Saturday, November 05, 2005

Manufactured Majorities Fall Flat

Check out this post, from The Carpetbagger Report, one of my favorite political blogs. It's about a movement to control the government of a single state by moving massive amounts of like-minded individuals into that state, thus creating a massive voting block that can mold the government to their liking. It is a very interesting idea and embraces the concepts of federalism, of the individual states as laboratories, and it has been wildly unsuccessful in practice. Two separate groups have attempted to carry this plan to fruition: Libertarians in New Hampshire and Fundamentalist Christians in South Carolina. The Daily Show did a story on the christian movement some months back. It was quite amusing, and if you haven't seen it, I suggest scouring the internet for it. The most amusing part of the story is when the correspondent spoke via telephone to the founder of the movement. Three years into the movement, the founder still lived in California! Some one hundred of his followers had obeyed his orders and migrated from their homes around the country, left their middle- and upper-middle-class jobs, uprooted their families, and moved to South Carolina. All because they hoped to live in a Christian Paradise, free from gay-marriage, evolution, secular humanists, and HPV immunization. And their leader couldn't even find time to join them.
I think the idea of moving huge populations of like-minded individuals into states so they can live only among their own kind is a little dangerous. There is nothing like bouncing bad ideas into an echo chamber, increasing their volume as they bounce back and forth between clones until they become so loud that they spill out into mainstream America as immutable truths. That is a recipe for disaster, if you ask me (which you impliedly did by coming to my blog and reading all the way to the end of the blog). Comments, as always, are welcomed and encouraged.

2 Comments:

Blogger Fishfrog said...

Xeno brings up an interesting point. One reason I am inclined to support fundies moving to a single state is that it would reduce their influence in my state, and would reduce their influence over a significant number of electoral votes. The rest of the country would be free to consider the wonderful possibilities of a secular humanist society. I'm not sure if that benefit outweighs the danger posed to the country by the echo chamber effect. I should say that I think any group that is not exposed to dissent and opposing views will quickly get out of hand. This goes for the humanists as well as the fundies.

8:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't have anything meaningful to say... but I like the Daily Show... its funny.

9:22 AM  

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