Right_in_Virginia:
[[ It's starting to feel more like 1775 ]]
mountaineer:
[[ Did he mean slavery was back in style, because it sure feels like it ]]
Don't blame the messenger for the message.
Harkin is right.
The country _is_ in a state of "Cold Civil War". Not "hot" yet -- but the divisions are there for all to see. Some on the left see this as clearly as do we on the right.
The country is literally "dividing" before our eyes, just as it did once before.
Here in the USA, we’re at where we _were at_ about 1856 or so.
The new “Great Divide” represents a chasm of unbridgeable philosophies so broad that reconciliation no longer is possible.
However, many Euro-Americans are still blind to this divide. It’s right there before them, they must deal with its symptoms and consequences every day, yet they still refuse to acknowledge its existence or speak openly of it. The divide remains buried beneath the surface of the A-Euros’ “white guilt”.
At the same time, the non-Euro Americans have no equivalent to “white guilt”. They are boldly advancing their agendas and openly celebrating their ethnic bonds. Hence, we have “La Raza” (now what does _that_ mean?), “Black this... and that....”, and so forth. The non-Euros know and understand that the guilt of the Euros can be used against them, and that Euros who are attacked for “racism”, “this...ism”, or “that....ism” will cower and submit rather than fight back. No one demonstrates this better than the Republican Party itself.
Meanwhile, The Great Divide grows.
On one side are those who believe in what I’d call (for lack of a better term) the old “Scots-Irish defiance”. This is the philosophy that embraces freedom, family, home, work, independence, and the mistrust of government which is regarded as a “taker” of what the individual creates. Simply stated, these are the “Don’t Tread On Me” folks.
On the OTHER side is a growing cohort of people who harbor beliefs that are diametrically opposed from the above group. These people see government as “the giver” -- their "keeper". These people view the “Don’t Tread on Mes” who oppose government largesse and power as a threat to their needs, and brand them as intolerant and “racist”, or whatever.
Call this “the new slavery”, if you will. Only now, it’s government that has become “the new Massa”, and corrupt politicians and their ever expanding cadre of bureaucrats, administrators, and regulators who take on the role of “the new overseers”.
On the one side of the divide, those who love freedom and mistrust government. On the other, those who love entitlements and government and its “gifts”, and who don’t seem to care much about their own “freedom”, so long as they get handouts.
In the 1850’s, it was “the North” against “the South”. In the twenty-first century it has become those who still embrace the concept of “freedom”, vs. those who would surrender it.
And most ominously, the two “sides” are no longer divided by region — instead, they appear to be divided by _race_.
Of course there are some non-Euros who share the same value system as do the Euros. But they are relatively small in number, their numbers so small as to be all-but insignificant. How many blacks voted for McCain in 2008?
What chances are there that these two fundamentally-opposed factions can EVER be reconconciled?
If reconciliation isn’t possible, what then?
I can see this. You probably can too. If Senator Harkin sees it, more power to him.
What's coming is coming. Not the soap box or ballot box. Sumthin' else...