The Scariest Picture You’ll Ever See

June 25, 2010
by Chip Wood

Take a good long look at the map below. Pay special attention to the areas that are in blue. Compare them, in size and location, to the areas that are in red. Then let me tell you why the numbers (and the colors) are so significant.



What you’re looking at is a map of the 2008 Presidential election, broken down by the results in each county. If Barack Obama received most of the votes in a particular county, it appears in blue. If John McCain was the winner, that county is in red.

If you added up the land mass of every blue and red county you’d see something really striking—the Republicans won 80 percent of this country, when measured by acreage. John McCain got a majority of votes in 2,417,000 square miles of the United States. Barack Obama, by comparison, won in just 580,000 square miles.

Ah, but now let’s look at the population numbers for each county. McCain still came out ahead, but not by much. The total population of counties won by Republicans was 143 million, while the population of counties won by Democrats was 127 million.

Basically, the Democrats swept the populations centers—the cities and more populated suburban areas—while the Republicans won everything else.

Now, guess what you would find if you could then overlay this map with one showing the distribution of food stamps, unemployment checks, subsidized housing and other welfare payments? Sure, there will be some in all of those red areas. There are plenty of Republicans receiving Social Security and Medicare. I’m sure there are even some Republican farmers who get paid not to grow crops. And there are certainly some Republican businessmen getting subsidies from Uncle Sam.

But the overwhelming majority of voters in the red areas pay more into government than they receive; while just the opposite is true in the blue areas. The majority of people there receive more in government benefits than they pay in taxes. In fact, 45 percent of adults in America pay no income taxes at all. Not one red penny. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

Can you guess where most of those people live? And which party they vote for? While you ponder the significance of these statistics let me repeat a quotation I used in last week’s column when I was discussing the differences between a republic and a democracy: http://www.personalliberty.com/liberty/ ... n-keep-it/

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, and is always followed by a dictatorship.â€