So, the conversation from the last blog post continued. I'm still waiting on the next "Red State" response...
...and this may be due to the fact that the last dispatch from United America is guaranteed to offend people on both sides of the cultural divide. I make no apologies for speaking the truth.
___
Dear Blue States,
Thank you again. It was a painful lesson last time but we did learn a great deal. We are glad you don't want to fight this time. We didn't want to fight last time but even basically peaceful people will fight back when they are invaded. You are more than welcome to the New Deal and the Great Society. It has worked well for you and you should keep it. As far as little George is concerned I think we have already expressed our opinion on that. We don't understand your reference about immigration. We have nothing against immigration. You are absolutely correct. We are a nation of immigrants and the great majority of immigrants are good, hard working, honest people. What we do have a problem with is illegal immigrants. And, once again, you are absolutely correct. The laws need to be enforced not circumvented. If the laws are bad or out of date then they need to be changed. That hasn't happened yet so they will have to be enforced as they are until they are changed. I don't believe we ever had any disagreement about the tax issue. We believe that they are your citizens, you collect the taxes, and you spend the revenue as you see fit. No argument. And, yes, we will buy our own stop signs. Why do we keep coming back to religion. We don't see where the disagreement is. We are not trying to establish a national religion. We believe we expressed the opinion that everyone had the right to practice and express their own beliefs in any way they choose as long as they are not harming or forcing those beliefs on someone else. That includes Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Agnosticism, Atheism, and even Christianity. We do, very much, believe in the first amendment and that that right applies to everyone. Minority and majority alike. And, if you don't believe that the second amendment is threatened you need to pay attention to the wording of the Supreme Court ruling you mentioned. Think of it as a lawyer would and pay attention to the bills being put before congress. You can legislate any right out of existence. You just keep pecking away at it. Regarding Iraq, we don't believe addressed Iraq in any context other than as a foreign war. The concern we expressed was with ending terrorism and punishing the individuals responsable for visiting it upon us. We believe that if you unjustly harm or detain even one of our citizens the repercussions should be swift and decisive. When dealing with another country we would do our best to use diplomacy first. But, at some point it needs to be brought home to the world at large that attacks on our citizens will not be tolerated. That is not to say that whole nations should be held responsible for the actions of a few. The people of all nations are just like us. They just want to live, support their family's, and have a good life. Bu t, the individuals that harm our citizens and the individuals that aide and protect them should have to pay a price. We owe that to our citizens. As far as the United Nations we have no strong feeling one way or the other. If another nation needs our assistance and their cause or need is just we will be more than happy to lend our assistance or support. If they want to tell us how to run our country we hope they won't be offended when they are ignored. To address the issue of being a pariah state, open your eyes, the United States is already a pariah state. Most countries will defer to us because we are the most powerful single nation on the planet. Don't let that that deceive you. The world, as a whole, wants our money, our trade, our markets, and our help when disasters happen. But on a whole, with a few exceptions, we are despised. We're pushy, we're busy bodies, we're always telling other nations how to run their own business, and we're always sticking our noses where they don't belong. Hopefully we, the Red Nation, will have learned from these mistakes and won't repeat them. If some nation needs our help or assistance and asks for it we will give it. By the same token, if the time comes that we need help of assistance we will expect the favor to be returned. Fair is fair. Reconstruction? If it comes to that please, if you are as kind and caring as you purport yourselves to be, do us the f avor of just nuking us out of existence. It would be a much kinder fate and you wouldn't miss us. Sincerely, The Red States
___
Dear Red States,
If you'd give the belligerent attitude a rest for a moment, we'd be happy to explain our position. We think that if you'd relax the knee-jerk reactions for a bit, you'd find that what unites us far outweighs what drives us apart--and what keeps us apart is ultimately irrelevant in the grand scheme of things anyways.
We'll be happy to keep the New Deal, thank you, and we think that it's high time we had another one. Look at it this way: economies downturn when there is a reduction in demand. Lower demand means more goods and services go unsold, forcing the providers of said goods and services to cut production and costs. Lowered production leads to lower wages and unemployment, which in turn reduces demand even more as those unemployed workers quit buying goods and services, and the downward spiral continues. Clearly, that is our current situation. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at its lowest point in 12 years, unemployment is at a 25-year high, and virtually every economist studying the situation is saying things are going to get worse before they get better. The only way, then, to reverse this downward spiral is to increase demand--and the only entity out there big enough to raise demand enough to have an impact is the United States Government. The New Deal was the federal government's attempt to do just that during the Great Depression. It was working, too--only it didn't go far enough. Only the outbreak of World War II forced the US government to spend enough to raise aggregate demand to the point where the Depression could finally be brought to an end. Tax cuts or spending freezes quite simply aren't going to cut it. They didn't work under Hoover, they didn't work under Little Bush, and they're not going to work now. Obama's stimulus package may not be perfect, but it's a step in the right direction, and I suggest giving it a chance before you go denouncing it out of hand.
The reason why we keep coming back to the immigration issue is because of the virulent, vaguely racist anti-immigration rhetoric constantly being spouted by certain elements within the conservative movement. We understand that this element isn't representative of the good people of the Red States as a whole (or certainly, we hope it isn't.) So, if you want to raise an issue about the lack of enforcement or the need to reform the system, you are more than welcome to do so, and we can have a civilized conversation about that. But when it gets back to the "America for Americans" rhetoric, forget it. If you want to trace it back far enough, the only real Americans are the ones currently living on reservations.
The tax issue is another argument being raised by certain right-wing elements, hence our need to address it. Taxes are quite simply the price we all pay to live in a civilized society. Certainly there is a need to have a discussion about our national priorities, and we need more accountability and oversight into how it gets spent. And certainly our tax system isn't perfect, but it would be short-sighted to suggest scrapping it entirely--a fact that quite a few Red Staters don't seem to understand.
Religion, meanwhile, is the metaphorical "third rail" in Red State politics that no one can touch. You claim you're not trying to establish a national religion. Why, then, do we keep hearing all this rhetoric about how America is a "Christian nation?" What's with the Ten Commandment monuments, the school prayer issue, and all the hyperventilating about "In God We Trust" or "One Nation Under God"? Yes, most of our Founding Fathers were Christians. Many of their decisions in both their private and political lives were guided by their Christian beliefs. But they erected that wall of separation between Church and State for a reason. The fledgling United States had just broken away from England, where the Church of England and the Crown were practically interchangeable. England itself had changed hands between the Catholics, the Anglicans, and the Puritans numerous times, and Europe as a whole had been wracked by wars for centuries that, if not caused by, were certainly influenced by religion. Many of the citizens of our new nation had come over specifically to escape that kind of quasi-theological rule, so our Founding Fathers wisely chose to keep the Church out of the Government--and the Government out of the Church.
Look at this issue another way. Suppose you were a Christian living in Turkey. Turkey is a majority-Muslim nation, but it has done its best to maintain a secular government. However, the conservative element in that country wants to change that. They're doing their best to make Turkey a "Muslim nation" once again. Some of the more extreme elements are even trying to implement a form of Sharia law, which makes the various religious minorities living there (particularly the Jews and Christians) understandably nervous. Now, bring that back home. If you're a Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, or Zoroastrian living here in the United States and you're hearing all this rhetoric about "returning America to its Christian roots," how do you feel? America has a First Amendment for a reason. I'm sorry if that means you can't put up a creche on the courthouse lawn, but you're still more than welcome to put one up on your own front lawn if you wish.
And about the second amendment issue. I'm sorry, but both sides of our cultural divide have their own sacred cows that the other side can't gore, no matter how much we might lke to. For you, it's gun rights; for us, it's abortion. In both case, there are laws and Supreme Court rulings in place that can't be overturned. Your side had six years in which you had firm control of Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court. Yet, despite your virulently anti-abortion base, is abortion outlawed today? Nope. It's every bit as legal now as it was before the "Republican Revolution" in 1994 or Bush's "election" in 2000. Yes, it's been tinkered with. Some states have implemented waiting periods. Some federal funding has been cut. Certain procedures have been outlawed. But the underlying right--the right to choose--hasn't been overturned.
Nor will your gun rights be seriously jeopardized anytime soon. Granted, it may be tinkered with as well, be it through waiting periods, background checks, licensing, or the prohibition on certain weapons, but as far as your underlying right to keep and bear arms--to own your own firearm for hunting or self-defense--nobody on our side can touch it.
Why, then, do these issues keep getting brought up? Any politician who's worth his salt knows that what we just stated here is correct. It's because of the self-serving need to play to a particular base of voters. Some Blue-State voters may want to take your guns away, and some Red-State voters may want to outlaw abortion in any form. Politicians realize this and are always going to prey on your fears about social issues such as these to garner your votes. But they'll never be able to actually do anything meaningful about it without a major revolution that, quite frankly, we don't see coming. Yes, our rights may be periodically compromised, but if you take the long view of history, you realize that democracy is self-correcting. The gun-rights compromises under Clinton were reversed by Bush; the abortion-rights compromises under Bush are being reversed by Obama. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Democrats replace Republicans that replace Democrats, and the world keeps on spinning.
If we were honest about our country and our values--the ones our country was actually founded on--we'd all be Libertarians, anyways. Don't like abortion? Don't have one. Don't like guns? Don't buy one. Don't like gay marriage? Don't have one. Don't like pornography? Don't watch it. Don't like flag-burning? Don't burn one. Don't like gambling? Don't go to the casino. The Declaration of Independence (not the Constitution, like Rush Limbaugh claims) states unequivocally that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. " As long as you're not hurting anyone else in your pursuit of these rights, then by all means, have at it. We may not like how certain people pursue them, but quite frankly it's none of our business.
And once again, you're missing our point about the Iraq War. We have no problem whatsoever with the stated goal of ending terrorism--very few of us objected to the Afghanistan War for precisely that reason. But Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and posed no threat to us. Going into Iraq, in fact, detracted from our mission of finding those responsible for 9/11. Now, due to the blood and treasure spilled in Iraq pursuing Bush's Folly, we face a rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan--and Osama Bin Laden still hasn't been caught. We had no business getting involved in Iraq, and it is imperative that we get out of that quagmire as quickly and in as orderly a fashion as possible.
And we do realize that our nation is highly unpopular in many parts of the world, and with very good reason. But just because that's how things are doesn't mean that's how things have to be. We as a nation have a lot of amends to make, but you can't make friends by being reflexively defensive. If "we" don't like "them" because "they" don't like "us," how will the situation ever be rectified? Like you, we can only hope that we as a nation have learned from our mistakes and will begin approaching others with an outstretched hand rather than a fist. This "America First," "if you're not with us you're against us" belligerence isn't going to work anymore.
And as far as your "reconstruction" request goes...I'm sorry, but I think you'll find that most of us Blue Staters don't believe in wasting money on Cold War-era weapons like nuclear arms anymore, so I'm afraid you're out of luck there.
I hope you have found our explanation enlightening. If you're willing to continue this conversation, we're more than willing to keep talking as well.
Sincerely,
United America
...and this may be due to the fact that the last dispatch from United America is guaranteed to offend people on both sides of the cultural divide. I make no apologies for speaking the truth.
___
Dear Blue States,
Thank you again. It was a painful lesson last time but we did learn a great deal. We are glad you don't want to fight this time. We didn't want to fight last time but even basically peaceful people will fight back when they are invaded. You are more than welcome to the New Deal and the Great Society. It has worked well for you and you should keep it. As far as little George is concerned I think we have already expressed our opinion on that. We don't understand your reference about immigration. We have nothing against immigration. You are absolutely correct. We are a nation of immigrants and the great majority of immigrants are good, hard working, honest people. What we do have a problem with is illegal immigrants. And, once again, you are absolutely correct. The laws need to be enforced not circumvented. If the laws are bad or out of date then they need to be changed. That hasn't happened yet so they will have to be enforced as they are until they are changed. I don't believe we ever had any disagreement about the tax issue. We believe that they are your citizens, you collect the taxes, and you spend the revenue as you see fit. No argument. And, yes, we will buy our own stop signs. Why do we keep coming back to religion. We don't see where the disagreement is. We are not trying to establish a national religion. We believe we expressed the opinion that everyone had the right to practice and express their own beliefs in any way they choose as long as they are not harming or forcing those beliefs on someone else. That includes Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Agnosticism, Atheism, and even Christianity. We do, very much, believe in the first amendment and that that right applies to everyone. Minority and majority alike. And, if you don't believe that the second amendment is threatened you need to pay attention to the wording of the Supreme Court ruling you mentioned. Think of it as a lawyer would and pay attention to the bills being put before congress. You can legislate any right out of existence. You just keep pecking away at it. Regarding Iraq, we don't believe addressed Iraq in any context other than as a foreign war. The concern we expressed was with ending terrorism and punishing the individuals responsable for visiting it upon us. We believe that if you unjustly harm or detain even one of our citizens the repercussions should be swift and decisive. When dealing with another country we would do our best to use diplomacy first. But, at some point it needs to be brought home to the world at large that attacks on our citizens will not be tolerated. That is not to say that whole nations should be held responsible for the actions of a few. The people of all nations are just like us. They just want to live, support their family's, and have a good life. Bu t, the individuals that harm our citizens and the individuals that aide and protect them should have to pay a price. We owe that to our citizens. As far as the United Nations we have no strong feeling one way or the other. If another nation needs our assistance and their cause or need is just we will be more than happy to lend our assistance or support. If they want to tell us how to run our country we hope they won't be offended when they are ignored. To address the issue of being a pariah state, open your eyes, the United States is already a pariah state. Most countries will defer to us because we are the most powerful single nation on the planet. Don't let that that deceive you. The world, as a whole, wants our money, our trade, our markets, and our help when disasters happen. But on a whole, with a few exceptions, we are despised. We're pushy, we're busy bodies, we're always telling other nations how to run their own business, and we're always sticking our noses where they don't belong. Hopefully we, the Red Nation, will have learned from these mistakes and won't repeat them. If some nation needs our help or assistance and asks for it we will give it. By the same token, if the time comes that we need help of assistance we will expect the favor to be returned. Fair is fair. Reconstruction? If it comes to that please, if you are as kind and caring as you purport yourselves to be, do us the f avor of just nuking us out of existence. It would be a much kinder fate and you wouldn't miss us. Sincerely, The Red States
___
Dear Red States,
If you'd give the belligerent attitude a rest for a moment, we'd be happy to explain our position. We think that if you'd relax the knee-jerk reactions for a bit, you'd find that what unites us far outweighs what drives us apart--and what keeps us apart is ultimately irrelevant in the grand scheme of things anyways.
We'll be happy to keep the New Deal, thank you, and we think that it's high time we had another one. Look at it this way: economies downturn when there is a reduction in demand. Lower demand means more goods and services go unsold, forcing the providers of said goods and services to cut production and costs. Lowered production leads to lower wages and unemployment, which in turn reduces demand even more as those unemployed workers quit buying goods and services, and the downward spiral continues. Clearly, that is our current situation. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at its lowest point in 12 years, unemployment is at a 25-year high, and virtually every economist studying the situation is saying things are going to get worse before they get better. The only way, then, to reverse this downward spiral is to increase demand--and the only entity out there big enough to raise demand enough to have an impact is the United States Government. The New Deal was the federal government's attempt to do just that during the Great Depression. It was working, too--only it didn't go far enough. Only the outbreak of World War II forced the US government to spend enough to raise aggregate demand to the point where the Depression could finally be brought to an end. Tax cuts or spending freezes quite simply aren't going to cut it. They didn't work under Hoover, they didn't work under Little Bush, and they're not going to work now. Obama's stimulus package may not be perfect, but it's a step in the right direction, and I suggest giving it a chance before you go denouncing it out of hand.
The reason why we keep coming back to the immigration issue is because of the virulent, vaguely racist anti-immigration rhetoric constantly being spouted by certain elements within the conservative movement. We understand that this element isn't representative of the good people of the Red States as a whole (or certainly, we hope it isn't.) So, if you want to raise an issue about the lack of enforcement or the need to reform the system, you are more than welcome to do so, and we can have a civilized conversation about that. But when it gets back to the "America for Americans" rhetoric, forget it. If you want to trace it back far enough, the only real Americans are the ones currently living on reservations.
The tax issue is another argument being raised by certain right-wing elements, hence our need to address it. Taxes are quite simply the price we all pay to live in a civilized society. Certainly there is a need to have a discussion about our national priorities, and we need more accountability and oversight into how it gets spent. And certainly our tax system isn't perfect, but it would be short-sighted to suggest scrapping it entirely--a fact that quite a few Red Staters don't seem to understand.
Religion, meanwhile, is the metaphorical "third rail" in Red State politics that no one can touch. You claim you're not trying to establish a national religion. Why, then, do we keep hearing all this rhetoric about how America is a "Christian nation?" What's with the Ten Commandment monuments, the school prayer issue, and all the hyperventilating about "In God We Trust" or "One Nation Under God"? Yes, most of our Founding Fathers were Christians. Many of their decisions in both their private and political lives were guided by their Christian beliefs. But they erected that wall of separation between Church and State for a reason. The fledgling United States had just broken away from England, where the Church of England and the Crown were practically interchangeable. England itself had changed hands between the Catholics, the Anglicans, and the Puritans numerous times, and Europe as a whole had been wracked by wars for centuries that, if not caused by, were certainly influenced by religion. Many of the citizens of our new nation had come over specifically to escape that kind of quasi-theological rule, so our Founding Fathers wisely chose to keep the Church out of the Government--and the Government out of the Church.
Look at this issue another way. Suppose you were a Christian living in Turkey. Turkey is a majority-Muslim nation, but it has done its best to maintain a secular government. However, the conservative element in that country wants to change that. They're doing their best to make Turkey a "Muslim nation" once again. Some of the more extreme elements are even trying to implement a form of Sharia law, which makes the various religious minorities living there (particularly the Jews and Christians) understandably nervous. Now, bring that back home. If you're a Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, or Zoroastrian living here in the United States and you're hearing all this rhetoric about "returning America to its Christian roots," how do you feel? America has a First Amendment for a reason. I'm sorry if that means you can't put up a creche on the courthouse lawn, but you're still more than welcome to put one up on your own front lawn if you wish.
And about the second amendment issue. I'm sorry, but both sides of our cultural divide have their own sacred cows that the other side can't gore, no matter how much we might lke to. For you, it's gun rights; for us, it's abortion. In both case, there are laws and Supreme Court rulings in place that can't be overturned. Your side had six years in which you had firm control of Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court. Yet, despite your virulently anti-abortion base, is abortion outlawed today? Nope. It's every bit as legal now as it was before the "Republican Revolution" in 1994 or Bush's "election" in 2000. Yes, it's been tinkered with. Some states have implemented waiting periods. Some federal funding has been cut. Certain procedures have been outlawed. But the underlying right--the right to choose--hasn't been overturned.
Nor will your gun rights be seriously jeopardized anytime soon. Granted, it may be tinkered with as well, be it through waiting periods, background checks, licensing, or the prohibition on certain weapons, but as far as your underlying right to keep and bear arms--to own your own firearm for hunting or self-defense--nobody on our side can touch it.
Why, then, do these issues keep getting brought up? Any politician who's worth his salt knows that what we just stated here is correct. It's because of the self-serving need to play to a particular base of voters. Some Blue-State voters may want to take your guns away, and some Red-State voters may want to outlaw abortion in any form. Politicians realize this and are always going to prey on your fears about social issues such as these to garner your votes. But they'll never be able to actually do anything meaningful about it without a major revolution that, quite frankly, we don't see coming. Yes, our rights may be periodically compromised, but if you take the long view of history, you realize that democracy is self-correcting. The gun-rights compromises under Clinton were reversed by Bush; the abortion-rights compromises under Bush are being reversed by Obama. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Democrats replace Republicans that replace Democrats, and the world keeps on spinning.
If we were honest about our country and our values--the ones our country was actually founded on--we'd all be Libertarians, anyways. Don't like abortion? Don't have one. Don't like guns? Don't buy one. Don't like gay marriage? Don't have one. Don't like pornography? Don't watch it. Don't like flag-burning? Don't burn one. Don't like gambling? Don't go to the casino. The Declaration of Independence (not the Constitution, like Rush Limbaugh claims) states unequivocally that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. " As long as you're not hurting anyone else in your pursuit of these rights, then by all means, have at it. We may not like how certain people pursue them, but quite frankly it's none of our business.
And once again, you're missing our point about the Iraq War. We have no problem whatsoever with the stated goal of ending terrorism--very few of us objected to the Afghanistan War for precisely that reason. But Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and posed no threat to us. Going into Iraq, in fact, detracted from our mission of finding those responsible for 9/11. Now, due to the blood and treasure spilled in Iraq pursuing Bush's Folly, we face a rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan--and Osama Bin Laden still hasn't been caught. We had no business getting involved in Iraq, and it is imperative that we get out of that quagmire as quickly and in as orderly a fashion as possible.
And we do realize that our nation is highly unpopular in many parts of the world, and with very good reason. But just because that's how things are doesn't mean that's how things have to be. We as a nation have a lot of amends to make, but you can't make friends by being reflexively defensive. If "we" don't like "them" because "they" don't like "us," how will the situation ever be rectified? Like you, we can only hope that we as a nation have learned from our mistakes and will begin approaching others with an outstretched hand rather than a fist. This "America First," "if you're not with us you're against us" belligerence isn't going to work anymore.
And as far as your "reconstruction" request goes...I'm sorry, but I think you'll find that most of us Blue Staters don't believe in wasting money on Cold War-era weapons like nuclear arms anymore, so I'm afraid you're out of luck there.
I hope you have found our explanation enlightening. If you're willing to continue this conversation, we're more than willing to keep talking as well.
Sincerely,
United America
phoenix:
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