"this scary Evening Standard article" [Daypop Top 40]
Interestingly, this sounds very much like the same sort of messed-up rhetoric the White Supremacists use and other religious extremists, distorting Christianity in order to justify their own views, to create an Apocalypse, to chose only the parts that feed their violence. Timothy McVeigh fit into this group and was a harbinger of the age of domestic terrorism. The problem is that Islam does seem to provide an easier path for its distortions to lead to the direct death of ANYONE else. This is the sort of home grown terrorism that will be very difficult to eradicate. How we respond to this will determine whether America can remain a country of liberty or become a fascist state. If we react to it as a criminal matter, as we did with McVeigh and the Columbine killers, then we stand a chance. But if we respond to homegrown terrorism as a military matter, then all of us could be in trouble. Because the government could hold way too much power over each of our lives, in ways that would inhibit the free exchange of ideas that has made America so powerful. America would decline, because the rapid pace of today's world requires the ability to improvise, to think up new ideas and to exchange them rapidly. The groups that can do this will be more successful. We have been successful because we have encouraged the rapid exchange of a diverse group of ideas. Clamping down on this in order to maintain some security, which is what current trends seem to be, will only hurt us in the long run. Some other group, some other country that can maintain this approach will bypass us. If we do not destroy any rival before it can. If we do, then mankind will be worse off. America walks a very narrow tightrope right now. A misstep and we can fall off, bringing many with us.
The Bill of Right s was designed to protect the minority from the majority. What happens when there are really 2 pluralities, each at 49%? Neither is really a minority, yet neither has a mandate to lead. Then no one is ever happy. I tell my conservative friends, who were furious at Clinton, and could not understand my support for him, that everything is reversed right now. I am furious at Bush and can not understand why any support him. This divisiveness is harmful and will be destructive in the long run. If 49% of the people in the US do not share your views, you should try to find out why. But reaching out in the middle is not tolerated much, by either party. We seem to be devolving into 2 tribes that never speak to one another. There seem to be no more pragmatists. If a politician does not meet the litmus test for his group, he has little chance to be elected to national office. Both McCain in 2000 and Dean in 2004 could have held pragmatist positions in their respective parties, possibly pulling in votes from the middle (It would have been a much tougher choice for me in 2000 between McCain and Gore. Much, much tougher than for Bush and Gore.) But neither Bush nor Kerry really hold positions that could reach across the divide of their parties.
It seems to me that the division in the parties we see today is similar to that see in the generation proceeding the Civil War. Not having lived in the US from 1830-1860, I can only make a conjecture. But the inability to find a solution that divided the political outlooks of the time, resulted in the destruction and reformation of several coalitions to form new parties, to the increasing harsh rhetoric and to the secession of the South simply because a certain President had been elected. Lincoln, in many major ways, was a real pragmatist. If the South had stayed, he may have actually put them in a better position that they were after the Civil War. But the sides had been so divided that nothing could bridge the gap, resulting in the deaths of such a huge number of men, and the damage to a whole region of the country that still resonates today.
Are we in for a similar fate? To a civil war between ideologies, with little room for anyone to find the middle? We have an administration in place now that has little hope of reaching across the aisle to the other side in any shape, way or means. While I am not convinced that Kerry and the Democrats will solve these problems, a slight chance is better than none. Bush has been a divider, not a uniter. We will need such a statesman before we are done. The sooner the better. Twenty years or more of divisive politics resulted in the Civil War. If that happens today, with the firepower available to so many, there might be millions killed, not thousands. I really hate that this Administration is pushing me into such Apocalyptic visions. But as they seem to be pursuing their own version, seemingly bent of fulfilling Revelations (with a dose of Nostradamus mixed in), similar visions seem to be more likely. What depressing times. What I would give to see a leader that could inspire most of us, instead of only some of us. 10:08:39 PM 
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