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I'm not sure if it's just because so many Americans (raising hand) disagree with President Obama's current policies that it seems this way but it really feels we are a very divided nation. Was it always this way?
I remember after 9/11 President Bush really united our country everyone kind of came together and it didn't feel divided. I also remember seeing AMERICAN FLAGS flying everywhere there was so much patriotism and love for this country, what happened?
For those that are older what was it like during the 1920's 30's 40's 50's etc? I really hope our next president has a positive affect on our people to unite us once again.
Depends which past history you mean. The country had been the most divided up until and including the civil war.
The great divide in our politics isn't really about pragmatic issues or about which policies work best. They're ideology based.
Liberals believe that America should be a nation with a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society's wealthy are taxed to pay for a social safety net, which is morally superior to the raw capitalism that existed before the New Deal. The nation works better, this side believes, when the affluent help the less fortunate.
The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. Many activists on the right see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.
In my view, this exists because the Republican Party has taken a sharp right turn. The Republican Party used to accept the legitimacy of Social Security and progressive taxation. President Eisenhower said that those that don't except Social Security are few and no political party that wants to get rid of it will exist for long. Now, leading candidates for the GOP presidential nomination voice hostility towards Social Security and progressive taxation.
Obamacare is modeled after the health plan Republicans wrote in the 1990s. Now, those Republicans call Obamacare socialism.
Depends which past history you mean. The country had been the most divided up until and including the civil war.
The great divide in our politics isn't really about pragmatic issues or about which policies work best. They're ideology based.
Liberals believe that America should be a nation with a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society's wealthy are taxed to pay for a social safety net, which is morally superior to the raw capitalism that existed before the New Deal. The nation works better, this side believes, when the affluent help the less fortunate.
The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. Many activists on the right see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.
In my view, this exists because the Republican Party has taken a sharp right turn. The Republican Party used to accept the legitimacy of Social Security and progressive taxation. President Eisenhower said that those that don't except Social Security are few and no political party that wants to get rid of it will exist for long. Now, leading candidates for the GOP presidential nomination voice hostility towards Social Security and progressive taxation.
Obamacare is modeled after the health plan Republicans wrote in the 1990s. Now, those Republicans call Obamacare socialism.
Please provide links that the Republicans want to end SS aka a supposed hostility towards it. Is making changes to it to keep it solvent akin to the above? I don't think so!
Please provide links that the Republicans want to end SS aka a supposed hostility towards it. Is making changes to it to keep it solvent akin to the above? I don't think so!
Paul Ryan's famous plan also privatized Medicare -- converting it into a voucher system that actually didn't provide enough money to buy insurance coverage.
I'm not sure if it's just because so many Americans (raising hand) disagree with President Obama's current policies that it seems this way but it really feels we are a very divided nation. Was it always this way?
I remember after 9/11 President Bush really united our country everyone kind of came together and it didn't feel divided. I also remember seeing AMERICAN FLAGS flying everywhere there was so much patriotism and love for this country, what happened?
For those that are older what was it like during the 1920's 30's 40's 50's etc? I really hope our next president has a positive affect on our people to unite us once again.
I think a big part of the problem is that since 1965 when the floodgates were opened to every foreigner that could come here in such large numbers without time being allowed to assimilate them it has created cultural and political division in our country like never before. Add to that the large number of illegal aliens here from all over the world and you have a recipe for division not unity.
Are we more divided now than at any point in history?
Who knows?
Never before in history have we had the combo of a 24/7 news cycle, the Internet and robust social media and politicians and special interests exploiting it.
The amount of money flowing into superpacs is more than enough to start a war.
No one has a reasonable solution to offset technology substitution and globalization. So they blame government and the other party. Politicians have no solutions so they blame and make grandiose proclamations and promises as if they alone have a magic wand to make it all better. This situation is not unique to the US.
People tend to believe anything when it validates their perceptions.
I can understand your lack of perspective if you were born in 1959 and were a mere child who wasn't allowed to watch TV until the 70's, because the 60's but this current era to shame when it came to divisions amongst the populace.
PS-Back in the 60's we still had real Marxist.
Lack of perspective? That's a real laugher.
I've witnessed and lived during the slow but steady disintigration over the past 5 decades, as opposed to being told about this great progress we've been blessed with
Aside the disastrous economic conditions we suffer today, compared with the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's ... social disintegration is very real, evidenced by the fractured family, and the leftist promotion of divisiveness among the general population who refuse to even consider a "live and let live" attitude, prefering radical confrontation and force.
Of course, this is by design, as a nation of whining and crying two year olds are too occupied with fighting and forcing their little social agendas on one another to actually pay attention to what is happening to them, politically and economicall, and the world at large.
As the police state is slowly built around us, civil liberties being legislated away, and the gangsters looting the Nation at a pace never seen before, .... the masses remain comatose, as the disintigration accelerates.
Nothing has been spared .... 19 Trillion in debt, criminals in charge, a healthcare system that kills more than it cures, while costing more than anyone else in the world spends ... We've now fallen all the way to 28th in education, from #1 just 40 years ago ... 80,000,000 on food stamps ... Wars ... Endless wars, terrorism, and here in the "land of the free" we incarcerate more people than any other country in the world, including those with double and triple our population.
Push for the US government to dissolve all group identities if you want to end division. Until the American public push for this, you really have no right complaining about division. You clearly aren't willing to do what needs to be done to get rid of the defacto divsion engine, the US Government
I'm not sure if it's just because so many Americans (raising hand) disagree with President Obama's current policies that it seems this way but it really feels we are a very divided nation. Was it always this way?
I remember after 9/11 President Bush really united our country everyone kind of came together and it didn't feel divided. I also remember seeing AMERICAN FLAGS flying everywhere there was so much patriotism and love for this country, what happened?
For those that are older what was it like during the 1920's 30's 40's 50's etc? I really hope our next president has a positive affect on our people to unite us once again.
No, it has not always been this way. Obama is the first president in my memory (and that goes back to the 50s) that fans the flames of racism and division. I have experienced the last ten US presidents and all of them except Obama made some effort to unite the people.
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