There Are Two Irreconcilable Americas

Hello all. The following is a Dennis Prager article about the strong polarization we are facing in the United States. Hopefully this will give you a better understanding of what we are faced with and why it is a better idea to dissolve the union and start over. Maybe this will get you thinking about solving this problem. Anyway, enjoy! SC

There Are Two Irreconcilable Americas-Dennis Prager
It is time to confront the unhappy fact about our country: There are now two Americas. Not a rich one and a poor one; economic status plays little role in this division. There is a red one and a blue one. For most of my life I have believed, in what I now regard as wishful thinking, that the right and left wings have essentially the same vision for America, that it's only about ways to get there in which the two sides differ. Right and left share the same ends, I thought. That is not the case. For the most part, right and left differ in their visions of America and that is why they differ on policies. Right and the left do not want the same America. The left wants America to look as much like Western European countries as possible. The left wants Europe's quasi-pacifism, cradle-to-grave socialism, egalitarianism and secularism in America. The right wants none of those values to dominate America. The left wants America not only to have a secular government, but to have a secular society. The left feels that if people want to be religious, they should do so at home and in their houses of prayer, but never try to inject their religious values into society. The right wants America to continue to be what it has always been -- a Judeo-Christian society with a largely secular government (that is not indifferent to religion). These opposing visions explain, for example, their opposite views concerning nondenominational prayer in school. The left prefers to identify as citizens of the world. The left fears nationalism in general (this has been true for the European left since World War I), and since the 1960s, the American left has come to fear American nationalism in particular. On the other side, the right identifies first as citizens of America. The left therefore regards the notion of American exceptionalism as chauvinism; the United Nations and world opinion are regarded as better arbiters of what is good than is America. The right has a low opinion of the U.N.'s moral compass and of world opinion, both of which it sees as having a much poorer record of stopping genocide and other evils than America has. The left is ambivalent about and often hostile to overt displays of American patriotism. That is why, for example, one is far more likely to find American flags displayed in Orange County, Calif., on national holidays than in liberal neighborhoods in West Los Angeles, Manhattan or San Francisco. The left subscribes to the French Revolution, whose guiding principles were "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." The right subscribes to the American formula, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." The French/European notion of equality is not mentioned. The right rejects the French Revolution and does not hold Western Europe as a model. The left does. That alone makes right and left irreconcilable. The left envisions an egalitarian society. The right does not. The left values equality above other values because it yearns for an America in which all people have similar amounts of material possessions. This is what propels the left to advocate laws that would force employers to pay women the same wages they pay men not only for the same job but for "comparable" jobs (as if that is objectively ascertainable). The right values equality in opportunity and strongly believes that all people are created equal, but the right values liberty, a man-woman based family and other values above equality. The left wants a world -- and therefore an America -- devoid of nuclear weapons. The right wants America to have the best nuclear weapons. The right trusts American might more than universal disarmament. The left wants to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples for the first time in history. The right wants gays to have equal rights, but to keep marriage defined as man-woman. This, too, constitutes an irreconcilable divide. For these and other reasons, calls for a unity among Americans that transcends left and right are either naive or disingenuous. America will be united only when one of them prevails over the other. The left knows this. Most on the right do not.

A disgusting charade indeed!

Welcome to the new America, land of the frivolous, home of the broke. At least that's what we are on our way to becoming (the broke part). I am openly transparent regarding my politics, and I have to tell you that from my standpoint today is a sad day for the general populace of the USofA. The Imperial Federal Government has passed and signed into law the porcine economic rescue bill. Included in said bill is an estimated 340 BILLION in pork spending, including tax breaks for every special interest group you can name. The estimated cost of this bill to taxpayers was supposedly 700 billion. if you believe this will be the final costs then i've got some beachfront property in south dakota to sell you. analysts are already estimating 1.3 to 1.6 TRILLION dollars. thats 10 to the 12th power for you math people out there. i emailed my us senators as well as my us representative to tell them how i feel. i am including this email in this post. as a side note, if you are not in regular contact with your federal as well as state representatives, then you are in no position to bitch and moan about the state of affairs in this country. voting is not enough. if you are too lazy to get out and vote, and there are NO excuses, then you should renounce your citizenship and move to canada. they'll keep you filled in; they know FAR more about us politics than we do! (only joking, canadians, milk in a bag and kraft dinner are great, eh!) as for the email, it follows:

Now that the unpopular economic rescue bill, or as some are calling it, "the economic pork sausage bailout bill" has been signed into law, I wonder what your office as well as those of your colleagues are planning to do to fund this legislation. It seems that with some estimates of 340 billion in pork barrel projects, which I understand were necessary to pass the bill, this bailout is going to cost my fellow taxpayers and I far more than 700 billion. If past government spending trends hold true, we can expect this to easily cost well over 1 trillion dollars. So that's what lawmakers have saddled us with, back to the question of how is it going to be funded. I just finished reading an article about the number of tax breaks that are included in this legislation. My honest opinion is that this is some of the more ludicrous aspects of this project. I can't begin to fathom how a bill of such burdensome magnitude can be passed, and then the very funding needed for said bill be riddled with breaks.
OK, so I asked a question and then ranted a bit. I apologize. I strongly believe that if this has any chance of working and not driving America into bankruptcy, then the very tax laws that will force taxpayers to support this deal need to be changed. I strongly encourage you to take a look at S1025, the FairTax, (forgive me if I have the wrong bill number). I feel that this is the only sure way to fund this bill without placing an insurmountable burden on the average taxpayer.
In closing, I want to reiterate my previous email. I feel that our government has made a grave error by passing this legislation. It is entirely unacceptable that the only way the Washington politicians can pass a bill is to earmark almost half of the proposed amount of the bill for pork barrel spending. All this while crying emergency. Our government has truly become a disgusting charade.

Sincerely,
Sugar Cookie

of course i signed it with my real name. ok, so i want to break this down for you, in case you aren't paying attention. we, the american taxpayer, have been saddled with the burden of funding largest single spending bill in history. this will probably cost over a trillion dollars. there is no reason to expect the ifg to all of a sudden learn fiscal responsibility. are these hard times? absolutely! would they have gotten worse quickly without this bill? probably. but keep in mind that wall street was in favor of this bill. it removes the financial burden off of the few whom have made horrendous decisions, spurred along by government pandering to the uneducated, sports center, entertainment tonight generation. the burden now resides on the shoulders of the taxpayers. this is a break for the irresponsible institutions, and they were probably helping make things look worse than they were. the djia is still well above 10 thousand, with nasdaq well over 2 thousand. the first bill failed, the financial institutions cried apocalypse, then promptly went and recouped two thirds of their losses. things to make you go "hmmmmm." i stated in my previous post that i was in favor of letting the markets police themselves. most respected economists were saying the same thing (copycats!). things would probably have gotten worse for a while, but once the chaff was sifted out, what would have been left would have been the strongest, most secure companies. our economy would have rebounded as much as it could, considering the oppressive tax structure of the us. which brings me to my next point.

it comes as no surprise that the us has the highest corporate tax structures in the world. in other words, companies pay more taxes here than in ANY other country on the planet. this is a major reason for the decline in our economy. companies simply cannot do business in the us and compete. follow that with the payroll tax being the single largest burden on the average american's paycheck, and you see where this goes. our tax code could be singled out as most responsible for the overall weakness of our economy in general. i'm not referring to this current crisis, but to the fact that the canadians are doing better economically than we are. hell, the mexicans are doing better than we are, but of course they are in the process of a deliberate invasion. which is another factor. all this said to point out something i referenced in the above email; the FairTax. if you don't know the specifics, go to www.fairtax.org for detail. to summarize it, it is a system in which all federal taxes are replaced with what is essentially a federal sales tax. this tax merely replaces the embedded taxes already included in new, first sale retail goods. no more april 15, and better than that, no more IRS!!!!!!! www.fairtax.org the price of goods doesn't go up as some have said because of the embedded taxes replaced by the embedded fair tax. don't want to pay taxes this week? don't go shopping. rebates will be given on necessities of life up to the poverty level. so you won't pay taxes on milk and bread, but that 60 inch plasma will cost you. anyway, i do a poor job describing it, look into it yourself. if you feel that this is a tax system you can live with, contact your federal representatives.
ok, so i've been at this way too long and i'm getting delirious. i do however want to make one final point. you've heard me say this before. this whole mess could have been avoided if the ifg would have kept their noses out of the free market. this whole collapse started with fannie and freddie, both govt supported programs. this new pork sausage bailout bill is just the latest example of how washington has lost control of it's bowels and is currently crapping all over the citizens which it has sworn to serve. this government has become a bloated corpse of it's original intent, and as such no longer serves any useful purpose. now is the time to begin to work for change, not obama style change, but 1776 style change. it can happen. it will happen. and it will happen sooner than you think. Godspeed.
SC