secession and tolerance

Excerpts from a nice post by Ronnie Cottonpants at Barefoot & Progressive...

Texas is the new France. This has nothing to do with any cultural similarity between the two, only that they've become the whipping boy of mediocre to lousy comedians everywhere....

We're in a brave new world now, with our snacks firmly named and our President half-black and also half-awesome. This leaves the door open for Texas to make noise about seceding. The governor has talked about it, Ron Paul has talked about it, and it has shown surprising support in the polls. So what would it mean if Texas left our beloved union?

Well, for one, it would mean that unfunny liberals will welcome it....[NPR's David] Faris said, "First, Texas should be given the option of taking neighboring Oklahoma, Alabama and Louisiana with them. These states are reliably deep red, and are also three of the biggest tax drains in the country, raking in federal dollars while kvetching about Obama's tyranny."

Has he maybe considered why Louisiana has drawn so much Federal money during recent years? Maybe something to do with bad weather? So poverty is funny when the poor people don't vote our way? It's cool to joke about the rapes in the Superdome, so long as the Superdome is in a Red State?

...the main problem is that the people writing these articles aren't really joking. They at least kind of believe what they say, and nobody has realized that this Texas secession talk isn't funny, it's scary.

It's bad enough that conservatives and liberals don't want to live in the same neighborhoods, don't want to watch the same news stations, even listen to the same music. None of us--on either side of the aisle--want to challenge ourselves. Now it's grown to the point that a lot of us don't want to live in a country with people who disagree with us....

Either we live in the country of Lincoln or we live apart. There's no third way.

Good stuff all the way through. The implicit reference to tolerance is interesting (and welcome) in light of B&P's primary demographic. But I want to focus on the third-to-last paragraph.

This subject is not inherently funny (although there may be elements of humor and/or hypocrisy within it).

I wouldn't say it's scary either-- perhaps worrisome as a barometer for what our country has done economically and politically for the last 16 years.

In another sense, it gives me hope-- that people are upset enough to propose something reasonable yet radical. Apathy and ignorance are not surprising, given that the costs of govt policy are relatively subtle and most individual voters have little to contribute to the political process. We know what apathy results in; attention and energy may be an improvement.

At the end of the day, secession (especially if other states follow the lead of Texas) would allow politics to become more local and would probably put an end to our painfully interventionist foreign policies. Frankly, I'd love to see it!