Bring back the Confederacy

I’ve gotta admit, ever since the tea-baggers took over Wisconsin it feels like I’m living in a Confederate state with lousy winters.

The more I think of it the more I’m convinced that it’s time to bring back the old Confederate States of America.

All you have to do is look at the red/blue maps from the last two presidential elections. The bulk of the states that despise Obama are the states of the Old South. The majority of the Tea Party Republicans that have constipated Congress are from the old CSA. Today the national Republican Party is rending its garments over losing another presidential election to a black man. Wouldn’t all the bigots, right-wing Christians, corporate dictators and warmongers just be happier if they had their own country?

Of course, in many ways the Civil War never really ended. For nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Jim Crow ruled the south. As Douglas Blackmon proved in his seminal book Slavery by Another Name, slavery was simply converted into prison labor, thereby legalizing the torture and murder of black workers for the profit of capitalists and corrupt politicians. Prison peonage wasn’t abolished until Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Circular No. 3591  in 1941. The National Labor Relations Act never covered domestic or farm labor and the Taft-Hartley “slave labor” Act of 1947 established anti-union “right-to-work” laws that have gutted unions. This hatred of working people reigns supreme to this day and is spreading to northern states like Wisconsin and Michigan.

The extreme right-wing Republican garbage that we’ve had to endure since the late 1960’s dates back to Nixon’s Southern Strategy. The Jim Crow south was transformed from solid Democrat to solid Republican. The former abolitionist Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln is now made up of angry white people who yearn for the good old days of racism, voter suppression, and free prison labor.

So why don’t we give it to them? Let’s resurrect the Confederate States of America and allow the neo-fascist right to finally have their own country. All the tea-baggers could self-deport from Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio and settle in Texas, Alabama, Mississippi or South Carolina. Union busters and “job creators” would then be free to create their own bigoted corporate utopia. They could discriminate at will against all the people they hate. Would the new CSA re-establish slavery? Not a chance. Walmart would never want to feed, clothe and house their employees. It’s easier to just pay slave wages.

Of course we would also have to let captive workers from the CSA immigrate to the Union. After a period of trans-migration they would be free to create a humane society that would respect workers rights, women’s rights, immigrant rights, gay marriage, public education and democracy. We would finally have a functioning federal government and the Confederate States of America could rejoice in their inhumanity.

Mike Konopacki
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