BECOMING BLUE

Feeling blue?

If so, you're not alone. More than half the nation -at least, half of the
half that votes - feels blue, too.

Most Texans, on the other hand, are red. As is most of the U.S. -
geographically speaking, that is.

If you watched the presidential election returns on the networks last
month, you saw the handwriting on the tote board, too.

Most of the U.S., in terms of land, was marked red - meaning those areas
voted for Bush. As a result, when the broadcast "journalists" finished the
night's tabulating, their maps were filled with lots of red surrounding a
few small dots of blue - the regions that went for Gore.

Using only those maps as a reference, you'd think the U.S. ushered Bush
into office with a landslide victory. Not so - more than half of the half
that voted punched "Gore" on their ballots (or at least tried to).

I've been thinking about those maps since Election Night. I think those
maps, which were obviously practically worthless when it came to counting
election returns, contain a hidden message about the future of our country.

And that message is this: The Red people are screwed.

Barring a major shift in the nation's temperament - and you only have to
look back at the last quarter-century to see how that's shifted from right
to left to right and back to the middle again - this could be the last
presidential election that Red can control.

Although the blue dots were small, they contained many more people - and
thus, many more votes - than the red areas. That's because the blue dots
were concentrated in urban areas, particularly on the coasts, while red
covered the largely rural areas in the rest of the nation.

Fifty years ago, most of the country's population lived in those rural
areas, and probably shared the same conservative philosophies. Thanks to
the mechanization of the American farm, most of the country's population
has since moved to cities - where those "country" folks apparently became
more liberal.

There's absolutely no reason to think that trend won't continue. In fact,
this newspaper has for years been filled with the lamentations of
small-town leaders who can't figure out how to keep their young people from
moving off to the city.

It might take longer than four more years. It might not happen until the
2008 election. But soon, the Blues will outnumber the Reds by an
even-larger margin - a gap that will enable the nation's urban areas to
wrest control from the larger (in terms of geography) but smaller (in terms
of population) rural areas. And you can guess the rest...

But that's not the only lesson to be learned here. It's obvious that we
have two distinct political philosophies emerging from these groups.
Speaking in generalities, Blue favors gun control, abortion rights, less
regulation of morality and more social services. In the same general way,
Red favors property rights, fewer taxes, some kind of legal rein on moral
issues and less government control.

Who's right? Obviously, that depends on your color. What's not right is
that soon, Blue will be able to dictate to Red.

Me, I'm one of those whackos who sees it both ways. My personal philosophy
on life sez you leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone. You want an
abortion? That's none of my business. You wanna smoke pot? Stay off the
highway and I couldn't care less.

Here's what I want in return. I want to shoot my guns - and I want you to
keep your nose out of it. I want to read what I want to read, watch the
movies I want to watch and go where I want to go. And I want you to shut
your mouth and leave me alone while I do it.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Can you imagine how much better our nation would
be if everybody would quit trying to make everybody else share their
lifestyles and their views?

Well, it might sound simple, but it's obviously not. Build a nude dance
barn, and somebody's gonna come along and tell you it's bad and needs to
go. Build a better rifle, and somebody's gonna come along and brand it
"dangerous" and say it, too, needs to go.

I don't want the Blue people telling me how to live my life. And come to
think of it, I don't want you Red people doing it, either.

The federal government, however, doesn't agree with that philosophy. When
Texans said they didn't want any more gun-control laws, their federal
lawmakers said, "Too bad."

When the folks in Oregon decided physician-assisted suicide was something
they wanted to allow, the feds came along and said, "Sorry, you're wrong."

And when California voters told law-enforcement officials to quit harassing
people who wanted to smoke marijuana for medicinal reasons, the federal
alphabet agencies made a show of trampling those newly given rights.

Obviously, states can't always have it the way they want it. When it came
to denying minorities their civil rights, for example, certain states - and
not just in the South - needed a Big Brother to change their minds.

But that's a different issue. Legal suicide, Second-Amendment rights and
medical marijuana weren't, in and of themselves, harming anyone who didn't
want to be harmed, weren't denying anyone the freedoms guaranteed in the
Constitution.

It's time our federal politicians and bureaucrats realized that what's good
for New York might not necessarily be good for Texas.

Frankly, I don't see that happening any time soon. And that's why we'll all
be blue - whether we like it or not.