{pic by Big Dubya}

Now, I don’t know much about what you might call “knowledge.” In fact, it’s probably safe to say that I know less than nothing when it comes to history, politics, economics, science, and all those other fancy subjects that liberal university-type people think are so important. But one thing I do know is that this Obama administration and this Democrat Congress are socialist. It’s not that I really know what the word “socialism” means, mind you. I mean, I know it’s like what they have in China and Russia and Cuba and places like that. It’s kind of like when a Big Government takes your money and spreads it around to everyone—sort of like the Feds do with Medicare and Social Security, except that I like my Medicare and Social Security, so don’t mess with them. But I don’t want anything else like Medicare and Social Security because that would just be too socialistical. I’d be against Medicare and Social Security, too, if we didn’t already have them and I didn’t already like having them…

But that’s not the point. The point is that people on the T.V. and the radio like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Ann Coulter tell me that Obama and the Democrats are socialist, and I believe them. It’s kind of like accepting that my 1978 edition of the New International Version of the English translation of the Bible is the Word of God. It’s something you just have to take on faith, and asking for proof kind of ruins the whole thing. I mean, demanding “proof” that the Bible is the Word of God is pretty much proof that you’re an atheist, right? So demanding proof that Rush and Glenn and Ann are telling the truth about Obama being a socialist is pretty much proof that you’re a socialist.

I just know what I know, you know?

I am brimming over with ill-defined pride and faux patriotism—and nothing you say could ever change my mind.

I am an All-American Fool.

{pic by luna715}

The idea of secession from the United States is often bandied about in Far Right circles as if it were the dire Nuclear Option within the conservative political arsenal. Just last week, on September 4, conservative economist Walter E. Williams broached the topic on the Rush Limbaugh Show. Williams—an occasional fill-in and hand puppet for the Dark Lord himself—was discussing the not-quite-mass movement for secession that is afoot in New Hampshire and opined that secession didn’t work “last time” (that unpleasant Civil War incident), but it did work “the first time in 1776,” and it would be nice to “see whether we could break the tie” and “have a sovereign nation.” Similarly, Texas Governor Rick Perry, appealing to the nebulous Right Wing populist rage at one of the Fox News “Tea Parties” last April, floated the possibility of secession “if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people” (apparently, he forgot which party won and which party lost in the elections last November). And there is no shortage of neo-Confederate hate groups, such as the League of the South, which are devoted to the idea of secession as a means of escaping federal intrusion upon the God-given right of states to enslave human beings for fun and profit.

Implicit in Right Wing chatter about secession is the assumption that it somehow constitutes a “threat”; that the inhabitants of a newly shrunk United States would bemoan the day they lost the invaluable contributions which the Far Right makes to Human Progress. But let us consider what would actually be “lost” were the United States of America (U.S.A.) to jettison the original 11 members of the Confederate States of America (C.S.A.): Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Even a cursory examination of available data indicates that the U.S.A. might benefit enormously from a southern-style divorce of this kind.

For instance, at a time when reigning in health care expenditures is a top priority for nearly every policymaker in the country, the Secession Option makes fiscal sense. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that the U.S.A. spends more that $75 billion on obesity-related medical expenditures each year, and the C.S.A. states account for roughly 30% (or $22.3 billion) of that total. In fact, the C.S.A. states have some of the highest rates of obesity in the nation. Based on my own calculations using the CDC’s obesity-rate data for each state and the U.S. Census Bureau’s state-population totals from the 2007 American Community Survey, I estimate that secession would permit the U.S.A. to shed roughly 26 million medically expensive obese individuals, which would reduce the size of the obese population in the country by one-third.

However, the benefits of secession go far beyond the fiscal advantages of shedding excess baggage from the health care system. Allowing the C.S.A. states to secede would eliminate nine of the 22 “red” states that swung Republican in the 2008 election. More precisely, based on popular-vote totals compiled by the U.S. Electoral College, secession would remove 36% (or 21.6 million) of those U.S. voters who thought that a McCain-Palin administration would have made a nice sequel to eight years of Bush-Cheney.

Shedding surplus Republicans from the U.S.A. would be advantageous not only from a partisan political perspective, but would vastly improve the general state of knowledge among the reduced U.S. population. The base of the Republican Party consists of Evangelical Protestants, a rather Taliban-esque group that tends to frown upon Enlightenment-era ideals such as scientific discovery and the use of human reason. For instance, 65% of Evangelical Protestants believe that all forms of life have always existed in their present form ever since a magical Supreme Being zapped them into existence—the fossil record and genetic mutation be damned. Not surprisingly, Evangelical Protestants are heavily concentrated in the C.S.A. states. Based on state-level estimates of religious affiliation from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, and adult-population totals reported for each state by the 2007 American Community Survey, I conclude that secession would remove 44% (or 25.5 million) of all Evangelical Protestants from the U.S.A.

In short, the secession of the C.S.A. states might be just the sort of fiscal, social, and intellectual stimulus that the U.S.A. needs to move forward into the 21st century rather than backward into the Middle Ages. There is an apocryphal quote that is widely attributed to Miriam “Ma” Ferguson (Governor of Texas, 1925-1927 and 1933-1935), and is said to have been uttered in response to a question about the use of the Spanish language in Texas schools: “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for Texas schoolchildren.” I think that pretty much says it all.