Posted on 04/30/2013 7:00:36 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Let’s face it—on nearly every important issue, from gun control to immigration to gay marriage, red states are holding America back. Lee Siegel on why the South should get the hell out of the union.
Let’s not be fooled by all the bipartisan rhetoric that has been streaming out of the GOP since Romney’s self-destruction. Hundreds of thousands of petitioners in a handful of red states still want to secede? Well, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
A solid block of Southern states continues to refuse to expand Medicaid, thus squashing one of the linchpins of the president’s health-care reform. The South will likely be the last and most stubborn battleground in the fight for gay marriage. Gun control? The more the two sides seem to get cozier with each other, the faster gun-control legislation gets watered down—and more and more red states are passing laws making it legal to carry a concealed weapon. As for immigration, the red states seem to be relaxing their anti-immigrant fervor, but nothing approaching new legislation is even on the horizon.
The sad truth is that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” can only be achieved at this point if the nation is split in half. Far from being fanciful or fanatical, the proponents of secession have a stronger grasp of political reality than just about anyone else. In fact, there are serious reasons why the North itself should take the lead in a secessionist movement.
Just think what America would look like without its mostly Southern states. (We could retain “America”: they could call themselves “Smith & Wesson” or “Coca-Cola” or something like that.) Universal health care. No guns. Strong unions. A humane minimum wage....
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
But right now the sides are growing apart. If there can't be a peaceful separation, there will be violence.
Look at the push to end religion in the military recently.
There is no way the control freak leftists (as opposed to the “take care of me” and “I care, I’m a good person” sheeperals)
will let the producers out from under their thumbs peacefully.
He's trying to make a sensation by saying outrageous things and provoking angry responses. See his assault on the Pope a few years back.
He's also the guy who wrote a book in praise of "seriousness" in culture in a "silly age." I guess the "new seriousness" didn't take for Lee.
Reason Magazine Online has published a very good critique.
then THEY should flee.
They should lock themselves inside manhattan.
let bloomie figure out what to eat when the snooty restaurants have no food to serve.
There is more of us than them.
Here in Texas we have our own grid. :) oh and we make f22s and f35s.
Please hurry up so I can breath free again in MD.
what jobs? Those “jobs” are gone. The age of composits is here.
3d printing is here.
Robotic automation is here and growing.
There are no jobs to bring back.
They’ll have everything except someone to pay for it.
My daughter went to university in Georgia. Met a nice young man and they got married after graduation. they have a wonderful home and both work very hard. They are young and want to start a family (God willing). While I hadn’t planned on retiring this soon, the last round of layoffs made it clear that now is the time.
I am looking forward to a wonderful new portion of my life. Thank you for the kind wishes. I figure the fact that I cook a mean cheesy grits will get me a pass when I am new. ;)
I can understand how that situation would tend to stick you in place. I don't blame you for not trying to relocate her, given her condition.
Got my fingers crossed that a way forward presents itself to you.
Thank you. I greatly appreciate that. I’m just unsure if I should look at Texas or Arizona. That would mostly depend upon availability of employment in my career field, as well as salary levels.
It is that way even here in California. The rural interior of the state has nothing in common with the Liberal cities along the coast, especially here where I live in eastern California with the 14,000' Sierra Nevada Range isolating us from the rest of the state..
The question may become “can they hold it together”.
Warchild has the view that it will all fall apart into something approaching a cyberpunk novel (Correct me if I am wrong).
I hope for something more along the lines of the end of the Soviet Empire. Though we don’t have the old memories of dead nations here.
I fear it will be more of a Mad Max film.
But at the end of the day, there are more and more people who depend on the government to support them. History has a lot of examples of this ending very badly. Wars, civil insurrections, death camps, or the more basic starvation when the grain ships stop coming in. Once a society decides to stop taking care of itself, by itself, things don’t end happy.
Warchild may have a different view, but I am a well known pessimist.
We seem to agree often my Virginia friend.
“Can Arizona be included with southern states?”
Any state of like mind and heart can and should join us or be left with the scumbag leftist. This is a choice yer people will have to make and I suggest that the door should be open perceptually, so no rush.
[Art.] The sad truth is that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” can only be achieved at this point if the nation is split in half.
They'd get Riker's Island and Governor's Island, too. We'd get Ellis Island, the port of entry for millions of American ancestors, and Bedloe's Island, where the Statue of Liberty Stands. But hey, they'd get Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and the Hamptons -- how could they complain?
Furthermore, we'd uproot Cornell and Princeton and ship them up to Vermont -- their faculties, too, after we tattoo their foreheads with indelible marks of perpetual exile, and expel them from the U.S.A. under death interdicts against their return.
We'd do the same thing with Gay Bay entire .... including UC Berkeley.
And Seattle.
And then we'd all partaayyy to the sounds of The Heavy, "How Do You Like Me Now?"
Nope .... send them home to Mexico (I'd let the Central Americans stay, they split their votes), steer the evacuees to northeastern Mexico, and then break off and evacuate Baja California and annex it, as compensation for all the money they've ripped off us through their "soft invasion" tactics. Which has been a fulltime project of the Mexican intelligentsia and foreign-policy establishment for the last 30 years.
Then I'd round up all the employers who were offering these guys jobs and helping smuggle them in, and ship them out as well, while lifting their U.S. passports at the border -- adios, guys, and don't come back! You sold us out, now here's your payback!
Two forces dominate history—Balkanism and Imperialism , One is a break up into smaller and smaller states, the other groupings into large mega states. Now we are in the Balkanization phase, then we will enter the Imperial as new large states appear—these will not be UN Global states but good old fashioned head busting imperialism. Hard to say how it will play out and what core states will be the builders of Empire—It takes a stable nation and a powerful charismatic leader. Not a lot of Napoleons around these days—but that may change. I believe China will not be one—too many internal problems, Nor will any south American Nations. Maybe Germany, maybe Russia, maybe India, perhaps South Africa, maybe Japan. We shall see.
Do more research. Maryland was very much a Southern State, but was occupied by northern State Militias before Virginia voted on secession. Had that vote come sooner, the conflict would have been vastly different.
Keep in mind, the words of the Maryland State Song "Avenge the patriotic gore/which flecked the streets of Baltimore" referred to riots in which the locals threw bricks and stones at the invading northern troops. (The State song Maryland, My Maryland was written by an expatriate in Louisiana during the war), and Maryland had regiments in the Confederate Army.
Unfortunately, the invading Yankees carpetbagged Maryland, too, and the liberal/criminal government mindset has plagued the State since.
One works for the other—by their fruits shall ye know them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.