From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Apr 4 22:07:42 1996 Return-Path: owner-chat Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id WAA21643 for chat-outgoing; Thu, 4 Apr 1996 22:07:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from obie.softweyr.com (slcmodem1-p4-1.intele.net [206.29.206.148]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id WAA21632 for ; Thu, 4 Apr 1996 22:07:34 -0800 (PST) Received: (from wes@localhost) by obie.softweyr.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id XAA00232; Thu, 4 Apr 1996 23:05:30 -0700 Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1996 23:05:30 -0700 Message-Id: <199604050605.XAA00232@obie.softweyr.com> From: wes@intele.net To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" CC: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: America the Beautiful In-Reply-To: <2281.828577114@time.cdrom.com> References: <199604031659.KAA28168@compound> <2281.828577114@time.cdrom.com> Sender: owner-chat@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Jordan K. Hubbard writes: > > The more interesting question to me personally is how long *Minnesota* > > will remain a part of the Union. (Not long I hope. Better a dead > > I wonder if you're really serious here.. It's kind of amusing, but > I've had a lot of my european friends ask me what America is going to > do in the next 50 years now that we're at end-of-empire and sort of > generally sick of playing self-appointed policeman to the world > (Vietnam was sort of the beginning of the end in many, many ways). At least our generation is. I don't see many signs of this in the aging WWII set, or even in the ex-hippy set. Unfortunately, the older ones are still running the country. I hope we can hang on till 2000, and get a good 35-40 year old President in office who doesn't want to play cop to the rest of the world. > I say that we'll still be here, just fragmented into a bunch of > nation-states. New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada will probably be one > independant territory, I expect the northies to go their own way > (Montana/North Dakota, etc) and California, of course, will finally > acknowledge the obvious and become its own country. I'm leaning in the opposite direction -- I can see all of North America becoming one large country. We've almost become one large economy already, what with the U.S. bailout of the Mexican banking mess; the cross-border trade being enhanced by NAFTA, the porosity of both of the U.S. borders (intentional on the north, but not on the south). Personally, if we manage to keep a reasonably representative government, I don't see this as a bad thing at all. America has suceeded so far *because* of the melting pot idea, and more of a melting pot will make us stronger. We'll also maintain the largest collection of natural resources in the known world. > No idea whether or not the transition will be peaceful thought. > Depends on how attached the Federalists are to the idea of a complete > Union. My feeling is that the writing on the wall will be there for > many years before the first official break-away, and by then everyone > will have had time to get used to it. That is, unless you silly > Minnesotans jump the gun or something.. :-) Those Minnesotans could be dangerous, if they can figure out how to organize their mosquitoes into an air force... -- Wes Peters | Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late Softweyr | The cannons don't thunder, there's nothing to plunder Consulting | I'm an over forty victim of fate... wes@intele.net | Jimmy Buffett