The South Shall Fall Again, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #210

February 21, 2011 Mike Gold 21 Comments

Last year Texas’s governor said they might secede. OK, so by today’s standards and according to present law, the guy’s a traitor. But when it comes to politicians south of the Mason-Dixon Line, he is by no means alone.

Ever since a black man became president, South Carolina’s political hacks have been trying to separate their state from federal laws. Not that these South Carolinians have all that much to brag about: Mark Sanford, Joe Wilson, Alvin Greene, Jim DeMint, Jake Knotts, even Strom Thurmond after he died… hokey smoke, South Carolina is a veritable Who’s Who of 21^st century political sleaze. But this one takes the cake.

Now Republican state senator Lee Bright wants his state of South Carolina to create its own currency.

Looking at what this nincompoop sees as the oncoming destruction of the Federal Reserve System’s currency, his legislation calls for the creation of a joint legislative subcommittee which would study the need, means, and schedule for establishing South Carolina’s own currency. When Senator Bright said “joint,” I gather he was talking about the source of his inspiration. Then again, Mr. Bright owes $67,261.02 in back-taxes to his state and they’ve got a lien on his trucking company. So if anybody in South Carolina needs to create a pile of funny money out of thin air, it’s this guy.

Bright is by no means a lonely voice in the dark. This is the 150^th anniversary of the first Civil War and, therefore, Jefferson Davis’s inauguration as president of the Confederate states. Parties, parades, official events and Stars-and-Bars abound throughout the South. The Mississippi Sons of Confederate Veterans has been seeking approval of a license plate to honor Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general (and, later, the Ku Klux Klan’s first national leader) who made millions trading slaves and was charged with murdering hundreds of black prisoners of war.

In Alabama, they’re doing a parade to honor Davis. The route – coincidentally – starts right by the spot where Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white man. The parade route then goes by the place where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and friends finished the seminal 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march. These Great Americans then pass the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Dr. King got his first pastor gig. You know, that church that was firebombed while King’s wife and baby daughter were there back in 1956. Then they manage to weave themselves within two blocks of the Greyhound station where those Freedom Riders who were working to desegregate interstate bus travel were beaten to a pulp in 1961.

Getting back to South Carolina, local citizens in period dress held themselves a sweet “Secession Ball” in honor of the 150th anniversary of South Carolina’s withdrawal from the Union. I wonder whom they got to serve the petit fours.

Locals throughout the South say their celebrations honor those who fought on the side of treason during the so-called “the War for Southern Independence.” “It’s not about slavery,” Tennessee organizer Tom Strain says. “It’s about remembering our history.”

So according to that philosophy, decedents of Nazis should be allowed to publically remember their history. After all, those Nazis were fighting for their country – they were not traitors to anything except humanity.

Back in 1861 the South had every legal right to quit the United States for whatever reason they wanted. In this specific case, slavery is not the issue. Some see that as treason and I think it meets that definition from the perspective of the motherland as well as from the perspective offered by this point in time. Certainly our Founding Fathers were concerned that if their Civil War – they called it a revolution – failed, they would all be put to death as traitors. Well, the Civil War of 1861 is no different.

But when it comes to states leaving the Union, there was nothing in the Constitution to prohibit such action. That’s since been adjusted, but at the time Abraham Lincoln was fighting a battle of principle and not of law. The only reason the imprisoned President Davis was not charged with treason and was instead released from prison after two years was because the militant abolitionist Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase (whip out a $10,000 bill – that’s Chase’s visage), found nothing in the Constitution that prohibited the secession of states at that time.

Hindsight is 20-20, and perhaps it took 145 years (or, in my mind, 87 years thanks to Strom Thurmond) to prove him wrong. Back in the day, the North should have let the South go.

I’ll tell you what, Senator Bright. I’ll support your move, in fact I’ll even come down there and campaign for it, if you first do two things: return the $12 billion dollars your state receives each year from the federal government, including those dreaded “earmarks” and some $300 million in those hated “stimulus” funds, and, oh yeah, secede from the Union.

Again.

Nuevo-Separatist, anarcho-syndicalist and www.ComicMix.com editor-in-Chief Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather radio show on America’s pop culture channel The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants annoy people each and every day at the same venue.