We think rights come from our Creator, they think rights come from our government. We think there are moral absolutes, they think everything is relative, including the Constitution.”

Oct 21, 2004 - 1:41 pm 39. Ed Poinsett:

We constantly hear Kerry moaning about outsourcing as a problem for the American worker. It’s a red herring. Jobs always move to the location that produces the most quality for the dollar. Whether that is from NY to Georgia or Ohio to India. The government can do very little to stop it and the alternative is for business to shut down operations completely and disband its entire work force.

Is there no benefit to American workers from overseas employers? How many US workers owe their paychecks to foreign firms who choose to “outsource” to America those jobs that economically make sense?

Oct 21, 2004 - 2:16 pm 40. TmjUtah:

The intensity of this election isn’t leading up to any decision in any Culture War.

That fight has already been lost, and by the liberal left. They lost it with Bush 1’s first inaugeration.

I don’t want to use a tremendous amount of space here. All the preceding posts have been fantastic.

Think of the last sixty years of American political theater as a parallel to America’s experience in World War 2. The combatants are constitutional democracy versus progressive liberal socialism. I am using the sequence of events, NOT making an allegory – please don’t infer that I’m likening the Left to Nazis. You will note some chronological confusion. No comparison is ever perfect…

Begin at Pearl Harbor as FDR redefines government as the source of individual welfare. William F. Buckley piloted his B-25 over Tokyo with “God and Man at Yale”. The high water mark of progressive power in the country came during the early sixties with Kennedy’s Camelot but his successors committed their own Barbarosa (the 1940 invasion of the Soviet Union) by leading the nation into a war they refused to prosecute to victory. The explosion of unrest in the late sixties was the last gasp of the offensive reach of both the Pacific and European campaigns by the Axis. They had all the power…but were now tasked to defend what they had gained.

Barry Goldwater’s unabashed conservative campaign was Guadalcanal – a clear challenge made to the elite establishment. Reagan’s keynote speech was Torch – a toehold gained nearer the home of the opposition. Nixon brought results in war but proved too timid, and too flawed, to abandon government solutions. The rest of the seventies, culminating with Carter, could well be the attrition fighting across Africa and the islands of the South Pacific. Republicans pick up more local and state offices and begin to acquire seats in Congress.

Ronald Reagan. D-Day, of course. He was everything the progressives weren’t – unwilling to accomodate evil, steadfast in the belief of freedom and American exceptionalism and the power of free men in free markets to prosper. By defeating the Soviet Union he actually set the stage for the last real gasp of liberal power, the Clinton administration. The war was won at Normandy…but the fighting would continue to Berlin. I think of the nineties as the Battle of the Bulge, in that it was an offensive initiated with fragments of a once dominating force intended to accomplish strategic goals that were beyond the ability of the attackers to exploit. A huge, wasted effort…expensive to both sides but fatal to the Germans because they had nothing left after the battle. I say the same applies to the Clinton years. The democrat party ran on an end-of-history/end-of-the-business cycle platform and ended up putting all the mechanical failures of progressive thought in stark relief.

Bush II won 2000 against an incumbent VP from an administration that routinely broke 60% approval numbers. During a perceived economic boom. And we were supposedly at peace. Yet Bush won in those conditions.

There isn’t a cohesive progressive movement left any more. There are dozens, if not scores, of agenda-driven interest groups that line up behind the liberal label…but there’s not really a “there” there. They exist to pursue their own interests and support who they think might help them.

Their interests seldom rise to national interest. That’s why they are finding it increasingly diffucult to compete on the national stage. Their anger and frustration is personal. That’s why it is so visceral.

I am not so sure there won’t be an uptick in political violence after Bush wins (300+ ECV, 57%, you saw it here first). They can’t win with ideas. Maybe they’ll take up throwing bricks instead.

Oct 21, 2004 - 2:29 pm 41. Terrye:

I live in Indiana and people are pretty sane [and dull] here. I don’t see any civil war any time soon.

I think it is fear that drives people. It is easier to hate Bush than deal with the likes of AlQaida. The Dems smarting from losses in 2000 and 2002 have siezed on that and run with it.

It is disgraceful ofcourse. They rant and rave like a drunk bar fly and then commplain that the world does not respect us. Well what do they expect when their exports are Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin?

But what drives them is fear and guilt and a desire to get back what they think they have lost.

fat chance.

Oct 21, 2004 - 3:01 pm 42. gb_in_ga:

Jerry: I realize that you were really addressing that to WichitaBoy, but I’ll attempt to field it anyway.

Check your history. Antebellum, slaves weren’t automatically freed just because they went north, via the Underground Railroad — that’s why it was underground, after all. Escaped slaves were returned, even if captured in the North, that’s why the UR went all the way to Canada. It seems to me that there was this one court case that settled that, quite controversial at the time, IIRC. It was not against the law to own slaves in the North, you just couldn’t BUY them there. But you could buy them in the south, or overseas, and bring them there, where they were still slaves. So, ownership of slaves wasn’t an issue. There were slave owners in the North as well as the South, and that didn’t change until the 13th Amendment postbellum.

It IS true that the issue of slavery was used as a rallying cry in the North — AFTER the war had already started, and it appeared that the South was prevailing on the battlefield. But that isn’t why the South seceeded, that isn’t why the war was fought. The South primarily seceeded because they knew that they were being economically “raped” and knew that nothing short of secession would change it, and the North invaded because they couldn’t stand the ensuing situation where their cash cow escaped. Hence the cry about saving the Union. Bah, they weren’t so much interested in saving the Union as they were about saving their tax base.

Oct 21, 2004 - 3:02 pm 43. gb_in_ga:

WichitaBoy:

About Davis and Lee supporting emancipation later in the war: You know, I often wonder why they just didn’t go ahead and go through with it. It would have been the right thing to do. Lee had already freed his slaves before the war, and it is known that Davis had made preparatory moves likewise. It would have been a masterful stroke, even before things became dire later in the war. When Lincoln started on his anti-slavery rants earlier in the war, the correct thing for the South to have done was to declare pre-emptive emancipation. It would have taken the wind out of the ultimately very effective rallying cry of the North, and perhaps given the Copperheads enough impetus to prevail in ‘64. Or even to just sue for peace. I get the impression that nobody except the hard core Lincolnians REALLY wanted that bloody war, anyway.

Oct 21, 2004 - 3:18 pm 44. jerry:

Wichita and gb:

Let’s do a thought experiment. Suppose Lee and Davis went forward in the spring of 1861 and argued that in order secure Southern rights in a new Union based on state sovereignty the South should end slavery. What do you thing would have happened? The succession movement would have fallen apart for the same reason that Union was broken, i.e., The Union had broken into slave and anti-slavery factions. Successionists would have simply repeated the same split on a regional level. How do you West Virginia got created? The particular State’s right that was in question here was slavery. No amount of idealistic revisionism can paper that over. The only reason that emancipation was on the table at the end of the Civil War in the South was (a) manpower and (b) last ditch effort to gain European recognition. It was merely tactical

Finally, the Underground Railroad terminated in Canada because of the Federal Fugitive Slave Law. Remember Dread Scott? I can’t think of any state in the North that permitted slavery. Also you are wrong that the Underground Railroad only terminated in Canada. The black community in city of Evanston Illinois owes its origins to the Underground Railroad.

Oct 21, 2004 - 4:14 pm 45. Terrye:

It is true that toward the end of the Civil war some Confederates considered freeing tghe slaves, some even considered allowing them to fight.

That is what 600,000 casualties will do. The war had taken on a life of its own and the goal of the South had shifted from states rights and slavery to survival.

But what I see today is just nastiness and stupidity. And a lot of really uninformed people blowing off. I don’t know about the rest of you guys but I have a hard time debating with a Kery supporter, they just don’t know what they are talking about. Their grasp of the issues is Kerry good, Bush bad. Try to talk about the war and it is no blood for oil or some such nonsense.

This campaign has gone on too long. The Dems started too soon and they have worn us all out.

We are like bickering screaming children in need of a nap.

Oct 21, 2004 - 4:56 pm 46. Dr. Fager:

I’m not a me too person but I’m struck by Old Dad’s post above. It’s succinct and right on the money.

Oct 21, 2004 - 4:59 pm 47. Susan:

jerry,

It goes without saying that the North gets the high moral ground on the Civil War, but gb_in_ga makes a sound point about what that war meant to the South. Only one third of Southerners were actually slave owners. This, of course, does not excuse these young men in their zeal to violently break from the Union, but it’s safe to say the South paid a hefty price for it.

My point is that when you see a good ole’ boy with his Confederate flag, it isn’t a call to return to slave-owning, but of a need to claim an identity. As a transplanted Southerner, I still find it an odd moral oversight, but I think that’s what is behind a lot of it.

Speaking of the Confederate flag, when Zell Miller tried to get the thing off of the Georgia flag Jimmy Carter actually said something along the lines of, “Why do you want to do that?”

Oct 21, 2004 - 5:23 pm 48. TmjUtah:

Old Dad -

I agree with everything you said. It comes down to my ‘idle hands’ theory of political philosophy. Doing something because it’s new, or well intentioned, or even just because you have the opportunity, is never necessarily a bad thing. Refusing to accept responsibility for what you’ve done – that’s become the bad habit of progressive strategy.

Oh, and I left out two factors in my analogy up above: Eighth air force begins flying out of England in earnest = talk radio rising in the late eighties.

And I don’t know how I forgot the Manhattan Project – The internet. I do not see the advent of unrestricted information flows as a club with which to beat an opponent but rather as an almost miraculous asset to be used toward reaching sound decisions. More data always equals better answers…after you get the noise out of the signal.

There’s still quite a bit of noise out there. It’s a loop. And it’s getting smaller all the time.

As long as we live in a system that ties the power to govern to a requirement to win offices on demonstrated merit – the ability to fulfill responsibilities or deliver on agendas, or the trust that they will – the Democrats are going nowhere fast.

Oct 21, 2004 - 6:43 pm 49. Tom O'Bedlam:

This may be the most vitriolic election in my lifetime (which I suspect is roughly the same length as Roger’s) but it is only a tie with the Vietnam years for the most divided time in my memory. The “dialog” then was just as much pseudo-dialog as it is now, and no more true communication or changing of minds occurred then than occurs now. The venom that one sees now, in certain minorities of true believers on both sides, existed then too, and was just as intense. It was just not as public.

A certain formality, a certain maintenance of standards, still prevailed. Society wasn’t as overtly crude in 1968 and 1972, and a distinction was still maintained between public behavior (which required observance of certain standards) and private behavior (in which more openness and less decorum was expected). Elections were public behavior, so candidates and officials associated with campaigns did not say or do certain things in the public sphere. As a result, the elections themselves were not so vitriolic. When public standards were breached in the private sphere, reporters did not feel the need to report such private breaches on the grounds that “character matters” and “the public has right to know.” This sort of thing is now disdained as “hypocrisy,” but hypocrisy has at least this much to be said for it — in order for hypocrisy to exist at all, there must be standards in the first place, to be hypocritical about.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. Or as Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure rhymes.”

Oct 21, 2004 - 7:24 pm 50. jerry:

Susan:

I never said that I get offended by the stars and bars. However, I am somewhat put off when Southerners try to argue that the root cause of the Civil War was something other then slavery.

One more for thing for gb. The south was hardly economicly raped by the North. The South was backwater society living in the 18th century. The North simply passed it by. Slavery retarded economic development in the southern states and they really did not even begin to catch up with the rest of country until the 1960s.

Oct 21, 2004 - 8:22 pm 51. richard mcenroe:

Jerry ó de Toqueville said the same thing long before the Civil War. He wrote that you could tell the difference between the North and the slave-owning south just by the sudden general air of dilapidation you found immediately upon entering a slave-owning state.

Oct 21, 2004 - 8:54 pm 52. Brown Line:

Jerry,

With all respect, there were many people in the streets of Chicago who had no idea who Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin were. But assuming you’re right, 1968 was a horrible year for so many reasons:

- LBJ driven from office.

- Two major political figures assassinated. One (RFK) was murdered by a Palestinian immigrant who was enraged by RFK’s support for Israel – a sign of things to come, if only we had had eyes to see.

- Widespread race riots in the aftermath of the MLK assassination.

- The Wallace candidacy. An ardent segregationist took six states that year.

- Thousands of US combat deaths in Vietnam.

Today’s election, while nasty, does not come close to matching the horrors of 1968. I hope never to see its like again.

Oct 21, 2004 - 9:17 pm 53. WichitaBoy:

jerry,

I always enjoy your posts and almost always agree with you.

The root cause of the Civil War was that people did not agree on the root cause. That was my original point and I did not mean to call for a refighting of that war. Your and gb_in_ga’s comments evidently prove my point, some 140 years later.

Goof is right; it’s all Rashomon all the time.

And, though I have Southern and Midwestern roots, I’m as Midwestern as you are. Your note reminded me of William Least Heat-Moon’s comment to the effect that when you’re from the middle of the country you’re a Yankee to the Southerners, a Southerner to the Northerners, an Easterner to the Californians and a Westerner to the Easterners.

Oct 22, 2004 - 12:13 am 54. Susan:

jerry,

I agree with you about southern denial and root causes. I meet southerners all the time who have absolutely no idea what the big deal is. After doing quite a bit of genealogy research and finding out that I have Confederate as well as Unionist ancestors, I was surprised at the amount of pro/con slavery debate that actually went on during that time, particularly in north Georgia. I had always assumed that no such debate took place. I find myself relieved for some reason that at least half of my ancestry decided to be on the right side of history.

I usually lurk around here, but I am a big fan of your posts (and others) for the great insights.

Anyhoo, back to lurking….

Oct 22, 2004 - 5:18 am 55. j. marzan:

Roger wrote:

Maybe it’s my own hyper-sensitivity, but this feels like the most vitriolic election of my lifetime and, because I come from the generation of “Forever Young,” alas, I no longer am. Is my memory growing weak or were families and friends ever torn asunder as they are now? Yes, I can remember Vietnam when parents and children were at odds, tremendous odds, but a dialogue was taking place. People were questioning their views, talking to each other. This is not that. Almost no one changes their mind.

Jeff Jarvis was wrong when he said that America is a country “undecided” not undivided. Like Roger, I know of friends whose relations have broken apart because of this election.

And if the Al Queda is smart, if they really understand America — then they know that the best time to attack the US is on Election Day.

Oct 22, 2004 - 6:25 am 56. gb_in_ga:

WichitaBoy:

“The root cause of the Civil War was that people did not agree on the root cause. That was my original point and I did not mean to call for a refighting of that war. Your and gb_in_ga’s comments evidently prove my point, some 140 years later.”

To a point, I’ll go with that. It has come to the point — well it was always the point — that there ends/ended up being no rational way to discuss the issues. It seems that nowadays supporters of the Northern cause are fixated on 1 single issue, insisting that is the ONLY issue. That is not the actual case.

But there’s another point that I’d like to bring up along these lines. And that is, that for whatever reason they decided — slavery, taxation, states rights, or anything else that struck their fancy — that the individual states at the time were well within their rights to seceed. They needed no reason at all, just a “people’s mandate”. The rest of the U.S. had no right whatsoever to interfere with that secession. Under the U.S. Constitution, there was nothing that prevented state secession, and under the 10th Amendment falls to the States and the people. Hence, the states were well within their rights to pull out of the Union for whatever reason struck their fancies. And the Union was in the wrong to oppose that by military force. Slavery or no slavery. It was always the assumption that States could leave when it suited them, as they were soveriegn. That’s why they are called “States”, instead of “Provinces”. BTW — if secession were not allowable, then why did several NORTHERN states threaten secession at various times and for various reasons during the antebellum years?

Meaning, the Union wrongly invaded another soveriegn entity. Hence: War of Northern Aggression.

More on the inherent right to secession:

http://www.geocities.com/confederate_cause/thecause-secession2.htm

jerry and susan:

Oh, and if it was all about slavery and just about slavery, why didn’t the Union invade the areas in the Carribean and South America that still allowed the practice, while they were at it? Why not just wipe it out of the whole hemisphere?

Or was it because there was much more than just an anti-slavery campaign on their minds?

For that matter, all of you Northern Apologists, go back to the root of the site I gave the link to and read the whole thing. There’s a WHOLE lot more to it than just slavery. You’ve only been taught the history that was written by the victors, you haven’t heard the whole story at all.

Oct 22, 2004 - 7:23 am 57. Terrye:

gb:

Ah yes I remember reading about Brown’s boys. The governor of Georgia was hesitant to send his men to fight oustside the state and railway lines often ended at borders. Hoisted on their own petards.

Lincoln said we must decide if we are one great nation or merely petty principalities. When there was talk that NYC might leave the Union he said that would be like having the front door set up housekeeping by itself.

I had relatives in both sides of the war and it was the South that fired the first shots. If they had succeeded there would be no United States, at least not with a big “U”. The Constitution would have been rendered a wothless contract between Kentucky and New York State. The Revolution would have been lost and the British through their ties with the aristocratic South would have won in all but name. The experiment of a state born of a document and held together by the rule of law and representative government would have failed.

Oct 22, 2004 - 7:51 am 58. gb_in_ga:

Terrye:

Did you read the whole thing? Apparently not. Go read the part about Lincoln’t speech before Congress in 1847. If it applied to Texas/Mexico, it applied elsewhere.

“Lincoln said we must decide if we are one great nation or merely petty principalities. When there was talk that NYC might leave the Union he said that would be like having the front door set up housekeeping by itself.”

The implication of what Lincoln says here is that the Constitution is only a tool to be used when it suites MY purposes in the manner that I deem right. He claims that the Union always was always indivisible, and that is patently false. Just because Lincoln claimed that something is so doesn’t mean he was right in that claim. His claim was that the Federal Government was the only soveriegn entity and that the States were subservient to it. That view is not supported by the Consititution itself. And that view by itself is a contributory factor in the eventual split, as it demonstrated Lincoln’s lack of constitutional knowledge and commitment.

Again, go back and read the whole thing. It is pretty condensed, just a few pages and not at all comprehensive.

Oct 22, 2004 - 8:02 am 59. gb_in_ga:

Terrye:

Ok, back from lunch, so I continue:

More about Lincoln and his position pertaining to the indivisibility of the so called Union. His position on that calls into question one fundemental principle that liberal democracy is based on: and that is that government is enabled and enacted by the consent of the people governed. This principle is critical, and trumps any written law, even the Constitution. Meaning, his position of the unitary nature of the Union was, in so many words, bunk. Any people, at any time, may seceed from any government, no matter what that government may stipulate in law. This is because it is the inherent right for any people to be governed by that government of their own choosing. This was the underlying principle that made it right and just for the American colonies to seceed from Britian. This was the underlying principle that made it right and just for Texas to seceed from Mexico. It is the right and perrogative for any people, at any time, for government exists at the behest of the people being governed. Lincoln publicly affirmed that very principle in his speech before Congress in 1847 pertaining to Texas’s secession from Mexico. Now, somewhere between then and the war he changed his mind. But his changing his mind on the matter did not make his new platform correct. It merely (and correctly) identified him as being a tyrant, willfully flaunting this fundamental right of a free people.

“I had relatives in both sides of the war and it was the South that fired the first shots.”

You are correct here, but you are wrong as well. You are correct in that the South indeed did fire the first shots at Ft. Sumter. You are incorrect in that this was not the incident that started the war, as war was already defacto under way, at the North’s instigation. The Federal garrison at Ft. Sumter had already been requested to stand down, and was offered safe passage back to U.S. territory before shots were fired. That offer was turned down, instead a request was made to allow a Federal naval pickup be done instead. All was OK until Confederate Intel found out that the Federal Naval force being dispatched to Ft. Sumter (and to Ft. Pickens, at Pensacola, where a similar scenario was being played out) was not ordered to evacuate the Federal garrison, but was ordered instead to reinforce the garrison. Now, since Ft. Sumter was indeed Confederate as well as S. Carolina soveriegn territory, that ammounted to an act of war by the North. And was correctly taken as such. The South was quite right to fire on the position, in other words, as the North had already started the war, even though no shots had yet been fired. That the positions were being maintained and reinforced in order to force either closure of the ports in question, or the forced taxation and levies (illegally, I might add), under gunpoint, on the commerce passing through those ports is immaterial from the point of view of the rightness of the war shots, but it was vitally important strategically both from the North’s and South’s points of view.

An analogy can be made to the comparatively recent situation of the U.S. Airbase — Clark Field/AFB — in the Phillipines. The U.S. built that air base. No doubt about that. But it was on Phillipine soveriegn soil. As long as the Phillipines allowed the U.S. to remain, all was well. But then the Phillipines requested that the U.S. abandon the base. That was their perrogative, as it was their soil. The U.S. was obligated to abandon that base, and did. Failure to do so would have been an act of war, just as failure of the Federal Garrisons to evacuate Ft. Sumter and Ft. Pickens were likewise acts of war.

Oct 22, 2004 - 11:25 am 60. gb_in_ga:

Terrye:

I continue:

“If they had succeeded there would be no United States, at least not with a big “U”. The Constitution would have been rendered a wothless contract between Kentucky and New York State.”

In a word: Bunk! It was already rendered a worthless “contract” by the very actions of one Abraham Lincoln, who stomped all over it. And to this day it is still a largely worthless contract, in that the actions of the government are governed by those passages that the government wishes to follow, and not those passages that the government wishes not to. You can thank Mr. Lincoln for that.

Moving on, the peoples who chose to remain under that Constitution were quite within their rights to do so. And there were many who chose to do just that. Nowhere in that document does it state just which states were required to be parties for it to remain in force, it was just a framework. There appeared to be no further breakup of the Union threatened, other than that of those people in the North who were so appalled by the war and the atrocious behavior of Mr. Lincoln that they actively chose to counter that effort — those commonly referred to as “Copperheads”. While they were the sensible ones, they were not the cause for any serious threat for further secession, their aim was to hem in and defeat Mr. Lincoln by conventional means. So, no, the Union was in no danger of dissolving. Even if it did, that is not in itself a bad thing, as long as the resulting government(s) governed by the consent of those governed. There’s nothing sacred about the United States, in other words. It is quite possible to create liberal Democracies & Republics seperate and apart from the U.S. Constitution.

“The Revolution would have been lost and the British through their ties with the aristocratic South would have won in all but name.”

No, the Revolution was already lost, in that government had progressed from the rule of law, respecting the rights of the ruled, to the rule of the hegemony, where the force of might imposed it’s will upon whole peoples who wished otherwise If the principles of the Revolution were still in place (the Revolution won), then the Union would have let the South seceed peacefully, as that is exactly what the South wished to do and did, completely within the bounds of the established law of the day. As far as the British were concerned — what business was that of the Union? It wasn’t their country any more. The Union had made peace with Britian at the time — the British weren’t at war with the U.S., and the border with Canada was stable, proving that peaceful coexistence with the British and their interests was quite doable. Not to mention the proximity of British interests in the Carribean.

“The experiment of a state born of a document and held together by the rule of law and representative government would have failed.”

Again: BUNK! The fact that the North instigated that war proved that the rule of law had already been done away with, and the representative government of the day actually responded quite admirably, in that representatives of the people, in their state assemblies, exercised their inherent rights to chose the form of goverment that best suited them — even to the extent of breaking away from a previously existing representitive government which did not suit them. All done legally, all well within their rights. The rule of law and representative government didn’t break down with the secessions, it broke down with the North’s subsequent invasions and coersions by military force. It was the North that killed the rule of law and representative government, not the South.

Oct 22, 2004 - 11:53 am 61. jerry:

gb:

As usual Confederates can’t seem to really state their case properly. It takes a northerner to do it for them. I suggest you review the debates of an 1858 Senate race in Illinois. Stephen Douglas presented a much more coherent argument for the South then any Southerner. Douglas said it was about slavery.

In any given the Southern view of states rights the Confederacy never would have survived. Once the threat from the North was finished they would set about squabbling among themselves. If you could secede from the big Union then why couldn’t you secede from the Confederacy? When West Virginia seceded from Virginia, the state said they couldn’t and sent Lee to supress the rebellion. He lost, just like he did all his other northern invasions.

Oct 22, 2004 - 12:13 pm 62. gb_in_ga:

Jerry:

What you are saying is nonsensical. And not only that, it is just downright insulting. You say that a northerner can state the south’s case better than a southerner? Hah!

The real issue of the war wasn’t slavery. The real issue of the war was that the South had the unmitigated audacity to split away from the North, and the North just couldn’t abide that. Whether the South then started a squabble-fest and further broke up should not have ever been a concern for the North. It was the chosen path of the people of the South, a whole ‘nother country. If that were the position of those people, that would have been right, for them, and their business and nobody else’s. Especially not the North’s.

And what somebody said in some debate in an ILLINIOS senate race is really immaterial to what was going on in the South at the time. In other words, I really don’t care what some yankee said the south really meant, I’ll just ask a southerner. Yes, there was a case made for secession based on slavery, but that must be tempered by the fact that it was being expounded by those from outside of the South, hence was biased.

Besides that, it makes not one bit of difference WHY the southern states chose to seceed, as long as it was done legally and peacefully. And it was. And that fact trumps any argument that the Northern Apologists may make. The people of the South chose to seceed, and did. Case closed, as it was entirely their perrogative to do so, as it is for any nominally free people to do so. Denial of that denies that they were a free people, incapable of charting their own destiny.

That the North chose to pursue war on the South after secession merely damns them — it demonstrates that the North was the aggressor and in the wrong.

Pertaining to the secession of West Va from the rest of Va, that is an interesting point you bring up. It is interesting that it happened AFTER the commencement of hostilities. Had it happened BEFORE the commencement of hostilities, military action would not have been warranted, W.Va should have been allowed to go their merry way. But since that portion of Va had chosen to break off and join with the enemy in time of war, it became an act of mass treason, and as such the military action was warranted. That the military action was not successful is not material.

Oct 22, 2004 - 12:43 pm 63. mudmarine:

gb-in-ga

Well, you sure dug up a dead rat. You have some obviously well researched and interesting points. Frankly, as a semi southerner (born in Jacksonville, FL ) I have always been somewhat conflicted. I’m trying to remember what I was exposed to in elementary/secondary school (the fifties of course), you know, the formative years.

The right of the people to do what they will vs. the right of the government to keep the peace. I’m glad it turned out the way it did, though even if the south had won, slavery would not have lasted, it is a despicable, vile and evil thing of course. Though mostly brought to us via the muslim folks in Africa or maybe the Greeks in Greece.

But then to think of the fractionalisms that would have been possible using your points, well, that is a scary thought. It is only because we are a United States that we are/have been able to have faced and still face the forces of evil that have confronted us in the last century and the century to come.

So I may concede your points of law and constitutionalism, but I think we are a stronger nation today due to the result of that horrible civil war.

Oct 22, 2004 - 8:53 pm 64. gb_in_ga:

mudmarine:

“The right of the people to do what they will vs. the right of the government to keep the peace.”

Huh? The government keeps the peace by invading a peaceful neighboring country? I don’t think so, you are 180 degrees off base here.

“…though even if the south had won, slavery would not have lasted, it is a despicable, vile and evil thing of course.”

You are correct here, it was doomed anyway.

“But then to think of the fractionalisms that would have been possible using your points, well, that is a scary thought. It is only because we are a United States that we are/have been able to have faced and still face the forces of evil that have confronted us in the last century and the century to come.”

That does not necesarily follow. For instance, the U.S. seceeded from G.B., right? Did that mean that the U.S. and G.B. would perpetually be at odds? No, it didn’t. Did that mean that the U.S. and G.B. would never cooperate to put down global evil? Of course not. Why is there this insistence that with the South seceeded, they would not have turned right around and made trade agreements and mutual defense agreements with the North, as eventually happened between the U.S. and G.B.? I think that a people that were as closely related as the North and the South would have become amicable neighbors in short order, had the South been given the chance. It happened between the U.S. and Canada. It happened between the U.S. and G.B. Why not between the U.S. and the C.S.A.? Given, for instance, Jefferson Davis’s farewell speech in the Senate, I get the impression that the barrier to that would have been on the Northern side, not the Southern.

“…but I think we are a stronger nation today due to the result of that horrible civil war.”

Well, the North may have been greatly strengthened, but the South certainly was not. Previously prosperous areas became depressed due to the effects of the war and subsequent reconstruction, and are still depressed to this day. The economy of the South was ruined, and still hasn’t completely recovered. And what about the dammage done to the Constitution itself, particuarly to the Bill or Rights? Mr. Lincoln and his Supreme Court established numerous erroneous precedents in Constitutional Law, let’s just say that he stomped all over the Constitution and got away with it, establishing precedent that continues to this day. There’s no way that one can say that strengthens the Nation. There’s no way that one can say that bringing in unwilling ex-citizens kicking and screaming at the point of a bayonet and then taxing them into starvation stengthens the Nation, unless one is willing to consent that the Nation is no longer truly free, for that act of violent coercion was anything but that of a free nation on it’s willing citizens.

In matter of fact, it was a war of conquest — and in all wars of conquest the conquerers became stronger, and the vanquished became weaker.

No, I suppose that had the CSA been allowed to go it’s way in peace, that it would have become a viable, prosperous nation and valuable trading partner with the US, and the sum total strengths of the 2 nations would have become stronger than what the US became instead. The agrarian society would have been left alone to do what it did best, and the industrial society would have been able to do what it did best, and commerce between the 2 would have strengthened and enriched them both. But we’ll never know, will we? Unless, of course, there is a second secession. Fat chance, the precedent has already been set, and we all know who has the nukes. Nothing like a nuclear bayonet at one’s throat, no? Well, a guy can dream, anyway.

Oct 22, 2004 - 9:55 pm 65. gb_in_ga:

mudmarine:

“Well, you sure dug up a dead rat”

Actually, I didn’t bring it up, initially. WichitaBoy did. I just picked up the ball after he moved on.

“You have some obviously well researched and interesting points.”

Thank you. I’m still researching, it is something that has really interested me since I moved from Tx on to La and now Ga. I’m now much closer to “the action”, the places where all of this actually happened, I can see the evidence here. Ok, so there was activity in Tx, but not nearly to the scale that there was around here. It has enticed me to dig a whole lot deeper than I ever would have back home in Tx.

Oct 22, 2004 - 10:56 pm 66. Goof®:

sammy small

She’ll probably vote for Bush, but she might vote for Kerry if the attack she expects doesn’t occur.

10 days to go.

Oct 23, 2004 - 4:20 am 67. bruce:

To turn back to the current election..

The Program on International Policy Attitudes polls the world to get a sense of how people think about today’s major issues.

They recently put out a report that pulls together polls of Bush supporters, Kerry supporters, and people in other countries, which asked questions specifically about the war on terror, and just a few other subjects.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it shows that Bush supporters and Kerry supporters have profoundly different views about what the facts are … it is not that people see the same thing when they look at the war on terror and judge the candidates based on a shared set of facts, but that they see entirely different facts.

It also finds that Bush supporters hold more beliefs about these facts that do not accord with the results presented by the 9/11 commission and the Duefler report, or even with much of what Bush is actually saying.

It also tries to explain why this is so.

I hope you look at this — especially at the analysis that begins on page 12, which attempts to explain the results.

Oct 23, 2004 - 6:52 am

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