For some of us old folks, “balkanizing” may bring back memories of lighting a tube patch while repairing a tire on our car. That's not it!

That term means much more than a tire repair. Like you, I have heard it used by the talking heads of TV Land and the political prophets. And like you, I have only been able to guess at its meaning. So this time I went to the reference books and did some research. The term itself means to “make like or produce a result like the Balkans.” While succinct and meaningful it did not answer my question about what does Balkanization mean?

My Britannica was more helpful in that it defined the Balkan region and led to more resources.

Here's the story! The Balkan region is a mountainous area of Southern Europe that has, over the centuries, been conquered and occupied by at least two major powers, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.The Austro-Hungarians were Christians and the Ottomans were Muslims.

These two powers reigned alternately and are part of the problem that has been endemic to the region. The Austro-Hungarians swept through Europe in the 1700s and drove out the Ottomans. The Ottomans began their conquest of Europe after Mohammed's death in 677 AD. They eventually swept all the way to Spain. They offered conversion to Islam, beheading or tribute as alternates. Thus many of the tribal groups decided to voluntarily convert to Islam. These tribal groups were really city-states in that they had their own governmental forms and strong group identification.

This region is approximately the size of Colorado, about 135,000 square miles (Colorado has about 104,000 square miles). It is mountainous and in most areas resembles our major life zones of mountains, high deserts and plains.

Within this area there are four language groups; Slavonic is predominant, with Romanic (Romania), Magyar (Hungary) and Hellenic (Greece) at the outer edges of the area.

At the close of World War 1, the Ottomans were pushed out of the Balkan Region; they had sided with Germany and were the losers. The Balkans were reformatted into Yugoslavia. The Allies took Croatia-Slovenia, Dalmatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro and called them Yugoslavia. Wallachia and Moldavia became Romania. Hungary became a satellite of Southern Hungary and Albania, Greece and Bulgaria became separate states.

So here we are with 14 separate, independent and proud states, four separate languages and each with discrete environments and life ways. They are, by government fiat, six countries. We are now ready to talk about balkanization.

Why should we even think about the term and why have political pundits referred to America being balkanized?

This European region with different languages, political loyalties and demographics provides the ideal model for conquering an entity by division. Former President Clinton was dragged into the Muslim-Christian conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Slobodan Milosevic is just now being brought to trial. This region is split by political, religious and language barriers. The rivalries and internecine scrimmages have been going on for centuries.

What is meant when the pundits refer to the balkanizing of our country? It is exactly what you see around you every day. Blacks against whites, evangelicals against atheists, gays against straights, Hispanics against blacks and also whites. It means that anyone the political (ruling class) types can make your enemy is someone to vote against or be the boogey-man.

We are now divided by race, gender and language. We are also divided by states; does anyone on the East Coast even understand Colorado? Some of them freak out once they leave a paved street.

We are now fast approaching the most important election in America's history. In my reading of history I see similar episodes that engendered as much rancor and partisanship as today's contest. There were divisions of geography and economy but all participants wore the badge of Americans first and partisans last.

The attempts to balkanize America and thus conquer by division make me mad as hell. We are all Americans and we can disagree about how we want to accomplish a task; but once we begin fighting amongst ourselves the ruling class wins; the country class loses.



Larry Tradlener lives down McElmo Canyon.