Posted by
Mel Smith on Saturday, November 15, 2008 5:02:50 PM
Two Americas: the fiction
John Edwards, the multi-millionaire Senator, frequently stated that there are “Two Americas”. The 2008 Presidential election has indeed proved there are Two Americas, but not the two Americas cynically portrayed by Senator Edwards.
Edwards mischaracterized the Two Americas in order to foment a wave of envy which he hoped would carry him into the Presidency. However, his obvious effort to stoke class rebellion was then exceeded by Senator Clinton’s more sophisticated approach, but then even her effort was surpassed by Senator Obama’s audacious propaganda campaign.
So now we can correctly identify the Two Americas.
Two Americas: the reality
As a result of the 2008 presidential election, the true nature of the Two Americas has become clear.
The first America asks: “what can we do for our country?”.
The second America asks: “what can my country do for me?”
The first America endeavors to be productive and self-reliant.
The second America perpetuates a culture of dependency and entitlement.
The first America believes in individual liberty.
The second America seeks to regulate away the liberties of others.
The first America sacrifices and builds for the future.
The second America confiscates for today.
These are the Two Americas which have been revealed by the Presidential election of 2008.
The resulting election map of red and blue states creates an oversimplified caricature of America’s true complexity. It is a child’s eye view of the Two Americas. However, viewed close up we see that the image resolves to red and blue counties across the country, and then red and blue houses in every county.
However, even in the aggregate these simple statistics tell a story. For example, consider the first America’s commitment to military service. The chart below ranks the states, in ascending order, according to the percentage of their population which serves in the military.* So, for example, the first 11 states listed each have less than half of one percent (.5%) of their population engaged in some form of military service. These percentages are indicated by the horizontal green bars (the scale is provided on the top axis).
Also on the chart, by state, is the percentage of voters who voted for Senator McCain in the 2008 presidential election (against the scale indicated on the bottom axis).** Those states won by McCain are indicated by the red stars.
Of the 23 states with the smallest percentage of military population, only three were won by McCain (13%). Whereas, of the next 27 states (with the largest percentage engaged in military service), 19 were won by McCain (70%). That is obviously not a coincidence.
(Click on chart for a better view.)
The “America” that does most of the sacrificing is the first America: the one which voted for John McCain’s Country First vision and voted against Obama’s mindless propaganda. This is the America of hard work and common sense, not the America that wants to provide welfare to companies that aren’t working and people who should be.
But what can we find in the second America? We find the auto manufacturers who want the rest of us to subsidize their dinosaur industries, labor unions and executive bonuses. (The automobile manufacturers in the first America are not asking for subsidies.) In the second America we find the large financial corporations who expect the rest of us to indemnify them from their own malfeasance. In the second America we also find urban city governments — bloated with unproductive staff and inefficient programs — asking us to subsidize their ongoing orgy of wasteful spending.
It is now quite obvious that the next two federal elections (in 2010 and 2012) are going to determine which America we will ultimately become. If the first America prevails, we will continue to be a great nation of sacrifice, hard work and liberty. However, if the second America continues to dominate the federal government, then we are doomed to become a nation where an unproductive majority lives off the backs of a productive minority until the nation collapses under its massive self-deception.
* Note: the number of military personnel by state was provided by the "Military and Civilian Personnel in Installations: 2005" report. To arrive at the percentages indicated in the chart above, those totals were divided into the 2000 population census. In the case of Hawaii, many of those military personnel are offshore and are probably registered to vote in a home state other than Hawaii.
** Election results can be found at Wikipedia (among other sources).