If you had to pick one person....
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  If you had to pick one person....
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Author Topic: If you had to pick one person....  (Read 5143 times)
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StatesRights
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« Reply #25 on: December 16, 2006, 08:42:03 AM »

The hippie movement, largely.
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Undisguised Sockpuppet
Straha
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« Reply #26 on: December 16, 2006, 09:21:23 AM »

Dubya
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Saxwsylvania
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« Reply #27 on: December 16, 2006, 02:33:48 PM »

People who whine about polarization and how we need a uniter as President, not a divider, are annoying.  So what if we have a polarized electorate?  It doesn't affect me.

In fact, I love polarization.  What we need is another Preston Brooks vs. Charles Sumner.  It would give the pundits a lot to talk about.
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Everett
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« Reply #28 on: December 16, 2006, 04:18:00 PM »


I think the hippie movement was the beginning of a lot of our problems.  We have never really recovered from the problems they caused.
Oh those damn liberal terrorist-coddling hippies. Never mind the sh**t that Bush caused. Let's just blame everything on hippies!
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The Duke
JohnD.Ford
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« Reply #29 on: December 16, 2006, 07:35:43 PM »


I think the hippie movement was the beginning of a lot of our problems.  We have never really recovered from the problems they caused.
Oh those damn liberal terrorist-coddling hippies. Never mind the sh**t that Bush caused. Let's just blame everything on hippies!

Polarization did not begin with George Bush.

Need I remind people about Vietnam, Watergate, Impeachment, etc.?  I just think its fanciful to act like we were all getting along just fine and then Bush showed up and screwed it all up.
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Gabu
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« Reply #30 on: December 16, 2006, 07:36:51 PM »

Polarization did not begin with George Bush.

Need I remind people about Vietnam, Watergate, Impeachment, etc.?  I just think its fanciful to act like we were all getting along just fine and then Bush showed up and screwed it all up.

Given that this topic asks people to pick one single person, it's kind of hard not to both oversimplify things and yet still answer the question asked.
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nclib
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« Reply #31 on: December 16, 2006, 08:56:50 PM »

There has always been polarization, but far as the extreme polarization recently, if I had to pick one person, I'd definitely say George W. Bush. His way of thinking is so "black and white" that he forces everyone to be either for him or against him.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #32 on: December 16, 2006, 09:13:35 PM »

The idea that the American electorate is polarised is not something backed up by election results.

Now, what could be thought of as the political classes, the activists and so on... that's different isn't it?
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #33 on: December 16, 2006, 09:23:26 PM »

The Answer to this question is, and will always be as long as the political division of America remains of is:

Lyndon Baines Johnson.

I think the polarization caused by LBJ (and Nixon, who really intensified it) only seemed to vanish or at least weaken in the 1980s and 1990s, when other domestic concerns such as the Economy gained over Imperialism and Cultural issues.

In Reality, I don't think the real division is between Democrats and Republicans. It's really between a bunch of very loud (Despite the claims that the corporate media is against them - John Pilger I'm looking at you.) left-wing radicals mixed with some McGovernistas, alot of the university intellegentsia and general anti-establishment types (with some more liberal Democrats) against the Republican-dominated Political establishment and Conservative groups and allies. With Moderate Democrats and Libertarians somewhere waving in between.

Or at least that's what it seems to me. For all the debate about the PATRIOT Act, only one senator opposed it.
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Beet
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« Reply #34 on: December 16, 2006, 10:39:05 PM »

The idea that the American electorate is polarised is not something backed up by election results.

Now, what could be thought of as the political classes, the activists and so on... that's different isn't it?

^^^^

What happened from the 1970s to 2000s is that the political classes became more polarized. Ironically, this is what many political scientists had long called for, although it was wrapped up in the language of "responsible party government," which focuses on the rationalistic aspects of this change rather than "polarization", which focuses on the bitter, divisive aspects.

There are at least a couple of other dynamics going on. One was the excesses of the "New Left" in the late 1960s to early 1970s; the New Left deliberately chose radicalism, and in doing so they created deep wounds among many people who in later decades turned that around to attack liberals. I was a bit surprised last month at how angry I was at the protestors at Gallaudet University here in D.C., how they forcibly took over the campus without regard to any rules in a rather excessive campaign. It makes at least one understand some of the people who turned to the political right around 1970 in response to campus radicalism, if not agree with them. Unfortunately, when you behave like that you create permanent emotional scars, and now some of those people like David Horowitz can't distinguish the progressive liberalism of today from the new left radicalism of the distant past. They and their descendants are actually exposing a new generation of Americans to the bitterness that they still have left over from those days. The New Left was wrong, but the New Right that followed in the 1980s-today is wrong too. Only I think the latter has lasted much longer and been much more successful electorally. Hopefully, those people have hit their peak with their disgusting excesses.
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angus
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« Reply #35 on: December 16, 2006, 10:48:42 PM »
« Edited: December 16, 2006, 10:50:46 PM by angus »

Who is most responsible for the polarization of America?

This was a man named Eli Whitney.  Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin in 1793, at a time when it was becoming economically unfeasible to spend large amounts of money on humans separating cotton from the boll.  But he also invented the system of interchangible parts, which took off rapidly in England, and later in the United States, in the form of the Industrial Revolution.  Eli was the man who put Maryland and Delaware and all US states south of them on one course:  argarian libertarianism.  And he put Pennsylvania and New Jersey (with slightly colder climates) and all states north of them, on a different course:  urbanization, or wage slavery.  This made all the difference.  Climate was only a mitigating factor before Whitney.  After whitney, it was a political system.  I hold Eli Whitney responsible for Agrarian Libertarianism (and the arrested development it maintained) versus Industrial Moralism (and the movements it spawned:  prohibition of alchohol, abolition of slavery, etc.) as the one person responsible for all economic polarization in the US.  Before you dismiss this idea, thinking we have come a long way since the quintessentially English gentleman Oxford-educated Virginia Planter versus the New World entrepreneur of Boston, who pulled himself up by his white-trash puritan bootstraps in public schools and in somewhat socialized public thinking, think long and hard of our political differences.  We're not so very different now.  If you had to name only one person, I say Whitney is the best person to name.
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Beet
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« Reply #36 on: December 16, 2006, 10:51:27 PM »

Who is most responsible for the polarization of America?

This was a man named Eli Whitney.  Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin in 1793, at a time when it was becoming economically unfeasible to spend large amounts of money on humans separating cotton from the boll.  But he also invented the system of interchangible parts, which took off rapidly in England, and later in the United States, in the form of the Industrial Revolution.  Eli was the man who put Maryland and Delaware and all US states south of them on one course:  argarian libertarianism.  And he put Pennsylvania and New Jersey (with slightly colder climates) and all states north of them, on a different course:  urbanization, or wage slavery.  This made all the difference.  Climate was only a mitigating factor before Whitney.  After whitney, it was a political system.  I hold Eli Whitney responsible for Agrarian Libertarianism (and the arrested development it maintained) versus Industrial Moralism (and the movements it spawned:  prohibition of alchohol, abolition of slavery, etc.) as the one person responsible for all economic polarization in the US.  Before you dismiss this idea, thinking we have come a long way since the Oxford-educated Virginia Planter versus the New World entrepreneur of Boston, think long and hard of our political differences.  If you had to name only one person, I say Whitney is the best person to name.

By the way, this is an appropriate response to a very silly question.
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