Let's even leave the religious aspects out of this, and the fact that Texas Governor Rick Perry is a hardline "Dominionist". That is, one of those who believes the U.S. must submit to a rigorous set of laws based solely on the Ten Commandments. Can you just imagine that? Atheists would be sent out by the boatloads or fear persecution!
But that's not what this blog is about. It's about Perry's neo-Confederate leanings, and appeals, which the corporo-media has basically ignored (showing why we call them "media whores") and leaving the job to dedicated bloggers who have to track these people.
Make no mistake that Perry, who's often espoused secessionist fancies for Texas, could easily challenge Iowa front-runner Michele Bachmann for the support of the white evangelical Christian voters in the Midwest. He's already led tens of thousands of mostly white fundies in a day of prayer this past weekend in Houston’s Reliant Stadium.
But he could also challenge national front-runner Mitt Romney as the candidate who can best take on President Barack Obama on jobs and the economy. Texas has led the nation in job creation in the halting recovery that followed the 2008 financial meltdown, mainly by cutting out benefits and icing unions, so make no mistake Perry could try to parlay this into a forceful argument for HIS way (which will include the 'Lawd") as opposed to Mormon Romney's. And there are just enough stupid bigots in the country to get him into the Reep nomination.
Also as Alex Pareene has observed in his recent Salon.com piece:
Perry's flirtations with neo-Confederate organizations and symbols -- ably documented by Justin Elliott -- are so extraordinarily reprehensible that it should immediately and permanently disqualify him from being taken seriously for national office. The Confederacy was not a bunch of generally well-meaning dudes who went a little too far, it was a gang of racist traitors who launched a bloody war to defend a monstrously unjust institution. Having neo-Confederate sympathies in America should be equivalent to supporting the reconstituted Fascist party in Italy, or worse. It should not be considered something that 50 percent of the nation should be willing to look past, or even embrace.
With which I absolutely concur, as I've said before.
The Confederacy didn't constitute a group of gallant "gentlemen" fighting for their "states rights", but vermin traitors, who sought to extend their vile enslavement of fellow humans to the whole country. This they attempted by dispatching frothing slavers into Kansas after the Kansas-Nebraska Act (which gave settlers free land, and which Confederates hoped to use slaves for growing export crops), in order to try to make it a slave state. In the process they butchered abolitionists, which prompted a violent response from John Brown. Indeed, the original slaughter of abolitionists in Lawrence, Kansas is regarded by most historians as the putative first marker which ultimately led to the shots at Ft. Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861.
Even today most Southerners insist the conflict was fought over their right to secede, not about their ancestors owning slaves. They forget or aren’t aware that by 1861 slaves represented a $3.7 billion “asset”, the largest for the southern states, and cotton was the largest export. That indicator, as well as the initial pre-War skirmishes in Kansas has shown these latter day groups are wrong.
Thus, the consensus of academic historians is unimpeachable: the Civil War, which cost 600,000 lives (including many brothers fighting against each other) was indeed about abolishing slavery once and for all. As it was, the U.S. was one of the last more advanced nations to have retained it that long. Even the more backward Russia freed all its serfs by 1861. The British colonies saw most of their slaves liberated by 1834. Barbados, a former British colony, saw freed slaves competing in their own independent enterprises with white plantation offspring by the time the U.S. Civil War started.
One thing all Proto and Neo-Confederates like Rick Perry have in common is an aversion to "big gummint" and at the same time, inserting theocratic agendas and bibles into whatever government they envision - thus making their version the biggest and most tyrannical ever.
What would the USA be like under a Johnny Reb sympathizer like Rick Perry? Denver Post columnist Ed Quillen made it abundantly clear with his provocative April 18 column,(How the South Finally Won). He notes:
To be sure, chattel slavery has long been abolished in this nation. But you could consider slavery a form of cheap labor with no legal protections for the laborers. Now consider the GOP current efforts to bust unions, cut wages and benefits, and reduce workplace safety regulations.
In other words, one essence of the antebellum South's economic system is becoming part of the national economic system."
Note the words "is becoming". If Perry is elected as President, the tense would need to be changed to "has become".
Whatever vestiges of trade unions and worker protections remain would be eroded faster than you can say "hominy grits". The besieged workers of this nation, already seeing their benefits (including health care) eroded, would end up becoming little more than chattel and corporate property (or indentured servants) in a new Confederacy, run by Massah Perry.
Is this what people want? I hope to hell not! Elections have consequences, and we've already seen how Standard and Poor's downgraded the nation's credit, based on the intransigence of the Tea Party brigade. Not said enough by the corporate media, is that the primary reason for taking this step is that they saw NO potential expirations for the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003! In other words, it is this lack of courage to kill these damned zombie tax cuts that's driving the USA into the ditch.
If we don't stop this foolishness, Moody's will be the next to downgrade us then you'll really see havoc.
As for Massah Perry, if that Secessionist gets in you can kiss the rest of this nation's history 'goodbye'.
It will end up just like the Confederacy he worships!
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