“I think we could be trending toward secession.”
It isn’t often I quote Rush Limbaugh, but in our current situation, it’s at least interesting if not appropriate. When the history of the last 30 years is written, he will be one of the chief characters in the decline and fall of American comity.
One of the reasons our country survived — and even thrived — for so long was a basic live-and-let-live attitude. As long as people tolerated us and left us alone, we returned the favor. There was a lot of nastiness below the surface. Racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia …
Hardly a perfect society, But for the vast majority of Americans, people didn’t hate each other because of political disagreements. People understood that on most issues, the answer was somewhere in the middle. And on difficult issues, the solution usually resulted in most people being a little bit happy and a little bit unhappy.
Just about the only issue where that was impossible was slavery, which was the only issue to completely kill American unity. The only issue where one part of the country had to militarily defeat another part to preserve the union.
It’s ironic that at least a generation before our own Civil War, both England and France had abolished slavery in a large part of their empires. But it is an issue on which the only possible room for compromise is how quickly abolition can take place.
Tolerate it and the best you can be is Home of the Free, Land of the Slave.
Not so great.
But even with slavery, the odds were pretty good the South would eventually have seen that it made no sense to own your workers if it mean you had to feed them, clothe them and house them instead of paying cheap wages to get their labor. Once slavery ended, though, most of the other issues were ones where some compromise could be found.
That changed somewhat during the Johnson Administration, both for good things and bad things LBJ did.
First and most important, Civil Rights. Nearly 100 years after the end of the Civil War, a system of de facto apartheid was in effect across the southern United States. Public accommodations were segregated and facilities for non-whites were decidedly inferior.
With the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and more importantly the Voting Rights Act in 1965, that began to change. Of course, the folks who didn’t want it to change didn’t like that. They had already seceded once, though, so most of them just became Republicans instead. And the formerly solid South was no longer hospitable to Democrats. In at least one presidential election, the Democratic candidate wasn’t even on the ballot in Mississippi.
Republican dog-whistle candidates — Nixon with “law and order,” Reagan with “welfare Cadillacs” and Bush 41 with “Willie Horton” — all had the same message to racist whites.
“We’re on your side.”
In fact, in probably the most outrageous example of all, Reagan kicked off his 1980 fall campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a small town known for only one thing — the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers.
“We’re on your side.”
Tough to find middle ground on murder.
I can’t speak for Mississippians. Their state is one of just four in the U.S. I have never visited. But I live as far south in Georgia as they are two states over, and I have never lived anywhere where I have seen so many happy interracial couples. That’s one reason I would be hard-pressed to imagine voters here looking to secede.
It’s difficult to imagine how it could even work. Look at a map from 1861 and you’ll see the entire Confederacy was contiguous and compact. You can add Kentucky and Missouri to that. They’re basically Republican states that were ambivalent about slavery 160 years ago.
Then if you start adding states that consistently vote Republican, essentially you split the United States of America in two. And if Georgia really is trending blue, you wind up with an American state completely surrounded by red states. Of course, the old Confederacy would lose Virginia, too.
The quote at the beginning is typical of Limbaugh. He brings up the subject of secession, and when people call him on it, he insists he’s not advocating secession. He’s just hearing about it.
Secession would be an absolute disaster for those leaving. You have to figure all U.S. military forces and facilities would be moved back to the United States, and Reds would be left with their national guards and militias.
With the exception of Houston (9th) and Charleston (10th), all of the 15 busiest ports in North America are outside the Reds Zone. Savannah ranks (4th), but remember, Georgia would be staying.
In fact, I’m not sure Florida would secede. American tourism is the lifeblood of that state’s economy, and it’s tough to imagine there wouldn’t be a dropoff if Florida was in a foreign country.
As for the economy in general, since most of the states that would be leaving have Right to Work (for less) Laws, I think it’s a fairly good bet the RSA (get it?) would become a third-world nation.
So rock on, Rush.
Got to remain relevant.