THE MYTH OF A 50/50 COUNTRY 28

The elections in the past two presidential cycles prove this is roughly a 50/50 country don’t they? The country is split equally right down the middle – half Red and half Blue, right? Well, actually not. Balderdash, you say. Alright let’s just consider what the evidence is on that score:

Author Morris Fiorina has written a book, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, in which he explodes the myth that people in this country are at opposite poles on the issues which are important to them and are divided equally. In fact when it comes to the important social, financial, and political issues, a majority of people, whether they are in the Blue states or Red states, are not that far apart in their opinions. In survey after survey when people are asked their positions on issues such as national security, government role in education, abortion, taxes, state and national government involvement in health care, gay marriage, appropriate punishment for crime, government enforcement on civil rights, government protection of the environment, and the degree of separation of government and religion one sees the results plot in the familiar bell or Gaussian shaped curves. And interestingly enough there is not much difference whether these opinions come from people in Blue or Red states. Further, these data have not changed to any important degree in the past generation.

It is instructive that three of the Bluest states, New York, California, and Massachusetts currently have Republican governors. They are moderate Republicans true enough, but that is exactly the point.

Why then this apparent severe and almost equal divide in presidential elections? The answer is simple. When voters have only two and not a continuum of choices they have to pick one or the other, i.e. Democrat or Republican. The total for all of the third parties (Ralph Nader, Libertarian, Green, Constitutional, Socialist, Flat-Earthers, Aliens-Among-Us, etc.) in 2004 amounted to approx. 1% - Bush received 52% of the popular vote and Kerry 47%). It turns out that currently as happens more times than not in history the electorate is split between Dems & Repubs almost equally. Even when there is what is called a ‘landslide’ the vote may go 55% to 45%; hardly an overwhelming difference.

Naturally the tails of the opinion curves contain the crazies – on both the left and the right. Of course according to us sane, rational, and appealing people there seem to be more loonies on the left than on the right. That may be because they have bigger microphones. Consider the strident, unstable, and famous (some would say infamous) Hollywood types; then there are the well known U.S.A. haters, e.g. Michael Moore, George Soros, Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Al Franken, Molly Ivins, Maureen Dowd, Eric Alterman, Robert Scheer, E.J. Dionne, Bob Herbert, Michael Kinsley, and Katrina vanden Heuvel to name a few (She is the editor of The Nation magazine and is not a wild-eyed loony – she is a Communist or close enough to it to count. Unlike many liberal gals she is attractive and in her generally smiling and cheerful way she would simply consign conservatives to the Gulags if it were within her power. Come to think on it the egregious Michael Moore was a Leninist as a youth and may still be for all I know although being sent to a Gulag would be the least onerous sentence one could expect from him).

A couple of days after the elections Michael Moore posted a map on his web site showing the Blue states linked with Canada with the title The United States of Canada; the Red states were labeled Jesusland. Paul Krugman wrote in a syndicated column in the New York Times that George W. Bush was a radical. That is not the pot calling the kettle black – that is a pot calling a silver chalice black. Carole Simpson of ABC News likened the Red states to the old slave holding Southern states. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi explained after the elections that the Democrats were holding a caucus to “save civilization as we know it.” Geraldine Anne Ferraro said all the talent and wealth of the country are in the Blue states; implying that the Red states are peopled by hicks, losers, and religious nuts. If the Democrats keep that up the country will become Redder and they will be consigned to a permanent minority status. But if they want to avoid relinquishing their position as a competitive political force they need to find more prominent places in their party for such moderates as Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democratic Leadership Council, Democratic pollster Pat Caddell, and especially they need to listen to Senator Zell Miller of Georgia.

The rightists, in particular some local talk radio hosts, have a few of their own lunatics. Ann Coulter qualifies as a hard right spokeswoman and is a best selling author, but lacks the vicious and hate-filled persona of bomb throwers on the left. Coulter flails the libs, leaving them raw and bloody, yet how can anyone be too put off with such a good looking long-legged blonde? The females on the strong left, with a couple of noted exceptions, look like they deliberately make themselves as homely and unadorned as possible.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Than are dreamt in your philosophy.” Who would have dreamed that the chasm which has opened up in the ethos of the Old World (Europe) and the New (U.S.A.) makes this country seem like one Big Happy Family by comparison? Fewer than 5% of Europeans go to church or synagogue regularly contrasted with 40% to 50% who do so in the United States. Europeans make the word ‘secular’ seem religiously devout in juxtaposition to their nihilistic philosophy. Apparently, especially after seeing the devastation of WWI & WWII, modern Europeans would sooner surrender to Muslim religious fanatics than confront them in another conflict. The “Rather Red than Dead” slogan of the 1960’s has apparently been replaced by the cringing admission of ‘better to be Muslimized that decapitized (not real words, but they rhyme).’

In a recent survey, before Yasser Arafat became brain dead (some would say that occurred 20 years ago), 13% of the French considered Arafat a terrorist, and 27% thought him a freedom fighter; 13% favored Israel and 34% favored the Palestinians in their ongoing battles in the Middle East. Doubtless part of the preference is due to anti-Semitism which is rampant in Europe today (technically since Arabs are also Semites it should really be called anti-Jewish bigotry).

There are no Good Guys and Bad Guys in the Middle East. Author Richard Ben Cramer wrote a 2003 book entitled How Israel Lost. He was the foreign correspondent for the Philadelphia Enquirer who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from the Middle East in the 1970’s. Cramer points out the economic ties between Israelis and the Palestinian Authority. Cement, steel, other durable goods, and even fuel oil and gasoline are sold by Israel to the PA to the profit advantage of both even though the Palestinians could do better on the open market. The Israeli equivalent of our CIA, the Masad, was instrumental in setting up and financing Hamas. Naturally they did not do this so Israel would be subjected to terrorist attacks; they did this to try to counter the power of Arafat. It was a colossal miscalculation. When he was growing up in Philadelphia Cramer remembers the mantra he heard at the synagogue: “A people without land for a land without people.” In his assignment in the Middle East he saw first hand that although the first part of that formulation might have some validity the second part certainly did not. There were plenty of Arabs as well as a few other peoples in Palestine before the Jews forced them out in 1948. In fact I met several displaced Palestinians when I was working in Libya in the late 1950’s. To say they were bitter about the situation would be to indeed understate it.

Still there is no moral equivalency between the murderous acts of terrorism committed by the Palestinians against non-combatants, especially women and children and retaliation by the Israelis. Terrorism trumps everything. When you commit heinous crimes against humanity you cede the moral high ground to your opponent regardless of how legitimate your cause. This is where the self-serving and perfidious Europeans go wrong in their one-sided bias against Israel.

Examples of how anti-Christian Europe has become is shown by the case of Italian European Union minister, Rocco Buttiglione, who is a personal friend of Pope John Paul II. When Buttiglione expressed reservations about gay marriage, mind you he only expressed reservations he did not outright condemn it, the EU blocked him from becoming an EU cabinet member. The Pope lobbied hard to have Christianity noted as part of Europe’s heritage in the EU constitution, a historical fact that even an uninformed visitor to Europe’s museums and urban centers would observe. He failed. Never mind, the Euros in the not too distant future can forget about Christianity (see the paragraph below).

In the 8th century A.D. Muslim armies tried to conquer Europe and failed. Europeans are not reproducing themselves in any great numbers and Muslins have a high immigration rate into Europe and are considerably out reproducing the natives by apparently being reflective rather than periodic ovulaters (just joking). Respected Middle East scholar and author, Bernard Lewis, estimates that by the end of the current century Europe will be essentially an Islamic continent. The Muslims will have triumphed this time without firing a shot. The young grandchildren in Europe today might be well advised to teach their children to say Salam Alekum and point out the direction to Mecca so they will be able to pray properly.