"In 1988, the Democratic presidential nominee, Michael Dukakis, carried 26 percent of the nation’s counties, 819 of 3,144, on his way to losing the Electoral College 426-111 and the popular vote by seven percentage points. In 2012, President Obama won fewer counties, 690, but he won the popular vote by four points and the Electoral College in a landslide, 332-206."While the title of the op-ed piece is misleading, the content is very interesting and worth reading.
"The wage stagnation for tens of millions of working Americans over the past decades combined with the financial crisis has been painful and even calamitous for millions. In truth, however, the middle class security that has now disappeared only existed for a very brief period after World War Two, when the United States accounted for half of global industrial output and achieved a level of relative prosperity and growth that was substantially higher than in any other country. Before the Great Depression and World War Two, there was no assumption in the 17th, 18th or 19th centuries that the future would be inherently better for one’s children."It goes on to say:
"...the equation of American economic success until the mid-20th century was not that if you worked hard you would have a stable material life. It was that if you worked hard, you could create such a life. The difference is not semantic; it is fundamental, and for Obama and many, many others, it has become blurred. The equation articulated by Obama and likely shared by a significant majority of Americans is that if you work hard, you should receive economic security and see the same for your children. The flip side of that theory is that if you don’t gain economic security, something is wrong with the system, and government has a responsibility to provide when that system fails.
The belief that something is a given simply by birthright is never a formula for long-term strength. Yet at some point in the last half of the 20th century, the American dream morphed from the promise that you could realize a comfortable life, to a promise that being American meant you would and should realize that. Hence the feeling, held by so many, that promises have been betrayed and the system is broken."
"Local Christians were permitted to erect a Ten Commandments monument at the Bradford County courthouse in Starke, Florida, prompting a lengthy legal dispute over the separation of church and state. Officials eventually struck a deal -- if atheists dropped the lawsuit, which they were likely to win, they could erect their own monument on the property.
And so, this week, American Atheists did exactly that, unveiling a privately-funded, 1,500-pound granite bench, honoring church-state separation, secularism, and atheism. Because of the prevalence of Ten Commandments displays at courthouses, especially throughout the South, the group says it has plans to erect 50 more monuments just like this one."
