If there had been a right-wing candidate...I'd probably be in the dumps. As it stands...eh.
The U.S. has been on a steady course toward a National Government (progressives, new deal, great society, obamacare) since 1865. Nobody's been able to stop it...Reagan was barely a speed bump.
Maybe the faster we get there the faster this place will implode...the only way to fix it is to break it.
The thing that amazed me - as I've just pointed out in another post - is that, even though Romney was just about nobody's cup of political tea, he still managed to get over 48% of the national vote. (The annoying bit is that Obama lost 10 million votes but still managed to win.)
I know something about the National Government tendency from Teddy Roosevelt onwards, but I'm going to have to fill in the bit between the Civil War and him.
23 years after Reagan and 21 years after Thatcher and the Big Statists are completely in charge - which I guess is was happens when you don't shrink the state when you have the chance.
Don't implode over there - please. I've been to China and I'm about as keen on the idea of that fascist state becoming the world's only genuine superpower as I was on the idea of Soviet Russia taking up the same role.
There was a generation of rampant, rapacious, industrialization (what the History Channel is calliing the making of America...a time of fantastic growth for "the country")...between the end of the War and the Trustbusters. That would have been impossible without the absence of the Planters in Congress AND with the elimination of an independent South freely trading with the World.
More to the point...the War established that the States would be subservient to the Federal Gov. We went from These United States to The United States. That was the necessary first step.
It might have the look of an implosion but it would be a return to soveriegnty for organic, culturally compact groups entities. The United States means nothing to me. It's an imperial construct. As the Federal government takes over more and more of people's daily lives (Obamacare!)...it will become evident that jamming people from Mississippi and Massachusettes into the same political body is absurd.
As it stands now...I don't know how exactly this place is going to stand agaisnt China.
As a small-state right-winger I have great sympathy for the cause of states’ rights. The fact that you have limited power over how you run things locally seems to play into the hands of Northern liberals who can go on sneering at the South in a morally superior way over slavery and the Jim Crow laws. They forced the South to get rid of both, thereby placing you in the wrong – in their eyes – for all eternity. I suspect that they go on flogging these aspects of Southern history mainly because of their resentment against you for largely deserting the Democrats in recent years. (I wonder if it also has something to do with the fact that the Democratic Party was the party of segregation until the late ‘50s, a fact that evidently makes Democrats deeply uncomfortable – at least, the few who actually know anything about pre-JFK history.)
As a right-wing European, however, I’d be terrified at the thought of America splitting in two. Thanks to political indoctrination in the schools and media for the last 40 years, my generation is probably the last that sees America – for all its faults - as the guarantor of freedom in the world, even with a European-style socialist in charge. Just as you see an increasingly powerful federal government as a threat to much that you hold dear, I see fascist powers such as the EU, radical Islam and, potentially, China, as a threat to what’s left of what I hold dear in this neck of the woods. At the same time, I suspect that an America officially split in two would be a less interventionist America – and, while I can see that that might be better for most Americans (the delights if untrammelled, one-party socialism would certainly give the North pause for thought), I don’t believe it would be better for people of my political persuasion elsewhere. Selfish, I know, because there’s no justification for you to go on having your culture repressed just so some paranoid bloke in London can feel a bit safer!
Anyway, as I’m deeply ignorant about these matters – but genuinely trying to get up to speed via your blog and some other reading – I’ll keep quiet about it for a bit. But I know where my natural sympathies lie.
If there had been a right-wing candidate...I'd probably be in the dumps. As it stands...eh.
ReplyDeleteThe U.S. has been on a steady course toward a National Government (progressives, new deal, great society, obamacare) since 1865. Nobody's been able to stop it...Reagan was barely a speed bump.
Maybe the faster we get there the faster this place will implode...the only way to fix it is to break it.
The thing that amazed me - as I've just pointed out in another post - is that, even though Romney was just about nobody's cup of political tea, he still managed to get over 48% of the national vote. (The annoying bit is that Obama lost 10 million votes but still managed to win.)
ReplyDeleteI know something about the National Government tendency from Teddy Roosevelt onwards, but I'm going to have to fill in the bit between the Civil War and him.
23 years after Reagan and 21 years after Thatcher and the Big Statists are completely in charge - which I guess is was happens when you don't shrink the state when you have the chance.
Don't implode over there - please. I've been to China and I'm about as keen on the idea of that fascist state becoming the world's only genuine superpower as I was on the idea of Soviet Russia taking up the same role.
There was a generation of rampant, rapacious, industrialization (what the History Channel is calliing the making of America...a time of fantastic growth for "the country")...between the end of the War and the Trustbusters.
ReplyDeleteThat would have been impossible without the absence of the Planters in Congress AND with the elimination of an independent South freely trading with the World.
More to the point...the War established that the States would be subservient to the Federal Gov. We went from These United States to The United States. That was the necessary first step.
It might have the look of an implosion but it would be a return to soveriegnty for organic, culturally compact groups entities. The United States means nothing to me. It's an imperial construct. As the Federal government takes over more and more of people's daily lives (Obamacare!)...it will become evident that jamming people from Mississippi and Massachusettes into the same political body is absurd.
As it stands now...I don't know how exactly this place is going to stand agaisnt China.
As a small-state right-winger I have great sympathy for the cause of states’ rights. The fact that you have limited power over how you run things locally seems to play into the hands of Northern liberals who can go on sneering at the South in a morally superior way over slavery and the Jim Crow laws. They forced the South to get rid of both, thereby placing you in the wrong – in their eyes – for all eternity. I suspect that they go on flogging these aspects of Southern history mainly because of their resentment against you for largely deserting the Democrats in recent years. (I wonder if it also has something to do with the fact that the Democratic Party was the party of segregation until the late ‘50s, a fact that evidently makes Democrats deeply uncomfortable – at least, the few who actually know anything about pre-JFK history.)
DeleteAs a right-wing European, however, I’d be terrified at the thought of America splitting in two. Thanks to political indoctrination in the schools and media for the last 40 years, my generation is probably the last that sees America – for all its faults - as the guarantor of freedom in the world, even with a European-style socialist in charge. Just as you see an increasingly powerful federal government as a threat to much that you hold dear, I see fascist powers such as the EU, radical Islam and, potentially, China, as a threat to what’s left of what I hold dear in this neck of the woods. At the same time, I suspect that an America officially split in two would be a less interventionist America – and, while I can see that that might be better for most Americans (the delights if untrammelled, one-party socialism would certainly give the North pause for thought), I don’t believe it would be better for people of my political persuasion elsewhere. Selfish, I know, because there’s no justification for you to go on having your culture repressed just so some paranoid bloke in London can feel a bit safer!
Anyway, as I’m deeply ignorant about these matters – but genuinely trying to get up to speed via your blog and some other reading – I’ll keep quiet about it for a bit. But I know where my natural sympathies lie.
should be ...withOUT the elimination of.
ReplyDelete