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.

Terri Falbo, Blue Stater

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

To me, the essay by Joe Franklin underscores the inadequacy of using conservative versus liberal or Republican versus Democrat to talk about the main divisions in U.S. political policies and thinking today. I totally support the values he outlines as "an honest day's pay for an honest day's work," "waste not, want not," "if it's broken, fix it, don't throw it away" and "pay as you go."

It is the domination of our economy, politics and culture by giant wealthy corporations that subverts these values. Some people are born with so much wealth that they never have to do a single "honest day's work." Others work more than an honest day's work every single day of their life and still cannot make ends meet. Corporate policies denigrate the environment and encourage wastefulness and a throw-away society. Corporate advertisements are designed to make us feel totally insecure and unworthy if we don't have the newest, latest whatever - even if it means having to borrow.

The essay by Cynthia Sneed addresses the "free-market" ideology rather than values. As long as we continue to allow some people to have hundreds of thousands of times more wealth than others, then letting markets determine everything will create major problems. In the marketplace, one dollar equals one vote, so one individual can have hundreds of thousands of times more "votes" than another. At least, with government, we theoretically have one person, one vote!

The main problem I see with our government is that we have allowed corporations and "the market" to dominate it also – "the best government money can buy," as they say!

We need to have a culture of citizenship and a true government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Then we wouldn't even think in terms of government "owing" or "not owing." Instead it would be "we the people" coming together to decide what type of society we want and how we can best obtain it.

Many times it is more efficient and cheaper to produce or buy things in quantity (economies of scale). We can come together as a people to do this. We can "cut out the middleman," i.e.: those not directly involved in producing the service or good, but only there to make a profit.

As far as Bergstrom and Gidehag saying that the U.S. poor have a high standard of living - I would like to see them try to live on a total annual household income of under $18,000 per year as 20 percent of U.S. households do! (Or even the $34,000 annually, under which 40 percent of U.S. households fall.) The fact remains that most surveys show the U.S. with a lower standard of living than many European countries, and the buying power of the U.S. worker has been slipping since 1973.

As for morality, I feel treating others the way you would like to be treated is of utmost importance. Someone who is being honest in a personal relationship and treating the other person with respect and love is being moral, while someone being dishonest, disrespectful, or unloving is immoral - regardless of sexual orientation.

posted at # 8:06 PM