The retired have immense experience and are often prepared to work as volunteers. But we are failing to match their talents to our needs; or our talents to their needs.
"We already are seeing 'border war' with individual states passing major legislation that differs considerably from that in other places," says Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, and William Gale, a Brookings senior fellow in economic studies,
When and if the issue turns to violent confrontations between local citizens and federal officers, or between contentious groups of citizens, the clash might well take place far closer to home
America has an extraordinary number of guns and private militias," they write. How many? They cite the National Shooting Sports Foundation's estimate of 434 million firearms in civilian possession in the U.S. right now. That would be 1.3 guns per person.
But the most meaningful geographic separation in our society is no longer as tidy as North and South, or East and West. It is the familiar divide between urban and rural, or to update that a bit: metro versus non-metro.
for now we're less a nation divided into 50 states than we are two nations that are both present in each of those states.