When Northerners Talk Secession They are Thoughtful and Open-Minded

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Audio and Transcript – I love finding all this common ground here now with these damn Yankees that all of a sudden can’t seem to force feed enough liberalism down the throats of Southerners, now they don’t want anything to do with us.  That’s what Chuck Thompson at Salon.com is writing about here.  He doesn’t want to make government our common cause anymore, and neither does Joshua Holland, the guy that conducted the interview.  They desire to not make common cause, or at least consider not making politics with those that they disagree with in the South anymore.  They’re now of the opinion that after we split — see, we’ll split up.  After the split, what will happen is we racist Southern, hick, hayseed, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal morons will come begging and pleading to get back into the union and for the Northern states to save us from infamy. Check out today’s audio and transcript for more…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  There’s an article posted at Salon.com.  It is about Southern secession.  It’s written by a guy who is a writer, a traveled writer, named Chuck Thompson.  He’s interviewed by a cat named Joshua Holland as part of the AlterNet podcast that you get over there at Salon and other places.  The question is: “Should the South secede?  The author of a new book challenges Northerners and Southerners to consider the possibility of a friendly divorce.”  Some of us have already considered it and have already begun trying to pave the way.

I am intrigued and encouraged that there is an increase, ladies and gentlemen, not a decrease but a marked increase in the amount of stories and amount of talk, amount of enthusiasm, the amount of debate now that is going on over the issue of size and scope of the American Union.  This is encouraging stuff here.  We’ve actually reached out to the author, Chuck Thompson, to try to get him on.  The book is Better Off Without ‘Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession.  Don’t you just love this, ladies and gentlemen?

Let’s just recap quickly.  If you’re a Northern secessionist, that is wonderful, fine and dandy.  You’re a thoughtful, erudite, out-of-the-box, political thinker that is serious about trying to find solutions to all the problems that plague the United States today, that’s if you’re a Northern.  If you propose that the Northern states kick out the Southern hick, hayseed states, you’re a genius, to be well respected, well regarded, well thought of, taken seriously and literally.  If you’re a Southerner and say the exact same thing, exactly, precisely the exact same thing, you are a traitor.  I’ve been called a traitor on my Twitter feed before.  You are a treasoner, you are seditious, you are a remnant of a racist culture or subculture still left over.  [mocking] “We all know why you want to secede, Mr. Church, and why you want to think about rethinking the American Union, you racist.”

I love finding all this common ground here now with these damn Yankees that all of a sudden can’t seem to force feed enough liberalism down the throats of Southerners, now don’t want anything to do with us.  That’s what Chuck Thompson is writing about here.  He doesn’t want to make government our common cause anymore, and neither does Joshua Holland, the guy that conducted the interview.  They desire to not make common cause, or at least consider not making politics with those that they disagree with in the South anymore.  They’re now of the opinion that after we split — see, we’ll split up.  After the split, what will happen is we racist Southern, hick, hayseed, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal morons will come begging and pleading to get back into the union and for the Northern states to save us from infamy, because we all know we will fail mightily without our Northern manufacturing base, with all our East Coast liberal elites leading the way and showing us the error of our ways, how the evolved think about these things.  In other words, we’ll come kicking and screaming and begging our way back into the family because we’ll lose out.

Apparently these people don’t read.  Apparently they have not gotten the memo that the Japanese and Koreans have gotten.  Hell, the Germans have gotten it, and that is that the South is where it’s at.  Germany and the Germans built a new BMW plant where?  Poughkeepsie, New York?  Detroit?  Ypsilanti?  Cleveland?  How about the old Hank Williams, Jr. song, “I’d love to haul them all down ‘round Spartanburg,” Greenville, South Carolina area.  Where’s the Kia Motors plant?  Georgia.  Where is the Hyundai plant?  Alabama.  Where’s the Mercedes plant?  Alabama.  I could go on if you’d like me to.

Manufacturing that once was the hallowed ground of the North and that with which they used as a cudgel to bludgeon Southern states during that most bloody and unnecessary of wars has now migrated its way southward.  Those things that used to pass — you used to be able to say, for example, that the North is industrialist and the South is agriculture.  Hell, there’s as much agriculture in the North now as there is in the South.  The piece is interesting.  I’m going to read some of the excerpts from it.  Doug, you’re next.  How are you?

Caller Doug:  Good morning, Mike.  Thank you for taking my call.  I’d like to tell you how much I enjoy your show.  I find it informative and thought-provoking.  I’m a Ron Paul guy myself.  I just wanted to call and comment that it’s not just the South that should secede.  The thought has taken place up there in New Hampshire.  I saw online that they were talking about it in Vermont.  With the exception of Massachusetts, there could be a New England thing.

Mike:  The Vermont First Republic — I saw a story on Twitter yesterday — the Vermont First Republic people are nuts.  I don’t think you want to be in league with the Vermonters.

Caller Doug:  You might be right when you say that.  On some things they’re dead on.  You look at their stance on gun control, they believe in absolute constitutional beliefs on gun control, but like you said, you have these things on healthcare where they’re way over on the other side of the spectrum.  Maybe you’re right.  Maybe they’re not the best example to lead with.  Here in New Hampshire, our gun laws are just about right.  Ron Paul was very popular here.  In spite of what everybody says, he was very popular here.  It’s not just the South.  Sure, the South did it once, but if the time comes again, it may not just be the South.

Mike:  The interesting thing about the article at Salon.com, “Should the South secede?  The author of a new book challenges Northerners and Southerners to consider the possibility of a friendly divorce”:

[reading]

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that cultural friction between the North and South persists to this day.  After all, we fought an incredibly brutal, ugly Civil War.  The battlelines that were drawn then continued to divide us through the Reconstruction period and well into the middle of the 20th century.

[end reading]

Mike:  The differences are not just between the cultural differences.  There are also philosophical and traditional differences that the Southerners never adopted.  The thing that was imparted to New England was Puritanism.  Somebody is going to call and say I don’t know what I’m talking about.  It was at least partially Puritanism, a form of Puritanism that has a different role and a different philosophical standpoint in how it perceives the relationship between people and the government.  I’m not passing judgment on which one is right or wrong, but there are two different ones.  In the Southern states, there was a totally different mindset and philosophical bent.  This produced traditions.  Some of the traditions came from overseas.  Many of the Southern traditions were produced by, and you’ll find this — I have to be really careful in how I say this, Doug.

Edward Payson Powell wrote a book called On Nullification and Secession in the 19th Century.  He wrote an historical tract in 1894 about the actual history of what happened from 1798 to 1865 or so, what really happened, what was really the American tradition and what the Constitution said.  In his summary chapter, Payson Powell said that Northern elites, at the time — remember he’s writing in 1890 — had made much hay about how the South had finally been subjugated and been forced to surrender its reliance on slave labor to support its aristocratic lifestyle.  That was an eternal, worldwide, unquestionable good.  Payson Powell, this guy was a Yankee.  He was from the City University in New York.  Payson Powell said how can we say that with a straight face?  It was that culture that produced Patrick Henry.  It was that culture and that ability of the aristocracy that produced George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Mason.  While slavery is undeniable and was undeniably an evil, the Southern experience with it was not without benefit to the world.  As I have often said, the fact that Jefferson did certain things does not exclude the Declaration.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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