Redneck Nation by Michael Graham Read Free Book Online

are trumped by the majority’s
     right to stomp “outside agitators”? Certainly not the 30 percent of the South’s population that is non-white, not to mention
     the one in seven Southerners born outside the South.
    On the other hand, Mr. Strauss’s argument for a SouthfreeU.S.A. is just as repellent. In his vision of America, he celebrates the potential triumph of central government, of “a new
     liberal majority” that could get to work gutting the Second Amendment without a bunch of yay-hoos complainin’ about it. We
     could end all this nonsense about the government having to compensate you for turning your private property into a protected
     habitat for the spotted snail darter. And we could finally pass some real hate-crime laws—you know, the kind that throw people
     into jail for expression of any non-state-approved opinion.
    What smug Northerners like Mr. Strauss cannot see is that they are advocating the same fundamental principals as their southern
     counterparts. Northern liberals merely apply these principles from a different angle. Is Strauss saying that dumping the South
     would also let him dump the Second Amendment of the Constitution? How is that significantly different from his belief that
     evangelical Southerners are constantly trying to dump the First?
    Would a Northern America adjust each citizen’s legal status based on his skin color or whom he has sex with? Gee, the South
     was doing that for years until the North intervened.
    Tired of those NASCAR ads on TV, Mark? You need to talk to the folks in New Hampshire and Chicago, where they are building
     racetracks as fast as they can.
    And if it’s southern illiteracy he fears, he should drop in on the public schools in Cleveland, Detroit, and Washington, D.C.—perhaps
     the worst in the nation. Good northern liberals are the most impassioned opponents of an educational voucher system that would
     let the children in these schools escape to the private sector tomorrow. Perhaps it’s because, like the bigoted Southerners
     theylook down on, they don’t want their kids going to school with poor black kids, either.
    In other words, the difference between Mr. Strauss’s North and Dr. Hill’s South is one of mere geography. Same ideas, applied
     from a different direction. And nearly all those are ideas happily supplied by the solid American South.

4
North vs. South: A Primer
    I n the South, white people hate black people and black people hate white people. In New York, it’s the other way around.
    • In the South, race is the single most important public issue in people’s daily lives. In New York, ethnicity is the single
     most important issue. Which means, in South Carolina, people can hate each other on sight, but in New York, they have to wait
     until they’ve been properly introduced and know each other’s last names.
    • In New York, my support of the Second Amendment and opposition to legalized abortion made me a right-wing zealot. Down South,
     my support of free speech and opposition to the death penalty make me a commie.
    • Southerners understand that the War Between the States was caused by many factors and that slavery was one of the complex
     issues that must be looked at in the political, economic, and social contexts of the time, which means it is difficult, if
     not impossible, to say what oneissue caused the war. In New York, nobody cares who started the damn war. We won. You lost. Get over it.
    • In New York, the fact that I used to go hunting—with an actual
gun
—made me a Neanderthal. In the South, the fact that I stopped makes me a homosexual.
    • In New York, I was expected to be impressed by the local Italian cuisine, which was often one fistful of garlic away from
     Chef Boyardee. If I didn’t say that a mediocre meal of shells and sauce was
molto bene
at least five times, my hosts were insulted.
    • In South Carolina, people aren’t expecting you to be impressed by the food, they just expect you to