A Fork In the Road is Coming
Dale Franks at QandO - America is headed for a major schism, says Mr. Franks, where we separate into collectivists and individualists. It won't be like the last civil war, because the split is much more even than it was then, so neither side can win. We're going to have to become two, or more, countries. The original design, of course, was fifty states, with a loose central government. This allowed people to move to a different state to escape policy they didn't like. But with the centralization of power in DC, that doesn't work any more. I don't think the power-damaged in DC and elsewhere will give up voluntarily, though, so there is going to be violence no matter how it eventually ends up. Hopefully, the violence will eradcate the power-mad, and harm very few of the rest of us, but that's wishful thinking.
Over the past couple of days, we've seen arguments about national health care erupt into incidents of local violence. Yes, we yelled at each other bit back in 2005 or so, when Social Security reform was on the table. But now we're seeing thugs in SEIU T-shirts showing up and throwing punches at people who are gathered to demonstrate against the current version of health care reform. We've seen a local Democratic Party apparatchik shove a demonstrator in the face. Billy Beck has often said it, and now he's saying it again: "You have always heard it here first: All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war."
At this rate, I'm afraid that it's going to become painfully obvious that a large number of people in this country are not going to politely doff their caps to the local SEIU grandees, once they've learned their lessons like good Germans. Quite the reverse, in fact.
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We're already struggling with the nearly impossible political task of how to reconcile two irreconcilable philosophies under a powerful central government. Having union thugs show up and deliver beatings and intimidation is only going to raise the anger level among Americans who feel they are being forced to do something they don't want to do, increase their resentment, and push the country closer to dissolution.
