Michael Lind, contributing editor to Politico and Salon columnist, had a very interesting way of showing his independence week patriotism this year- by dreaming about how great America would be without the south.
In this anti-Dixie op-ed in Politico Magazine, Lind bemoans and complains about “southern exceptionalism,” which he describes as “higher violence and less social mobility.” He opines that this culture is keeping the more civilized in America from achieving supposed benchmarks of modern society.
But even by the standards of the English-speaking world, the U.S. appears as an extreme outlier, in areas ranging from religiosity to violence to anti-government attitudes. As we learned after the slaughter last month in Charleston,
S.C., some deluded Southerners still pine for secession from the Union. Yet no doubt there are also more than a few liberal Northerners who would be happy to see them go.
Minus the South, the rest of the U.S. probably would be more like Canada or Australia or Britain or New Zealand—more secular, more socially liberal, more moderate in the tone of its politics and somewhat more generous in social policy. And it would not be as centralized as France or as social democratic as Sweden
Lind conveniently leaves out the fact that eight of America's ten most dangerous cities are northern, or in the case of Oakland, very “progressive.” He also specifically mentions the ongoing racial issues, violence, and unrest in South Carolina, but ignores recent struggles in Baltimore, Chicago, and New York City- more facts that go against the rhetoric needed to condemn a more conservative faction of American geography.
Finally, his op-ed concludes with the kicker that “white Southern Republicans” want to regress America back into a pre-1960s era of limited minority voting rights with their recent actions on voter registration and ID:
Not until the 1960s, with the help of federal military intervention in Southern states, was the right of African-Americans to vote secured. And today white Southern Republicans are at the forefront of efforts to roll back the voting rights revolution by making voter registration more difficult.
Again, he ignores the reality of this issue. Very little has changed in terms of voter turnout even though many states have implemented new reforms to protect the integrity of elections. According to a statistical study by Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, the effect on turnout is essentially incalculably low.
As has become the norm, facts aren’t going to get in the way of the liberal media’s message. And Michael Lind’s message is that the conservative south is the only thing keeping the United States from becoming Canada- Something most Americans are probably okay with anyway.
