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Thread: The South is holding America hostage

  1. #1

    The South is holding America hostage



    When I have described the well-considered, coherent political and economic strategies of the conservative white South, as I have done here, here and here, I am sometimes been accused of being a “conspiracy theorist.” But one need not believe that white-hooded Dragons and Wizards are secretly coordinating the actions of Southern conservative politicians from a bunker underneath Stone Mountain in Georgia to believe that a number of contemporary policies — from race-to-the-bottom economic policies to voter disfranchisement and attempts to decentralize or privatize federal social insurance entitlements — serve the interests of those who promote them, who tend to be white Southern conservatives.

    Just as a strategy is not a conspiracy, so it is not insanity. Ironically, American progressives, centrists and some Northern conservatives are only deluding themselves, when they insist that the kind of right-wing Southerners behind the government shutdown are “crazy.” Crazy, yes — crazy like a fox.

    Another mistake is the failure to recognize that the Southern elite strategy, though bound up with white supremacy throughout history, is primarily about cheap and powerless labor, not about race. If the South and the U.S. as a whole through some magical transformation became racially homogeneous tomorrow, there is no reason to believe that the Southern business and political class would suddenly embrace a new model of political economy based on high wages, high taxes and centralized government, rather than pursue its historical model of a low-wage, low-tax, decentralized system, even though all workers, employers and investors now shared a common skin color.

    So the struggle is not one to convert Southern Baptists to Darwinism or to get racists to celebrate diversity. The on-going power struggle between the local elites of the former Confederacy and their allies in other regions and the rest of the United States is not primarily about personal attitudes. It is about power and wealth.

    For some time, the initiative has rested with the Southern power elite, which knows what it wants and has a plan to get it. The strategy of the conservative South, as a nation-within-a nation and in the global economy, combines an economic strategy and a political strategy.

    The economic strategy is to maximize the attractiveness of the former Confederacy to external investors, by allowing Southern states to out-compete other states in the U.S., as well as other countries if possible, in a race to the bottom by means of low wages, stingy government welfare (which if generous increases the bargaining power of poor workers by decreasing their desperation) and low levels of environmental regulation.

    The political strategy of the Southern elite is to prevent the Southern victims of these local economic policies from teaming up with allies in other parts of the U.S. to impose federal-level reforms on the Southern states. Voter suppression seeks to prevent voting by lower-income Southerners of all races who are hostile to the Southern power elite. Partisan gerrymandering of the U.S. House of Representatives by conservatives in Southern state legislatures weakens the votes of anti-conservative Southerners, if they are allowed to vote.

    If voter suppression and vote dilution strategies fail, the Southern conservatives can still try to ward off unwelcome federally-imposed reforms that might weaken control of the Southern workforce by Southern employers and their political agents, by policies of devolving federal programs to the states, privatizing federal programs like Social Security and Medicare, blocking the implementation of new federal entitlements like Obamacare or a combination of these strategies.

    To date the response of progressives and centrists, as well as moderate conservatives in the North (who have a quite different tradition) to what might be called the Southern Autonomy Project has been feeble and reactive. The South acts, the rest of the country reacts.

    Here Midwestern Republican legislatures or governors try to copy the South’s anti-labor “right-to-work” legislation, and labor activists and liberals react. The legislatures in the South and their allies elsewhere pass voter suppression laws, and civil rights groups scramble to counteract them. Now the Southern-dominated Tea Party in the House shuts down the government and threatens to force the federal government into default. In this game of “Whack-a-mole,” the Southern right and its neo-Jacksonian allies in other parts of the country always has the initiative.

    Instead of waiting for the next Southern conservative outrage, and treating it as a single, isolated example of inexplicable craziness, the rest of America from center-left to center-right should recognize that it is dealing with different aspects of a single strategy by a regional elite — the Southern Autonomy Project. It is time for the non-Southern American majority, in alliance with many non-elite Southerners of all races, to target and attack every element of the Southern Autonomy Project simultaneously. If the neo-Confederates want to wage political and economic war, their fellow Americans should choose to respond with political and economic war on all fronts, not on the terms and in the places the Southern conservatives choose.

    Setting political difficulty aside, it is intellectually easy to set forth a grand national strategy that consists of coordinated federal policies to defeat the Southern Autonomy Project.

    A federal living wage. At one blow, a much higher federal minimum wage would cripple the ability of Southern states to lure companies from more generous states which supplement the too-low present federal minimum wage with higher local state or urban minimum wages. (Strong national unions could do the same, but that is not a realistic option at present.)

    Nationalization of social insurance. Social insurance programs with both federal and state components, like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), allow Southern states to be stingier than many other states, creating more desperate workers who are more dependent on the mercy of employers and elite-dominated charities. Completely federalizing Medicaid (as President Ronald Reagan suggested!) and other hybrid federal-state social insurance programs would cripple the Southern Autonomy Project further.

    Real voting rights. Using the authority of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Congress should completely federalize voting requirements for all federal, state and local elections, making it as easy as possible for U.S. citizens to vote — over the objections of kicking and screaming neo-Confederates.

    Nonpartisan redistricting. Partisan redistricting by majorities in state legislatures should be replaced by nonpartisan redistricting commissions, as in California, New Jersey and other states. The redistricting commissions should be truly nonpartisan, not “bipartisan” arrangements in which incumbent Republicans and incumbent Democrats cut deals to protect their safe seats from competition. (Electoral reforms like instant run-off voting and proportional representation are struggles for a more distant future).

    Abolish the Senate filibuster. The filibuster is not part of the U.S. constitution. It has been used by Southern white conservatives from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first to preserve Southern white power and economic privilege. This relic of premodern British parliamentary politics should be abolished. Democracy means majority rule. If the Southern Right loses a battle in Congress, it can try to round up allies and win next time. It should no longer be able to paralyze the Senate, the Congress or the federal government as a whole.

    Abolish the federal debt ceiling completely. The federal debt ceiling is another institution like the filibuster which has now been ruined by being abused by Southern conservatives. Now that the Southern right is trying to turn it into a recurrent tool of hostage-taking when it loses votes in Congress, the federal debt ceiling should be abolished. The federal government should be authorized to borrow any amount necessary to fund spending appropriated or authorized by Congress, if there is any shortfall in tax revenues.

    It continues...

    http://www.salon.com/2013/10/13/the_...erica_hostage/
    "The Patriarch"



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  3. #2
    As if!!!

    The south and midwest could hold America hostage if they chose to all take a few weeks of vacation. Imagine people in the coastal cities actually needing to produce what they consume.

  4. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by fr33 View Post
    As if!!!

    The south and midwest could hold America hostage if they chose to all take a few weeks of vacation. Imagine people in the coastal cities actually needing to produce what they consume.
    +rep

  5. #4
    The train to Grinderswitch is runnin' right on time...

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by NorthCarolinaLiberty View Post
    The train to Grinderswitch is runnin' right on time...
    I'll be. That band is new to me, + rep.
    "The Patriarch"

  7. #6
    I would be more than happy to leave the Union if they would let me.
    “First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.” Lying Sack of Crap

  8. #7
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  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by shane77m View Post
    I would be more than happy to leave the Union if they would let me.
    I've been trying. They keep following me.
    "The Patriarch"



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  11. #9
    The article writer sounds like a useless weakling loser.

    " 'The South' isn't giving me enough numnums, it's persecution. They won't adopt even more of my precious social programs, and the 'elite' there are persecuting me by not giving me all their monies to spend how I want to spend it. Their economy is winning too much, it's just not fair. Such persecution, such endless infamy. The power elite make money and don't give me all of it, that's tyranny, everything is tyranny.
    Idiot can't hack it but nevertheless should still be the one running things. Rednecks are mean to me, everyone is mean. What a world, woe is me. So let me run things, instead of the other guy."


    I'd sooner die than afford this wet noodle inept garbage-stain the authority look after my supposed best interests. He's no real alternative to the rent-seekers already around.

  12. #10
    The South is holding America hostage
    Good.
    Rand Paul 2016

  13. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Origanalist View Post
    I've been trying. They keep following me.
    Of course they are! They are deeply concerned about your welfare, Origanalist.
    They fear that you might end up in a "low-wage, low-tax, decentralized system."
    That couldn't possibly be good for you!. Don't you understand this?

    No, wait, of course you don't! We're all just lowly peons.
    Well, let's not worry our poor little noggins over it.
    They know what's best for us, I'm sure ...
    Last edited by Occam's Banana; 10-15-2013 at 09:22 AM.
    The Bastiat Collection · FREE PDF · FREE EPUB · PAPER
    Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

    • "When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law."
      -- The Law (p. 54)
    • "Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
      -- Government (p. 99)
    • "[W]ar is always begun in the interest of the few, and at the expense of the many."
      -- Economic Sophisms - Second Series (p. 312)
    • "There are two principles that can never be reconciled - Liberty and Constraint."
      -- Harmonies of Political Economy - Book One (p. 447)

    · tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito ·

  14. #12
    I want this author to say what he thinks the federal government ought to do if, after enacting the policies he advocates, some states secede.

    I assume I know the answer. But he needs to say it explicitly. Stop the sophistry and tell us what your plan really boils down to. And then tell us again, who's holding whom hostage?

  15. #13
    To be fair, the South did try to secede a while back, but they weren't allowed to.
    Radical in the sense of being in total, root-and-branch opposition to the existing political system and to the State itself. Radical in the sense of having integrated intellectual opposition to the State with a gut hatred of its pervasive and organized system of crime and injustice. Radical in the sense of a deep commitment to the spirit of liberty and anti-statism that integrates reason and emotion, heart and soul. - M. Rothbard

  16. #14
    So of all the people he lists in his article Ted Cruz is the only one in the South. All the rest are the Midwest....guess there goes his whole premises that we're all a bunch of racists, bigots and slave owners......you know because all the slum jobs in all their big cities that pay minimum wage are anything different then ours.

    If we have this massive divide why not let us leave? We'll happily sign on the dotted line and become our own country. You can keep all your progressive BS and we'll become the economic power house of the world.

  17. #15
    Ugh, why would you want to give salon any traffic? After Glenn Greenwald gave that place the slip (and the community at large there HATED him and anyone who followed his articles), it officially became devoid of any worth.

    Salon also employs some douchebag from Wonkette or whatever it was who went 'undercover' to go around campaigning during the '08 Paul campaign in order to ridicule us for pageviews.
    Last edited by RM918; 10-15-2013 at 10:04 AM.

  18. #16
    Face it,we're just never going to be able to convince a bunch of snaggletoothed rednecks with beer bellies and one syllable vocabularies about the incredible awesomeness of:
    a new model of political economy based on high wages, high taxes and centralized government
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  20. #17

  21. #18
    I would gladly leave peacefully if they'd let me.

  22. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by mad cow View Post
    Face it,we're just never going to be able to convince a bunch of snaggletoothed rednecks with beer bellies and one syllable vocabularies about the incredible awesomeness of:a new model of political economy based on high wages, high taxes and centralized government
    Especially since that's what the first revolution was fought to prevent.

  23. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Nic View Post
    I would gladly leave peacefully if they'd let me.
    No, youre headed to a fema camp for indoctrination. Not peacefully to some other land.
    Last edited by jbauer; 10-15-2013 at 10:41 AM.

  24. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by RM918 View Post
    Ugh, why would you want to give salon any traffic? After Glenn Greenwald gave that place the slip (and the community at large there HATED him and anyone who followed his articles), it officially became devoid of any worth.

    Salon also employs some douchebag from Wonkette or whatever it was who went 'undercover' to go around campaigning during the '08 Paul campaign in order to ridicule us for pageviews.
    But but but... they said something almost nice about Rand once, therefore they are on OUR team now....
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  25. #22
    Wow, some stunning revelations from that "article".

    - The Tea Party is a Southern movement. Guess a lot of people have to move.
    - The "Southern Elite" are the only people who want cheap labor. Thank goodness, for a minute there it seemed like all of the elite wanted cheap labor. Good to know it's exclusively the South.
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  26. #23
    Michael Lind has become a full blown economic fascist.

  27. #24
    I want to try something...

    "That's racist! The racial hatred of many in this country towards white Southerns has grown in recent years and in many ways encompasses the whole of what is sometimes called the modern liberal movement. While in the past the subtle hints of this racist agenda made it's way into modern culture with such cue terms as conservative and evangelical, now their attacks have become more open and common place and has found more than just a dark corner of the Democratic party..."

    Hmmm, somehow this seems to fit better than when the libs us the race card on us. oh well. la de da.
    I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, 'Give, give.'

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  29. #25
    Best watch out. We're now passive-aggressive down here.

  30. #26
    Who would have thought a balanced budget would have been this easy! Starts Thursday! Woo hoo!

  31. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by jbauer View Post
    No, youre headed to a fema camp for indoctrination. Not peacefully to some other land.

  32. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by William R View Post
    Michael Lind has become a full blown economic fascist.
    BACKGROUND Michael Lind:

    Michael Lind (born April 23, 1962) is an American writer. Currently Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., Editor of New American Contract and its blog Value Added, and a columnist for Salon magazine. Lind was a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School and has taught at Johns Hopkins and Virginia Tech. He has been an editor or staff writer at The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New Republic and The National Interest. Lind has published a number of books on U.S. history, political economy, foreign policy and politics as well as fiction, poetry and children’s literature.
    Lind has examined and defended the tradition of American democratic nationalism associated with Alexander Hamilton in a series of books, including The Next American Nation (1995), Hamilton’s Republic (1997), What Lincoln Believed (2004) and Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States (2012). Lind has also written two books on U.S. foreign policy, The American Way of Strategy (2006) and Vietnam: The Necessary War (1999). A former neoconservative in the tradition of New Deal liberalism, Lind criticized the American Right in Up From Conservatism: Why the Right is Wrong for America (1996) and Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics (2004). Lind has also published a novel, Powertown (1996), a narrative poem, The Alamo (1997), and a children’s book, Bluebonnet Girl (2004).
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  33. #29
    I've never read so much insufferably condescending, self-congratulatory pablum in my entire life. If the author truly believes that (relatively) low taxes and low regulations have been anything but a boon for the south, and that fiscally conservative southerners are just misguided yokels who need the sage DC overlords to take us by the hand and show us how much we've erred, he/she should talk to people who have actually lived in both the north and the south and get an informed opinion, instead of just conjuring decades-old Boss Hog cliches and Antebellum plantation imagery.

    To paraphrase one of the classics...everyone on this forum is now dumber for having read it. I award the author zero points, and may God have mercy on his soul.
    Last edited by BuddyRey; 10-15-2013 at 07:26 PM.
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  34. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by BuddyRey View Post
    I've never read so much insufferably condescending, self-congratulatory pablum in my entire life.
    He's been around for a while. I remember some of his screeds being pilloried in Liberty magazine way back in '90s. As HOLLYWOOD shows above, he's pretty much a dyed-in-the-wool Establishmentarian. He's the same jackass who concocted this tripe: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...plies-to-Salon
    The Bastiat Collection · FREE PDF · FREE EPUB · PAPER
    Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

    • "When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law."
      -- The Law (p. 54)
    • "Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
      -- Government (p. 99)
    • "[W]ar is always begun in the interest of the few, and at the expense of the many."
      -- Economic Sophisms - Second Series (p. 312)
    • "There are two principles that can never be reconciled - Liberty and Constraint."
      -- Harmonies of Political Economy - Book One (p. 447)

    · tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito ·

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