Hell Yes, Secesh!

[NorthCarolina]

April 24, 2010

Hell Yes, Secesh! Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out

By David Michael Green

It is a measure of the sheer poverty of our national politics that the notion of secession is in the air again. Hey, just like those happy days of slavery and civil war again!

Last summer, no less an official than the governor of Texas and likely presidential aspirant (never mind the irony this is regressivism we're talking about here, folks), Rick Perry, hinted that if Washington didn't stop leaning so hard on the states, then people down there might just get to feelin' justified to go their own way. Don't mess with Texas, Eastern elite dudes! Meanwhile, though, Perry will of course continue accepting large lump-sum checks from the Feds, if it's all the same to you.

Then knucklehead governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, who seems every day more like a model of forward thinking if only it were still the thirteenth century has joined the recent stampede to honor those great patriots of the 1860s who, er, um, tried to wreck the country by re-instituting Confederate History Month there. No mention of slavery, either. Great idea, Bob! And so original, too. Old, racist, white guys feeling victimized by history. What a novel concept!

Meanwhile tea party savants continue to demonstrate the volatile dangers of amateur alchemy, mixing ample ignorance with toxic rage to produce catastrophic idiocy in scary proportions. (As if twenty minutes of watching Glenn Beck wasn't single-handedly sufficient to make that case by itself.) They hate the oppression of Washington and bemoan the transgressions against states' rights. Then they go cash their Social Security checks, on the way to their Medicare-funded doctor's office visit.

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These are the ravings of lunatics. The combination of federalism and capitalism makes American government in Washington about the least intrusive of any in the world, apart from those that are just a mess. I guess if you happen to think that the people of Sweden are being crushed as we speak under the oppressive yoke of socialism, you might find the (very low) tax rates in America to be scandalous. I guess if you think our good friends in Britain are enraged that they not only don't have a federal system of vertical power sharing like we do, but they don't even have states with which the national government could share power if it wanted to, then you might get away with thinking that Washington is a cruel taskmaster, lording it over Mississippi and Arizona. Just one thing, though don't tell the Swedes or the Brits. So far, they have miraculously managed to avoid finding out just how oppressed and unhappy they truly are.

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Link: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Hell-Yes-Secesh--Don-t-L-by-David-Michael-Gree-100424-814.html