Go Ahead, Secede Already!

(Okay, I have to admit it. There are absolutely no altruistic motives in my posting this piece. I simply want someone else to be as pissed off as I am. I read articles from a wide variety of sources - foreign and domestic, liberal and conservative. I try to be balanced in my views, and objective in my opinions; and then I read something like this. I'll do you all a favor, and only post excerpts, but feel free to follow the link for the full experience.)

EXCERPTS:
by Lee Siegel Apr 30, 2013 4:45 AM EDT
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.
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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. A humane immigration policy. High revenues from a fair tax structure. A massive public-works program. Legal gay marriage. A ban on carbon emissions. Electric cars. Stronger workplace protections. Extended family leave from work in case of pregnancy or illness. Longer unemployment benefits. In short, a society on a par with most of the rest of the industrialized world—a place whose politics have finally caught up with its social and economic realities.

But I don’t want to appear blindly partisan—a sundering of the union would make the other half of America equally fulfilled. The red-state republic could finally establish a theocracy in which the fundamentalist Christian church would legislate all the important aspects of civic life. It could either send its illegal and/or legal immigrants northward or reinstitute a reformed system of indenture whereby immigrants are purchased by bona fide citizens who have a fully modernized respect for private property. It could, taking the lead from the pioneering Kansas legislature, abolish the income tax, raising revenue from, for example, a “pay to work” program. It could ban abortion in all instances, including rape and incest, and use the growing population of orphans to establish an impressive standing army.

The red-state nation, giddy with new mobility, could make the 1958 Chevy its official car, and use the cutting-edge resources of cable television and the Internet to broadcast postwar situation comedies 24 hours a day. It could arm all of its citizens, and thus relieve itself of the financial burden of maintaining law-enforcement agencies. And without any type of regulation, it could finally compete with similarly unhampered societies all over the world. Without the FDA, a new red-state republic could use refined transfats to develop ever tastier delicacies, perhaps energizing its economy by instituting a toxic-food-for-toxic-toys program with China.
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Liberal pundits, especially, refuse to see this, perhaps because their livelihood depends on their ability to cheer readers and viewers through the deepening gloom with ever brighter optimistic prognostication. Nonetheless, the country is still as neatly divided as quinoa pilaf with mushrooms on one side and roasted pork belly on the other, and will continue to be.
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May I, with the subtlety of cannonballs falling upon Fort Sumter, suggest that we stop using the anodyne categories of red and blue, and start calling the two sides “Confederate” and “Union,” which is what they really are?

The association of North with modernity and South with regression is so prominent, so visible, so all-encompassing that its familiarity has made it invisible. Here are the facts—with important exceptions in every category. The great research universities are in the blue states. So are the great medical schools, the great hospitals, and the great law schools. The great art and history museums are in the blue part of the country.
The most important popular and “high” art is produced by blue people, in blue places. Even the best comedians—with the exception of Stephen Colbert—are, you might say, from free as opposed to slave states.

By contrast, the South leads in all the negative trends. The South has the highest infant mortality rate. It has the most traffic deaths. It leads the country in gun deaths. It has the greatest number of obese people. It has the highest rate of diabetes. It has the largest number of people dying from stroke—a broad swath of the southeastern United States is known as the “stroke belt.” The South has the highest rates of cognitive decline.

Interestingly, though the South is home to the major tobacco companies and to carcinogenic Coca-Cola, the highest incidence of many types of cancer happens to be in the North. Which just proves that the stress of living alongside the Confederacy is now seriously affecting our health.
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As for the great numbers of enlightened men and women in the South, let me cut through all the nuances of history and polemic and invite them all to flee northward. To paraphrase Swift, I am opposed to the Southern tribe as a voting, obstructing, retarding whole, but not to the countless individuals who make up the tribe, some of whom of course are exemplars of decency, humanity, wit, sophistication, and charm. Let them come north, and enrich us with their grace and charm. (And maybe if CNN moved their headquarters to New York or Philadelphia or Boston, the network could save its plummeting ratings simply by changing its employees’ diets.)
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Let us, along with the secessionists, get real. Maybe, by turning our unacknowledged, absolute division into a recognized aggression—by liberating the two irreconcilable halves of the country into two frankly contending rivals—just maybe, we can, at last, play ball.

Little Czechoslovakia split itself in two; why can’t we?

Memo to the South: Go Ahead, Secede Already! - The Daily Beast

 

Truly amazing Libtard logic.

 

What's to be pissed off about? He is an idiot with idiotic ideas...I don't begrudge his right to spout idiocy, nor do I think he will sway anyone with 2 or more living brain cells to the cause of liberalism.

 

To bad we can't split Oregon into red/blue counties and let the Libtards destroy themselves as we laugh about it.

 

Don't forget Homer, we have a special breed of them... Sure we outvote them now, but as the Kalifornians keep learning about the retirement possibilities...

 

Is this guy for real? Please tell me he is joking.....nobody can be that stupid....can they? I swear, I just lost IQ points reading that..

 

Yes, but the sad part is that walking Libertard's vote counts as much as mine. He may only have one firing brain cell, but it is enough to push a button and pull a lever.

 

Being from PA, we have Phidelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west and Tennessee in the middle. Now If we could just get rid of Philly and the Burgh we would do just fine. Born a Yankee but Rebel to the core.

 

Not all...some are just that young and foolish...

 

I think the problem with idiots on the "news" who have a responsibility higher than the rest of us to tell the truth is that when they resort to using stereo types as a platform for their personal ideas it is a blatant abuse of the freedom of speech. I am not even sure that the freedom of speech applies to the fourth estate. It seems more like they are abusing the idea of the first amendment by using it in the opposite way it was intended. It is much like a supreme court justice calling someone a jack ass because they like the Red Sox and he likes the Yankees: sure they have the freedom to do so under the first but to use their office to sway public opinion against a sports team (or in the case above a political matter outside of the realm of voting) is an obvious abuse of position. Does the freedom of speech override the responsibility to tell the truth and be honest and fair in the journalism profession? And if this guy is truly ignorant of what he is doing, is his employer and everyone in the company also ignorant of it? There is no right to vote on abortion or gun control or gay marriage or any other issue that is clearly delegated to the people themselves.

John Stewart hits on this exact idea in this video and the hosts turn on him like jackals. Luckily he controls the interview and changes the frame over and over if you notice.

 

Sean Conery in "The Molly McGuire’s" (good movie) while in a bar and somebody starts badmouthing his ancestry. He smiles at them and says something like "You don't need to get nasty if all you want to do is fight". Perhaps that is where we are today.

 

That would leave Pax and I on the Libtard side and although we have a lot of ammo, I don't think we have enough to deal with that.

 

I like this plan except Ashland has to be given to CA whether they want it or not!

 

Proves the saying "you can lead a liberal to logic but you can't make them think"

 

This is a tough one.

I'd like to maintain control of the pass if at all possible...and I am thinking they would all head south pretty fast anyway