← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Buster
Thread ID: 12063 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2004-01-28
2004-01-28 19:34 | User Profile
Overlook this guy's ignorance about American history, his advice to Democrats is solid.
[url]http://slate.msn.com/id/2094552/[/url]
2004-01-28 21:05 | User Profile
Buster,
The historical aspect of this article is too funny to ignore.
But there's an even longer political history of Southerners whining and wheedling their way into disproportionate and undeserved power. For all its resistance to Big Government, the South is arguably the most socialistic region in the country; nearly half of all U.S. military personnel are stationed there, and the region was only lightly affected by the post-Cold War base closings of the 1980s and 1990s.
As I understand it, the reason that there are so many military bases in the South was due to Northern "liberals" who didn't want them at the time because they were against "war." (as if the rest of us are for it) The writer overlooks the fact that at the time these bases were established were wasn't that much of an armed forces to base there. WW II solved that problem.
This is the legacy of the Southern congressional barons on Capitol Hill, who blocked civil rights legislation from Reconstruction until 1957. Before that, Southerners successfully turned defeat in the Civil War into an occasion to erect Jim Crow laws. Before that, the South treasonously separated itself from the Union. Before that, the South successfully battled all attempts to end the practice of slavery, which the Founding Fathers well understood was incompatible with the principles of the American Revolution.
:lol: :lol: :lol: It isn't just "liberals" who spread this nonesense around. Neo-cons do it too. When I hear someone whinning about this I suggest that there are two things they can do if he/she dislikes the South that much.
[list] [*]Don't move down here.
[*]Write your representatives and demand that the South be expelled from the Union. At times I personally think that the South and the rest of the country would be better off. [/list]
If the person doesn't wish to do that then I tell them to p*ss off.
2004-01-29 00:37 | User Profile
"Overlook this guy's ignorance about American history, his advice to Democrats is solid."
Agreed. There is simply no way John Kerry (sigh) or (hopefully!) Howard Dean can carry any states south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Its unfortunate that by my definition of "The South" (the 11 CSA states, plus Kentucky and Oklahoma), the region holds well over 150 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the Presidency, but if some northern liberal is going to win the Presidency (I feel weird actually wanting that to happen, but its the old politics-makes-strange-bedfellows thing), he'd be very wise to focus his efforts on ACTUAL swing states, like Ohio, Missouri, Colorado, Arizona, Montana, the three upper New Engand states, and the one Southern swing state of Florida. The idea that Kerry or Dean are going to be competitive in even Tennessee or Georgia (let alone South Carolina or Mississippi) is positively ludicrous. They should spend their resources where they can do some good. It was common in much of our history for the Republican Party (back when it didn't suck) to carry the Electoral College, and yet get less than 15% of the vote in the Deep South states. If it could work for William McKinley or Calvin Coolidge, it can work for, um, "us." The math really hasn't changed all that much.