180 Degrees of Separation

Sept. 11, 2001, had a triple impact. It focused American minds on how vulnerable to attack we were, it showed us how pathetic our intelligence operations were, and it gave us a respite from our national spiritual, cultural and political division.

But 9-11 did not cure that division. We are still a nation as divided as that now-famous map – the one that shows red small-town and rural America that voted for Bush and blue Al Gore urban-suburban city-states.

The philosophical divisions between red and blue country are not the kind that can be healed or compromised away. That is because one side does not understand that the basic principles upon which this nation was founded are not up for discussion or compromise. Over a period of years, the U.S. Constitution has been shunted aside. What replaced it is the dogma of the politically correct collectivist and corporate state.

Because of this failure to understand how profound our divisions really are, in the long run the war on terror and the patriotism that temporarily unite us may not be enough to keep us together.

In all probability the majority of people in the U.S. will remain ignorant and apolitical. Meanwhile, the U.S. will continue to drift into the American version of Euro-socialism and corporate statism. If another leftist on the order of Bill Clinton is elected president, that will increase the division and set the course for the foreseeable future.

That is not hyperbole. If another Clinton type takes office, the direction of the country will be too entrenched and tenured for reform to occur.

Conservatives and libertarians understand that government seldom reforms itself. Because of that, they also know the greatest civilizations always end the same way. Once the dependent client state is created, it does not disappear on its own. Eventually that civilization or nation is destroyed, invaded, loses its cultural and political fire, or dies of its own bureaucratic weight.

A Euro-socialist corporate state for America will leave conservatives and libertarians with nowhere to go. As it is, most libertarians and principled conservatives already know that is the case. They also know that their chance of voting agents of change into office, on a large enough scale to stop the leftward drift, are nil.

As a matter of fact, significant implementation of the agenda of libertarians and conservatives in the United States is a lost cause. National dialogue, agenda and debate on policy will continue to be controlled by the left. Republicans will go along with it or they will not be elected.

The body politic has changed and will continue to change. It is true especially with uncontrolled immigration, in which the ethnic minorities invariably vote left, which means they vote for Democrats. Voting records show this is the case. The only minorities that are exceptions are Cuban refugees and some Asian communities.

In a recent commentary, Martin Kettle of the U.K.'s leftist Guardian newspaper reviews a book which sets out the reasons why the libertarian and conservative agenda may be over with in the United States. Kettle relates:

"In their striking new book, "The Emerging Democratic Majority," the left-of-center writers John B Judis and Ruy Teixeira have used census data, voting studies and exit polls to argue that a combination of deep-rooted modern American demographic, economic and cultural trends is beginning to stack the odds ever more heavily against the Republicans."

Kettle of course incorrectly assumes that the Republican Party still stands for conservative or libertarian or constitutional values. He assumes they have been able to slow the leftward juggernaut that has propelled the United States for 75 years. To paraphrase conservative William F. Buckley, it was the job of conservatives to stand astride history and yell stop.

Well, conservatives have been doing that for decades to absolutely no permanent effect. The direction of America is still leftward HO!

"The new majority ... is based on professionals, women and minorities, all of whom, especially the Latino minority, are growing as a proportion of the electorate, and all of whom are keen to vote. These Democratic voters are concentrated in postindustrial urban "ideopolises" in the Northeast, the upper Midwest, the West Coast and in significant parts of the South, including Florida and Virginia."

Kettle tells us, "Judis and Teixeira go out of their way not to be deterministic, but their argument is undeniably intriguing. As long as Democrats remain fiscally moderate, socially liberal, reformist and egalitarian, the authors say, the party will enjoy the edge over Republicans for years to come."

What that means is that the direction of the American system and its institutions are going to be in the hands of demographic groups that are the product of the incremental growth of collectivism.

The New American will demand more transfer payments, not fewer. The New American will not mind when there is increased regulation of our lives, as well as multiculturalism at the expense of the American culture and self- interest. They will demand and receive more "stuff" of all kinds from government (prescription drugs, for instance). In addition, there will be the expansion of identity politics, micromanagement of the economy, more taxes and more benefits and more money thrown at worthless expensive failed programs.

Almost nothing short of an act of God, or the individual states insisting on their rights under the Ninth and 10th amendments, can stop the growth of the collectivist central state.

Additionally, the twisted kind of leftist intolerance already in place in society will force libertarian and conservative voices underground. Hate- speech legislation will be the tool that will make that possible. Hate- speech legislation is another indication that, for conservatives, the First Amendment will cease to exist. It has already happened in Canada and it is happening in California and Massachusetts.

When the great silence falls, any opinion that does not fit with the agenda and goals of the left will be called hate.

The take-over of American universities by the left shows how smothering conservative opinion works. As the left took control of universities, conservative opinion and worldview became almost nonexistent among the professorate. How could students learn that there is more than one way to look at the world if they only heard one voice?

Once the left was in charge, few if any conservative professors or scholars were hired. Today there is an almost total absence of conservative or libertarian speakers and scholars on college campuses. When there are, riots and demonstrations and intimidation against them often take place. Free speech is only allowed if you are on the left.

Ask any conservative who has been invited by conservative university student organizations to speak on campus. Ann Coulter and David Horowitz as well as Jeanne Kirkpatrick and many others can tell you about the kind of hatred spewed by students when a conservative opinion is voiced.

This is the way the left works. This is what will happen nationwide when the left or Democrats never lose an election. This control of the agenda and speech has already forced Republicans to vote for and approve of numerous collectivist programs.

Society has always worried about the loony fringe right, but though they may be intolerant, they don't have any power. However, the intolerant left does have power, and lots of it – and they don't hesitate to wield it against conservatives.

The Clinton era is a case in point. Universities are a case in point. Congress is a case in point. Bipartisanship has come to mean you do it the Democrat way or no way. When Republicans protest, immediately the demonization and vilification and lies begin.

Meanwhile, our elected representatives have managed to create an ever-expanding un-elected federal bureaucracy. This entity does most of the implementation of leftist policies. From the State Department to the Interior Department, the left is in control. This means that the U.S. Constitution is a dead duck. The Constitution means whatever the representatives of the leftist/socialist majority and their appointed federal court flunkies say it means. Federal bureaucrats make sure the policies of the left remain in place no matter who is in office.

What should be frightening even to dyed-in-the-wool Democrats is that if another leftist like Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman or John Edwards is elected president, our national self-interest and sovereignty will be at the mercy of international bureaucrats and one-world-fits-all American political advisers like Strobe Talbot or Jeffrey Sachs.

It is the Democratic left that itches to hand American constitutional sovereignty and liberty over to international bodies. It is the left who cannot act in America's self-interest without the approval of an international body of some sort. It is the left that paralyzes us as we pursue any form of American self-interest.

The sad fact is that Republicans are only capable of calling a halt to the insanity when a major catastrophe like Sept. 11, 2001, occurs. Before Sept. 11, Bush and the Republicans were impotent. Daschle and company set the agenda and the direction, even in foreign policy. Sadly, the leftward drift of the U.S. never stops for long.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand." That was true before the American Civil War and it is true now. Nevertheless, if the issue of slavery had not been the ostensible reason to force the South to submit to Northern demands for Union, there would have been absolutely no legal or political justification for Lincoln to hold the South in the Union.

In our own day, the divide in America is not about states' rights versus federal government. It is about what we are as a nation and what we want to be. The differences between us amount to a chasm.

The most disheartening thing is that most conservatives and libertarians have given up hope that the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights will ever be resurrected. Thus, even responsible conservatives and libertarians recognize that it may be time for a national divorce. They include Walter Williams, Joseph Sobran and Lew Rockwell, to name only a few.

Many of them don't care diddly if the Democrats/progressives go so far left they fall off the earth, they just don't want to fall off with them. Conservatives and libertarians don't wish them ill; they just don't want to be part of the leftist social or political culture. They want the right to choose.

Conservatives and libertarians want something different from what the collectivist left wants. They can't obtain it through voting, but they would prefer to obtain it peacefully and legally.

In a column last year titled "What the Founders Feared," economist Walter Williams related the intentions of the Founders in regard to a national divorce, which we call secession:

"Thomas Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address said, 'If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it.' Fifteen years later, after the New England Federalists attempted to secede, Jefferson said, 'If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation ... to a continuance in the Union ... I have no hesitation in saying, 'Let us separate.' "

In Federalist Paper 45, Madison guaranteed: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."

What a concept. It is almost unknown in the United States today. The states are no longer able to be in charge of their land, they cannot decide their own educational policy, they do not have their rights as guaranteed under the Constitution in the Ninth and 10 amendments. In fact, the states have become the agents of the federal government. Originally the federal government was supposed to be the agent of the states.

Constitutional conservatives and libertarians care about putting in place the ideals in the Bill of Rights and the ORIGINAL Constitution as written – a Constitution which any person can read and understand. That no longer seems possible by voting it in through our representatives or expecting our courts to interpret it as it is. Another legal way must be found to re-establish the rule of law through constitutional means even if that means a national divorce.

Funny thing is that it is Canadians who may be developing those legal means for autonomy outside the collectivist state. Canadian provinces, other than Quebec, are yearning to breathe free of the control of the urban city-states of Ottawa and Toronto, the centers of power for the Canadian collectivist state. What we in red flyover country have in common with our conservative Canadian brethren may be summed up in the words of Benjamin Franklin: "Where liberty is – there is my country."

(Next time: The American Free State and 10th Amendment movements. Who are Stephen Harper and Corey Morgan and what is the Calgary Declaration? How will Canada's 1999 Clarity Act be the legal means by which provincial Canada will loosen the socialist strangle hold of Ottawa and Toronto? Former PM Elliot Trudeau began Canadian dissolution with the National Energy Policy Act. By signing onto the Kyoto Protocol, current Canadian PM Chretien just hammered one of the last nails in the Canadian coffin – just ask Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon and the Northwest Territories.)

Why is this so hard for some freepers to grasp? We don't have the demographics to stop government growth now, why are we importing MORE people who vote big government every time they get a chance? We only end up further behind and less able to even set an agenda.

Move to the NE or West Coast and live there and immerse yourself in the Goron culture for a while. You'll see that there is no reconciling the two. Sooner or later, something will happen. The two visions of American can't be reconciled. One wants small government and low taxes, the other wants the nanny state and tax somebody else. I live in the heart of the kind of people that elected Hillary. Nothing Bush does or says or ever *will* do or say will make them accept him or anything he does/says. Ever. They are diametrically oppopsed to everything he stands for. Every gesture he makes to their beliefs they'll return 10 fold in big government. A few of them think he's basically a nice guy, somebody you'd have a game of softball with. But, they certainly don't want his 'kind' running things or setting social agendas. HeavenForbid! They think the war on terror is about Bush's big oil interests, they think the Iraq thing is his getting even for his Dad's loss/etc. They've been brainwashed thoroughly and there is no hope. The lights are on but nobody is home.

Conservatives and libertarians don't wish them ill

I agreed with everything but this. The Christian in me cries for them to repent and be made whole. The American in me cries for justice to be done and for them to rot in unmourned graves. The left has destroyed this country and attacked my way of life. They are barely recognizable as human.

(I better stop here before I go into serious rant mode)

God Save America (Please)

Alarmist nonsense. The country is not more divided now than it was in the past. Contrast the situation today with the "Culture Wars" of the 80s and 90s: how much more restrained and pacific the mood on those fronts is today than in those days. Of course activists left and right make proclaimations. They always do. And of course there are regional differences. But people do a fine job of working together. Sometimes, it looks like everything is going to fall apart, but this is a common experience. What matters isn't the ideologues or bureaucrats, but the wider public.

Secession is just walking away, not a solution or resolution. These articles are a little like someone who only has a hammer using it for every other purpose, as a wrench, as a screwdriver, etc. The writer has secession on his or her mind and doesn't bother to consider other possibilities. It's a sign of a weak mind to say "separate, separate," whenever controversies arise.

There is no instance of a people inhabiting even a small island, if remote from foreign danger, and sometimes in spite of that pressure, who are not divided into alien, rival, hostile tribes. The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constn. a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world. Woe to the ambition that would meditate the destruction of either!

--James Madison

"The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated. Let the open enemies to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened; and the disguised one, as the serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into Paradise."

-James Madison

I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Because it's always useful to demagogue conservatives when they merely *peep* about anything to do with culture or *gasp* race. I'm a scientist and therefore not a firm believe in 'race' per se. I do believe in culture tho. I also think my country's culture is superior to all others. In my country it isn't OK to molest young children, slaughter goats in suburban backyards, or use the public sidewalk as a latrine. I understand these are perfectly acceptable practices in *other* cultures but when the members of said *other* culture come to my country I insist they respect *my* country's culture. For this, I have been labeled a racist by the bots. Sad. America is *not* a race, it *is* a culture tho.

My ancestors didn't come here to be *white* but they did come here to be free. Recent immigrants by and large only come here for financial gain and care little about the freedoms the founding fathers fought for so long as their welfare checks arrive on time and their ballots are in a language they prefer.

You are so right! You're not the only person who has friends and family members who hate Republicans and cannot discuss issues without resorting to name-calling. I have two sisters who both make over 100 grand working for a major corporation more than twice what yours truly makes. Yet the only thing they could talk about the last time we met was how much they despised Bush and how sad it is that the U.S is run by "terrible white males". I finally asked my oldest sister, who has quite a lot of kale saved up (which let her give my parents a brand new European car ..Audi or something like that...among other luxuries), if her life was terrible. She admitted that she was living pretty good. Then I asked her what she was complaining about. She had no answer.

All my three sisters are (1) ardent Democrats and (2) have a dismal knowledge of current events and economic facts. The two situations seem to go together.

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