If The Confederates Had Won.....

Incredibly, even as we continue to recall assorted Civil War events and battles in their sesquicentennial year, millions of Confederate sympathizers across the land continue to blow noxious clouds of revisionist history on how the South was "wronged", that it was really a "war of Northern Aggression" (never mind the South seceded first) and wow...how great things would have been if the Confederates had prevailed! (Actually, in many cultural-political ways they did, as noted by author Joshua Zeitz in his article 'Dixie's Victory' in the Sept. 2002 issue of American Heritage. From fundie, bible pounding hellfire religion, to run amuck gun toting and incessant braying by the political class for ever more tax cuts and 'smaller government', the South really has put its odious mark - brand?- on the nation.)

Anyway, what IF these miscreants and traitors had prevailed? Let's give their worshippers and many others a bit of a reality check on what the state of the nation would be today. Maybe, just maybe, some will think again about their derelict ideations and realize the best outcome was the one that transpired. (Well, almost the best! Had the South not rooted its tentacles throughout the culture and political landscape THAT would have been the best. Then, we wouldn't have to keep fighting these old battles, over and over and over!)

If the Confederacy Had Won:

1) The Trade Union movement would never have originated in the 1940s. Kids would still be toiling starting from the age of 8 from sunrise to sundown. No worker's compensation, no paid time and a half for overtime, no time off for illness, or family problems.

2) Women would never have cracked the workplace and would still be disallowed their voting franchise with blacks. They'd have remained "barefoot and pregnant".

3)Blacks would never have been accepted into the military or as football or baseball players. (They might have been allowed to play basketball, but who knows?)

4) The Jim Crow laws would still prevail, with separate facilities (restaurants, motels, rest rooms, etc.) for each race. Blacks would continue to have to sit at the back of the bus. Rosa Parks -- had she refused to change her bus seat-- would have been flogged then flogged again, and likely branded.

5) The lowest wages, slave wages, would predominate throughout the land. African-Americans would be disallowed for all jobs other than possibly house servants or lawn workers, landscapers, and even then only be paid by meals or housing - like today's sugar cane workers. No benefits, no health care.

6) Immigration, especially illegal, would be disallowed at the point of guns. Anyone crossing the border of even a light brown color would be shot on the spot.

7) The Confederate Battle flag would fly everywhere. There'd be no Lincoln Memorial in D.C. but rather a Jefferson Davis Memorial, with only whites allowed to visit.

8) There'd be little or no entertainment except for the Confederate Broadcasting System, and the Confederate Movie Network. The latter would show 'Birth of A Nation' on an endless loop, while the former would have all the current news about the great new Confederate strides..

9) Andersonville would never have been closed, and would remain today a Confederate -run concentration camp for those with pro-Northern sympathies.

10) Bibles (KJV) would be mandated in every home under pain of being horse-whipped - or sent to Andersonville!

11) Southern -cum-biblical morality law would rule the land. Eye for an eye justice, and morality from the Old Testament.

12) The military would be the biggest employer and the budgets would be allocated at nearly $1.5 trillion a year. The national debt would be twice what it is now, given the Southern ascendants had forbidden any taxes (thus, no 13th amendment to the Constitution would have been passed). Also, no Federal Reserve. (which originated as part of the 13th amendment).

13) There would be NO Medicare or Social Security. Those would be seen as "Yankee inventions". People would either make do with what they had, or perish. If kind enough, a gentle neo-Confederate would put an oldster out of his or her misery with a shot to the head or a shiv from an old Rebel bayonet.

14) The life expectancy would be 55 for men, as opposed to the median of 75, and 62 for women, as opposed to 78. All the wonderful modern medical inventions that beat back disease, including polio vaccine, flu vaccines, smallpox and typhoid vaccines, as well as MRI machines, CAT scans and colonoscopes...would never have been invented. Cancer and smallpox would be the number one killers along with self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head.

15) University research would be almost non-existent. As opposed to thousands of universities such as we have now, there'd be maybe 100 in all. The only ones assured of existence would be the Ivies, e.g. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc. because of their endowments.

16)Confederate History would be taught at all high schools and universities.

17) Corporal punishment (e.g. paddling using monster paddles 21/2 -3' long) would be mandated nationwide at all high schools for both sexes, as opposed to being confined to mainly Southern High schools (e.g. in MS, AL, GA, NC), as is the case today.

18) Bible reading would be mandated at all high schools nationwide, as well as prayer in schools. Any atheist kids, if they existed or revealed themseles, would get the paddle about every day.

19) Prisons would actually be converted to work farms, and prisoners (for all crimes, including anti-Confederate sentiments, civil rights protests etc.) would be rendered neo-slaves. Forced to work in the fields from dawn to dusk and flogged by overseers at any slight infraction.

20) Barack Obama would never have become president, nor would Herman Cain be vying for the spot on the Republican ticket!

21) Neither Barack nor Michele Obama would have received the Ivy League education they did.

22) Miscegenation laws (e.g. against the races mating or mixing) would apply under pain of instant execution...e.g. flogging then lynching. (Thus, Barack Obama might never have been been born).

23) Adult Yankee atheists would be given the choice of leaving the country, or being permanently remanded to a CSA work camp.

Had the South won....I wouldn't be writing this now, at least from the C.S. of A.