Red State / Blue State | An election season blog

In the December 2001 edition of the Atlantic, David Brooks wrote an essay titled "One Nation, Slightly Divisible," in which he suggested that America is divided largely into two political cultures, one "red" and one "blue." His idea is based on those electoral maps in 2000 that colored majority-Republican states in red and majority-Democratic states in blue. Brooks' witty essay pictures the red-state voter as trending rural, a salt-of-the-earth type, concerned with individual liberty and family values, whereas the "blue" voter trends urban, more of a book-reader, a Beltway-savvy intellectual, the environmentally conscious soccer mom or dad.

Cliches? Maybe. But Brooks does have his finger on two very strong currents in the American votership. It's not that Pennsylvania is a "blue state" or Alabama is a "red state." It's that our two political cultures don't talk to each other much, or even know much about each other. To bridge that gap, we've brought together two "red" voters - John Franklin and Cynthia Sneed - and two "blue" voters, Terri Falbo and Timothy Horner. Each week, they'll ponder and debate the issues arising in the election campaign. The hope is that they'll model an intelligent discussion, a great big conference room where red and blue sit down together.

Cynthia Sneed, Red Stater

Question Number 5: What makes you a conservative? What are the values that underlie your allegiance to your chosen form of political belief?

My decisions are based on the party platform. The political party that holds the White House and Congress sets the economic agenda for the most powerful nation known to civilization. The party in power chooses federal judges, Cabinet members and determines policy for the economy, domestic programs and national defense issues. My primary issues are taxes, education and national defense.

I am a free-marketer and believe that the economy grows and everybody is better off if taxes are low and government interference in markets is low. We have undisputed proof that the capitalist system and the free market economy create wealth. For example, the latest housing surveys find that the average size of a European dwelling is 976 square feet, compared to 1,875 in the United States. The average size for poor households in the U.S. is 1,228 - or about 25 percent larger than the average European home. When you break it down to dwelling space per person, the differences are comparable - 395 feet for the average European to 721 for the average American and 428 for the average poor American.

Two economists, Fredrik Bergstrom and Robert Gidehag, compared the number of households that have modern conveniences, including clothes washers, dishwashers, microwave ovens, TVs, personal com-puters, VCRs and automobiles. In 11 of the 13 categories, Americans households were more likely to have the convenience than households in ANY of the European countries. In Sweden, people have more phones and cell phones than Americans do but we have more of everything else.

Bergstrom and Gidehag report, "Major living standard surveys carried out in the USA show the poor to have a surprisingly high standard of living."

For instance, 46 percent of "poor" American families own their own homes. More than three out of four have air conditioning. Seven in 10 have a microwave oven and 97 percent own a color TV. Six in 10 have cable or satellite TV. The average "poor" family has an automobile.

We have, as the Democrats are always telling us, a nation of fat, poor people.

The two economists cite taxes as the primary reason. We complain about high taxes here, and we should, but the tax burden in the U.S. rose just 1.5 percent from 1970 to 1999, while most of the European countries saw double-digit percentage increases. More im-portant, the tax bite on the last dollar earned (the marginal tax rate) in European countries ranges from 60 to 90 percent. Bergstrom and Gidehag refer to this as the "tax wedge." Six of the European countries have tax wedges of 80 percent or more.

Bergstrom and Gidehag report the high tax wedges result from Europe's "extensive welfare system" that provides universal healthcare and free college education to all (just like John Kerry has said he would like to do here in America).

Democrats were not always "redistributionists" to the extent they are today. JKF (the president, not the senator) cut taxes to stimulate the economy. And the other JFK, at one time, very much wanted to reduce taxes "on the rich." When Kerry was running for the Senate in 1984 he strongly supported a plan that would have reduced taxes on the wealthy.

Presidents and political parties come and go but tax laws are forever.

Of course there are other issues such as the funding for national defense and what to do about terrorists attacks against America. Other issues such as the dismal state of education in America today and abortion is important but for me the three more important reasons are economic policy regarding taxes, national defense and education, education, education.

I have the privilege of dealing with the end results of social promotion, outcome based education and math without memorization (of math facts like multiplication tables). I deal with the end results of children who were given all A's and B's in high school - lest we diminish their self-esteem - but who have never read an entire chapter in a textbook, written more that a (I am not making this up) nine-paragraph term paper downloaded off the Internet. Children who are given "review sheets" to study for tests - always fill in the blanks instead of having to read the textbook.

Many Republicans are against the concept of "federalizing" education but education was federalized when the Department of Education was formed under Carter in 1979 and enacted under Reagan in 1980. Less than six months later the first Secretary of Education, Lamar Alexander, told President Reagan the if he did not do something about the Department of Education they were going to dismantle the public school system in America with unproven theories like social promotion and outcome based education. And so it was.

posted at # 8:17 PM