Most of my posts lately have been about books and this one isn't going to be much different. Reading has been taking up most of my time, which has been nice because it's been a while since I've been able to read something other than school books. I have a lot to catch up on.
Although I've gotten the other Twilight books, I haven't started them yet because I picked up a different book while I was waiting for them to come. Now, normally I have no problem reading more than one book at a time. I find that I can keep them straight and remember what was going on in both of them. This time, however, I felt bad for considering to put down this book to start the third book in the Twilight series. Maybe it's because I had already put it down once when I started the second book and it would just be insulting to the book to put it down again. For whatever reason, I'm determined to finish the book before starting another book.
The book is called Empire and it's by Orson Scott Card, who is a fantastic writer. The book is an interesting mix of fiction, what seems to be Scott Card's personal opinion, and social/political commentary. I'm not usually one for political books, but this one is good. The whole idea seems to be to ask the question, if the United States were to have a civil war, where would the lines be drawn?
It's an interesting idea as well as a scary one. The answer is obvious as well as true. Scott Card brings up the point that people in America think that we can't have a civil war here like other nations because we don't have the ethnic divisions that other nations have. It's true that we don't have that kind of division, but we shouldn't. Our country isn't tied together by ethnicity because the U.S. wasn't created by ethnic groups. The U.S. was created by the ideas of the people who came here. That's what ties our nation together, ideas. So, it stands to reason that what can divide our nation is the separation of ideas, basically your Democrat and Republican standards.
It seems like a crazy idea, but when you think about how divided the Democrats and Republicans are at this point, it starts to come together. By today's standards, to be a Democrat or Republican means that you accept all of the ideas that come with it. There are few politicians who could be considered moderate, accepting some standards of one group or the other, while mixing with other beliefs.
This makes voting hard. How do you vote for someone that you don't agree with because you aren't that extreme? Like anything, it probably takes voting for the person that you agree with on the important issues for you, while compromising on the other issues. It's hard to compromise though especially when there are many important issues.
Of course, Scott Card is not saying that civil war is inevitable. What he does though, is point out how it could happen and it would be a war unlike any other that we've fought. The main issue is getting people from either sides to agree. Most people, it seems, feel that they are so in the right, that everyone that disagrees is ignorant and plain wrong. They feel no need to try to see the other side's point of view, which is a big mistake if you're trying to get anything done. In my mind, the farther people gravitate to either side, believing that they are right and the other side, or anyone who doesn't agree with them, is wrong, the bigger the split between them becomes. All it would take is for one person to believe that they have been wronged beyond repair, and to take serious action. It's a sobering thought.
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