It IS a good and valid point. Almost all politics have become politics of opposition, of destruction of the other side, and that negativity is infecting our population as much as the negative opposition politics of the 1850s did the people of that time. There comes a point where the people simply do not WANT to be a nation any more. We are not so neatly divided as we were then, with slave states and free states ... but the lines are still pretty much there.

In the Deep South, the opposition to the Democrats is almost as fervent as it was to the Republicans then. The Democratic base, however, is stronger in the cities, and even in strong Democratic states, the rural areas are often Republican. I hope that we cannot again come to blows ... but it seems harder and harder to come together as a nation.

"There’s a reason the Constitution begins “We the people . . .” rather than “We the unconnected individuals who couldn’t care less about one another . . . .” - Eugene Robinson