The South Secedes Again

The first time the South seceded from the United States, two of my great-grandfathers fought as privates to free the slaves. Make no mistake about what and who caused the war. Most of the rich people of the South had most of their money tied up in valuable slaves. That was their capital. They seceded to protect their investment.

Slavery was, as General Grant noted, as bad a cause as anyone ever supported.

In a way we are still fighting the Civil War today; The Tea Party, someone said on television, represents secession. The Tea Party is united around an issue that reminds me of the South in 1860: escape from the federal government. This escape takes many forms: hating people of color and immigrants and viewing women as inferiors (the government offers them some protection); home schooling rather than school district education; crippling all government by cutting its income; ending social security and Medicare; threatening to secede; arming vigilante militias; claiming the government is not legitimate; claiming to represent the original founding fathers (a tactic copied from the South in 1860); freeing itself from a belief in history and in science, including economics, climate studies, biology, geology (the earth is 6,000 years old)--in short, freedom from facts. The object of all this is to prop up a jumbled ideology that is unrelated to reality as our species understands it. Like slavery, Tea Partyism can not be defended rationally.

The good news is that Tea Party represents a minority of voters. The bad news is that we are still fighting for the sanity of a nation.

It's rumored that Rick Perry, a governor of a once Confederate State, who has threatened to secede, may run for the Republican presidential nomination. The Tea Party loves him. I hope he wins the nomination--that should make the situation clear to the majority of Americans, including the 400 families that form our oligarchy. They supported and used the Tea Party in the past, but things got out of hand. Monopoly Capitalism vs. Radical Right Populism--it might make a good monster movie.