What if the South really was a whole other country? If so, suggested New York Times columnist John Tierney, “Michael Moore would be an obscure foreign filmmaker” to Southern conservatives and Northern liberals wouldn’t have to find a candidate who “pretended to enjoy NASCAR races.” There is some sense to that scenario, given how divided the nation seems politically right now. “Politics in both countries might be less partisan, even civil,” he said.
Tierney’s imagined international border puts Kansas in the North, a la the Civil War. But Kansas would seem to fit more naturally in a new South.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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35 Comments
Señora Rhonda,Porqué, seríamos ciudadanos americanos excepcionales, apenas como se. Solamente pondríamos la salsa caliente en todo.
Under the Southern Cross, I claim Kansas in the name of True America, the Confederate States of America.
Wait a minute, we don’t want Kansas! Take it back! Please!
Southern by the grace o’ gawd!
sho’ nuff.
BS!! Give kansas to the south! Us yankees don’t want our landscape marred by this twit infested piss hole.
As the heart of the nation, Kansas is a border state on all four fronts: East and West as well as North and South.
Oh wonderful! The balkanization of America begins.
Politics is always partisan and rarely civil. Another pipe dream from the bong at the NY Times. Usually they wish there was no United States and we were all citizens of the world under the UN. Now they want to cast aside sections of the country they disagree with. What a civil and non-partisan concept.
I suggested this matter a few months ago. Empires throughout history have grown, and grown, and then broken up. The interests of the red states are different from those of the blue states. To be sure there are intrastate differences as well, such as rural versus urban versus suburban, but the interests of the “parentheses states” (New-England/Mid-Atlantic on the right, West Coast on the left) are very different from those of the “heartland”.
We heard talk from Republicans awhile back about “states rights”, i.e. returning to a Federalist model in which the power of the federal government was reduced, but this proved illusory.
The EU is trying to emulate the US, but that experiment is not working very well, and Europe’s most prosperous nations, Switzerland and Norway, aren’t members, nor is Ireland, whose long-laggardly economy is booming while its EU counterparts stagnate.
Most Kansans wanted a Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld team to lead them. Most Californians wanted Gore/Lieberman and Kerry/Edwards. What’s wrong with Kansas–and Californians–EACH getting their preference? This, protecting functional democracy, may be far more beneficial than one-size-fits-all imperialism.
There seem to have already been a movement to separate by political ideals, as was observed by those tracking such things. Red is getting redder and Blue is bluer, people moving to where they feel more akin to those around them. Every Winter I threaten to move to Florida because I hate snow and ice, I had moved to Oklahoma because of that and the opportunity to work in a chosen field. But I could not imagine moving because I would feel more comfortable in a different political climate. Kansas has surprised me of late, like most I did not truly taken notice of the rise of the R.R. and the Neo-cons here till it was too late. Some how I had always thought Kansas were smarter than that.
I don’t think people move based on political ideology. They move because of jobs or climate.
There has been an exodus of people out of the N.E. and into the South and South West.
Politics changes so much, what we are experiencing today will be different in years to come.
I actually think the reverse of heartlander. I believe we will expand into an EU style government but for his hemisphere into a PanAmerica.
First is economic and trade barriers (in the works). NAFTA, CAFTA, FTAA.
Only republicans move for those reasons joe. A statement like that can only be made by a member of every majority (white, male, straight, christian, republican).
Yeah. No shit. NO reason for you to move is there?
Maybe if the conservatives of BOTH parties had targeted you for persecution and discrimination, and maybe if the kansas taliban made sure everytime you picked up a paper or turned on the news you were being blamed for the demise of THEIR marriages, and maybe if the ONLY thing republicans and democrats agree on is the queers need to be kept in their place…
… maybe then you would feel differently.
Like that would ever happen….
“But I could not imagine moving because I would feel more comfortable in a different political climate.”
Ditto on the above for you writerdog. I am sure you cant imagine what it must be like to be hated by more than seventy percent of the voters in kansas. VERY difficult for most of you to imagine.
No wonder you also cant imagine why that might prompt productive citizens to leave and go where their contributions may not be appreciated, but at least they arent hated. The clergy of the state isnt trying to run YOU out on a rail.
And it never really hurts until it is YOU or YOURS?
“Kansas has surprised me of late, like most I did not truly taken notice of the rise of the R.R. and the Neo-cons here till it was too late.”
Duh. Because YOUR ox was not being gored you didnt notice?
You didnt notice the growing storm, the blood on the ground, the circumstances of ANYONE in ks who isnt part of the majority? You didnt hear the rhetoric of anyone running for office in ‘04?
You never heard of Terry, Joe or Fred until NOW?
“Some how I had always thought Kansas were smarter than that.”
So did I dog, so did I.
I guess we were BOTH wrong.
What are you trying to say KFG?
Last I heard, gay marriage ban is in every state except Mass., and you haven’t moved there.
Flordia, Georgia, and New York just solidified it. Although I disagree with it.
I don’t think it can be won in the courts. Peoples minds must change and the legislatures need to reverse it. Which I think they will, but it’s going to take awhile.
Generation X is arriving on scene and will change the political landscape and provide more freedom to individuals. The Babyboomers and many of the dead wood still run our government. They haven’t died out yet.
Sometimes political change takes a long time. Anti-miscegenation laws were deemed unconstitutional in 1967 by SCOTUS, but it took until 2000 for the last state to repeal it.
When segregation deemed unconstitutional in 1954 and the Civil Rights act of 1964, in Oklahoma in the 1980’s still had segregated restrooms. Many states didn’t desegregate their schools until the 1970’s.
The Gay Rights Movement is going to be a long struggle, but it will prevail. Hopefully as soon as possible.
Kansas is already a border state. The border of SANITY. We teach creationism instead of evolution, the attorney general wants to monitor the sexuality of your children, the wingnuts are instituting rule by the church, the woman running for the chief election officer thinks women should have never been “given” the vote, she and bonbon huy think it is ok for 14 year olds to get married… and the list of hits could go on.
I know many of you all care nothing for the image of kansas in the world. You hve been VERY clear about that.
But ask people in other states, other countries, about Kansas, and they will tell you that crossing the boarder into kansas is like setting your watch back 100 years.
Long ago, with the flat earth crowd, maps of the known world were boardered by depictions of the unknown territory. That unexplored territory was marked with the words “here, there be dragons” because they didnt know what was beyond the horizon.
I know, the flat earth days are alive and well here in the wheat state. Which causes people outside of kansas to look at our boarders and think…
“HERE, there be dragons.”
LOL @ “Here, there be dragons.”
more like “Terra Incognita”
I am really concerned about the image of Kansas. We need to throw the bums out and I suspect we will. I believe the BOE will go back to moderate or even be disbanded, Bonnie Huy will lose re-election, and I’m not for sure about Kline.
It takes awhile. I’m willing to fight for Kansas rather than give up and move somewhere else.
I know I have posted this before, but I think it is appropriate here again. Unfortunately, the people who most need to read this are the ones who will scroll right by. Typical.
Dear Red States…We’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us.In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii,Oregon,Washington,Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. Webelieve this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.
To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get ElliotSpitzer. You get Ken Lay. (sorry, dated :)
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss.
We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs.
You get Alabama.
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than theChristian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get abunch of single moms.
Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice andanti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq atonce. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their children’s caskets coming home.
We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we’re not willing to spend our resources in Bush’s Quagmire.With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95 percent of America’s quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale,Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health carecosts), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists
Rush LimbaughBob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.
You get Kansas.Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacredunless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11
and 61 percent of you crazy b*****ds believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.By the way, we’re taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirtweed they grow in Mexico.Peace out,Blue States—–
KFG- I haven’t seen that before– it’s really good.
That’s a pretty good slam and a lot of truth to it.
I can see why people in the Blue States looks down at people in Kansas. I guess we are inferior.
Although I don’t think it’s the politics so much as it is organized religion.
“Last I heard, gay marriage ban is in every state except Mass., and you haven’t moved there.”
I guessed you missed the post where my partner and I are looking at a little farm near Barcelona, and we are also looking at South Africa.
Both Spain and South Africa now have better human rights ratings than the good ol’ us of a. Not that it matters to most kansans. Hell, they are PROUD of their bigotry, not to mention stupidity.
We can be citizens of the world, much to the distain of some here. We are highly educated, highly productive and participative citizens. We are self sufficient and financially comfortable. We have skills. We can go anywhere in the world we chose.
We also know we are not wanted in this nation. Why should we stay? To piss you off? I think we dont see that as worthwhile. Living here serves you joe. It does not serve us.
peace out. Maybe not today, but someday… we will live among people who value us and our contributions. It just wont be here.
I understand. Honestly go where it makes you happy. You shouldn’t be misreable or repressed.
I’ll take up the good fight though. Hopefully me and others can salvage what is left both economically and freedom wise of the USA to make it a nation that you can come back to if you like.
I’m just hoping it can happen in our life time.I know the USA and even Kansas is far from perfect, but I know it has the potential to be much better for everybody.
“Although I don’t think it’s the politics so much as it is organized religion.”
It is EVERYTHING joe. We are like the poor, mentally deficient little brother. Cute, and the rest of the family dont want to see him go, but they sure get a big kick out of his gaffs as he bumbles his way through life.
Where should we start? Terry, joe and FRED? The second coming of the Scopes Monkey trial? The woman running for chief election officer thinks women shouldnt vote? The Nuss fuss? Our inability to govern ourselves with school finance issues? TABOR?
Susan Wagle and the sex police and gambling police?
Our economy? ROFLMAO.
Our stewardship of water resources?
Phill KLEIN for god’s sake?
Mark Geitzen? heheheheh.
Brent Castillo masquerading as a “journalist” for the paper in the state’s largest city?ROLLING NOW FOR SURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No joe, it is the whole package in kansas. You cant blame only the taliban.
But we make such a cute, backwards little brother….and the rest of the family does need some comic relief.
If you can’t change the people around you, then change the people around you.
I’ve always considered Kansas to be a northern, Midwestern, or western state, never a Southern state. If you study Kansas history, you read about Bleeding Kansas and the abolitionists founding Lawrence, Topeka, and Manhattan; Kansas entering the Union as a free state; Kansas contributing more soldiers to the Union per capita than any other state, European immigration to the state and immigration from other parts of the Midwest and north. I’ve always taken pride in the fact that Kansas was a northern, Midwestern state and not a Southern state. I don’t consider a political or cultural alliance with the South or “new South” to be “natural.”
Just because the Republicans have recently become successful in the South doesn’t make a marriage between Kansas and the South “natural.” I think that Kansas being a very Republican state has as much to do with history as it does with whatever policies the Republican party is favoring currently. Lincoln and the abolitionists were Republicans and ever since statehood Kansas has had a Republican majority. People vote Republican because their parents and grandparents voted Republican and because the Democratic party has never had a foothold in certain parts of the state. There are parts of the “blue states” where people vote Democratic for the same reason, not necessarily because they support every item in the Democratic party platform.
It’s pretty bad when editors at the New York Times are writing editorials in favor of splitting up the USA into different countries. You couldn’t split up the country along state lines anyway. There are red counties in blue states and blue counties in red states. Go to uselectionatlas.org, pick an election year, click on a state, and move your cursor over the counties to see the percentage each county gave to the different candidates. The central valley of California is as Republican as Kansas, so is Orange County. The eastern three-fourths of Oregon and Washington are very Republican. The suburban areas around Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Chicago are also quite conservative and trending Republican.
The real problem is the electoral college system and the winner-take-all system of electing presidents and representatives. No wonder Democrats in red states want to move to blue states – they want their vote to actually count. 430,000 people in Kansas voted for John Kerry in 2004 and it amounted to absolutely nothing because they didn’t have the majority in this state. The winner of the majority of the national popular vote should become president, anything else is unfair.
KFG, it was the amendment that was awake up for me, I had hear Fox pushing for it and thought that he had a snowball chance of getting it passed. I had not paid too much attention to politics and the like till Fox and then Bush. I had always found partisan politics to be laughable, the spin was so out there that I could not believe anyone with a rational thought would pay attention. But then the amendment passed and I was shocked! I had actually started coming to the message board before coming to the blog during the build up for the vote. Posting against the vote and it was amazing that only one person defend Fox or the amendment most seem to be against it. There were the typical “Gay bashing “ of course, great team religious zealots and redneck idiots on the same mind level. They made up the majority that voted, of course the real majority did not say anything…. sixty seven percent.
I am sorry that the states hates you, but I do not…there is at least one Kansan that does not. hate you.Have you ever seen “Blazing saddles “ I keep trying to remember that one line where the gunfighter tries to make the black sheriff feel better about how the white town’s people are treating him.
I think it went something like this, “You know they are simple people, people of the earth….You know….Shit kicker!”
Until I started paying real attention I did not know that so many did not feel or think as I do. I thought Kansas was somewhat a progressive state. It was in my little corner of the world, I was like the majority of Americans when it comes to Bush. It takes awake up call that shakes the senses to bring them to the true.The amendment vote was my wake up call to how the power had shifted from common sense to the Pharisees.
Hey Ian–
The ARMY is taking your people now. Why don’t YOU sign up.
Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts
By JOHN KIFNERPublished: July 7, 2006
A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed “large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists” to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.
“We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad,” the group quoted a Defense Department investigator as saying in a report to be posted today on its Web site, http://www.splcenter.org. “That’s a problem.”
. . . .
The report said that neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance, whose founder, William Pierce, wrote “The Turner Diaries,” the novel that was the inspiration and blueprint for Timothy J. McVeigh’s bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, sought to enroll followers in the Army to get training for a race war.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/washington/07recruit.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
If I remember right, Ian already served in the first bush war, er, gulf war.
Writerdog, thanks for saying that. And thanks for your earlier post too. You just happened to say the same thing that many people did and said, but wouldnt admit, so thanks for being truthful.
I read an article the other day that asked something like “do you blame bush voters for the state of the country” or some such. Cant find it now to save my soul.
But when I read that article and the comments that followed, I realized I was not alone. I am damn angry at every single, individual person who voted for this preznit. I do indeed blame them more than I do him.
Sorry. I know that is a crappy thing to say, but it is my truth, and it was some insight to me for why people here keep commenting on my anger. Then I got it. Yep. I am angry at what has been done to the america I thought we lived in. Angry about the rape of the constitution.
And I am personally angry with people I dont know and have never met. But I am mad at them for facilitating this lunacy that poses as our federal government.
They put bush and his cronies in charge of flushing what made us great.
They put Terry and Joe and yes, even Fred in charge of the kansas constitution and molded it in their own hateful images.
KCL keeps wondering why I gig him when I dont even know him. Maybe this will tell him why. Is it bigoted on my part. Yep. Guess that makes me not only a real american but a real kansan as well.
And guess what? I am mad at myself too for delivering 63% of the vote in my 2:1 republican registered county to governor leadership. Only to watch her pull the plug on one of this region’s biggest economic assets. Cedar Bluff.
I’d like to take MY stupid vote back too. I wish there was a non wingnut I could shift it to, but alas…
It was: You know, morons
My favorite line in that movie is when the Waco Kid introduces the black sheriff to the klansmen.
Waco Kid:”Hey boys, look what i’ve got over hear…”(pulls sheriff from behind the rock)Black Sheriff:”Hey! Where the white women at?”
Well said kfg.
Well said.
Thanks Madder, it has been some time since I watched the movie. I love it as it was the movie my wife and I went to on our first real date.LOL had a flat tire on the way to take her home and was late getting her back. Even with my mother coming along to verify we did have a real flat tire. She was grounded from seeing me again for a month! NO I DID NOT LET THE AIR OUT OF THE TIRE! Gee no one trust a sixteen y.o. boy anymore!
In a sense I was mad at the majority that re-elected Bush too. I said it once before, sometimes I think something is so obvious like it would be to say that the sun is shining at ten A.M. By 2004 I knew he had misguided (I know lied, but I feel nicer today after watching Pastor Fox this morning LoL) the country to war. I did not scream it from the roof, because I thought everyone else was seeing the same thing!Was I blind or what? I blame partisan politic to a greater extent, if all you hear is the other side will lie about anything to get an upper hand. It is easier to ignore the truth when spoken by some one from the other side. I have to give credit to Richard Clarke, if he had been a raving liberal I might have dismissed him and what he was saying. But he had served under more Republican administrations then Democratic, one that showed he was good at what he did and two he was not a political hack. One the real question was in my mind enough to look farther things seem to become clearer.
Wrtierdog, this is the problem, not directed at you specifically, but at conservatives in general.
“I have to give credit to Richard Clarke, if he had been a raving liberal I might have dismissed him and what he was saying”
The people who WERE shouting about what to expect from bush WERE liberals, and yes, they were RAVING about what was to come from this preznit. It wasnt too hard to connect the dots and see. Some of those liberal raving about the evils of the cult of bush were from Texas, with personal bushista experience.
But because they were liberals, they were dismissed.
Because they were raving, they were dismissed. heheh. Let’s not even TALK about the raving of the bushbots. Their raving was ok, but the raving of liberals were not.
heheheh. How’d that dismissal of raving liberals work out for ‘merica?
I guess we see now how “government by label” performs for us common folks. But I hold little hope that any new listening will occur. We just vote by whatever label sticks.
You know the bumper sticker “vote republican, it’s easier than thinking” must have been printed by a non-union shop in ks.
John Tierney (NY Times) said the country should spit N/S, so that Northern liberals wouldn’t have to find a candidate who “pretended to enjoy NASCAR races”.
Tierney seems to be referring to his own “coverage” of John Kerry.
Maureen Dowd (NY Times) falsely claimed Kerry said “Who among us doesn’t like NASCAR?”, and attacked him for “saying” it.Tierney, and 3 other NYT reporters repeated the false quote, and also attacked/ridiculed him. The quote was even changed to “…doesn’t LOVE NASCAR?”
“Kerry actually said, at a rally: “There isn’t one of us here who doesn’t like NASCAR and who isn’t a fan,…” That was a lead-in to a point about job losses.
Details at, http://archive.salon.com/politics/war_room/2004/10/04/nascar/ — and Daily Howler link at bottom.
We can’t have a “less partisan, even civil” country when media can invent what a candidate said, and then attack them. We desperately need a more accurate, and responsible media.
“We desperately need a more accurate, and responsible media.”
Cosmos, what do you think values boy would have to say on that subject. heheh. The media is too godless?
Kansas is the Belt Buckle of the Bible Belt, what the hell would we be doing in the North!