Among the traits that liberals share is a committed aversion to deploying US military power abroad, unless of course a Democrat is president and he's mired in scandal.
Which makes it all the more odd to hear liberal radio host Thom Hartmann suggest it might be time to send American troops -- to the South.
Hartmann, arguably the most influential talker in that barren fraternity known as liberal radio, believes the time may have come to revive Reconstruction that lasted a decade after the end of the Civil War, until Union troops were withdrawn from the South following the election of 1876.
Hartmann made the suggestion on his radio show July 7 after citing a Politico story critical of the South (audio) --
OK, I want to get into the South here and I'm going to get off on this rant and then I'll be picking up your calls at the bottom of the hour, but I don't know if you saw this piece by Michael Lind in Politico. It's titled "How the South Skews America." You know, the United States has some pretty bad statistics -- this is not from Michael Lind's piece, this is from an op-ed by Nick Kristof in the New York Times, but the United States, we rank 30th in life expectancy, 38th in saving children's lives, 55th in women surviving childbirth. We have one of the world's highest homicide rates for developed nation. We have higher traffic fatality rates than 37 other countries, higher suicide rates than 80 other countries. We rank 32nd in preventing early marriage, 38th in the quality of our education system, 49th in high school enrollment rates, and 87th in cellphone use. We're number 49! We're number 87, right?!
So what Michael Lind writes is, in practice, he talks about, you know, American exceptionalism and that we're a special nation uniquely founded on high ideals like freedom and equality. But in practice, he says, much of what sets the United States apart from other countries today is actually Southern exceptionalism.
Now listen to this in the context of my question -- should we, a) reoccupy the South with Union forces and restart Reconstruction which came to a screeching halt in 187- whatever it was, '74 I think, the election of Rutherford B. Hayes ... He needed one vote in the House of Representatives to win, it was one of those contested elections that went to the House, and the deal he made with the Southern legislators was that if he became president he would pull the Union troops out of the South and basically end Reconstruction. ...
So, you know, should we, a) restart Reconstruction or b) just let the South go their own way? Let the Confederate states say you can fly that flag, you can have your own country. Good luck.
Just a hunch, but if a person was also inclined to crunch crime stats and unflattering demographics from major cities run by Democrats and compare them to the nation as a whole, the cities would undoubtedly "skew" America.
Among his many criticisms of the South, Lind cited this --
Economic inequality? Apart from California and New York, where statistics reflect the wealth of Wall Street, Hollywood and Silicon Valley, the South is the region with the greatest income inequality.
Yeah, "apart" from the biggest, bluest states in the country. Seems like a rather conspicuous exception.
Lest he leave his readers feeling pessimistic, Lind offers this hopeful note --
A combination of demographic change and generational change is weakening the ability of the old-fashioned South to skew American politics and culture in the future. Peripheral Southern states like Florida and Virginia are increasingly competitive, and the Deep South may join them in time. In Texas once-reactionary cities like Houston and Dallas are competing with Austin as tolerant meccas for transplants who prefer the Sun Belt to the Old South. Immigration into the South from other countries and American regions is breaking down local oligarchies and old folkways.
Or as it's otherwise known, ethnic cleansing. Especially considering how the South is such a hotbed of conservatism, its worse sin of all.
As for Hartmann's suggestion of the possible need to redeploy "Union" troops, a century and a half after the end of a war that neo-secessionists and paleoliberals never want to end, many of our soldiers sent there would feel right at home, seeing how the South enlists more of its sons and daughters to serve in the military than does any region in the country.
In case you're wondering, Hartmann is a Michigan native and former Atlanta resident who lives on a houseboat in Washington, D.C.
