For a while there I was thinking that there wasn’t much of value coming from the far-right fringe of American politics. I mean listening to Texas school board members yammer on about the six days of creation or Sarah Palin on presidential death squads doesn’t exactly invite serious intellectual dialogue. Tea-partiers who pronounce America’s impending socialist-driven demise or social-security pensioners complaining about welfare abuse find most folk fairly immune to their anguished agitations.
But lately a new movement is taking shape that is finding fans on both sides of our immobilized political process. They’re being called “Tenthers” for their eagerness to invoke the 10th Amendment to the Constitution any time an edict out of Washington displeases them. These are folk who claim states’ rights still trump the federal government, who believe Mississippi matters more than these United States. Sound familiar? Thought we’d gone through this some 150 years ago? Well, here we go again…and some of us from the other side are thinking it’s not as wacko as some of you may at first think.
Secession has its good points. When someone like the secessionist-threatening Texas Governor Rick Perry urges his fellow fanatics with statements like…” (We are) willing and ready for the fight if this administration continues to try to force their very expansive government philosophy down our collective throats.” It only gets liberals to thinking that maybe a Texas-less U.S. wouldn’t be all that bad.
With Texas off on its own, America would cut its capital punishment quotient by at least half and maybe even regain a little credibility among the world’s more civilized countries. And that is only the beginning of the benefits that could accrue if those who claim to want a very different nation than the one we’ve got, actually go. Think of it…Glenn Beck could begin his long anticipated career as the intellectual bellwether for a new confederation of un-united states! Rush Limbaugh could take charge in Florida and leave the rest of us to go on our merry, neo-Marxist way!
Oh the joy. Imagine a Senate without men like Richard Shelby who threw a procedural tantrum when he didn’t get enough pork sent his southern way. Shelby, you may remember, ingratiated himself to a certain segment of wingnutdom by demanding to see President Obama’s birth certificate during the last election. And, of course, the House of Representatives would reap immeasurable benefit by watching the backsides of malcontents like Congresswoman Michele Bachman who recently announced that it was time “to wean everyone off Social Security and Medicare.” Michele might have to move from Stillwater to San Antonio to live on the far-right side of a new Mason-Dixon Line but I’m sure many in Minnesota would appreciate it.
Now I know there are descendents from the last round of secessionists who would just as soon remain attached to the rest of us, but it is tantalizing to think of other ways in which a new confederacy could be of considerable benefit. As I understand it, a new secession of certain states would lower the U.S. crime rate significantly and raise our educational level dramatically. Our national health care costs would diminish along with our national debt since the annual per capita tax revenue from the original seceding states still doesn’t match the annual per capita governmental expenditures. I’ve been told divorce rates would fall, life-expectancy would rise and literacy rates improve for the rest of us if our secessionist friends would just take leave of us the way they have taken leave of their own senses.
“America: Love it or leave it!” was what we once heard from those who claimed to be this nation’s only true patriots. Some of us are thinking…maybe it’s time they follow their own advice?