David McElroy

On Dec. 20, 1860, people claiming to represent the broader population of South Carolina met in a convention and unanimously declared that they had withdrawn from the union of independent states which had been established less than a hundred years before. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas followed.

Early in 1861, delegates from all of those states held a convention in Montgomery, Ala., to set up a new federation for their independent states. The seven states started peacefully taking control of military facilities in their territories. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln said he wouldn’t use force to bring the states back into the old Union. But when he refused to turn over one of two remaining federal forts in southern territory — Fort Sumter in South Carolina — the Confederates opened fire and took the fort by force. The war had started.

After the fighting began, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas also withdrew from the United States and joined the Confederacy. Over the next four years, more than half a million people died in the fighting and from war-related disease.

That’s what happened the first time some people tried to secede from the United States. What insanity makes anyone think the power-hungry politicians of this country would stand for it any better in 2012 than they did in 1861?

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For me, it’s always been second nature to try to understand other people and what they believe. I was aware very early in life that I was “wired up” differently than other people were. From an early age, I thought a lot about why people were different from me — and I spent a lot of time trying to understand why they were so different. (That’s what quickly led to my life-long interest in psychology.)

Even at this point in my life, nothing fascinates me and much as observing people closely and trying to understand them. Most people are that interesting, but I sometimes find things I wasn’t expecting. Every now and then, I strike gold and find someone with enough depth that I could spend a lifetime of exploring and not run out of new things to find. Some people are obsessed with football. Others are obsessed with stamps or fishing or shoes. I’m obsessed with understanding people and figuring out how they tick.

That’s the context for the article I wrote Tuesday about the two sides of the political mainstream not understanding each other. It’s so deeply ingrained in me to want to understand that I thought others would realize it’s a big deal if the sides don’t understand each other, but I think I was mistaken.

When I posted a link to the article on my Facebook page, a very conservative friend responded by saying, “It’s not so much conservative vs. liberal as educated vs. stupid.”

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The re-election of Barack Obama honestly stunned many conservatives. They could understand some people being confused enough to vote for Obama four years ago, but as they watched his actions during his first term, they were certain that most people saw the same danger they saw.

Now those conservatives are left confused and scared of what’s next. Mostly, though, many of the conservatives I know are trying to figure out what went wrong. How is it that what was so plain to them wasn’t plain to a majority in the country?

Deep down, most people believe that other reasonable and intelligent people are like them. It makes sense on some level. If you assume that you’re intelligent, informed and reasonable, you assume that similar people would come to similar conclusions. And if they don’t come to similar conclusions, well, they’re not very bright. Or they’re ill-informed. Or biased. Or unreasonable. Somehow, there’s something wrong with them.

Conservatives have believed that they were in the majority for years. Even during the tumultuous ’60s, Richard Nixon told conservatives that they were the “silent majority.” In the ’70s, the Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority to become a political force for social conservatives. In both of these names, you see the assumption that the majority are obviously “with us.”

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