I think we do agree on many issues from an opposite angle. I would entirely agree with you that this government has issues with the lifetime elect, especially considering to be elected you practically have to be upper class. I, however, have a problem with the structure of the government and I believe it needs to be reworked. I think a lot of the problems you see issues with are caused by greater factors than "liberal" against "conservative," and I think that statistics such as crime rate are so multidimensional that you can't, or can very rarely, pin their swaying one way or another on a single factor, such as gun control. You will also note that loosening gun control laws in a lot of ways can help reduce crime, but there are other ways to reduce crime as well. I fall somewhere in the middle on this issue, as I believe people should be allowed to own guns, but I have issue with concealed weapons (the carrying of concealed weapons may reduce crime, but at the risk of vigilantism, collateral damage, and a potential increase in spur-of-the-moment murder or assault). I also don't see the point in a person owning an RPG or anti-aircraft rifle, as this is not needed for recreation or for self protection, and if they are part of a collection ammunition does not need to be owned.
Canada does pretty well and they have only a handful of guns privately owned in their nation compared to the US. The has a much higher homicide rate and still has 50% of Canada's violent crime rate when ONLY considering aggravated assault, while Canada considers all categories of assault violent crimes. Also, I don't know how recently you're talking about Florida, but according to the Miami Herald Florida murder rate has been constantly driving up for years.
Also, the issue of gun-control having an impact on crime is weighted, as if you take away gun control laws, these are laws no longer being broken. It's just like if we legalized marijuana, crime rate would plummet (though to a much less extreme). It is interesting to consider the fact that BOTH controlling guns and loosening gun control have had similar effects in different times in different cultures given different circumstances.
This is all besides the point, however, because a much larger factor in our crime rates is our justice system. One of our largest growing industries are for-profit penitentiaries, and our method of punishment for crime is designed with, quite literally, to have one of the highest possible return to crime rates (in fact, as part of an experiment, students at some midwestern university were asked to design a prison system which had the highest possible return rate; nearly every design mimicked to startling degree our own system). If you want to reduce crime, the first step is destroying laws which are outdated, unreasonable, unfounded, or ineffective to prevent needless entry into the justice system (gun laws, illegalization of recreational drugs, etc. would be considered here) . The second step is rehabilitation rather than removal to prevent a life in crime after conviction. The third step is providing social institutions which are intended reduce poverty and pain, which will reduce gang and organized crime activity as well as "required" criminal activity in which the criminal feels trapped into the crime by necessity (whether or not this is true is irrelevant, if the individual feels it is true he or she will act as though it is true).
Most of the problems you are talking about, as far as the government is concerned, come from a bi-party polarization of votes (I will only vote Democrat or Republican). I do find it somewhat ironic that you complain about these problems while whole handedly attacking Democrats without a negative word for Republicans. This type of mentality, this alienation of one side over the other, is what causes a lifetime elect in "blue states" and "red states". If we had a poly-partied system or if our individuals were less inclined to vote only for one of our two parties (which is more or less impossible given the laws of polarization, especially in a mass and political situation) these would not be problems.
We agree that empires collapse from a sense of entitlement. This could be from forgetting what makes them great (and this is probably a factor). It is just as likely that a nation could gain a sense of entitlement from overemphasizing what has made them great in the past, providing a dwelling on glory days instead of an eye for the future. When things in the world change is when empires lose their dominance. I cannot think of a situation in which the world has stayed more or less stable but an empire began to collapse because it was changing too much. Besides, isn't the glory of human societies that we have the ability to recognize past patterns, think about future trends and use this information to run the great experiment to adapt and change over time as we see success or failure? Japan managed to have a comeback hundreds of years after it closed its doors, but this grasping at the past was the cause of a loss of power for a long time.
I feel like you keep trying to curb this issue to become a Republican vs Democrat argument, which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. To your mind, I'm a liberal (and in many senses, I am a very large liberal). But in some ways I am conservative and I do not consider myself a Democrat, nor do I have any sense of loyalty to this party (which I see in many ways as a large failure, especially congressionally). Never should a conversation like this become one party against the other, but it should be about ideas which are untied to party lines so that each person, according to his or her own perspective can use his or her own ideas to add to the greater picture. The shades of gray are important.
Only two of the top ten while seven of the bottom ten ranked states in education voted red in the most recent election, according to this:
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/edu_bes_edu_ind-education-best-educated-index(list of which states are red and blue according to the wikipedia article on "Red states and Blue States")
Job growth largely has more to do with factors outside of democrat/republican bounds including rising industry, natural resources available, and the effects of economic downturn (for example, my state of Michigan is one of the worst states to be in because its industry has largely been left to car manufacturing, which was a decision of corporate interests rather than the government, which left these corporations to a large part unregulated. Efforts have been made to invite other industries in, such as the film industry, via certain methods such as tax exemptions and specialized schooling programs, but the efforts were made to an extent too late to help the state now--the effects of this will only be seen in five or ten years, if at all).
If you can find me a reliable statistic for non tax-deductible charity donations by state made by individuals rather than institutions, I would be interested to see it. I couldn't find one, though I briefly looked around.