A CNN travel editor named Chuck Thompson has established himself as a
one-man hate group in writing a short book entitled Better
Off Without ‘Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession.”
He advertised his book in an October 20 article in Salon entitled
“Just Secede Already.” Oh, if only we could.
Hatred of and bigotry toward Southerners is of course nothing new.
The New England “Yankees” of the early nineteenth century thought of
themselves as God’s chosen people and deplored the immigration into the
country of lesser humans from parts of Europe other than their own little
section of the British Isles – especially the loathsome Catholic immigrants
from Germany, Ireland, and Italy (See Albion’s
Seed by David Hackett Fisher).
The early nineteenth-century New England descendants of the Puritans so
hated Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, and its prospects for accommodating
masses of God’s un-chosen people, that they spent a decade
plotting secession. This plot culminated in the 1814 Hartford Secession
Convention at which the New England Federalists issued severe criticisms of
government, but decided that their political and economic fortunes would be
best served by undermining the government of the founders from within rather
than seceding. Their political descendants (The Whig and Republican
parties of that century) succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in creating a
centralized, bureaucratic empire that would rival the British and Spanish
empires.
Thompson falsifies history when he writes in his Salon article that
the idea of secession originated with “traitorous Southerners” and is “part
of the soiled fabric that stretches from John C. Calhoun” and the South
Carolina Nullification Ordinance of 1832 (which nullified the “Tariff of
Abominations”). As a matter of fact, New Englanders were the first to
discuss and plot secession, and there was a secession movement in the
Middle-Atlantic states in the 1850s (See William C Wright, The
Secession Movement in the Middle States). Some Northern
abolitionists advocated Northern secession prior to the War to Prevent
Southern Independence, and of course America was created by seceding from the
British Empire. In that sense, nothing is more American than the
idea of a voluntary union and freedom of association through the right
of secession. Earlier generations of Americans thought so.
Thompson also falsely associates the origins of nullification with John C.
Calhoun. The reality is that the colonists employed the concept as a
means of attempting to escape some of the tyrannical clutches of the British
empire, but nullification is mostly associated with the Kentucky and Virginia
Resolutions of 1798. Written by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison,
respectively, these resolutions announced that the states of Kentucky and
Virginia would not enforce the Adams administration’s Sedition Act, which
criminalized criticism of Adams and his government, since it was a clear
violation of the First Amendment.
The idea of nullification was subsequently used by Northerners who opposed
the Bank of the United States (a precursor of the Fed) and the Fugitive Slave
Act. It was not a trick used to “defend slavery,” as generations of
totalitarian-minded statists like Chuck Thompson have said in their
never-ending crusade to mis-educate and misinform the American public about
its own history.
Thompson is obviously unaware of the constitutional definition of treason
when he refers to “traitorous Southerners” of the nineteenth century.
Article 3, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution defines treason as “only”
levying war upon the United States, or giving aid and comfort to their
enemies. The “United States” is in the plural, signifying free and
independent states that are united in a cause. The word “their”
is most important because it also signifies that treason is defined only as
levying war upon “them” – the free and
independent states, not something called “the United States
government.” This of course is precisely what Lincoln did when he
levied war upon the Southern states.
The whole purpose of the Constitution, James Madison wrote in Federalist
#10, was to “restrain the violence of faction,” by which he meant unlimited
democracy. Thompson defines any and all efforts to restrain “the
violence of faction as “anti-Americanism” and “redneck poison.” His
position is the un-American one. He is so filled with hatred of
everything Southern that he even attacks the Waffle House restaurant chain, a
popular, cheap, breakfast place that exists all throughout the South, as
serving “redneck poison” to its customers. He thinks this is humorous,
as does the New York Times, which gave his “book” a glowing review.
Thompson makes the case that Southerners are generally knuckle-dragging
Neanderthals who stubbornly participate in national politics in a way that
keeps “real” Americans like him from realizing their dream of a totally,
one-hundred-percent unlimited government. He complains bitterly that
property taxes tend to be lower in the Southern states than in the Northern
states. Horrors!! He calls this “dysfunctional” government, the
latest left-wing buzz word that’s being used to described any hiccup in the
steady march toward totalitarian socialism in America.
Thompson also stupidly equates “America” with the federal government in
Washington by declaring that the “current attack on the
federal government” is “part of the hidebound Confederate agenda” that
displays an “antipathy toward America.” No, Chuck, to the extent that
there is a peaceful political “attack” on Big Government (Praise the Lord!),
it is because of antipathy towards unlimited looting and plundering of the
population by the 536 egomaniacal psychopaths who lord over us. We are
NOT the government, Chuck. Those of us in the productive, taxpaying
class are its victims.
Unlike the refined, polite, prosperous, and gleaming cities of the North,
such as Detroit (slum capital of America) and Chicago (murder capital of
America), Thompson portrays Southern cities and their inhabitants as
uniformly ignorant, violent, racist, and generally uncivilized. His
book spews hatred on every page. The real source of his obsessive hatred of
all things Southern seems to be his acknowledgment that Southerners have
sometimes not been very hospitable to the labor unions that have destroyed
Northern industry, nor to big, unlimited government that has destroyed
American prosperity. This must end, he says.
Despite the massive explosion of government spending, taxing, debt, and
money creation that has occurred during the Bush and Obama administrations,
Thompson surrealistically claims in his Salon article that “Our
government is under attack from a band of domestic anarchists . . . everyone
sees that.” Well thanks, Chuck, but surely you give me and my fellow
anarcho-capitalists way too
much credit. (Thompson apparently arrived at this conclusion by reading
about Senator Ted Cruz’s short and inconsequential filibuster over
“Obamacare” when he was out of the country).
If that is all it takes to cause such hysteria in the minds of left-wing
journalist like this one travel writer, he may just keel over dead upon
discovering LewRockwell.com. His rantings do serve one good purpose,
however; they bring out into the open the two-century-old attitude of
Northern “Yankees” (but not all Northerners by any means) that they are
superior to all others and should separate themselves from all those lesser
humans (See Clyde Wilson’s “The Yankee Problem in America”). If they
want to try to create a socialist “paradise” in the Northern states, I say
Let ‘Em Go. Secede. Maybe they WILL be better at socialism than the
Soviets, the Chinese, the North Koreans, Cubans, etc. Just keep the
rest of us out of it.
The Best of Thomas DiLorenzo