Democratic Forest Trusts (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.Democratic trusts with leadership elected by citizen-members promise to solve many of the problems afflicting both traditional government and corporate ownership of forestlands. This article explores these issues in some depth.Complexity and the Dream of Human Control of Eco-Systems (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.The title captures it. I then explore the kinds of institutions compatible with both nature and the modern world that are implied from this analysis.Rethinking the Obvious: Modernity and Living Respectfully With Nature (PDF)The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Winter, 1997.Modernity is usually considered a wrong turn in terms of respect for and sustaining the environment. I argue the reality is more complex, for modernity has freed us from personal dependence on agriculture, ended the economic value of children, radically reduced the likelihood of large scale wat, and shifted much production to intellectual rather than material capital. This partially decouples society from nature, which gives us important opportunities as well as problems.Towards an Ecocentric Political Economy (PDF)The Trumpeter, Fall, 1996.This paper begins my effort at showing how liberal modernity can be harmonized with an ecocentric perspective on our relationship with the natural world. It is a corrective to much “free market environmental” literature that sacrifices Nature to money as well as to anti-liberal attacks by well-meaning but economically naïve environmentalists.Unexpected Harmonies: Self-Organization in Liberal Modernity and Ecology (PDF)The Trumpeter, Journal of Ecosophy, 10:1, Winter 1993This is my initial paper exploring how what I term ‘evolutionary liberal’ thought can be an important means by which society and nature can be brought into greater harmony. The other Trumpeter papers build on it.Deep Ecology and Liberalism: The Greener Implications of Evolutionary Liberalism (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 1996.Liberal thought and deep ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. But the “evolutionary” tradition offers a way to integrate the two through commonalties in the work of David Hume, Michael Polanyi, Arne Naess, and Aldo Leopold, providing a stronger foundation for liberalism while strengthening the case for an ecocentric ethic.(Related subjects: Ecology)Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Politics)Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Critical Review, 6: 2-3, 1992.Murray Bookchin is considered a leading radical environmental theorist. However, his analysis is incapable of leading humankind towards a more respectful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. Criticisms of Bookchin from both the deep ecology and evolutionary liberal perspective complement one another, pointing the way towards a better understanding of how modernity relates to the environment.The paper as a whole offers an early discussion of issues that are more clearly addressed in later papers, particularly Deep Ecology and Liberalism (1996) and the three Trumpeter articles in 1997, 1996, and 1993. However, there are other ideas in the article which have not been developed more thoroughly elsewhere.
I suspect this post will upset most of my readers. It may be written off as a rant. If that’s your inclination, before writing it off, please consider the actual arguments I make, because doing so will encourage rethinking some very basic issues that we supposedly celebrate on July 4. I personally would prefer drawing conclusions different than where this piece ends, and would appreciate being convinced my diagnosis is wrong. The final straw was an article I recently read.
In Mississippi and Alabama if a pregnant woman has a miscarriage she now needs to demonstrate to the police she was not responsible. These “small government” beasts would intrude into one of the saddest and most intimate tragedies in many women’s lives in the name of their demon god and the depraved morality they practice. If she was responsible in the eyes of the savages who wrote the law, she can be tried and imprisoned. This law is being enforced
There is only one word for the law, and for the people who advocated it, and that word is “evil.” The law could only be put forward by malignant human beings. And when I read about it, the seeds of this post were planted.
These “pro-life” places are also among the benighted places where women’s life span is actually declining in the United States. Look at the map and think about it: everywhere else in the industrialized world, lifespans are increasing. In the South, dominated by people claiming to be “pro-life,” women’s life spans are decreasing. And Americans are already neither the longest lived people in the industrial world nor keeping up with the overall rate of increase. They are falling behind. This problem is centered in the South.
The very same people responsible for these outcomes, with their allies elsewhere, also seek to make it difficult for women to have access to contraception, and have cut back on state assistance to poor families and to education. At a time of high long term unemployment they campaigned with promises to improve the job situation, and once in office ignored those promises. They prefer picking on the poor and on women. At the same time they oppose taxing the filthy rich even back up to the levels they paid under President Clinton. For them it is far better to make the least powerful members of our society pay the full brunt of any changes in policies.
When this pattern is considered as a whole, again there is only one word for the policies and the people responsible for them. Evil. For they are utterly without compassion, integrity, or a sense of fair play.
As Independence Day approaches we learn a disappointingly large minority of Americans do not know the country from which we declared our independence. The largest percentage of Americans with such abysmal ignorance is in the South. Southerners have suffered longest under the NeoConfederate politicians and Satanic religious leaders who dominate the place, and their ignorance is symbolic of this misrule. I wish it were better known that Dixie is the only region of the US where its leaders explicitly rejected the reasoning within in our Declaration of Independence and declared our Founding Fathers mistaken – because it could not be used to support slavery and they almost universally agreed it was wrong.
If this were entirely a matter of policies within their own benighted states we could live with it. After all, travel is relatively easy, and people are free to leave the place. Or move there if that’s what makes them feel at home. But we are not so fortunate. These people also destroy our attempts to govern ourselves as a nation.
The people responsible for their states moving in the opposite direction from the civilized world are the same moral and political degenerates who prevented decent medical care for millions of Americans nationally, prevented measures to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, have sought to destroy Social security and Medicare and Medicaid and have most fervently supported our aggressive wars. Absent them we would have better environmental laws, better health care, better education, and fewer wars. They have deliberately made our country ungovernable except on their terms, regardless of majority opinion. And their terms are depraved.
These states and the people they elect are crucial players in the destruction of the United States. Their support has been crucial in adopting catastrophic policies and, far worse – because we all make mistakes – in preventing any efforts to learn from these catastrophes and adopt wiser ones. Their people in Washington have made it clear they would rather see the country fall into ever deeper crises than adopt policies different from their own. As Kevin Drum put it,
“…over the past ten years. Republicans got the tax cuts they wanted. They got the financial deregulation they wanted. They got the wars they wanted. They got the unfunded spending increases they wanted. And the results were completely, unrelentingly disastrous. A decade of sluggish growth and near-zero wage increases. A massive housing bubble. Trillions of dollars in war spending and thousands of American lives lost. A financial collapse. A soaring long-term deficit. Sky-high unemployment. All on their watch and all due to policies they eagerly supported. And worse: ever since the predictable results of their recklessness came crashing down, they’ve rabidly and nearly unanimously opposed every single attempt to dig ourselves out of the hole they created for us.”
As we see in states the Republican right controls, and no where more than in the NeoConfederate parts of the South, they are attacking the principle of democratic elections. In the name of fighting nonexistent election fraud, across the country Republicans are attacking Americans’ right to vote. They want to cement their rule, and that is more important than democracy. As E. J. Dionne explains,
“In Texas, for example, the law allows concealed-handgun licenses to work as identification, but not student IDs. Nationwide exit polls show that John McCain carried households in which someone owned a gun by 25 percentage points but lost voters in households without a gun by 32 points.
“Besides Texas, states that enacted voter ID laws this year include Kansas, Wisconsin, South Carolina and Tennessee. Indiana and Georgia already had such requirements. The Maine Legislature voted to end same-day voter registration. Florida seems determined to go back to the chaos of the 2000 election. It shortened the early voting period, effectively ended the ability of registered voters to change their address at the polls and imposed onerous restrictions on organized voter-registration drives.”
This issue is more serious than simply political disagreement. It is a sustained attack on a free society. Vital and creative cultures have been destroyed from within as well as from without. In the Middle Ages Islamic societies were more creative than European ones. But today Islamic societies are benighted backwards places made rich only because they sit on oil deposits. They contribute nothing much themselves. Why? While there is no settled opinion, it appears to many that when what calls itself conservative Islam came to triumph in these societies, they ceased to be centers for creative thought. Much closer to home, it also appears to be the case that William Penn’s hopes for a tolerant Pennsylvania that treated Indians well was undermined from immigration by intolerant Christians into the region.
I suggest we consider similarly unpleasant outcomes as disturbingly possible here in the United States, at least for a period long enough to do enormous lasting damage to our country and its better nature. We certainly have our home grown barbarians.
The Significance of Alabama and Mississippi
Alabama and Mississippi are extreme examples of what the contemporary Republican Party wants for us all. Its leadership is dominated by enemies of the principles this country was founded upon, and its base of support is in the most benighted parts of the South. When we look at the policies these people would pursue if they had complete power, look no farther than Alabama and Mississippi. Other states have similar people in power, but particularly outside the South their hold is more tenuous, and they are often subject to recall by a population that on balance has proven itself willing to abide by democratic norms.
In making this charge I do not put the rest of the United States on a pedestal. Even without the worst of the South dragging us down we have serious problems. Lots of them. We have many different points of view about the extent of those problems and even when we agree, we do not necessarily agree how to address them. But on balance we respect one another enough that we will not try to destroy our common political system if we do not get our way. We do not insist “My way or the highway.” We realize that democracy requires enough respect for other points of view that compromise is a essential part of collective life.
Absent the theocrats and authoritarians in Dixie we would have the chance to actually deal with the issues that confront us. Outside the South the political and social disease of the nihilistic anti-American Right is not so strongly embedded. It would not be strong enough to destroy the country as a whole.
Someone should leave
There sometimes comes a sad moment when we need to read a person out of our lives, and make clear that we have neither time nor room for them until they return to becoming decent members of the human race. Many families face this painful dilemma when a member gets involved in serious drug abuse, especially alcoholism. When matters get that far they usually need to hit rock bottom before they ultimately turn their lives around. They are beyond help from human beings on the outside.
On far more rare occasions a portion of a society so loses its moral bearings that they are better cast off until they change than continue with common membership. To keep association as political equals legitimates their depravity and hamstrings us in living our lives.
They also need to experience the full consequences of their beliefs and behavior. The worst parts of the South receive far more from the rest of us than they contribute. In a very real sense we subsidize those who despise us and wish to rule over us. They insist their way is so superior that they would prevent the rest of us from living as we deem best. They should be allowed to walk their talk, but without the test of us being dragged along in the same moral and political muck.
The Declaration of Independence
On July 4 we should do more than celebrate with fireworks. We should think about the principles our country was founded on. The core logic behind the Declaration of Independence’s argument for secession from Britain is increasingly applicable to the United States today:
“governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”
The constitution has no means by which Americans can periodically affirm their common identity, or leave it. I think it should. But one part of the country has already seceded in almost every way that matters to people who are inspired by our highest ideals. I think we need to consider declaring independence from these people.
Someone will argue that even the most benighted parts of the South has many good people, and they will be right. But as it currently stands, while these good people benefit from the Southern elite’s being somewhat limited by our constitution in what they can do, at the same time the South as a whole prevents American self-government. If Mississippi and Alabama were kicked out of the Union, along with any states who wish to follow, the civilized portions of these states could and in many cases would leave, to join good Americans elsewhere. And perhaps our worst citizens would move to where they would feel more at home.
In time their society, rooted as it is in lies and hypocrisy, would decline so far that new generations would reject their ways. Perhaps they would then build free societies at home, or perhaps they would seek to rejoin. That would be their choice. But to achieve either outcome they could no longer romanticize the corrupt elites who dragged their societies down.
Today we are far from seceding from these places, or having them secede from us, though I’d vote for it either way in a second. But we should begin thinking about it an talking about it. We should make it clear to those who support these people where the logic of their actions leads. We should be clear that when we deal with those who rule Alabama and Mississippi, and those like them elsewhere, we know we are not dealing with fellow citizens who disagree about policies but with vowed and dedicated enemies who will stop at nothing until they have established absolute dominion over the rest of us. That they claim to be patriots and continually claim to follow a constitution they do not understand only adds fraud to their assaults against this country.
Is it practical?
Someone will worry that a smaller and freer part of this current country would not last. To them I answer “Look at Europe.” It is more prosperous, more humane, freer, more peaceful and healthier than this country. Further, the smallest European states are among the most successful. They are not perfect, they have their problems, but what societies don’t? And on balance they are doing better than we are. Many American states would be doing as well were we not continually hobbled by the barbarians rooted in the cultural blight of the old slavocracy. Or if Europe seems too far away, look at Canada to our north. It’s not heaven, Canada also has problems, but it’s better run than here.
I think we should seriously consider casting the neo-confederates free like they say they want to be, or that failing, leaving ourselves. If the majority of people in those states do not want to sever political ties with the rest of us, they have a simple solution. Stop voting these people into office.
If it ultimately comes to secession, the way to self government is not through violence. Violence was a tactic of the Confederacy, very fitting with its ethos, and ultimately a failure. A peaceful exit is possible, and the more it is discussed the more possible it becomes.
For me who should leave and who should stay is secondary to the more basic point that important forces within the American South have deliberately cut themselves off from willingness to play by traditional democratic rules, impose evil laws when given the chance, and left to their own devices will do this country irreparable harm. Better to expel them or, that failing, leave ourselves.
posted July 3, 2011 at 9:11 pm
One good rant deserves another, Gus, along the same lines.
I’m a little bit older, I think, that you, and I see continuity here, not something new. It has been a long war, and it has been going on almost since the Constitution was ratified. Sometimes it burns hot, sometimes it cools down, but the old centuries-long war continues to find new fields of battle.
A few old soldiers from the Civil War, both Union and Confederate, were still alive when I was a boy aged 8-10, and there were much more than a hundred living Black people who could remember having been slaves themselves. Also, “Jim Crow” was in full vigor.
In the ’40s and early ’50s, very many — maybe most — people were still fighting the Civil War with words and votes, if not so much with bullets. Memories of lost battles and past injustices still bitterly rankled. Neither side was at all happy, by and large, with the compromises that had ended the Civil War, and then had wrecked the Reconstruction. I remember that unhappiness and its frequent expression.
Those of us who had no interest in continuing the fight could buy small flag sets back then for one’s desk, displaying Union and Confederate flags side by side, equally elevated, as a symbol of Reconciliation. I had such a flag set myself as a boy. I hardly understood what they symbolized at the time, but I liked flags.
And then the Civil Rights movement made it clear to everyone, however willfully blind they had been, just how much that old Reconciliation was still costing our Black fellow-citizens . . . but at the same time it shattered the old compromises, unjust but profitable, that had ended the Civil War and the Reconstruction.
The Civil Rights movement was a war, too, though a war of a new kind, fought in a new way. And the South lost most of the battles of that war, too, a hundred years after decisively losing the first war.
What I think is going on now is quite simple. The diehards in the South have not stopped fighting, and the Civil Rights movement raised up a new generation of diehards, spoiling for another hundred years of battle in the same old war. There is no reason to think that they will stop fighting until everyone is dead who remembers the Civil Rights movement.
This long war is not now being fought by uniformed soldiers on battlefields, as it was in the 1860s. Nor is it being fought by lawyers in Federal courts, as it was in the 1960s. Now it is being fought by diehard politicians in countless local, state and federal elections. (It is a sort of guerrilla war on the political front.) And I think, as you suggest, that its goals include unconditional surrender, or otherwise the final destruction of the Federal Union.
Also, clever lawyers and money men have discovered that one can get very rich indeed, not by producing goods and services, but by destroying companies that used to make money by producing these things. What works on sound and solid companies might work on first-world countries, too, with even greater profits ensuing.
These same clever and wealthy people may be attempting the experiment just now, as they co-opt and finance the current phase of this old long war. We shall see whether they are right. If they are, the United States may be the first example of the process.
posted July 4, 2011 at 11:44 am
I myself would be perfectly happy if the South decided to secede just because they would then have to shut up about their wounds and their affronted dignity and all that garbage. And this time I would hope the North would not fight a war to convince them otherwise. But I think there is something missing in your critique of these two states. They are both very poor; Mississippi is in fact the poorest state in the US. I think that has an influence on their policies. When all you have is “values,” everything looks like an issue you have to “solve” with laws.
I am not so sure as you of the evil of these things. They are wrong and cruel, but evil? Hmm. To me, evil implies that those who are putting forward these ideas are plain sadists. I don’t think so. I’m not a big believer in evil, though.
I am not so sure that voting things out really works, either, so I guess my view is far more cynical than yours. I voted last time and I feel that what we have now is not so different from what we would have gotten with the other guys, with the exception of the bombast. We heard lots of big talk but got nothing but war, war, war and tax breaks for billionaires while our society collapses and we all start attacking each other like a bunch of rats.
I have come to feel that the difference between Republicans and Democrats is more one of style than of substance, frankly. They both serve interests diametrically opposed to those of the great majority of people. I have no answer to this except to work on and teach skills that will best help folks survive in a collapsing world.
posted July 4, 2011 at 1:16 pm
The economic viability of smaller states resulting from the re-division of North America. Economies the likes of Argentina or Denmark or even Israel aren’t so terrible. “More” in a #20 ecoonomy may be better than “less” in the #1.
For quite some time, I have been open to and mildly supportive of a re-division of North America along sociocultural and bioregional lines. More concretely, I favor Ecotopia, a utopian vision of such a bioregional state on the West Coast (even though I do not think its formation very likely). I suspect that another such regional state would develop from the American South. As for the others, I have no schema, but I imagine that they would emerge.
I find that I share your suspicion of the American South as the cultural and political reservoir of a legion of outlooks, views, ambitions, and concepts that jostle against those that I have learned to look at as central to America’s core culture.
I suppose that I’d say that I’m rootedly comfortable in being a Westerner and resist finding myself and that regional culture being overgrown by “Dixie” regional culture. But America has become a mobile and fluid and stirred sort of place, and regional cultures are mashing up together with great rapidity.
Anyhow, I’m good with looking at North America as a cluster of regions that don’t match up with any existing nations or states.
posted July 4, 2011 at 5:09 pm
I grew up in Texas and still have many relatives there. I’d be sad if I couldn’t ever visit them again without fear. But, sadly, I agree with your analysis, and I’m sorry that Rick Perry is talking about running for President. I liked him better when he was talking about secession for Texas.
Even here in New England, there are people who would turn CT or NY or MA or ME or NH into another copy of Mississippi, Alabama, or Texas. They rail on about cutting taxes and being more business-friendly and cutting the minimum wage and privatizing the schools and destroying the public workers’ unions and re-criminalizing abortion. We need to cut the South loose and let those states sink or swim on their own. Let them prove the correctness of their faith-based theocracy by having to live it every day, while the rest of us in the reality-based community carry on trying to keep the Republic that the Founding Fathers set up for us.
posted July 4, 2011 at 5:34 pm
I live in Biloxi, Mississippi, and also lived in Mobile, Alabama for 12 years and in Houston before that since my birth, so a Gulf Coast native here. I certainly agree that the religious fundamentalist Christians down here are in effect being incredibly cruel & short-sighted. Religion though is so vital to people they will do anything to keep it in their lives. If that means being cruel & hateful & justifying this via their holy book, they will do that. That is the power of following dogma, something we’ve known about for centuries now. It’s based on the concept of a Sinful Self, articulated by Seth in his books. Life is far too complicated to look at Mississippi for example in such narrow terms. Down here on the coast there are casinos, gay bars, an open atmosphere, it’s not a police state Nazi regime with statues of Jesus everywhere nor do I see a strong hatred of women here. There is diversity here, as there is everywhere. The basic problem in the USA right now is labor rights, and that is a national problem having not much to do with the absurdity of religious dogma here in the South, believe me it was much worse in the 1940s and 1950s down here. So my main argument would be this: that labor rights have to be enhanced, like Chomsky says most wage labor jobs are not much different than slavery nowadays. The old North/South argument is dead & over. We lived in a united country now & I don’t see that in the mindset of youth here, it IS however in the minds of older people, the 60s & 70 yrs old people, but they won’t be here much longer. The laws will change as a reflection of people’s minds changing, and that takes great effort & evolving of the nonphysical parts of us. I agree mostly with Harold above on this one.
posted July 4, 2011 at 7:19 pm
This is the old Gus I know and love! Fire in the belly and some lead shot in the knuckles of the gloves! There’s a time for temperate speech and spiritual introspection and all that, but there also comes a time when you must call a spade a spade. The thugs are winning largely because they are very, very adept at redefining language. In the Sauronic Christian paradigm, hate is love, murder is self defense, the personal interests of billonaire criminals is recast as “fiscal discipline” and a platform of frank fascism is redefined as “freedom.”
The states you mention are indeed the heart of this kind of culture, but by no means the extent of it. The tumor has metastasized throughout the South, but also in many other quarters of the country. It happens pretty much wherever white middle and working class people find themselves sliding into poverty and virtual slavery and then blame the wrong people. The people enslaving them have them on a string like marionettes, and it’s happening because virtually no one in this country knows their history and has forgotten who they are, who we are as a people.
To continue Gus’ longstanding and very useful Tolkien analogies, most of our people are reduced to the state of King Theoden, fully under the spell of evil and doing its bidding in clear detriment to their own well being and that of their fellow citizens. If we can’t somehow snap them out of it, we’re in for some VERY dark times…
posted July 4, 2011 at 10:39 pm
Dear Gus -
I see what you mean. You mean what you say. (July 4, 2011)
We have had bad times before.
The United States has gone badly and cruelly wrong many times in our history.
What is really bad now is our enhanced potential to ruin it for the rest of the world.
When I am afraid, I often mask the fear with anger.
Right now I am afraid that the tactics used by the religious right and the righteous rich will work.
They will be able to take over the voting process.
They will retain their hold on the Supreme Court.
They will continue to use intransigence as a substitute for political discourse.
They will continue to run slavishly at the heels of demonstrable idiots and mad men.
They will hold the country hostage until they trigger a major governmental financial default.
If a corporation has the rights of an individual, the personhood of you and me, what do we do about their potential immortality (with the associated leverage on finances), their almost universal total fixation on making money to the detriment of all else, and their use of the brightest and the best of our young to game whatever system is put in place?
I worry more about them than about the stupid cruelty and ignorant self-centeredness of the American South.
Life span in the South is decreasing in large part because of the obesity epidemic, a natural result of factory farming and the creation of semi-addicting prole-fodder for the poor.
I have many reasons to feel anger, many reasons to feel fear, and many reasons to feel shame because I have not done enough to struggle against the undertow.
blessings on your words, keep your blood pressure down and work as you have worked. – see you at Theurgicon
George Hersh (Heggaia)
posted July 5, 2011 at 12:14 pm
I’m fine if America expels the South. It will be very inconvenient for those living in Atlanta, Savannah, Asheville and other fairly liberal places, but yeah. I’ve been saying that Texas should secede for a long time now, with good riddance. I would have no trouble moving away from the south to a freer country.
Two related questions…
Where would you draw the boundaries?
Would “New America” be contiguous?
posted July 5, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Bill-
If secession became a seriously discussed issue, the boundaries would likely almost draw themselves as these divisions in our society are becoming geographical again, as they were before the Civil war, only not as much. Ideally the people who live somewhere should draw the boundaries by voting. I suppose if there were a coherent split between one part of a state and another, the state could divide, as Virginia did during the Civil War. (West Virginia used to be part of Virginia.)
I see no reason why the result need be either a contiguous or discontiguous United States. Again, remember Europe, or the US/Canadian border for that matter. Borders do not matter much between free societies, only between unfree ones or free and unfree ones.
Some words by Thomas Jefferson are relevant here. When the US acquired the Louisiana territories Jefferson was asked whether such a large addition of territory would eventually lead to secession. Here are his words:
“I confess I look to this duplication of area for the extending a government so free and economical as ours, as a great achievement to the mass of happiness which is to ensue. Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I believe is not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those of the eastern, and I feel myself as much identified with that country in future time as with this . . . .”
This is in complete agreement with what he wrote in the Declaration of Independence, especially the part I quoted above.
posted July 5, 2011 at 2:56 pm
Firstly, as a woman who resides and works in the South and who might potentially be subject to the miscarriage laws, you DO NOT SPEAK FOR ME. Your presumptuous championing of my cause is likely to make the situation worse for me, not better.
Secondly, this post is a welter of ignorance, perpetration of stereotypes, and punitive venom, along with appalling privilege. Just for one, it’s not “easy” for people to move. It’s only (relatively) easy for middle-class-and-above people to move…and since the areas you are speaking of are some of the most poverty-stricken in the nation, the facile presumption that they can “just leave” is both oblivious to reality and cruel.
It’s also not true that right-wing ideology is “more entrenched” in the South…both recent history and surveys of attitudes in the region, plus what is going on politically in the rest of the country, contradict that idea. The fact that so many (liberal) Southerners actually believe it doesn’t make it true. It just makes it a politically successful lie…successful in that it takes the fight out of people before they even get started. They *think* they can’t win…so they really can’t. In my twenty years of activism, political campaigning, and marching in the streets, that attitude has been my single worst and most pernicious enemy.
I have more I could say about this, and a mountain of evidence, but I have other matters to attend to right now. If you’re actually interested in understanding the South…instead of just bashing it…from the point of view of a Southerner who is so liberal I’m practically a Marxist, we can talk.
posted July 5, 2011 at 3:27 pm
You were explicitly invited to make comments of disagreement, perhaps with evidence to back them up if you have any. Try reading the first paragraph for comprehension sometime. I do not need to ask again.
The things I attacked were not only objectionable to any decent human being – and not just to you – but to many women who, you might be surprised to find out, I actually know. And since when did you take it upon yourself to be the spokeswoman for all women, since many women have agreed with this post. Many people in the South have agreed with this post. But then, you tell us that just because we disagree with you, we are wrong.
I was born in SW Virginia, frequently return to the Old Dominion where I have relatives, was raised in a family with strong neoconfederate members, including one who looked back nostalgically (and drunkenly) at slave times, and have as much right to talk about the South as you.
Your arrogance is disturbing, especially when combined with a complete refusal to address any issues raised and a denial that I have the right to raise any issues you feel you have a monopoly on.
posted July 5, 2011 at 5:11 pm
In my opinion, the post starts well enough, but then you do kind of devolve into a “The South Is Bad” rant. I can understand why, and you make a few good points, but here is my standpoint on the situation:
“Evil” is a very hefty word to be throwing around. Things are not well argued or discussed when you get into that kind of black-and-white morality, and you do this in quite a few posts, including this one. You have removed any ability for someone on the other side of the argument to put forth their case for why this law is helpful to a free society or whatnot, by calling it evil, and by extension, linking that evil with anyone who might find the law worth being on the books. That said, I don’t like the law at all, and I find it legally a morass, overturning the whole idea of “innocent until proven guilty”, though this ideal admittedly (again in my opinion) hasn’t been much followed in the American court system recently, anyway. If the burden of proof is on the person who had the miscarriage, as you seem to make it sound, then I agree that this is against the ideals of our Constitution, and in this case should be struck down.
However, I don’t live there. I’m VERY much for small government, if it’s done right (and no, I don’t think the Republicans in office right now really have it right). They have a right to determine what laws are alright for their state. Granted, where I have a problem is when they try to make these laws nationally-applicable, but they haven’t yet succeeded. Values change, though. Sixty years ago, it’s very possible that the law would have met with largely national approval.
Complaining about the South’s problems, you do indicate an understanding that the rest of the country has its problems, but you seem to still attack the South as if it were generating more problems. I do not believe it is. I can show in anywhere I’ve lived the same mentality; in Ohio, where I lived 25 years, I was even part of it for a short time, before I embraced Gnosticism and then Paganism. Politicians used to call it the Moral Majority, but the fact is, most of the time it’s the vocal minority, spinning issues to the point where if something is NOT enacted, “this” or “that” horrible thing will happen. I saw it a lot in the last election for Senator and for Governor here in Colorado, on BOTH sides. Democrat Bennet was almost worse, honestly, trying to point out Tea Party fave Buck’s “extreme views”, views which would probably have been welcome in Mississippi or Ohio.
All this said, you still bring up the South’s secession from the Union. Remember, the Civil War has also been called the War of Northern Aggression. The South, like Sudan now, had every right to secede from the Union (and still does). I do not believe it was right to force them to rejoin; many then, as now, clamored for war as much for war’s sake or for fears of looking weak to Europe as for any desire to remain together with their “Dixie” neighbors. If any state – ANY state – applies for secession now, I would support that wholeheartedly, whether or not I believed in their politics. What you seem to desire, though, is forced secession, and I don’t see this as any more productive than what the Union did in the 1860′s. I could be wrong, and if I am, I apologize, but I have several friends in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and so forth, and often they prove to me that the outside view of a state’s problems can be very different than the view from inside.
Hindsight is 20/20. Maybe the Union should have let the Confederacy secede, and perhaps that would have made today’s South an easier place for many kinds of minorities (ethnic, religious, political) to live and thrive. Maybe not. Villanizing the South now for views that are also influencing the Midwest, the Plains states, and even sections of other states, I feel is counterproductive. That said, you stated this would be a rant, this is only a response. I’m not looking to convince you otherwise, just put forth my view. Enjoy.
-C
posted July 5, 2011 at 5:55 pm
Corc-
I used evil as a term because I have been driven to utter frustration by the combination of utter arrogance, intellectual dishonesty, moral hypocrisy, and disregard for others that so many of these political and religious leaders demonstrate. It is a term I never used to use and that I still have argued is at its core rooted in ignorance, not in an absolute state of reality. That is a monotheistic conceit. But that evil is not a basic dimension of reality does not mean the term is without value. These people are not just morally wrong, they have cut themselves off from willingness to deal with others as moral beings worthy of respect. And they appear to revel in having done so.
By civilized I mean people who are capable of acting civilly. The right threatens our lives (read Ann Coulter, listen to Beck or Limbaugh) and spreads lies. Politics always involves exaggerations and puffery, but what we are experiencing now is not that, it is toxic to a free society.
So yes I use the “e”word, and I mean it as referring to someone who has essentially cut themselves off from honest intercourse with others while actively seeking to rule over them, and injure them if they are not completely subservient, and sometimes even if they are. I do not for the life of me see how those who supported the law regarding miscarriages could fall into any other category. Please explain if you feel a decent human being could support such a law in this day and age.
I did not say that people in Mississippi and Alabama do not have a right to their own laws so long as they are constitutional. In fact I explicitly said otherwise. Read me again, please. Further, my solution if it is one, leaves them with even greater power to make their own laws and torture their own people. That is the price we may need to pay to be able to govern ourselves and deal with the very big problems we face that under current conditions we cannot even address.
I do pick on the South. I am aware that similar mentalities exist elsewhere. But they have not dug in and corrupted the culture elsewhere and I do not want them to. Minus those states they would win elections on occasion but they could act within a decent larger constitutional system rather than destroying it. In Italy the Communists provide very good leadership to many cities they govern by winning Democratic elections. But at least while the saw themselves as allied to the USSR, if the Communists had ever controlled the national government the outcome would have been nasty. Same principle from my perspective.
I will not get into the history of the Civil war, which is complicated and which I myself have held different views at different times. But we can agree any state should be able to secede if they want. I wish they would.
As to “forced secession” it’s a word game. I want political separation so long as the majority of voters in those states elect people who are determined to prevent any national majority exercising self-government except on terms they dictate. The US system is deliberately biased towards preserving the status quo and to more than simple majority rule. That is why getting a law passed requires three separate agreements – House, Senate, Executive – or two super majority agreements – House, senate – to happen. This is a good idea so long as the regions of the country have enough in common so as to be good losers when they lose an election. It preserves us from extremism. For the same reason, it breaks down when a part of the country no longer believes it has enough in common to act in the spirit of the founding document. We then are victimized by extremism more than would be the case in a purely majoritarian system, like a parliamentary democracy. When that point arrives, someone should leave. I would prefer them to leave, but if not, we should.
I am very well aware that at present this is not a possibility. The best way to prevent it from happening is to raise the issue. Most mass supporters on the right do not want to leave. If they see what they are starting perhaps they will stop playing the “my way or the highway” game. If they do not, we should be aware we have an option other than being a victim. But until the issue is made explicit more and more momentum might build up behind these traitors until not only is it the only way out, it will be a nasty road to that outcome.
posted July 5, 2011 at 6:22 pm
I believe that the fundamental problems of this country are economic, not cultural. We need fundamental changes in the laws governing corporations and we need to restore the rights of labor, as another poster said. I don’t think breaking up the Union will make much difference in that struggle.
The framers of our Constitution intended the states to have a great deal of autonomy and they continued to have it after the collapse of Reconstructio until the requirements of industrial capitalism and Presidential activism to turn the United States into a world military power expanded the powers of the federal government. As a liberal, I’m not a big fan of states’ rights, but they do have the merit of allowing people to agree to disagree and to order their societies according to local cultural norms instead of turning everything (such as marriage law, reproductive freedom and drugs control) into a Federal case.
If we were to break up the United States into several regions, I think it would be more governable, but surely that will not happen unless powerful economic interests decide that having a bunch of smaller nations in North America will make them richer.
Your argument seems to be that the politics of the South never change, and that most of the Right’s strength is based there. Right now, the politics of Kansas are every bit as poisonous as the politics of the Deep South. Politics of a state or even a very conservative region can change as a result of generational shifts and migration in or out. Many African Americans whose grandparents moved North in the mid Twentieth century for economic opportunity and a better life are moving back to the South for the same reasons. These people tend to be socially conservative but economically liberal. The Southern states have also experienced a lot of immigration from Latin and Asian countries in the last couple of decades. These immigrants have been settled long enough to begin to be politically active. It’s a little early to predict how these population shifts will affect the politics of the region.
posted July 5, 2011 at 6:36 pm
I find myself wondering what “When that point arrives, someone should leave. I would prefer them to leave, but if not, we should.” would look like.
I hear you in your point of bringing this conversation/concern to the forefront, whether The South is literal geographacially or symbolic.
(Funny. At a picnic last night, a friend who grew up in Tennessee said how astounded he was at seeing both Confederate flag & US flag next to each other on a bumper sticker. Guess the Reconcilation aspect of that never occured to him)
posted July 5, 2011 at 7:31 pm
You took an issue which affects me directly, which *does not affect you*, and appropriated it to serve an agenda which is directly against my best interests and those of people like me. It is the moral and semantic equivalent of those abortion = genocide billboards aimed at African-Americans, and you deserve to be called out on it. Your defensiveness, attempts to reframe the conversation, and name-calling are all the answer I need to know where you really stand…which is emphatically not with the women being victimized by those laws, or anyone else being affected by the radical Republican rampage. Like, oh, the state employees in Wisconsin, or the towns that have been taken over by “financial managers” in Michigan. You planning to get them to secede too? How many states do you think are going to be left?
posted July 5, 2011 at 7:51 pm
Sarsen-
I said quite explicitly that we could live with their nastiness so long as it stayed in their states: “What happens in Mississippi stays in Mississippi.” Fine.
I said quite explicitly that they were causing serious damage to national policy, which does affect me and my loved ones. They are aggressive. And they are destroying our ability as a nation to address important issues by making policy impossible except on their terms.
What part of those arguments do you find so difficult to comprehend? If you do comprehend them you have no good reason at all to make the charges you do. None.
You have been invited to give actual arguments as to why I am wrong, and the best you can come up with is that I am a man who does not live in Mississippi or Alabama. Further you seem to appropriate for yourself the right to speak for all Mississippi and Alabaman women. Who elected you? What are your credentials such that I should take you seriously?
Your argument could be employed with equal logic against ANY white Northerner who criticized lynching, Jim Crow, or other white Southern racist laws. In fact it could be MORE logically employed against those people because the South was not trying to impose their values on the country as a while, as the authoritarian right is today. And those white northerners wanted to force the South to stop, as they ultimately were, whereas I just want them to leave if they cannot stop on their own.
Was it a mistake for Northerners to assist with the civil rights movement?
Please learn to read for comprehension sometime. It can be eye-opening.
posted July 5, 2011 at 8:26 pm
This is a good post, Gus. I have been wrestling with the issues you raise ever since you put it up. I, like some other commenters, have a problem with the term “evil,” but for this comment let it stand as you have used it.
Back in 1981, Joel Garreau argued that we are not naturally one nation here in North America, but at least nine large “nations” (as well as a host of smaller ones). Moving counterclockwise, he distinguished: Quebec, New England, the Foundry, Dixie, the Islands (in the Southeast) Mexamerica (in the Southwest), Ecotopia (on the West coast), the Empty Quarter (which is the largest of them all), and the Breadbasket (in the middle of the continent). These “nations” have few interests in common, but very many interests in conflict with one another. One may quibble about the details, but he hit on something important here.
And something of the same sort was also true of the original thirteen colonies that declared and won their independence from England. Despite their many conflicting interests, and their very few interests in common, they were able to form a nation together and ratify a shared Constitution. They could do this only because they were willing to compromise over and over again on a variety of issues, some of which were seen by the framers as issues of good versus evil. But even on such issues they willingly compromised, since otherwise they could not have created a common polity.
This same willingness to compromise even with what one viewed as a great evil, and to allow it a perpetual vote and a perpetual voice in the nation’s political debate, was at once a strength and a handicap. As a strength, it allowed the new nation to survive and grow. As a handicap, it ran directly counter to the ancient enthusiasm of Western culture for seeking out evil, wherever it might be found to fight and defeat it.
And here is where I may part company from you and from many commenters on this post. I do not think that it is possible for anyone, however wise, to devise a moral or ethical code, however basic, that would seem self-evident, obvious or desirable to everyone in every part of the globe. Nor do I think it possible to devise such a code that could be imposed by either reason or diplomacy or force on all people, whatever their nation or culture.
This being given, the only way any nation can cohere is by a political process that is perpetually willing to compromise with what some of its citizens see as evil — even very profound evil — and allow it its own seat at the political table, its own voices and votes in the political process.
This is not because we as a species are evil or unjust; nor it is because we fail to be good or just. Beyond either of these two characterizations, we as a species are cantankerous and quarrelsome.
However high the “good” that is proclaimed by some, there will always others for whom that same thing will be — or will become!!! — “evil” in an equal and opposite degree. Moreover, these others will, in their turn, see as the highest good what the first group of citizens will view as the basest evil.
Given this, no polity can endure unless it is perpetually willing to compromise with things that some of its citizens will see as evil. What these things may be, will differ from one citizen to the next, or from one region to the next. Such a polity will make laws to embody these compromises, but will avoid enacting moral or ethical codes in any detail.
But can a polity endure even if it is of this sort? Only if the citizenry rejects its old inherited passion to seek out evil wherever it may be found, to fight and destroy it. This passion, in my view, is not something people feel by nature, but only by nurture. It is part of our Western heritage — a part that has led to war after war for at least the last two thousand years.
It seems to me that many of the men who framed the Constitution, and a certain fraction of the politicians who guided the country’s history since then, rejected this passion — often as a matter of highest principle, understanding how destructive it could be to any stable polity. I personally mean to take my own stand on that same high principle: a willingness to compromise even with evil to preserve the nation.
But if the citizenry as a whole prefers the other position now, then let Dixie go, if you like. But know that it will not stop with Dixie.
Today Dixie may go. Tomorrow it will be New England that leaves, for it already has little use for the rest of the country. Soon Ecotopia will follow, and likewise Mexamerica — which may rename itself Aztlan and try to reclaim all the old Spanish territory in Western North America. Then the Empty Quarter may well withdraw into itself, as may the old Foundry. Some of these new “nations” will perhaps fight for the food that the Breadbasket produces, and even for the territory of the Breadbasket itself. All this will cut Quebec and the Islands loose from the rest, whether they like it or not. And there will be not two nations on the continent, but many — perhaps not precisely Garreau’s nine, but they will be many.
Each of them will be able to say, perhaps, that it has conquered evil — what it judged to be evil, at least. But they will mean different things by “evil.” And none of them will be any closer to bringing in a new age of “liberty” and “justice” for all, because these two terms also share in the flexibility of the terms “good” and “evil.”
For my part, I am a practical man, not a moralist or ethicist. For me, the price of this kind of crusade against evil is far too high. For you, your mileage may vary (as they say). But I would like us to be able to compromise, even with what each of us may see as evil, to keep this nation together.
posted July 5, 2011 at 8:26 pm
Good for you, Gus. I sympathize immensely with the frustration and bitterness you express. However, I don’t see secession as the solution. I think these largely Southern right-wing ideologues have only gained power because the left has been to mild and moderate in its response to right-wing initiatives. When politicians on the left in the post-Obama era eventually find their voice again, and are willing to call cruelty cruelty and idiocy idiocy, and to speak up for a real sharing of wealth and real compassion toward the poor, I think the left…not the South…will rise again. But for now, grim times indeed, and having a President who seems to believe in compromise for compromise’s sake, with no real principles that he is willing to stand up and fight for, is a very sad situation. I am looking forward to the next generation after Obama, assuming anything will be left of America by then.
Keep speaking up, you are contributing to genuine discussion of important issues!
posted July 6, 2011 at 11:10 am
Evil. Yes I think that was the correct word to use.
Enslavement is another appropriate word. People are being enslaved. Harnessed to work for those who care nothing for them other then as a means to a personal end. Far cry from what our Founding Fathers had in mind.
The part of history I recall on Independance day are the discussions about slavery that the continental congress held as they were trying to form the union. It was not just the south that held to slavery. We forget the Triangle Trade. Who provided the ships? Boston. Both North and South were making $ off of misery. One indirect and one direct. Same now.
Evil is the use and control of others for personal gain. Enslavement is alive and well in both the South and the North. Our political “leaders” (I use that phrase in jest) harness our votes then walk away from their promises. Then pass laws to hobble us further……. and we reelect them!
Evil seems to begin in our own minds and then we vote it into place around use. The only secession that will work is one that begins within the individual.
posted July 6, 2011 at 5:41 pm
I’ve read you for a long time Gus. Just about everything I have to say was summed up quite nicely by Sarsen. It’s painful and disheartening to finally realize that those I’ve always considered my political and religious allies in other areas of the country are as eager for the destruction of the liberals, gays and Pagans of the South as the southern “conservatives.” This certainly isn’t the only place I’ve seen this attitude, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it expressed so vitriolically by a blogger who’s opinion I’d respected.
posted July 6, 2011 at 5:50 pm
If neo-confederates in my home state were to attempt to secede/impose theocracy, then I, as an American citizen would attempt to stop them. I suppose it’s good for us southern progressives to know in advance that northern progressives would just throw up their hands and conclude that any racial/religious/sexual minorities and women just deserve whatever we get under such a system because they were unwilling or unable due to finances or family to simply *give up* and give the Un-American right what they want.
posted July 6, 2011 at 6:20 pm
Souris Optique
I asked Sarsen to give reasons more weighty than that I am a male who does not live in Mississippi or Alabama, which seems to be the extent of her critical argument. I ask you the same.
My post in no way denounced the South as such. Nor does it criticize Pagans in Alabama or Mississippi. I do say that the South as a culture was powerfully changed by the rise of a strong pro-slavery culture buttressed by a degraded form of Baptism, and that it has grown in virulence to what seems the highest point of toxicity since the Civil War. Kevin Phillips’ “American Theocracy” is particularly illuminating here.
If in your Southern patriotism you cannot distinguish a harsh criticism of Southern politics and its impact on the US as a whole from a rejection of the South as such, I think the problem is not me, it is you.
Marlon took the time to argue why my analysis was mistaken. He argued that the current level of political poison is the death throes of a dying culture, one not shared by the younger generation. If you read my original column again you will note that I ALSO said there was an EASY way to change my mind: a majority of residents should stop electing sworn enemies of the principles this country was founded on. I obviously hope Marlon is correct.
But if he is NOT correct my stand remains what it is. Pagans in Mississippi and Alabama benefit from their states being in the United States. That is a powerful reason for Pagans there to not want their states to leave. If they did their situation would degenerate. I understand this.
But what if those states, and a few others, are also key to having people elected into national government whose goal is to destroy what has made the United States as a whole an increasingly safe place for Pagans? What if the people elected from those and similar states are seeking to make the country ungovernable except on their terms? Suddenly the issue is not simply a matter of the well-being of Pagans in Mississippi and Alabama. It affects the country as a whole, including Pagan men and women from Maine to California.
In my opinion we need to remember two very important points. First, countries are not as real as people. They are comprised of people. Democratic countries are comprised of people most of whom put democratic principles ABOVE and specific issue. This enables everyone to be a good loser and a good winner. As soon as a part of the country puts certain principles above democratic procedures they become a threat to others if they seek political power. The Republican Party has made it clear they put many principles above democratic rules. That is why they are acting as they do in Washington and elsewhere. And this part of the Republican Party has a base of power, which we all know is largely Southern based.
In my view the future of the United States as a decent place to live requires the nation repudiating the kind of politics and people that were responsible for the events and laws I described. States unable to repudiate those people and principles are a threat to the country as a whole so long as they provide a political base for a faction that controls one party within a country where the laws make it virtually impossible to have more than two. That is why progressives have to put up with the current Democrats, for example, because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.
Second, anti-democratic movements can transform a culture in remarkably rapid ways. In Europe before the Nazis taking power Jews in Germany were more integrated into mainstream society than perhaps anywhere else in Europe. Koonz’s “The Nazi Conscience” shows how German society was changed in that regard, and I think any Pagan would be well advised to read it. Americans are not immune.
I am coming from a space that puts the survival of democratic procedures and religious freedom at the highest level of my political priorities. These folks attack both. I also put protection of the earth at a similarly high level, and they also attack that. It is one thing to say that we can differ about how to facilitate democracy, religious freedom, and the well being of the earth as we know it. It is quite another thing to reject these values as anything from irrelevant when inconvenient to being bad. I can live with the first, I do not want to live with the second when they have the power to destroy these values.
posted July 6, 2011 at 6:37 pm
Souris II-
No – you misread me again.
In my opinion secession should be by majority vote, and the issue should be contested. I would certainly do what I could to criticize the Neo-Confederates, as you should know from reading this blog. BUT IF the Neo-Confederates so dominate the state that the secessionists win, I say “Let them go.” The rest of us will be better off as a nation and we will be able to provide a safe haven for anyone who wants to move here. Hopefully some of our own Neo-Confederates will move south to be with their spiritual kin, which will make us safer.
There is a basic NATIONAL reason for considering this a better outcome than the current situation. The US Constitution was designed not as a majority rule document, but as one whose ideal was consensus, and it tried to square that circle by making it necessary for any law or financing to pass three hurdles- House, Senate, Executive. Essentially three majorities elected by three different means. And there are other customs that further push towards the consensual ideal, such as the fillibuster.
This system works well enough when differences between people are not great and political parties are not monolithic. Today the Republican Party is monolithic in a way no American Party has ever been and its power depends on emphasizing its differences from the Democrats. Further, its goals are, from my perspective, hideous. Being monolithic, once it has enough people it can bring business to a halt even when not a majority (see our Senate) and when it gets a majority (for reasons having nothing to do with its program and everything to do with people being unhappy with the Democrats) it imposes ghastly measures as a price for letting anything happen. This is minority rule and minority blackmail of the majority. This will not work for long, and it will ultimately destroy the country.
I am trying to make a very unpleasant fact clear. Very clear. To make it clear we need to tell them where their policies and tactics will lead them. If it is made clear hopefully people who currently support the Republicans by habit will take a second look, and ask themselves are they Americans or Republicans first, and vote accordingly.
posted July 7, 2011 at 1:55 am
Gus & others: My only reason for arguing the point the way I did is because I’ve seen an evolving change in the minds/hearts of some of the locals here. They still vote conservative (i.e., 2008, McCain) but they are not racist or really aligned with the deeper negativity you see in the worst of the Republicans (the people spoken of in this post who really are enemies of democracy, I totally agree). So I’m thinking in 20 years or so, the changes will be enough that then more people will in fact vote more progressively. I think one big change we require is to get the money behind issues like religious freedom, protection of rights for everybody & protection of democratic procedures & that would mean using all forms of media to persuade people to think differently. That’s how we got into this mess to a great extent, I think simply by persuasion and advertising. People can be open to suggestion & will believe the stupidest stuff if they are given a convincing reason, or given an answer for something. Look how much money is being spent by the climate deniers, & they know full well climate change is real & is gonna destroy the Earth sooner rather than later, or at least make it hellish for a long time. No money for education in the counties here in Mississippi means a lot less people reading books down here, which spells very bad news all the way around, plus anger & hostility is like I’ve never seen it in my life (just read blog posts, news sites, etc.). Things could certainly take a turn for the worse if the right person came along, but Obama will get re-elected so I think the apparent game of Republican vs Democrat dualism will continue on at least a few more years.
posted July 7, 2011 at 12:52 pm
When I hear or see a claim like “You are making it worse for me”, especially when that contradicts my understanding of the issue and the energy it requiers to be resolved, I believe the compassionate reaction is to pause and ask: “Why would it be worse? What is/are the effect(s) you expect or already experience from the cause at which you are pointing?”
I can claim some personal sympathy for the complaint. I’ve lived through a similar situation, one not as intense or with as extreme, possible outcomes, but the core principles look to me to be the same.
Some general advice, obviously directed to Sarsen: I have three sisters. Two of them have been sexually assaulted (police records exist). I also have two daughters and three nieces, all but the youngest having had negative encounters. No one, and I mean no one and I don’t care about gender or their experiences, gets to brush me off because I’m a man. I don’t need to be a woman to see the injuries on their bodies, the pain in their body language, or the fear and anger in their eyes.
And btw: claiming a monopoly on an issue, at least in this crowd, gets the same laugh as claiming to have The One and Only True Faith[tm]. If there’s one thing I expect a Pagan to comprehend first, it’s that gender creates no barrier to understanding, compassion and empathy; they fail only for the failure of the individual to make the effort necessary to accomplish them.
posted July 7, 2011 at 4:45 pm
…in my “Southern Patriotism?” Whose “Southern Patriotism,” exactly? That manages to be *incredibly* funny as well as insulting, and really shows off all the inaccurate assumptions you’ve already made about me based on where I happen to be from.
I wrote a long, thought out reply, and lost it to the commenting system, and I really don’t have the time or patience to try to rewrite it all, so I will try to sum this up:
I don’t think giving the Nazis their own little section of Germany early on to do with as they wanted would have prevented any of the atrocities that ultimately occurred. You seem to think that you can appease these people somehow by saying “here have your godsawful authoritarian corporate state over here, where you can grind women and minorities under your heel in peace, and just leave us alone.” The people who buy politicians and who are engineering the corporate buyout of the U.S. aren’t from or based in the South, and they aren’t going to meekly retreat there because you offer it to them. They don’t want their own little fiefdom; they want the U.S.
Yes, the fact that it’s me and my family who would be jobless, homeless and turned into refugees in our own country under your suggested plan makes me quite a bit more irritable about it than I might otherwise be. I don’t think that’s terribly unreasonable. But I wouldn’t be any more supportive of a proposal to essentially turn any other part of the U.S. into a hostile foreign power, either.
posted July 7, 2011 at 4:46 pm
Marlon-
Good insights in my opinion, and I hope with all my heart that you are right. I hope we can survive the years of madness before the younger generation takes over and the old bigots do us the service of moving on to the next stage of wherever their spiritual journey is taking them.
Your comments also suggest a positive avenue for encouraging change, and that is actively reaching out to assist in education and awareness. I suspect it is no coincidence that the states who have adopted what seem to me the most hideous laws of the culture warriors so far are also among our poorest and least educated. their elites like it that way. I would hope local Pagans realize that it is the right thing to do at many different levels to support more money for education, and perhaps encourage activities like Science Buzz cafes http://www.sciencebuzzcafe.org/Sebastopol/node/18 , and the fascinating experiment being carried out in Macon. Georgia, with Macon Money. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028155.700-future-of-money-a-currency-thats-building-community.html .
I think we cannot equal anytime soon the money spent by large corporate interests to keep us divided, but we have two advantages in other areas. First, we come from a place of far more heart, integrity, and decency. Second, we will work for our beliefs for values other than money, whereas most of their main operatives are essentially intellectual mercenaries, and worse.
But in my opinion we should never forget that the stakes are very very high.
Franklin-
Well and beautifully written.
I am working on a response to many of the ideas and comments that have appeared here, and will make it an independent post soon
posted July 7, 2011 at 5:00 pm
Souris, I regret not getting to see your lost reply. I suggest highlighting all the text (ctrl-A) and copying it (ctrl-C) before clicking on Post. You can at least try again with paste (ctrl-V) if the usual glitch hits you.
I wish to join with you on your point. I would choose to put it this way: We are becoming a society of micro-nations already. Even as state boundaries blur and fade, regionalism is still pushed in Congress with the red-blue meme, and it focuses more on portions of a state or regions that cross state lines, especially when centered on an urban center (like here in Philadelphia). There could come a point when the US simply fractures, regardless of prosaic identities like Southern, and we will become a de facto set of small nations even while Congress remains to superficially tie them together.
posted July 7, 2011 at 5:10 pm
Souris III
Regarding Southern Patriotism – all I have to go on is what you write here. As to your long reply, what I do for this blog as well as other online stuff is, if it’s going to be a long piece, write it elsewhere and paste it. That way, if the system erases you – it’s happened to me plenty – I still have it to paste again.
Now to your main point. My Nazi comparison was not that they should have been given their own little portion of Germany. Secession was not an issue there and then. The Nazi comparison was to say that what we face is in my opinion as serious as what the Weimar Republic faced and that we seem far removed from the horrors they brought to their country is no guarantee it cannot happen here.
Our three advantages over Weimar are first, that the authoritarian right does not have a charismatic leader. The likes of Beck and Limbaugh don’t equal Hitler. We can be very grateful. Second, we do not have an equally anti-democratic left (Weimar got it from both sides). Third, our democratic traditions are of long standing and associated with our Founding, not with the outcome of losing WWI. (That is one reason why these traitors are trying to rewrite history to make the Founding serve them and not freedom and democracy.)
On the other hand, we do not have a multi-party parliamentary system like Weimar did, which would make the current authoritarian right an irritant but not a means to prevent any action except on their own terms. The rules of the American political game exacerbate their power beyond its actual numerical strength. Second, because its base is regional, in a system with only two parties they have a permanent power base that exists as a threat to the country as a whole.
If I have to choose between the US collapsing into authoritarianism and chaos or cutting your state, whatever it may be, free, well, good bye. Equally to my “liking” would be for my state to leave the US, which might have the same effect on where you live. And if you have values at all progressive, in my opinion you could not reasonably argue against my point.
How to prevent that sad outcome? That’s disproportionately the job of you and those like you who live in those states. We on the outside can help as requested as well as do what we can to promote decency where we live, I hope, but a major (I admit not the only) problem is in the warp and woof of a certain kind of Southern culture and it is Southerners who have to heal it. Marlon says this is already happening. I hope so and look forward to evidence at the polls that it is so. Having only two parties makes it harder to manifest than it would be in a multiparty parliamentary system.
posted July 7, 2011 at 7:28 pm
Hi Gus,
As you know our constitutional system that gives every state two senators does work to enable a minority to hobble the majority. The framers meant to do that, and its proved to be a problem at times. I live in Maine and have my whole life and until 2010 I thought we were a blue, blue state. The teabaggers got us then and captured the governorship and the legislature. We are all of a sudden very “south”. I can only hope that their awful ideology, true ignorance will allow us to toss them out in 2012, but it will take hard work and organizing. You know back in the New Deal days, it was the South that gave FDR enough support to beat back the Wall Street and Boston bluebloods. I hope that energy is still there in the South because we need it. It don’t look good, but we can still hope (and you angry liberal southerners can still organize and fight like hell to do the right things) and turn this crap around in 2012.
posted July 7, 2011 at 8:52 pm
I want to echo Gus’s point about a charismatic leader and how fortunate the rest of us are that the authoritarian right does not have one now. What follows may serve as a short cautionary tale.
Back in the early 1970s, when I was a very junior faculty member, a very old professor happened to come into the administrative office carrying a 78 record with one of Hitler’s original speeches on it, recorded live. It was an artifact of a past he had lived through, but we had not. Of course, we all had to listen to it, then and there.
Back then my own German was excellent. I could speak it without needing to take forethought, understand anything said to me, and even dream in the language. I could even understand spoken plattdeutsch, which is somewhat more like Dutch than Standard High German. But Hitler’s dialect completely defeated my best efforts to understand him: I could make out just a word or two here and there, at best. (Of course, I knew what horrors he had stood for, and I supposed he was going on about them.)
Even so, by the time that very short record was over, I was totally spell-bound! There was a part of me that could have listened to that man for hours, and could have followed him anywhere! (I can only compare the controlled power of his voice to the controlled power of expert shamanic drumming, though the latter serves a different purpose.)
It wasn’t what his words meant, and I couldn’t make sense of them anyway. It was his speech, the way he used his voice — its subtle rhythms and cadences, his use of emphasis and breath and tone and pitch and volume and speed — that got to me where something in me lived, something on a fundamental sub-human level that I probably share with other primates, and even with dogs and bears.
I have heard some very great orators in my time, such as Everett Dirksen or Kennedy, and now Obama. None of them could or can hold a candle to what Hitler knew how to do with his voice.
And that is charisma in its full power. For all his loathsome ideas, Hitler had it like no one else I have ever heard speak.
I am very glad we have had so few leaders at any time in our country with that level of charismatic power. It is utterly toxic.
I am even more glad that no one on the authoritarian right has that level of charisma in these days.
Such people are very rare. But you never know when one might come along . . .
posted July 8, 2011 at 4:42 pm
Hey, Gus,
Thanks for the reply. First issue: the assumption that I meant that you were saying those states don’t have the right to determine their own laws. I apologize, what I meant was I was pointing out that they have a right to determine their own as opposed to national law, that’s all. Sorry for the confusion.
On to the meat of the post:
First, I can certainly understand the frustration. I myself feel it from time to time. However, evil implies several things that I don’t believe can be applied to many people who support this law, my family included. Your statement supposes something that just isn’t true, that a decent person cannot support something that is morally wrong to a subset of our society (and yes, right now it’s a subset, not the whole). This kind of thinking supports the kind of “us versus them” separation you have previously railed against in some of your posts. Many decent people have been convinced, confused, even tricked into believing some horrible things, often through religion or social norm. So, yes, I believe a decent human being could support such a law in the here and now, even though I think the law is wrong, and they do. As to the others you’re calling “evil”, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, etc., yeah, I can agree with that assessment to the degree of what you have expounded on. You’re right in that these do close off all ability for argument or discussion, and in some cases, do so without bringing up religion at all. No argument with you on some of the leaders of the Right; that’s the price of politics, though, that even someone trying to actually do something right turns to crap.
Political separation, forced secession, it’s pretty much the same thing, as you indicate (“it’s a word game.”). It doesn’t change my view on the subject: there are quite a few in the South that would be left behind. It’s not easy to move, especially for families with children, and especially when there is that kind of political upheaval. Some may accomplish it, but when the writing’s on the wall, some may end up stuck. I don’t think that’s a good idea right now, and with the current of extremism in modern politics, conflict may turn violent as a result. Concerning secession, the best option would be to convince those extremists it’s better to separate. Any type of imposition, them being kicked out or the rest of the states leaving, will likely be seen as aggression, for, as you say, “Most mass supporters on the right do not want to leave.”
Again, thanks for the response, and keep writing!
-C
posted July 11, 2011 at 8:45 pm
Corc-
My lambasting was aimed at the people who originated and voted for the legislation. not the thoughtless people who simply accept what their leaders tell them. They are guilty of some pretty objectionable things, but being “evil” is not among them.
I hope my most recent post puts my “get out!” sentiments in better perspective. Any actual separation would occur only after a lengthy preamble. It would still be a serious hardship for many good people who would either have to stay in very precarious circumstances or give up friends and perhaps the land of their birth to emigrate elsewhere. Unfortunately this bad situation is one that millions have had to experience, but it is still preferable in my mind to seeing the entire country either become increasingly unlivable or worse, accidentally fall under the sway of the NeoConfederates. Our political system will not work with a sizable region dominated y people who hate its values. They will use them to destroy it.
posted July 8, 2011 at 9:12 pm
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posted July 12, 2011 at 4:54 pm
I’m a woman from the reddest state in the US — Oklahoma. We have some of the highest rates of dmoestic violence and child abuse. We have horrifically punitive marijuana laws. Every year we spend thousands trying to put the 10 Commandments in State Capitol. And we also spend thousands trying to ‘out conservative’ each other. At least our politicians do.
What I find troubling about Sarsen’s & Souri’s comments is the finding of vitriol against women (unless I misread — and I read each more than twice…) in the initial post. I didn’t. But I also don’t think that even in joking, seceding is an option. Honestly? I don’t know, any longer, how to reach the ultra-conservative Right.
Many of my family feel that women should be breeders, that gays are horrible not-quite-people, that non-Christians are heretics who should be suffered only so far as absolutely necessary. Their politics are clothed in moral and religious wrappings, so that we are never able to talk, because any attempt on my part to discuss differences is seen as a religious attack.
So please — let’s talk here
. Surely we have more in common than not. If we can’t find common ground, what hope is there? 
posted July 12, 2011 at 5:17 pm
Brittongildersleeve-
Thank you. I’m as frustrated as you, and have people with similar views in my own family. These are in many ways decent people, but they seem impermeable to genuine communication with different views, and absent their opening themselves to genuine communication I see no happy outcome. They will support political monsters who will either destroy the country by making it ungovernable or destroy the country by turning it into a hideous Hell for the rest of us. I see no third option.
The only way I can make some initial sense out of it is to identify who they are as a tribe – good people “with their own kind” but intolerant and worse to people who are different. Tribes put the superiority of their tribe over any moral values, and we are all prone to it to some degree. But they have made it a virtue. They save their capacity for empathy to their own group. I started out in life as a young right winger myself, and the three or four events that slowly moved me away from that position ALL involved things that opened my heart, not that appealed to my reason.
That is why I put all my criticisms in ultimately moral terms. They are morally challenged, and if they are like me, the only way out is to open their hearts. But only they can do it.
I think what we can do is continually put these issues in fundamentally moral terms, try and dissociate them from the malignant people who hold power with their support, and seriously consider life without them through secession if necessary. I develop all this more in my newest post on love, power and America.