Will the South succeed (in destroying the Union) ?

From Salon, a provocative suggestion that the South needs to go.

If you imagine there’s anything even remotely new about the current movement to cripple the government, well, bless your heart....

In fact, it’s the same old obstructionist strategy that’s been pursued by traitorous Southerners in government since long before Robert E. Lee’s doomed charge at Gettysburg. It’s part of the same soiled fabric that stretches from John C. Calhoun and South Carolina’s 1832 Ordinance of Nullification—an argument that essentially said that if a state didn’t like a federal law it could simply ignore it—all the way to the Newt Gingrich-led government shutdown and de facto second paralysis brought about by his presidential impeachment campaign of the 1990s. With stops along the way to roll back Reconstruction, stop black kids from entering white schools, dismember the Voting Rights Act, etc., etc.

The south is disproportionately represented in the Suicide Caucus.

In a piece published earlier this month beneath the headline “32 Republicans Who Caused the Government Shutdown,” The Atlantic tallied up the hardliners who have bent the country into going along with their insidious shutdown. Of the 32 it counted...20 come from Southern states. ... That’s why although we were all supposed to act shocked and appalled when a Confederate flag showed up in front of the White House during a Tea Party protest last week, nobody actually was.

And this strategy is truly harming the US on the global stage.

Obama blamed the shutdown for canceling appearances at sessions where global leaders gather to figure out who’s going to play makeweight in world affairs in coming years and who’s going to sit on the sidelines. 

In the international press, the dominant theme that emerged from the APEC meetings was how Obama’s absence amounted to rolling out the red carpet for China and Russia. Taking the unaccustomed role of dominant players at the event, America’s primary global rivals wasted no opportunity to chisel away at American influence, all while giddily sound-biting about the United States’ torrential loss of financial and political authority in the world’s most robust economic region. 

If the anger and narcissism of an influential part of the U.S. government was preventing it from seeing the big picture—no need for the shaky U.S. dollar to continue on as the world’s standard currency when by comparison the Chinese yuan looks Rushmore-esque in its rock-solid reliability—then let’s get on with cutting deals with the superpowers who actually seem both super and powerful. Or at least who have an idea about how to handle their business....

So our influence wanes, along with our infrastructure.  IN the US, we are un-paving roads, slashing research, and denying climate change, trying to run back to 1862, while in other parts of the world, the 21st century is well on its way.

So you might wonder, did the South succeed, when it didn't secede?  There's a lot of anger building at the Tea Party south, the evangelical south, the south that takes more federal dollars than it gives, the south that seems to be dragging us into the past.  Or is that just a cover for our lingering racism, kleptomaniac plutocrats, and greedy wall street junkies?