"The Blue People,...have their pent-up longings, their unreasonable yearnings for perfection, redemption, a world beyond pain. Senator Obama, who speaks of the moment when “the perfection begins” (the moment when the proselyte sees the light and embraces his communal faith) offers the Blue People a secular approximation of the nirvana they seek.
Sarah Palin embodies the alternative ideal.
Thus the clash of civilizations 2008. The struggle will almost certainly be fiercer in this election than it was in those of 2000 and 2004. The mandarins on the coasts never cared for George W. Bush. But their dread was tempered by the suspicion that the graduate of Andover, Yale, and Harvard was merely manipulating the religious question for political gain. Here was Machiavellianism they could understand — much as they understand Senator Obama’s dalliance with faith-based initiatives. It’s just politics.
In contrast to the Bush dynasty, the Palin clan is, from the point of view of the well-to-do classes, the genuine article, a pure specimen of the native fauna.
That’s not just politics. For the other side, it’s war."-- Michael Knox Beran, pointing out the metaphysical clash within American politics - which TMR (almost alone) has always harped on with it's coverage of NewAgers and their political players - in the National Review Online.
The irony here is that for all their talk about self reliance, the Red Staters are actually parasites living off the Federal trough, supported almost entirely by people in the Blue States.
ReplyDeleteI personally dont care what these folks obsess over, but I'd feel a hell of a lot better if they did it on their own dime, instead of picking my pocket.
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The Tax Foundation keeps track of the amount of federal income tax paid by individual and corporate taxpayers in each of the 50 states, and then figures out how much on the dollar the various states get back.
Here in New York, for example, we get back 80 cents for every dollar we send to Washington.
New Jersey taxpayers get back 57 cents.
In John Kerry's home state of Massachusetts -- "Taxa-chusetts," George W. Bush sneered -- they receive a return of 78 cents on the dollar.
Few of the "Blue States" get as much back from the federal government as they pay.
The Red States do, though.
They get it back and then some.
All those Republicans up in Alaska get $1.89 for every dollar they send to Washington, nearly double.
The Bible-thumpers down in West Virginia cost us $1.86 on the dollar, and those self-reliant cowboys out in Montana rake in $1.60.
While the Mormon religion places strictures on its members accepting government money in the form of public assistance, it turns out that the whole damn state of Utah is on welfare, receiving $1.20 for every dollar they put in.
According to the Tax Foundation study, every one of the Red States gets as much or more than it pays, with the exception of Nevada.
In other words, the 20 cents New Yorkers don't get back, the 43 cents our neighbors in New Jersey don't get back, the 22 cents Massachusetts taxpayers don't get back and all the money people living in Wisconsin, Washington, New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Connecticut and California don't get back goes to fund the thriving, God-fearing, gay-bashing, morally superior economies of the South and West.
Shortchanged state and local governments in the Blue States are forced to make up the difference, which goes a long way toward explaining why our property, sales and income taxes are so high.