Today is the 11th of November; when I was a child, people still called this “Armistice Day,” in commemoration of the cease-fire that ended the First World War. Maybe it’s a good day to call an armistice in America’s red-vs.-blue civil war. Maybe not.
Presidential advisor Karl Rove was quoted in Wednesday’s New York Times as saying “moral values” swung the election to George Bush. The current edition of Newsweek says one of five voters cited moral values as their top criterion in the election and 79 percent of them voted for Mr. Bush. Any number of pixels has been devoted to Mr. Bush’s proximity or distance from moral values in the past four years and there seems no end in sight, so let’s look at the morals of last week’s voters.
Given that so many Bush supporters have morality on their minds, one would expect that states that went for Mr. Bush (“red” states) are demonstrably more moral than states that went for John Kerry (“blue” states). With that expectation firmly in place, would you care to guess which state, according to the U.S. Census, has the lowest divorce rate? It is, of course, Massachusetts, Mr. Kerry’s home state, which has 2.4 divorced people per thousand of the population. Texas, by contrast, has 4.1 per thousand. Overall, the highest rates of divorce are in the southeast Bible Belt and the lowest divorce rates are in the liberal northeast, where same-sex couples can enter into marriage or civil union in Massachusetts and Vermont, respectively. Based on this evidence, we would have to conclude that gays and lesbians are not a threat to the sanctity of “traditional marriage” but country music is. Perhaps Mr. Bush will soon support an amendment to the Constitution outlawing The Nashville Network.
That’s just one statistic; we shouldn’t look at one factor and blow it out of proportion. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, seven of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2003 were Bush states; six of the 10 states with the lowest murder rates were Kerry states.
A week after the election, the United Health Foundation released its annual summary of health statistics. The UHF was founded by the insurance industry examine statistics used in setting premiums. The UHF considers factors such as prevalence of smoking, obesity, high school graduation rates, occupational fatalities, per capita public health spending, prenatal care, children in poverty and infant mortality. All measures of health to be sure, but also measures of morality, giving us insight into how well we care for our children, our poor, our pregnant women and our employees on the job. The healthiest state in America is Minnesota, followed by New Hampshire, Vermont and Hawaii – all blue. In all, eight of the 10 healthiest states are blue – all ten of the least healthy states are red.
Finally, there’s the issue of taxes – at the core of George Bush’s agenda – and the moral agenda, in terms of greed. Eight of the top 10 states that pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal benefits are blue states; eight of the top 10 states whose federal benefits exceed federal taxes paid are red states.
The conclusion we’re left to draw is that American voters are becoming like the politicians they elect – you can’t believe them when they start to preach about morality.
Practice What You Preach
Today is the 11th of November; when I was a child, people still called this “Armistice Day,” in commemoration of the cease-fire that ended the First World War. Maybe it’s a good day to call an armistice in America’s red-vs.-blue civil war. Maybe not.
Presidential advisor Karl Rove was quoted in Wednesday’s New York Times as saying “moral values” swung the election to George Bush. The current edition of Newsweek says one of five voters cited moral values as their top criterion in the election and 79 percent of them voted for Mr. Bush. Any number of pixels has been devoted to Mr. Bush’s proximity or distance from moral values in the past four years and there seems no end in sight, so let’s look at the morals of last week’s voters.
Given that so many Bush supporters have morality on their minds, one would expect that states that went for Mr. Bush (“red” states) are demonstrably more moral than states that went for John Kerry (“blue” states). With that expectation firmly in place, would you care to guess which state, according to the U.S. Census, has the lowest divorce rate? It is, of course, Massachusetts, Mr. Kerry’s home state, which has 2.4 divorced people per thousand of the population. Texas, by contrast, has 4.1 per thousand. Overall, the highest rates of divorce are in the southeast Bible Belt and the lowest divorce rates are in the liberal northeast, where same-sex couples can enter into marriage or civil union in Massachusetts and Vermont, respectively. Based on this evidence, we would have to conclude that gays and lesbians are not a threat to the sanctity of “traditional marriage” but country music is. Perhaps Mr. Bush will soon support an amendment to the Constitution outlawing The Nashville Network.
That’s just one statistic; we shouldn’t look at one factor and blow it out of proportion. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, seven of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2003 were Bush states; six of the 10 states with the lowest murder rates were Kerry states.
A week after the election, the United Health Foundation released its annual summary of health statistics. The UHF was founded by the insurance industry examine statistics used in setting premiums. The UHF considers factors such as prevalence of smoking, obesity, high school graduation rates, occupational fatalities, per capita public health spending, prenatal care, children in poverty and infant mortality. All measures of health to be sure, but also measures of morality, giving us insight into how well we care for our children, our poor, our pregnant women and our employees on the job. The healthiest state in America is Minnesota, followed by New Hampshire, Vermont and Hawaii – all blue. In all, eight of the 10 healthiest states are blue – all ten of the least healthy states are red.
Finally, there’s the issue of taxes – at the core of George Bush’s agenda – and the moral agenda, in terms of greed. Eight of the top 10 states that pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal benefits are blue states; eight of the top 10 states whose federal benefits exceed federal taxes paid are red states.
The conclusion we’re left to draw is that American voters are becoming like the politicians they elect – you can’t believe them when they start to preach about morality.
© Mark Floegel, 2004