JMyste, a frequent visitor whose quest to keep me honest is worthy, but probably futile, gives it another go. He responds to my prediction that the Republican Party is in a death spiral, with no hope of pulling out. His answer first appeared here:

Agree or disagree, it is a very well-written and brilliant idea to consider. It invokes memories of the home computer done it a few yards back. I would love to see this posted on a conservative site. Of course they would mostly disagree, but it would still be entertaining.

I would also point out that as conservatives grow more conservative and pledge greater allegiance to the purely defined conservative flags of Hannity and Limbaugh, liberals become more liberal and have already started their own worship of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, who also go to extremes and present their cases as retained attorneys would.

All four of these individuals show no signs of a scientific mind. They argue a point, attack members of the other party for crimes with which they appear to sympathize when it is their own party committing them. Usually when a major news event happens that could damage the reputation of a politician, those of his own party immediately start a defensive damage control and those of the other party immediately attack. The improprieties and crimes themselves are rarely evaluated on their own merits by these political Gods who direct our thinking on political matters.

If I am a liberal, I find out what I think about any specific event from the extremist of liberals, and then I become more liberal. If I am a conservative, I find out my opinion from the most conservative of conservatives, and I become more conservative. Ironically, I am addicted. I cannot wait for stuff to happen, and when it does, a cliffhanger forms. I can barely contain my anxiety until I can tune into my program of choice and find out exactly how I feel about it.

There are opinion makers and opinion consumers. The latter outnumber the former a million to one. People are not content to settle for the data alone. When learning how they feel about an issue they want excitement and a lot of it. To put it bluntly, they wish to be tickled until they have an accident. They don’t want someone to lean this way or that. They want someone to stand solidly on one side and show how ridiculous the other side is. That is the MO of extremists. The best most successful opinion shops out there are run by fanatics.

I see nothing in place to change this phenomenon in either party. And if it is indeed the evolutionary conclusion to both parties, then the GOP has simply evolved faster than we liberals have. Better for them: get it over with, so they can move on to whatever it is they or their successors will become. If the annihilation of the GOP is truly imminent, then we will laugh hysterically as we delight in the preview of own demise.

The Drive-By Media is desperate to push the Republicans into being moderate because they lose when they go that route.

 - - Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio personality, February 4, 2010

This year, as every year, we celebrate the bravery of those founders who quite likely would have been executed had their Declaration of Independence not prevailed in battle. It is noteworthy that that theirs was not the only independence declared during those uncertain days.

Of General Washington’s 100 or so slaves, 17 stole into the night in search of freedom. Thomas Jefferson, who unsuccessfully sought to retain a condemnation of slavery in the American Declaration, lost 23 of the 200 slaves he owned. They escaped slavery and fled their celebrated owners.

Several blog sites, Daily Kos and others, have revisited the famous 1852 speech by escaped slave Frederick Douglass. “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?" was his quite reasonable question. Douglass gave his speech in Rochester, NY. I grew up near that site, and I have had occasion to think about his impassioned words and about the nature of patriotism.

That slavery is America’s Original Sin is so commonly accepted, that it has become a cliché. Michael Medved and Pat Buchanan are fairly isolated in trying to justify slavery. Both believe the enslaved and their descendants were actually liberated from the relative poverty that freedom in Africa would have provided them. In this, their followers number literally in the tens. To everyone else, the truth is obvious. If the benefits of slavery were so great, voluntary enrollment would have been used. No fences or force, or fugitive slave laws would have been needed to perpetuate the exploitation.

Slavery has provoked contrasting reactions. One has been racism against the victims. Guilt is not necessary if there was no real crime, if the victims were not quite humans. Another has been a condemnation of America and patriotism itself as hypocrisy: how can we celebrate the freedom that was won only for the pale of skin?

The traditional response, one in which I deeply believe, is that the founders defined an ideal. Patriotism is the province of those who have moved America in the direction of that dream. Martin Luther King described the Declaration as a promissory note, and offered his faith that American Justice is not so bankrupt as to avoid eventually making good on the promise.

But I cannot help but wonder about those 40 slaves who escaped from just two of those we celebrate. It is our loss that their stories are not known to us, and that we cannot celebrate their own quest for freedom.

We appreciate the founders who made the promise. Our appreciation should take the form of making sure their promise was the truth.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal"

 - - Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., August 28, 1963

Behold the dreamer! Come now, let us kill him ... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.

 - - Genesis 37: 19-20

The son of a truck driver and JC Penney clerk, Rick is known as an innovator in business, health care, and politics, and has developed a reputation in the health care industry for providing affordable, high quality services through a patient-centric approach to cost and care.

 - - Rick Scott for Florida, 2010
     On the Corporation that defrauded Medicare of billions before he was fired
     by his own Board of Directors