America’s Ever-Increasing Polarization

This last week marked the long-awaited appearance of Hillary Clinton before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. This has only taken three years to arrange, mostly because of foot-dragging and the intentional hiding of e-mails by Hillary herself.

While it has taken a long time to get to this point, Representative Trey Gowdy has made it clear that he is determined to follow through and find out what happened and what failures caused the death of Ambassador Stevens and the others.

Yet to the Democrat Party, this has been nothing but a partisan witch hunt. Their stand has been clear from the beginning that the only reason for the investigation was to play politics and besmirch the names of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

This is where our country has gotten to. For the last who knows how many years, we’ve been becoming more and more divided. While the rate of obvious division has increased under President Obama, that’s not where it began.

He has pushed division between black and white, rich and poor and yes, between conservatives and progressives; but the political polarization goes back to way before his time.

Perhaps some form of polarization has always existed. Looking back, the current divide between conservatives and progressives started before World War II. It was common for the conservatives of that day to call FDR a socialist.

But even before that, we had the polarization between the north and the south, which resulted in the Civil War. In fact, political polarization started with the birth of this country, between the Federalists and the Whigs.

What has made the polarization of today’s political parties so obvious is the realignment of conservatives and liberal progressives under the banners of the two main parties.

Thirty years ago there were both conservatives and liberals in both parties. But today, the Democrat Party is purely liberal, while the Republican Party is a mixture of true conservatives and “moderates.” Of course, what is considered moderate today would have been considered extremely liberal 30 years ago.

This realignment has increased the divide between the two parties, as well as the country as a whole. Today you can’t find conservative Democrats or Liberal Republicans.

Nor can you find a whole lot of people who bother listening to the viewpoint of the other side. Progressives aren’t interested in hearing the conservative viewpoint and conservatives aren’t interested in hearing the liberal-progresive one.

Perhaps that is because the issues we are battling over today are much more serious than they were a generation ago. Today’s issues are over same sex marriages, elimination of our rights, the loss of our two-party political system to illegal immigration and massive redistribution of wealth.

While the foundations of these issues existed a generation ago, you didn’t see them on the surface; they were things that were happening below the radar.

Both liberalism and conservativism have changed over the years as well; but liberalism has changed all the more. The changes to conservative ideology have mostly been reactionary, dealing with liberalism’s constant push to go more and more extreme. But the real changes have happened in liberalism. What used to be called liberal has now become conservative.

Video first seen on Fox News

So, what are the big changes in liberalism?

More than anything, it is a much more blatant disregard for the principles this country was founded on. No longer do those who call themselves liberal see any need to hide the fact that they want to do away with the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the vision of the Founding Fathers. Instead, they want to create a progressive utopia which is totally controlled by progressive ideals and all other ideas are suppressed.

This new liberalism isn’t liberalism at all. Traditional liberalism is about denying the overreaching authority of government; but they want more government control. Strangely enough, defying government overreach has become a conservative trademark.

No, what we have today is “progressivism” which while often called “liberalism” is actually something quite different. More than anything, it’s pure socialism, Marxist variety. So, those who are spouting off about their progressive ideas are trying to turn us from being the United States of America to being the Soviet States of America.

But it won’t stop there. As Vladimir Lenin said, “The goal of socialism is communism.” So what they’re really espousing is a controlling communist government to take away our liberty, our livelihood and our money. No wonder we’re a country divided.

These same people are the ones who are controlling what is considered politically correct in this country. So, not only do they want to control our money, taking it from us to give it to the more deserving, they also want to control what we are allowed to say. Once again this smacks of communism, where the people’s freedom of speech is nonexistent.

Progressive liberals fall into two categories; the “elite” and the poor. The elite are Washington insiders, most of the mainstream media, much of Hollywood and a few liberal business moguls, all of whom are convinced that they are smarter than anyone else.

They know they’re smarter because they keep telling each other that. So, since they are smarter, they should take the burden of making decisions off of everyone else’s shoulders and tell us what to do. All we have to do is obey them, and we’ll have a utopia.

There’s only one problem with this. Few of these elite have any idea about reality. C’mon, does anyone really think that a Hollywood actor, who has made his fortune in make believe stories, has any idea about reality? Does anyone think that a professional politician, who has insulated themselves from the problems they cause everyday people have any idea of what it’s like to make a living and pay the bills? Yet these are the people who are saying that you and I should pay more taxes, so that they can give our money away.

Then there’s the second group of progressives. Those are the poor. This includes the legitimate poor (there really are some) and those who are sponging off the system (there are some of these too).

This group is going to go down with the ship, voting Democrat, because the Democrats have told them that the Republicans will take away their benefits, throw them out of their homes, kill them and eat their children. Since few of these people bother to read for themselves, they believe that drivel.

Finally, we have the third and final group of progressives. These are the people who have to vote with them, because the Democrats protect them and allow them to do what they want.

More than anything, this refers to the LGBT community and the Muslims. Both of these groups, who are minorities in this country, are the tails wagging the dog, because they are talking loud enough, making themselves out to be victims and spending enough money to get the attention of the media and the progressive politicians, who say, “Who cares if it’s true or not, they vote Democrat?”

Against this cornucopia of whiners, stealers and liars we have mainstream America; the silent majority. Those who just want to be left alone to live their lives.

They don’t have any great banner to gather under, because they don’t have the hate that the left says they do. No, it’s the left who are the purveyors of hate. But it’s also the left who controls the media. So, even though the conservatives are still the heart of America, their voice is not heard.

The left is in control and they like it that way. Even though both houses of Congress have a Republican majority, it doesn’t really matter. They can’t get anything past the President and the magic veto pen. Obama has managed to embolden the left and they are going to take advantage of it.

This is sad, but almost funny too. We, those of us on the right, don’t need the progressive liberals. They don’t add any value to our lives. But they need us. They can’t survive without us. Without mainstream America to pay the bills, they couldn’t do all their entitlements and government programs.

So, while the progressive politicians and the mainstream media are constantly blaming the right for the divisiveness in our government, it is clear where it is coming from. But then, in the eyes of the left, we on the right no longer have a right to our opinion; nor do we have a right to our freedom of expression. We have a right to agree with them or we have a right to keep quiet.

Is there hope still? Is there a chance for reconciliation? I seriously doubt it. While I am a man of much hope, I just don’t see much in the country to give me hope.

The political left is set on their ideology and they are determined to do whatever is necessary to take over the country. But those on the right aren’t as committed. All too many are willing to compromise, for whatever reason, rather than stand on principle.

Somewhere in all this, the will of the people has been lost. What we have is the will of the ruling elite; and they are using the division that they’ve caused, so that they can maintain control.

This article has been written by Bill White for Survivopedia.