Balkanization: The Case In Favor

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away."
-- Elvis Presley

For the past 32 years or so, we have been humoring the Far Right. We have been generous and accomodating, giving in to their unreasonable demands instead of telling them what we truly think, in the hopes that they would return the favor. They haven't. They've taken a mile for every inch we've given them. We have had every right to employ the exact same cutthroat, uncompromising politics that they have - but we haven't.

I truly believe that this policy of appeasement and submission to injustice is the only reason that we are not currently neck-deep in a hideous Second Civil War (instead, we are merely neck-deep in a Cold Civil War).

Am I agitating for civil war? Of course not. But the Far Right is absolutely willing to go that far to get what they want. The Left has to at least ask itself: How far are WE willing to go? Let me repeat, I do not want a war. This is why I propose what I consider to be the only viable alternative: a divorce. The South has been not-so-secretly itching to secede for about 150 years now. I say, let them! I am sick and tired of them retarding desperately needed progress. We've freed the slaves, what do we need them for, really?

According to http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09/red_states_feed.html, 8 of the top 10 beneficiaries of federal tax money are red states - deep red, too, like Alaska, Alabama, and the Dakotas. And the 10 states that receive the least federal tax money in comparison to what they pay? Only ONE (New Hampshire) is a serious red state - 2 others are battleground states (Colorado and Nevada), and the rest, like New York, California, and Massachusetts, are solid blue. Contemplate this for a second. Do I need to elaborate on this matter?

Now, I know what you may be thinking: "We have BARACK FRIGGING OBAMA! America is already headed left! And most conservatives don't want civil war either, they won't let the Far Right go that far!" Or possibly, as one person once told me when I raised the issue previously: "No way. Half of my family is liberal and the other half insane, but we all love each other very much and nobody's pulling us apart."

I'm very sorry, but there's a reason I chose the Elvis quote today: moderates desperately ask, "why can't we just get along?" - well, as things stand, we can't. Moderates don't understand the true nature of the conflict in America. They have tried to smother the issue with sheer weight of numbers, but the Far Right and Far Left understand what they're talking about. We're not going away until the conflict is resolved - and that conflict is nothing less than the struggle to define America's raison d'etre: are we the Land of the Free, where those outcast from other societies can find refuge to live however they want, or are we a "Christian nation", home of the Christian, English-American, Jacksonian ethnic group where everyone else is merely a guest who has to conform to the rules of their culture? America is fundamentally divided between mutually exclusive mindsets and the MOs that follow from them. Simply put, roughly half the country believes in freedom, and the other doesn't - it's just that "freedom" is a "good" word, so they have a completely different definition for it. One George Lakoff wrote an insightful book on this matter that you can learn more about here: http://www.whosefreedom.com/. Like the man says, this is America's most important idea, and we can't operate with two completely different definitions of it.

The Far Right's not budging. Neither should we. What will happen now that we're standing up for ourselves?