Instead of pulling back from the lawlessness we saw under Bush (which most of Obama's enthusiastic supporters must surely have expected in the 2008 campaign) Obama has simply legalized the vast majority of what Bush did--and then some, in some instances.
This is not your father's rule of law. It's not your rule of law. It's not Madison or Montesquieu's rule of law. It's George Orwell and Franz Kafka's rule of law . . .
Republicans and Democrats don’t seem to agree on very much these days. They’re divided on the kinds of television shows they watch, cars they drive and beers they drink. And now new research by political scientists at the University of Chicago adds one more thing to that list: baby names.If the surveys are to be believed, Republicans tend to watch golf or Survivor, drive a pickup, and drink Coors Light. Democrats lean towards watching NBA basketball or Family Guy, driving a hybrid, and drinking Heineken.
Oliver and colleagues found that, for both boy and girl babies, “softer” sounds were more prominent among educated whites living in more Democratic or liberal neighborhoods. That is, a boy’s name like “Julian” or “Liam” or a girl’s name like “Malia” would be more common in Democratic neighborhoods. A boy’s name like “Trig” or a girl’s name like “Bristol” would be more common in Republican neighborhoods.In other words, Liam will likely be behind the well of the hybrid, and Trig will likely be behind the wheel of the 4x4.
Oliver and colleagues also emphasize that these partisan or ideological differences were largely confined to better-educated whites. As other political science research shows, partisanship and ideology often operate most strongly within this group. Thus, it is a mistake simply to divide America into red and blue. This leads to the paper’s provocative conclusion:After reading these article I expect someone to re-write Romeo and Juliet as a story about a Democrat Julian who falls in love with a Republican Bristol. The two commit suicide by drowning in a vat of Dos Equis because they can't agree which vehicle to drive to the wedding of their non-partisan friend Joshua.As we see in patterns of baby names, liberal elites use esoteric cultural references to demonstrate their elevated social position just as conservatives invoke traditional signals of wealth and affluence. Instead of divides between “Red and Blue states,” it is more accurate to say that America is divided not just by “Red and Blue elites,” but also in the ways these elites seek to differentiate themselves from the largely “purple” masses.
