Blue Movie - The "morality gap" is becoming the key variable in American politics

The Atlantic Monthly ^ | January/February 2003 | Thomas Byrne Edsall

[madprof98]

The demographic reality is that as currently constituted, liberal Blue America is growing and conservative Red America is in decline.

I seriously question that. If it's so, why is sexual experience among teens being curtailed? Why is the number of abortions on the decline? And why is popular enthuasiasm for abortion so obviously on the downside? I know that my wife and I vote Republican because we were so repulsed by the excesses in which our generation indulged. I can't help but think that some of those "experienced" folk whom the author cites may likewise question the wisdom of what they did when they were less mature.

[eno_]

Basically I have the same answers. I guess I'm one of those people who just prefer to be left alone, including in the wallet region.

[RAT Patrol]

We either value morality or we cease to exist. That doesn't have to mean we toss offenders in jail. But neither should we stay neutral. Embarrassment and shame for adultery, promiscuity, an appetite for porn, or whatever is as valuable as embarrassment and shame for cheating and lying. Virtue in all its forms should be valued by our society. In fact it MUST be valued or our end is near.

"Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private virtue, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics." -John Adams

"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever." -Thomas Jefferson

"We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." -James Madison

"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security." -Samuel Adams

"Your supposed right to destroy yourself infringes on my right to pursue happiness, being sad at having to sit by and watch people needlessly suffer and die. When you abrogate the unalienable right to life, doing so abrogates my unalienble right to pursue happiness, being sad at watching people needlessly suffer and die." -The Forecastle

"[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen onto any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man." -Samuel Adams

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom...go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels nor arms. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." -Samuel Adams

"Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants." -William Penn

"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles." -Patrick Henry

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined," -Patrick Henry

"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated." -Thomas Paine; 1776

"[I]f we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity." -Daniel Webster

"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain blessings. Much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to, so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass. The Great Governor of the Universe has led us too long and too far to forsake us in the midst of it. We may, now and then, get bewildered; but I hope and trust that there is good sense and virtue enough left to recover the right path. " -George Washington

"Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history." -- Will and Ariel Durant

[Sonny M]

, Gore was boosted by probably 2% by Americans who had fatter wallets who did not want to "rock the boat".

I think it was alot more then 2%, considering how many votes he had, and how close it was, and what an absolutley bad canidate he is, and how his previous run was a disaster when he sought the nomination. I honestly think, he knows he would have gotten his clock cleaned in '04 and thats why he's not running.

[Arkinsaw]

"Not withdrawl Sir..., Redeploy!"

Unfortunately most conservatives enjoy a futile headlong frontal charge into heavily fortified terrain more than anything else and your suggestion would be an affront.

I'm not sure if its for the feeling of heroic reckless righteous bravery inherent in such a strategy, if they are foolish re: tactics, or if they just like to have their asses kicked.

[madprof98]

Another recent post reminds us that it was just five short years ago that the Lewinsky mess came to light. I think many Americans at that time began to see the light about how morally degenerate this country had become. It was no blinding flash, of course, and many commentators brushed it off with "It's only sex, so let's move on." But I know it brought some people around.

"It felt like I was in the Roman Colosseum."- Patricia Heaton

[MonroeDNA]

"That makes two of us. "

That makes three of us.

[MonroeDNA]

Dittoes what you said.

I don't hate homos (homophobic), I just don't like them coming on to me in the locker room.

I don't like abortion, but believe it should be up to the states to decide.

I HATE taxes, and am sick of supporting people who pay no taxes.

I don't go to church, but believe in God.

[Celtjew Libertarian]

That makes 4 of us.

[timm22]

But should war fade into the background, or as soon as emboldened congressional Republicans begin moving to restrict Americans' sexual autonomy, the currently weakened Democratic Party will be positioned to push back with the kind of vitality that propelled Bill Clinton to victory in 1992 and 1996.

Just what kind of restrictions against Americans' sexual automony are Republicans going to persue at the national level?

Even some of the most hard-core social conservatives on this site don't support sex laws on the national level, wanting them instead on a state level. You could arguably point to Federal anti-abortion laws, but those only concern sex in a very indirect way, and opinions are still split pretty evenly in this country on that matter.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Meanwhile, the four percent of voters who consider themselves "upper-class" like Ted Kennedy, Frank Corzine, Jay Reckefeller, et al went for Gore by 56 to 39 percent.

. . . because the Republican Party is the party not of the rich but of the middle class.