Re: Tuesday's elections

Once Upon a Midnight Dreary, While Jane Pondered, Weak and Weary, Over
Many a Quaint and Curious Forgotten Post, and then wrote:
--------------------------------------------------------------
>Cheryl said:
>
><<<But seriously, the level of intensity of anti-ID argument here is
>amazing, far in excess of what seems reasonable to me in the face of
>some
>popular theory being stuck in a school curriculum. Even the
>constitutional argument doesn't seem convincing in context, unless you
>assume not only that there's a vast conspiracy (not merely an attempt
>to
>influence public life) out to destroy the anti-ID people and their way
>of life. The anti-ID rhetoric is so strong I am at a loss to explain
>it,
>unless somehow it's gotten amalgamated with all the political losses
>and
>social changes the ...well, 'left' is a much maligned and inaccurate
>word;
>let's say the non-Bush, non-religous group) has experienced over the
>last
>number of years. >>>
>
> Actually< you know< I tend to think that this is exactly right
>
> Not only about the ID/evolution argument, but about the entire
>atmosphere of our politics over the last decade or so.
>
> There's the feeling that one way of life or another must prevail
>and the other must be wiped out, and everything--from SCOTUS
>nominations to evolution in science classrooms to why Bush went to
>war--is a matter of choosing up sides for one way of life or the other.
>
> I think it's why the left screams that Bush is an evil prick who
>lied to get the country into war and the people who voted for him are
>stupid, hick-town racist homophone bigots, and the rights screams that
>liberals are all traitors trying to sell the country out to Communists
>and Islamists and make Christianity illegal in the process.
>
> Traditionally, in the US, we solved the problem of competing
>visions of what the country should be with federalism--states did
>things differently from each other.
>
> Some of that federalism was wrongheaded (for instance, the equal
>protection clause SHOULD have meant that even Mississippi could not
>discriminate by race in its government programs, from schools to jobs
>in state enterprises), but we went far past that in an attempt to
>require everybody in the country to accept one set of standards as the
>"right" ones.
>
> So now, neither side is willing to live with federalism--the
>anti-abortion right doesn't want an end to Roe but a life amendment
>that would make it possible for the federal government to forbid
>abortion everywhere, and the pro-choice left isn't going to be
>satisfied with states having whatever abortion laws they see fit. The
>same is true of a lot of things.
>
> I tend to want to let federalism work--to let states make
>decisions even when I find those decisions fundamentally morally
>wrong--with VERY broad parameters within which they could do that. I
>would, for one thing, change antidiscrimination law so that it applied
>to taxpayer-funded enterprises but not to private ones, and I'd leave
>local school boards to make most of the decisions they do make.
>
> I'm comfortable with the idea that people in Connecticut would live
>what I consider sane lives and people in Kansas would not--but then, I
>see to be one of the few people on EITHER the left OR right who doesn't
>believe, in my bones, that the other side would overwhelm me and mine
>if the federal government didn't protect me from them.
>
> This is a huge country, with 291 million people, 4000 religious
>denominations, 30 million nonreligious, and enough capitalists,
>communists, socialists, libertarians, liberals, conservatives and who
>only knows what that we should have ended up collapsing years ago--the
>only reason we don't is that we agree to leave people be, even when
>they're doing things we don't like.
>
> I wish we could get back to that.

Where and when do you think this began? I noticed this polarization in
the middle of the Clinton years, when the Ginrich and the Republicans
first shut down the government. But it may have its genesis earlier. I
wasn't paying as much attention before that.

Do you think Bush has exacerbated it, or tried to, in soem way, dampen
it?

John P
.

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