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I thought of these words while reading Chuck Thompson’s “Better Off Without ’Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession.” Or rather, rereading. On its release in August, I dismissed it because the author is rude and obnoxious and because his chapter on football in the South is utterly lacking in logic and sound history. Thompson doesn’t think that the Alabama Crimson Tide has the greatest tradition in college football. But I digress. (More on football later.)

Over the past months, however, I’ve become more convinced by Thompson’s main argument, that the South—the states that comprised the Old Confederacy—should not only be allowed to secede, but both countries created by the split would be better off.

Most of Thompson’s main points are in the first 40 pages:

—“It’s too bad that we just didn’t let the South secede when we had the chance.”

—“Everyone has joked about a modern-day secession. Politicians, like Texas Governor and presidential hopeful Rick Perry, have even threatened it. But what would the measurable impact be if it actually happened? … In fact, for both sides, an exciting by-product of separation would be an explosion of southern tourism. … ”

—“With time, Americans would start thinking of the South as another Mexico, only with a more corrupt government.”

—“The South has operated like a competing nation in cannibalizing and degrading Michigan and the American auto industry.”

—“ … [A] union based on such a diametrically opposed approach to social organization—uncompromising Bible literalism versus protean secular law—is like a bad marriage that needs to end in order to save the children. … “

—“All these gloom and doomers … whining about a world on the brink of extinction are descendants of the Lost Cause defeatism fostered and fetishized in post Civil War southern churches. …”

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So we've got every right to get good and angry about the fact that, by and large, the people who are getting our money are so damned ungrateful -- not to mention so ridiculously eager to spend it on stuff we don't approve of. We didn't ship them our hard-earned tax dollars to see them squandered on worse-than-useless abstinence-only education, textbooks that teach creationism, crisis-pregnancy misinformation centers, subsidies for GMO crops and oil companies, and so on. And we sure as hell didn't expect to be rewarded for our productivity and generosity with a rising tide of spittle-flecked insanity about how we’re just a bunch of immoral, godless, drug-soaked, sex-crazed, evil America-hating traitors who can’t wait to hand the country over to the Islamists and the Communists.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
I say - good bye and good rid! Oh, did that sound too mean? How about - don't go away mad, just go away.

Buh bye now

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Always at the top of religiosity, meth use, obesity, and anti-gubmint politicians who somehow still get big handouts from daddy-gubmint. A toxic brew, tolerated and even advocated by a majority of it's often fat, toothless, ignorant stereotypes... er, I mean citizens!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, let's see... about those stereotypes... not that anyone stereotypes libruls as "damn yankees", or "crazy californians", or anything.

It's not the people in those states, its the states themselves... always at the bottom of education, health care, median income, and environmental protection. Willing to be turned into a dirt-poor free-trade zone. Always at the top of religiosity, meth use, obesity, and anti-gubmint politicians who somehow still get big handouts from daddy-gubmint. A toxic brew, tolerated and even advocated by a majority of it's often fat, toothless, ignorant stereotypes... er, I mean citizens!

Poor california... silicon valley, big agricultural output, largest western USA port. I mean, wow. What would we do without ya'll?

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Originally posted by Geezer:
Interesting to see folks who consider vast swathes of the country to be filled with homogenious masses of stereotypes.

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