Posted on 09/06/2003 9:14:08 AM PDT by quidnunc
I've been mulling this over and I think you're correct. My guess is that unless current trends change, California will be first. By analogy (a poor mode of reasoning, I realize), it's quite similar to what happened to the Episcopal church, which in my lifetime was (fairly accurately) known as "The Republican Party at prayer."
The liberals got control in the 60s and started changing things. In "modernizing" the liturgy (in the process losing the very beautiful Cranmerian language -- yes it is archaic, but it's easily understood) they altered the doctrines. There were some bitter fights, and the first round of departures began.
Then it got worse. In the early 80s my rector (for whom I still retain much love and respect, though he has passed on) got a bit frosted when, as a delegate to the diocesan convention, I not only voted against supporting the Nuclear Freeze Initiative, I questioned why the church was involved in secular political issues. (I was a bit more naive then.)
Soon after I moved away and just could not associate with any of the churches here, so (making a long story short) I joined the departures as I became an Anglican. The depatures slowed to a trickle, until the recent confirmation of Vicki Gene Robinson, who divorced his wife and then became the first openly practicing queen bishop, which is roiling much of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Soon, I suspect, they will have driven anyone who isn't extremely left-wing out. And they will own the church's extensive properties, free and clear. At least until they've run them into the ground.
Would it have been different if we'd all stayed and fought until the very last man standing? I don't know. I consider that the changes that brought about the first departures were already bitterly fought -- and lost. The liberals have a basic advantage in that there is nothing so low that they won't stoop to it in order to WIN; and most conservatives and moderates are hampered by the failure to recognize that we're engaged in a winner-take-all social war. Rudyard Kipling illustrated this in his story The Mother Hive.
Now think of California and what the liberals are doing. For individual reasons, rationally made, the more conservative are leaving. Taxation, regulation, affordability, the moral climate -- there are all sorts of reasons to leave. How many years it will take I have no idea (I'm still guessing, mind you), but it is conceivable that at some point the supporters of the Aztlan movement (or whatever it is called) to change "ownership" of California to Mexico will surpass the opposition. Certainly some of the recent actions, Motor Voter and Illegal Aliens Get Driver's Licenses, move things in that direction. And America's Left will support the give-away.
People like you are so funny. You completely ignore the actions and war crimes of those you idolize.
Davis was a politican, nuff said. But Lee was the absolute embodiment of the statement, "An Officer and a Gentleman".
If you look at the documents of the officers on both sides of that war and you will note that 90% of them, including Grant, agree with my statement.
Grant: " Let us have peace."
You must mean 'peace of the grave', because when Grant was finished with the South, he turn his attention to the West and committed GENOCIDE against the native americans.
Whiskey Papa, a person so anti-southern that it is funny.
It is true the sout sent their 'negotiators' to discuss the debts of the south, and they were refused, but primarily because the debts of the South were, even before the south stole every bit of Federal property not nailed down, so much larger than it's ability to repay them that meeting with the commissioners could only be the equivalent of a bankruptcy sale. Compared to the southern democrats and their penchent for soaking down 60% of the Federal treasury funds annually while the south only contributed 14% of the tax income, Lincoln was indeed a real conservative. It is to be noted that while the south had a way to fund it's war effort, it failed to do so and simply ran itself into a financial hole in the ground. The north, on the other hand, managed it's resources very competently dispute what was then an un-magineable debt load. THe credit for this did not go to Linccoln though, but the Thaddeus Stevens who was head of the House Ways and Means committee for the duration of the war.
Long trashed in cheap pulp fiction and, most notably, Woodrow Wilson's dixiecrat brutally racist history of the war, Stevens was truly appreciated and acknowledged in his day, and was given a public viewing on the same bier in the under the Capital Dome that Lincoln was given. He was a truly remarkable individual and a political wit of true genius. There has been no American politician like him since, and given the way the ideas of the founders are being run into the ground, very likely never will be another.
If you look closely you will see that I didn't make the comparison, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette did.
This was an exerpt from an editorial which almost certainly was written by the redoubtable Paul Greenberg, whose credentials as a Southerner and as a rock-ribbed conservative simply cannot be gainsaid.
I would bet money that this is also a Pro-Clinton newspaper.
I don't put much stock in any newspaper with the word 'Democrat' in it's name.
You would lose.
There were a couple of FOB columnists, but Greenberg — who runs the editorial department of the paper — attempted valiantly to warn the electorate about Clinton prior to the election of '92.
He coined the nickname "Slick Willy."
I don't put much stock in any newspaper with the word 'Democrat' in it's name.
The name Democrat-Gazette came about when two ppers — the Democrat and the Gazette — merged.
But how you can compare a religious theocracy (Islam, which is base on middle eastern sects and cults) with a democratic-republic (the South which is based on both the original Constitution and British common law) is beyond me.
Well, I'm no more pro-North than you are pro-South.
The only difference is that I'm pro-the-winning-side while you're pro-a-bunch-of-losers.
As for comparing Araby with the South: didn't they both engage in slavery and both subscribe to an honor/shame culture?
And of course as Greenberg pointed out, they have both constructed a mythos about their history which is more fantasy than fact.
How quick you forget that the U.S. supported slavery for almost 90 years. Also, the founders of this nation, whether they liked it or not, also signed off on slavery when they sign they signed the Constitution (look un the 3/5 vote for a slave).
And not much have really changed, the country still has slaves, only we don't them slaves. They are either in the URBAN slums, harvesting votes or in the sweatshops.
And here is the true irony of the situation, this country is falling apart because of the socialism that Abe himself started the ball rolling on a little under 130 years ago.
How quick you forget that the U.S. supported slavery for almost 90 years. Also, the founders of this nation, whether they liked it or not, also signed off on slavery when they signed the Constitution (look up the '3/5 vote for a slave' in the Constitution).
And not much have really changed, the country still has slaves, only we don't them slaves. They are either in the URBAN slums, harvesting votes or in the sweatshops.
And here is the true irony of the situation, this country is falling apart because of the socialism that Abe himself started the ball rolling on a little under 130 years ago.
It is true poetic justice.
They made a political compromise on slavery to accomplish union, expecting it to fade away in a republic. Wrong. -- Slavers did not want republican forms of government.
And not much have really changed, the country still has slaves, only we don't them slaves. They are either in the URBAN slums, harvesting votes or in the sweatshops.
Weird view, - you a communitarian?
And here is the true irony of the situation, this country is falling apart because of the socialism that Abe himself started the ball rolling on a little under 130 years ago. It is true poetic justice.
The concept of an 'all powerful state', one that can ignore our constitutions restrictions, has always been a product of the states rights movement in america. The socialistic politics of the early 1900's grew from that seed, -- and flowered in Roosevelts big government 'new deal'; which was bought to power by a coalition between leftist labor & states rightist political interests.
http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/ea/side/newdeal.html
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