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Lincoln, Liberty and Two Americas
New York Times ^ | CHARLES M. BLOW

Posted on 11/24/2012 4:41:35 PM PST by Eric Blair 2084

The gap is growing between liberals and conservatives, the rich and the not rich, intergenerational privilege and new-immigrant power, patriarchy and gender equality, the expanders of liberty and the withholders of it. And that gap, which has geographic contours — the densely populated coastal states versus the less densely populated states of the Rocky Mountains, Mississippi Delta and Great Plains — threatens the very concept of a United States and is pushing conservatives, left quaking after this month’s election, to extremes.

Some have even moved to make our divisions absolute. The Daily Caller reported last week “more than 675,000 digital signatures appeared on 69 separate secession petitions covering all 50 states,” according to its analysis of requests made through the White House’s “We the People” online petition system.

According to The Daily Caller, “Petitions from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas residents have accrued at least 25,000 signatures, the number the Obama administration says it will reward with a staff review of online proposals.” President Obama lost all those states, except Florida, in November.

Snip nonsense and vomit

But even putting secession aside, it is ever more clear that red states are becoming more ideologically strident and creating a regional quasi country within the greater one. They are rushing to enact restrictive laws on everything from voting to women’s health issues.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial
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We are 2 different countries. I have nothing in common with these people. No shared culture or values. They are not my fellow citizens or neighbors.

Their definition of "liberty" is letting you kill your unborn children and letting gays get married.

These are the same liberaltarians who will ban

Guns Fireworks Smoking Trans Fats 16 oz soda

Give them CA and 100% control of a State. Federalism guarantees good experiments and lessons in what doesn't work.

1 posted on 11/24/2012 4:41:40 PM PST by Eric Blair 2084
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To: Eric Blair 2084

If Texas seceded, I’d be tempted to move there even though the weather horrifies me.


2 posted on 11/24/2012 4:45:38 PM PST by A_perfect_lady (Great nations are born stoic and die epicurean. -Will Durant)
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To: Eric Blair 2084

Very condescending piece form a liberal POS. But at least he sees the divide.


3 posted on 11/24/2012 4:46:51 PM PST by central_va ( I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: A_perfect_lady

You’ve changed your tune!


4 posted on 11/24/2012 4:47:38 PM PST by central_va ( I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: Eric Blair 2084
yep. After one such insane tirade Dennis Miller observed, "We really are two different tribes now."

Too bad, but reality is what it is. One tribe striving to preserve ancient traditions that got us where we are today, one tribe seeking to strike off on its own self-defined course, not just leaving behind but destroying anything of worth.

Bad times ahead.

5 posted on 11/24/2012 4:49:10 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: Eric Blair 2084

These people make no logical sense.


6 posted on 11/24/2012 4:49:35 PM PST by GeronL (http://asspos.blogspot.com)
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To: Eric Blair 2084

Leaving aside all of the nauseating, politically-correct gobbledygook of the second paragraph, for once, Blow (and how ironically well-named he is) is bascially correct. Seccession is inevitable, we can only hope its more like Czechoslovakia and less like Yugoslavia.


7 posted on 11/24/2012 4:49:35 PM PST by teflon9 (Political campaigns should follow Johnny Mercer's advice--Accentuate the positive.)
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To: A_perfect_lady
If Texas seceded, I’d be tempted to move there even though the weather horrifies me.

Texas has somewhere on the order of 6 climate zones.

Pick the one you want and go there.

Most people don't realize that depending on your direction and points of entry and exit, you can drive across Texas all day and still not be halfway done.

8 posted on 11/24/2012 4:50:42 PM PST by elkfersupper ( Member of the Original Defiant Class)
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To: Eric Blair 2084

expanders of liberty?

Seriously??

lol


9 posted on 11/24/2012 4:50:49 PM PST by GeronL (http://asspos.blogspot.com)
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To: central_va

I worked until retirement to take my health benefits into retirement. Half the country just voted themselves free Obamacare.


10 posted on 11/24/2012 4:53:11 PM PST by Ciexyz
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To: Eric Blair 2084

“Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.

But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole.”

— George Washington, Farewell Address


11 posted on 11/24/2012 4:53:50 PM PST by EternalVigilance (America's creed: Our rights come from God, not men. Governments exist to secure those rights.)
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To: Eric Blair 2084

‘Democrats may want to expand personal liberties’but Republicans have spent the last few years working feverishly to restrict them.’

Liberties the Dems will NEVER adhere:

1) Allowing us to opt OUT of Obamacare
2) Allowing us to opt out of Social Security
3) Rolling back gun restrictions


12 posted on 11/24/2012 4:55:09 PM PST by Le Chien Rouge
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To: Eric Blair 2084

Let the Left deceive themselves. If they don’t compromise and are willing to let the United States break up because of their own partisan idiocy and intransigence, then I would consider supporting secession.


13 posted on 11/24/2012 4:55:20 PM PST by Post Toasties (Leftists give insanity a bad name. 0bama: Eight years of failure and fingerpointing.)
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To: elkfersupper
Texas has somewhere on the order of 6 climate zones.

Pick the one you want and go there.

You got it wrong. Just stay in place and the six climate zones come to you - sometimes in the same week.

14 posted on 11/24/2012 4:55:32 PM PST by Nachoman (Wisdom is learned, cynicism is earned.)
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To: Eric Blair 2084

for later


15 posted on 11/24/2012 5:02:06 PM PST by APatientMan (Pick a side)
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To: Eric Blair 2084

“...and is pushing conservatives, left quaking after this month’s election, to extremes.”

I would love it if just once these lefty nincompoops would explain how wanting to keep this country as it is (or was) is extreme & pulling us into something we’ve never been is not.


16 posted on 11/24/2012 5:03:38 PM PST by Twotone (Marte Et Clypeo)
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To: Nachoman
You got it wrong. Just stay in place and the six climate zones come to you - sometimes in the same week.

Well, there's that. I currently live 8 miles West of the Texas border.

Year before last, we had a situation where it went from 12 below zero to 112 degrees in about 45 days. That's a 124 degree temperature change.

Before my father passed away, he was fond of speculating that the reason the SAC and TFW Air Force Bases all went away from this part of the world is that neither the people nor the equipment fared well with the temperature swings.

Then, there's the wind, but that's another story.

17 posted on 11/24/2012 5:05:49 PM PST by elkfersupper ( Member of the Original Defiant Class)
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To: Le Chien Rouge
‘Democrats may want to expand personal liberties’ but Republicans have spent the last few years working feverishly to restrict them.’

This amid a call for unity. What a crock.

These "personal liberties" are little more than a ruse, a false sense of license with which to build a society incapable of self-government, requiring a massive police state to settle disputes and a welfare state to mitigate the damage of its own doing.

18 posted on 11/24/2012 5:07:36 PM PST by Carry_Okie (The Slave Party: advancing indenture since 1787.)
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To: central_va

“Very condescending piece form a liberal POS. But at least he sees the divide.”

Good, between the condescension, and hubris, he seems worried because the rift is unbridgeable. The progressive Left, in this country, has not yet shown a proclivity to use violence against their most implacable enemy, the conservatives. For the US Left, the thought of violence is an anathema to their exalted self image. Conservatives need to continue to stock up and dissociate themselves from people on the Left. The witching hour will come, and we need to be ready.


19 posted on 11/24/2012 5:20:22 PM PST by grumpygresh (Democrats delenda est; zero sera dans l'enfer bientot)
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To: grumpygresh

I think the MSM and all the leftists in academia etc. are just as shocked as we ( conservatives ) are at how far and how fast they have gone toward totalitarianism and the destruction of the republic. I mean the Bush era seems like 40 years ago.


20 posted on 11/24/2012 5:23:37 PM PST by central_va ( I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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