Every time I hear about the more than 30 states that have filed petitions asking to secede from the Union, I picture a teenager telling her parents, “I’m running away from home, and you can’t stop me!” I tried to do that once, when I was about 14. You know what my mom did? She packed my bags and pretended to call a taxi. It worked like a charm.
This emphasis on theatrics – this obsession with making symbolic points instead of actual ones – is what lost the Republicans the election. On almost every issue, the right focused on figurative solutions instead of common sense ones.
Let’s start with abortion, the issue that dissuaded so many women from voting for Gov. Mitt Romney. Do Republicans really want fewer abortions, or do they just want the symbolic victory of overturning Roe v. Wade? Because the best way to prevent abortions is to stop unwanted pregnancies, and one of the best ways to stop unwanted pregnancies is to provide women with contraception. Yet, the right also opposed Obamacare’s contraception mandate.
The same thing happened with immigration. Do Republicans really think that the solution to our nation’s 12 million undocumented immigrants is self-deportation? Or were they just saying that because they are discouraged by the current immigration system? Much like I would lock myself in my room and vow to never speak to my parents again whenever we argued during my adolescence, the Republicans took an outlandish, unenforceable position on immigration. And much like I would have to eat my words days later, the overwhelmingly Democratic Latino vote is making the right rescind its previous position.
Is the biggest threat to family really gay marriage, or is it divorce? Is it logical to ignore most of the scientific community and treat climate change as a joke? Is it responsible to promise the American people tax cuts and a lower deficit without actually showing them a specific plan of action?
The positions Republicans took were immature and childish. They were adopted, not as the result of thoughtful consideration, but as means to show off, to make a point, to stand for something only in a figurative sense. And now, they are at it again. All those people who have signed petitions to secede know what they are suggesting is ludicrous. They know that they can’t survive on their own, but, just like when I was 14, they can’t help but be overdramatic.
I so wish there was a way to call their bluff.
This article appears in Nov 21-27, 2012.
The thing is you’re right. People want free shit, latinos don’t want to be deported even if they’re illegal, and certainly gay marriage d doesn’t help marriage.
Yes, but if your problem is with dramatics then you need to just disregard politics all together or you’re gonna have a bad time. The latest decrees come from what appears to be “your side” with all the dems flipping out over republican disgust with a potential nomination of Susan Rice to Sec. of state. Calling the republicans racist and sexist all to simply just raise a stir and counter politics with politics each making a scene because it’s simply what they do.
There were only so many boats on the Titanic.
@Christopher, free stuff is nice, but not on welfare, only a small percentage of people actually take advantage of welfare, the rest truly need it. Gay marriage doesn’t affect anything, it doesn’t cause straight couples to divorce. Although to make the argument fair, Jerry Sandusky is supposedly straight yet is a child molester. The only part of your statement that is actually true is that illegals don’t want to be deported.
How differently Ms. Arreaza would be feeling if Obama had lost. Sure, it’s easy to talk of love and getting along when your side wins. But when Bush won reelection in ’04 I’m sure she was singing another tune altogether. And that was mostly over an unpopular war in Iraq. A war is something we can at least eventually extract ourselves from. But fundamental changes within our own national system and adding to an already crippling debt won’t be so easy. In fact, it will be impossible. And that is what Obama has done. So, though both sides may have their respective ‘hissy fits’ and make threats, the issues over which they are doing so are like comparing apples to oranges. What is NOT seen by Ms. Arreaza and her fellow democrats is how intolerant are. Most conservatives do not have a problem with gay civil unions. For progressives, that isn’t enough. Everyone must – MUST, completely agree with and accept their own positions – or else. Or else the names like homophobes, racists and bigots start flying. Which is what petulant children do. No. Actually, children wouldn’t have the foresight the democratic party has in seeing the political strategy such manipulative maneuvers have. In this sense democrats and progressives are worse than children.
Conservatism can thrive without progressivism. Progressivism cannot thrive without conservatism. In short, a worldview built on redistributionism, must have something to re-distribute. Without the effort of the makers, the takers and their enablers are dead in the water. The most remarkable aspect of this last election is that Democrats ran on a platform that amounted to biting the hand that feeds them, and still prevailed. When vilifying success and the accumulation of wealth is a winning political strategy in America, the proverbial jig is up. Hence, the sooner the historical failures of progressivism and its all-encompassing Nanny State impulses are realized, the sooner we can reset the nation on a healthy course. But then again, the democrats can always explain to the ignorant masses that it was Bush’s fault. Even 40 years from now it will still probably work. Especially if they’re passing out free stuff with one hand while pointing blame with the other. It seems to be a winning combination for the Democratic Party. Let’s see how ‘winning’ we are in four years when everyone is equally miserable (the true goal of leftism).
o0
Ms. Arreaza needs to get her head out of the sand and look at the secessionist movements in Catalonia and Scotland.
BTW, Ortho-Cyclen and Ortho-Tri-Cyclen cost NINE DOLLARS a month at a pharmacy WITHOUT INSURANCE. That’s two Starbucks or two NoDa pints. Explain to me how you’re coming out ahead if your premium increases by $20 a month to cover the paperwork and red tape costs of providing that $9 prescription. Imbeciles!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFuzRXxU6AE
@Peter, I see a lot of crying on both sides. The only people I find actually intelligent enough to debate with are neither right nor left but mostly in the middle. Quite frankly, we did it the conservative way. It has been proven not to work yet conservatives insist it will and the only reason I can see that their insistence based on is greed. It was proven not to work under Bush, the rich got richer, the poor either stayed poor or got poorer, the middle class took a pay cut or got poor. Those are the conservative economics at work. So it makes no sense to keep trying something that doesn’t work.
We’ve heard this nonsense before. Here is some historical data on the petition to secede from the union.
What did Andrew Jackson do when South Carolina said that they were going to secede from the union?
Well, Andy was enraged. He said to the South Carolina congressman that if the state’s leaders disobeyed state laws, he would “hang the first man he got his hands on”. after he ran for reelection, he enforced the idea that he would have to force everyone to obey federal laws and the Union was preserved.
Carlos