October 8, 2012

I read this book in August

http://www.amazon.com/Better-Off-Without-Manifesto-Secession/dp/1451616651


Better Off Without 'Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession -

Chuck Thompson takes a hysterical look at the "threat" of "The South Is Gonna Do It Again" and turns the tables on the Take Our Country Back Crowd.

I have hesitated to post a review because we do have so many staunch liberal and progressive members at DU who come from the 14 states he makes a strong argument *nudge* for the rest of the country INSIST the South leaves the union.

The serious side of the book (layered throughout the humor) is the vast inequality that still exists in the South today. Example - how can we head into the future when the public school system is broken and RE- segregated? With people who wish to continue the inequality by their push of "charter" schools and the massive number of "Christian" (read whites only) schools that have sprung up in retaliation to the Brown V Board cases? Would the US be better to leave those 14 states Thompson outlines behind? Allow them to go so they can take science off the table and teach creationism without United States interference?

He touches on everything from the SEC College Football shakedown to the Jesus/Creation Museums, to the very definition of a Southern Strategy by one political party who benefits from the entrenchment of Confederate values, and how it could even become a huge tourist point for Americans . . . IE - made into an exotic foreign locale akin to Tanzania or Belize.

Might be worth a read - because while funny - its also a terribly sad analysis of perhaps WHY non Southerners and those who have no roots in the South (I'm in the North East - raised here but have Alabama red clay in veins) say . . . Why didn't we just let them go when we had the chance?