The Worst Book of 2006

So for my birthday Brazen Hussy and I went to the bookstore so that I could blow my birthday money. I was wandering around the stacks, thrilled at the opportunity to spend cash on things that are fun without feeling guilty about it. I was having a great time.

And then...

This book jumps off the shelves. No really, it was like a poltergeist or something. Okay, I'm lying. I was scanning the titles, and this one had huge red letters on a white background so it stood out. The title in question was at the minimum intriguing and the maximum horrifying: The South Was Right!

Now this could be about a lot of things, I suppose. But I had some suspicions, so I picked it up and skimmed through it. And sure enough, Mssrs. Kennedy & Kennedy were justifying Secession. That's right. According to the authors, the Civil War was won by the unjust party - they think that the South had a perfect right to secede, and that the North violated those rights in forcing the South to remain in the Union.

I am just scandalized that someone would write something like this. Now the writers apparently went to great lengths to say that their defense of the South had nothing to do with slavery. But then according to them the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery either. To which I say, Bullcookies. Do they think it's just coincidence that the only historical difference between North and South was the institution of slavery? The whole thing was a like a controlled experiment to see what slavery would do to a people's economic system, political culture, and social structure. If there had been no slavery, there would have been no war, because there would have been no other reason for the South to identify itself as an entity distinct from the rest of the union. Also, the proximate cause of the war was the election of a President who opposed the extension of said institution into the western territories.

Leaving the slavery issue aside, the writers trot out the absurd argument that the Constitution was a compact of states. Under this reasoning, any state would be able to secede, since each retained its sovereignty. Of course the country pre-dated the independent state governments. We became an indepenent nation in 1776, not 1789. In addition, the ratification of the Constitution was done by popularly elected state conventions, not state legislatures, for the precise reason that the Founders didn't want states to get the idea they could dissolve the Union at will.

None of these arguments are new. They're at least as old as the Webster-Hayne debates, and probably older. But I think it's worth remembering the rationale that the Nationalists used against the States-Righter's, if only because a lunatic fringe in the South keeps trotting out the same old canards decade after decade, hoping that the rest of us having forgotten.

Well I for one haven't forgotten. To paraphrase Hubert Humphrey, States don't have rights - people do. The South failed in its bid for independence for a simple reason - it deserved to. The South seceded not out of any desire for self-government, but because they wanted to dominate the Union from within, to impose the institution of slavery in every nook and cranny of America. Their aim was to tear down the Declaration of Independence and erect a tower of privilege on the rubble of our liberty.

Well damn them to hell, I say. I hope that whatever afterlife they suffer is every bit the equal of the suffering they so callously inflicted on their fellow men and women. There is no justification for crushing the freedoms of others, and I am breathless at the audacity that those who would do so justify their oppressions in the name of "liberty."

Hmm. So much for avoiding arrogant proclamations.