Why the South Cannot Rise Again

I have often argued that had the Confederacy successfully seceded from the Union, the American South today would be part of Mexico. The South was never in a strong position for war. It was an agricultural region with little capability for manufacturing war materiel. Had it been sprung from the Union, the French Army occupying neighboring Mexico would have marched into the South in such a way as to make Sherman’s March to the Sea look like an afternoon hike.

In the aftermath of President Barrack Obama's election, a bunch of Obama-hating post-election dead-enders passed around petitions in all 50 states calling for secession from the Union. Most of the action, of course, was in the Red states, those that vote most often for Republicans. And most of those Red states are in the Old South. Since Donald Trump took up domicile in the White House, his racist-bating rhetoric has only encouraged those same dead-enders.

I stand by my conjecture above. If secession succeeded today, the result would be the same as it would have a century and a half ago—the South would still end up part of Mexico.

But it won’t succeed. It won’t even get a start. Bigotry might still be alive in Dixie, but the sociological

conditions that allowed the secession of the South in 1860 simply don’t exist today.

A Rich Man’s Movement

The southern secession movement in the mid-1800s was largely a rich man’s movement. The South has always been more oligarchic than the North. Plantations owners wielded great political power. They used their wealth to finance “filibusters,” mercenaries armies sent to take over Latin American countries to turn them into future slave states. Abolition threatened their cheap source of labor and that, in turn, threatened their profit margins.

The average southern man, however, was simply poor and ill-educated. He had little knowledge of the Union, or anything beyond a few square miles of the state in which he lived. Typically, he had no concern about slavery one way or another. To him, his state was his country. The idea of blue coats marching into his state was simply an act of aggression against his country. As a result, southern men were easily fooled into becoming cannon fodder for slave owners looking to save their profits.

To begin with, African Americans are no longer an enslaved people in the South. Minorities of all races are becoming the majority in the United States. Unlike the 1800s, they have a voice—a strong voice. And they vote.

The populace of the South today is also much better educated and much more aware of the rest of the country, if not the world. Far more of them were raised in other states, or studied in other states. They have a world view that just didn’t exist in the 19th century.

Moreover, those better educated Southerners are well aware that their very livelihoods depend on spending from Washington, D.C.

Dependent on Washington

Federal spending on such programs as defense, aerospace, agriculture, energy, Social Security, and Medicare is heaviest in the Red states. As much as some of their citizens might think of themselves as independent and self-reliant, they are actually the biggest “takers,” receiving far more federal funds per person than they send to Washington in taxes.

According to research conducted by the business website 24/7 Wall St., Red states make up eight of the top 10 states receiving the most federal dollars: North Dakota, West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, New Mexico, Maryland, Virginia, and Alaska. Connecticut and Hawaii were the only Blue states in the top 10. Research by the Washington Post found similar results.

The fact is this Union is held together by an economic spider web of federal spending. Any attempt by a state to break away would result in an immediate economic collapse in that state. Large corporations with federal contracts – whose only loyalty lies with the source of their profits – would quickly pull up roots and relocate to a loyal state to keep those contracts. Subcontractors working for those corporations would do likewise or wither. Housing markets in secession states would collapse as workers moved to Union states to keep their jobs, and construction jobs would soon disappear.

Breakaway states where the economy relies on imported and exported products would be unable to do either. The federal government not only controls all the air corridors crisscrossing the nation, but also all the intrastate waterways. Without the FAA to regulate air traffic, or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to maintain ports or rivers like the Mississippi and the Missouri, commerce would come to a standstill.

Defenseless

Seceding states would be left defenseless from outside aggression. In 1860, state militias were funded entirely by the states. When the Civil War started, they were able to raise an army from state-funded militia. But it didn't last. The Confederate states were unable – perhaps unwilling – to raise enough tax revenue to fund the rebel army. By the end of the war, the Confederate Army was short of everything needed by its troops—clothing, shoes, food, ammunition. Johnny Reb fought much of the war barefoot and starving.

Had the South successfully seceded, its army would have been no match for the French army in Mexico. Napoleon III was keen on recapturing land the first Napoleon reluctantly sold to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Throughout the Civil War, French troops stood ready to invade the American south had the opportunity arose.

Today, Washington, DC pays 95 percent of the costs to maintain each state’s National Guard, the modern day organized state militia. Since Red states today are as reluctant to raise taxes as their Civil War predecessors, it would be impossible for them to maintain their state militias. Any border state that secedes from the Union would see its state militia fall apart, leaving the state vulnerable to invasion from more powerful countries such as Mexico, Canada or, in the case of Alaska, Russia.

When our Founding Fathers created this country in the 18th century, they originally founded a confederation of states. The loose bounds of that confederacy made governance nearly impossible, so our Founders created the Union.

In 1860, the seceding states also created a confederation. It worked no better than the original confederation. Despite early rebel battle victories, the Confederacy could not support its army or maintain itself as a country.

There is no reason to believe a third try would be the charm.

 

The Myth of Republican National Security Prowess

Each election year, Americans are bombarded with Republican claims that the Democrats are weak on defense, and only the GOP can protect America. Historically, however, the Republican Party has been pathetically weak on national security – so bad in fact, we came close to losing more than one war.

After the end of the American Civil War, the Republican Party opposed maintaining an  army of any appreciable strength. As soon as the war ended, the GOP-controlled Congress reduced the U.S. Army to a bare shadow of its wartime strength. They did this despite the fact that a very clear and present danger existed at the country’s southern border. At that point in history, the much larger French Army occupied Mexico. French dictator, Napoleon III, openly harbored  a desire to wrestle control of France’s former Louisiana Territory back from the United States. 

Nevertheless, Republicans repeatedly cut the army’s strength. Throughout the late 1800s, during which the GOP held virtual one-party rule, the American army’s strength dropped to 27,000 regular troops. What troops we did have were poorly trained and poorly armed. While the rest of the world’s armies were adopting modern magazine-fed repeating rifles, the U.S. Army was still armed with archaic single-shot Springfield “Trapdoor” rifles, many of them simply remanufactured from Civil War muzzle loading guns. 

During the Indian Campaigns of that period, many of the Native American tribes were better armed than the average army regiment. Col. George Custer and the men who met their fate with him at the Little Bighorn did so not only because they were outnumbered, but they were out-gunned, too. Armed with their single-shot Springfields, Custer’s men could not match the intensity of fire offered by Sitting Bull’s forces, many of whom were armed with repeating rifles like the Henry, the Spencer, and the Winchester. 

Out Gunned by the Spaniards 

Many of our troops were still armed with Trapdoors during the Spanish American War in 1898. Those who were issued modern Krag-Jorgensen magazine-fed, bolt-action rifles complained that because of the lack of funds for ammunition, the army had  disabled the magazines, requiring soldiers to reload the weapon after each shot. The rifles also still used black power, which revealed the shooter’s position with a massive cloud of smoke. 

The Spanish Army, on the other hand, was armed  with state-of-the-art Mauser repeating rifles and rapid firing Maxim machine guns, both firing smokeless powder. The only rapid fire weapon our troops had were Civil War-vintage Gatling Guns. 

The American Navy didn’t fare much better under Republican rule. In 1881 the London humor magazine Puck described the U.S. Navy as a force of "three mud-scows supplemented by a superannuated canal-boat." It wasn’t much of an exaggeration. 

The GOP-controlled Congress funded a naval shipbuilding program that began in 1890 and continued throughout the end of the century. But the funding they provided for training ship crews was so meager, sailors were rarely able to practice their gunnery. As a result, during the Spanish American War, U.S. naval gunnery was pathetic.  At the Battle of Manila Bay, American ships fired a total of 4,959 shells of various sizes. They scored only 72 hits. At the Naval  Battle of Santiago de Cuba, the U.S. Navy fired 1,300 shells; only 25 found their mark. 

In his memoir of the Spanish American War, Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican himself, condemned his own party’s failure to support the army and navy with adequate funding. In the end, the U.S. won the Spanish American War only by  the courage of its soldiers and sailors, and the fact the Spanish never wanted to fight a war over Cuba in the first place. 

TR tried to improve American military power during his presidency, but his policies were largely reversed by his own party after he left  the White House. 

When a European war broke out in 1914, it was the isolationist Republican Party that led the movement to keep America out of it. It would be up to a peace-loving Democratic president, Woodrow Wilson, to see the dangers posed to this country by a collapse of Britain and France and build up our military in preparation to sending them “over there.” Still, America’s military equipment was so limited that the bulk of U.S. troops in WWI were armed with British Enfield rifles, French-made Chauchat machine guns, and French- and British-built aircraft. 

When Republicans again controlled the government in the interwar years, U.S. military strength again shrank and stagnated. Important legislation passed in 1920 established the framework for an improved, professional army. However, because Republicans controlled both houses from 1920 to the early 1930s, lack of appropriate funding prevented the reforms from being fully implemented. The U.S. Army so stagnated that some career officers remained junior officers like lieutenants and captains for nearly their whole careers. 

Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt and his fellow Democrats in Congress began the  rebuilding of the American military in the early 1930s, despite  opposition from isolationist – and in many cases, pro-fascist – Republican legislators. 

Establishment of the Defense Industry 

World War II was followed by years of decline in conventional forces, as the atomic bomb  was considered the weapon of the future.  Outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, however,  brought with it the need for a massive buildup of conventional American forces and equipment. When US manufacturers balked at retooling for war, President Harry Truman made a momentous decision that would impact the U.S. for the rest of history – with passage of the Defense Production Act of 1950,  he created the defense industry. 

Once the defense industry became a permanent form of business in the  United States, the Republican attitude to military spending changed. From that point on, the pro-corporation Republican Party would push as much money as possible to the defense contractors. 

But spending on the defense industry doesn’t necessarily equate to making America strong.  Massive defense spending during the Reagan administration did little more than triple our national debt and turn the U.S. from a creditor nation to a debtor nation.  With defense manufacturers overcharging  million of dollars for such follies as “crash-proof” coffee makers and the so-called “Star Wars” missile defense system, there was literally little money left for maintenance. 

As a result, some older Navy ships were unable to leave port due to mechanical breakdowns. Entire squadrons of aircraft reportedly were cannibalized for spare parts. At the time, I served in a Navy reserve ground combat unit that, despite being part of the country’s Rapid Response Force, had no weapons; Reagan had sent them to El Salvador and there was no money to  buy replacements. 

Defense from Terrorists 

In 1999, the Clinton administration received a single warning of a pending Al Qaeda attack on the U.S. President Bill Clinton immediately placed the country’s entire law enforcement apparatus on alert. As a result, the so-called Millennium Plot was thwarted when the intended bomber was caught trying to cross into the U.S. from Canada. 

In 2001, the Bush administration received some 40 separate warnings from American and foreign intelligence agencies that Al Qaeda was planning an imminent attack. George Bush ignored all of them.  On September 11, more than 2,000 Americans paid the price for Bush’s national security incompetence. 

Less than two years later, in March of 2002, Bush told reporters he was no longer concerned with finding the organizer of that attack, Osama Bin Laden. Bush eventually closed down the CIA office dedicated to tracking and capturing or killing Bin Laden. Two useless and unnecessary wars later, the Al Qaeda mastermind was still at large when Bush left office in 2008. 

It would be left to Bush’s Democratic successor, Barack Obama, to reopen the search for Bin Laden and launch the covert operation that finally made him pay for his treachery. 

So much for Republican prowess on national security.

 

Jesus Hates Us, This I Know...

“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Matthew 19:24

 Apparently, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker credits God in his war on the working class in his state. While running for governor, Walker did what all Republicans do these days – he announced he is a Christian. In an interview with a so-called Christian broadcasting station, Walker said God told him to make many of the decisions in his life. One of those decisions was leaving college to take a job with IBM. I never knew God ran an employment service. More likely, Walker is using God to bury the fact the governor was a sub-average student who became a college drop out.

 The implication of Walker’s testament is that everything he’s doing in Wisconsin – handing out $140 million in tax cuts for wealthy corporations, then claiming the state is facing bankruptcy; denying state workers their bargaining rights; taking millions of dollars away from the public school system to finance vouchers for private schools for the rich – all this, he says, God and Jesus told him to do.

 

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The only prophets these self-styled disciples of Christ follow are the ones preceded by dollar signs. In my opinion, they epitomize those Jesus accused of turning places of worship into “dens of thieves.”

 

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It amazes me how many Republicans claim God talks directly to them. How does he it do it? Does he call them collect? Does he send them videos like Osama Bin Laden? In Walker’s case, how does he know he’s really talking to God and not getting punk’d by another liberal blogger?

Moreover, how does a man who claims to be a follower of Christ’s teachings of love, charity, tolerance and forgiveness reconcile his actions of taking money from the poor and working class citizens of his state and giving it to its richest residents?

 Certainly, it helps if you are a cynical sociopath. No doubt that’s the case with Newt Gingrich, the disgraced former Republican House leader who, with a straight face, recently told a Christian news show that his love of country caused him to work so hard it destroyed two of his three marriages. In Gingrich’s mind his habitual womanizing had nothing do with those failed marriages, or with his forced resignation from Congress.

But what if Walker actually believes he is doing God’s work?

We have become a nation in which rich people who got rich by lying, stealing and cheating, are getting elected to leadership positions in state and federal government. Walker’s own reputation as a corrupt county administrator was so bad he lost the county he used to run. Rick Scott, the new governor of Florida, was CEO of the health care corporation convicted of the largest Medicare fraud in U.S. history. U.S. Rep. Darryl Issa, the California congressman now planning a series of investigations into what he claims are crimes committed by the Obama administration, has an arm’s-length rap sheet including grand theft auto and arson for profit.

Jesus Loves the  Rich

How do these men face the electorate when they should be hanging their heads in shame? How do they call themselves men of God and followers of Jesus Christ’s teachings? I’ll tell you how. Because they know something you and I don’t: They know Jesus hates us. He hates us because we’re not rich.

One of the fastest growing sects of Christianity in this country is called the Gospel of Prosperity. Dating back to the 1930s – during the Republican-caused Great Depression – the Gospel of Prosperity believes the Bible got it wrong. Christ wasn’t sent by God to minister to the poor and downtrodden. He was sent to aid the wealthiest of the wealthy.

Under this form of Christian belief, the rich have no problem getting through the Gates of Heaven. It is the poor and middle class who will have a harder time getting through the Pearly Gates than a camel has getting through a needle’s eye. You can do whatever you need to do to become rich – lie, cheat, steal – because you are doing God’s work. Who could argue with that kind of missionary work? But it also involves destroying the lives of other people.

If you think this is just hype, consider this: dozens of conservative members of Congress – both Republicans and Democrats – live nearly rent-free in a Washington, DC condominium project owned by The Family. If you’ve followed the sexual scandals of Sen. John  Ensign and South Carolina  Gov. Mark Sanford, you’ve heard of The Family. Also known as the Fellowship, the Family has been criticized by mainstream Christian churches as being a cult-like congregation of the rich and elite that caters to their appetite for power and wealth.

Gospel of Prosperity

The best known apostle of the Gospel of Prosperity is Oral Roberts, the televangelist who in 1987 invoked his viewers to send him $8 million or he would be called to Heaven by God. I never understood why a man of religion would fear being called to meet his Maker. But apparently, Roberts’ viewers felt compelled to save him from his just reward by sending him their life savings. Roberts was spared, temporarily. He died in 2009 in an exclusive enclave of Newport Beach, California, after he was forced to sale off his homes in Palm Springs and Beverly Hills, as well as three of his Mercedes. 

Another who preaches the prosperity gospel is TV cleric Pat Robertson, who has financed his lavish lifestyle with his viewers’ donations to his church and its shady disaster relief programs. Robertson’s belief that God wants him to find a gold mine led the televangelist to make a business deal with Liberia’s dictator Charles Taylor to look for gold in that African country.

Now deposed, Taylor is standing trial before an international criminal court for crimes against humanity involving his attacks on neighboring Sierra Leon, motivated by Taylor’s coveting of that country’s mineral riches. Robertson, who claimed Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake were God’s vengeance (apparently because the victims were poor), continues to defend Taylor to this day.

You can also count George W. Bush in this category, too. When Bush, whose family business – the Carlyle Group – reaped a fortune from the war in Iraq, said he was a Christian, the Gospel of Prosperity was the Christianity he was referring to.

The only prophets these self-styled disciples of Christ follow are the ones preceded by dollar signs. In my opinion, they epitomize those Jesus accused of turning places of worship into “dens of thieves.”

With such a belief system, one can commit any reprehensible, even criminal, act to gain power and wealth – lie, steal, betray, even start a war – because you’re doing God’s will. With this corrupt moral compass, you can commit any sin; as long as you say you accept Jesus into your heart, you’ll be forgiven. To me, this gospel’s idea of Christ smells more like the Antichrist. In the meantime, the rest of us are just so much flotsam left in the wake of God’s miraculous work.

I am certain Gov. Walker considers himself a good Christian as well as a patriot. But then history is filled with evil men who cloaked themselves in patriotism and Christ. “When fascism comes to America,” Sinclair Lewis prophesized in 1935, “it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” If there is a hell, then I believe there is special place there for Gov. Walker and his phony “Christians.” They, in turn, would consider me a heretic for suggesting God and Jesus were interested in such heathens as the unwashed masses. So be it. I will remain, as Jackson Browne wrote, “a heathen and a pagan on the side of the Rebel Jesus.”