An Independent Southern U.S.

[Slithy_Tove]

These threads were always so much more enjoyable reading before Sampiro quit*

(* please refresh my memory - was it because he was always shouted-down by Northern bigots, or because the South finally became indefensible? I sure don’t recall him as someone easily shouted-down)

[Human_Action]

@drew870mitchell

Inconclusive due to lack of data. We’ve only had a couple states and a couple elections to go by. Anyway, if you would like to follow my reasoning:

1. Minorities are allowed to vote and participate in the political process.
2. Both parties agree (even if they’re wrong) that voter ID laws suppress legitimate turnout. Democrats, duh; Republicans, see, e.g., the “this law will turn Pennsylvania for Romney” guy.
3. Not just any legitimate turnout, but specifically minority turnout. Your WSJ link’s chart says that ~3% of white voters don’t have/don’t know their ID, whereas 6-12% of blacks, hispanics, and Others don’t have/don’t know.
4. Many states still passed voter ID laws. Regardless of the pending factual verdict, these are widely believed to depress the proportion of minority voter turnout.
5. Minorities would be unable to stop soft-suppressive laws in the hypothetical USSEC because there are already soft-suppressive laws we were unable to stop in reality.

I follow you, though again, I think the intended effect is anti-Democrat rather than primarily being anti-African American. Similarly, a California Democrat would be wise to fight a law making it more difficult for an illegal immigrant to vote, if he thought such votes would go his way, to use a hypothetical example. A matter of electioneering, not racial supremacy.

The missing step between my position and yours is the step from soft-suppressive laws like voter ID, and measures like gerrymandering, and full-on “hard” suppression of days gone by. I think a certain amount of jiggering with the rules to swing a percentage point here or there is part and parcel of democracy, but murdering people who are trying to register voters is gone for good, I think.

@drew870mitchell

A nation where the voters enact laws because their preachers told them to vote that way is only barely preferable to a nation where the preachers can eliminate the middleman and govern by themselves. If you’ll humor a sliding scale of theocracy, the USSEC would take a big lurch in that direction, even if we don’t follow the Webster’s definition to the letter.

By that measure, then, all nations are theocracies, are they not? Just at different points of a sliding scale? If that’s true, then the term has little meaning.

@drew870mitchell

These Constitutions were written in the 1800s when the struggle for an open atheist would have been far greater, yet they chose to include the provisions anyway.

True, but society has changed since they were written. I will concede that folks don’t much care for atheists around here, so I won’t rule out the possibility that you’re correct on this matter, but neither will I take it as a given.

@drew870mitchell

How many cranks and radicals, and actions of the most recent 5 years, would it take to get you to change your tune?

Meaning what would have to happen for me to believe that the South is fundamentally flawed such that if it were independent, it would reject American values of equality and freedom and become a horrible place for many of it’s citizens to live? That’s tricky, in that most of what we’re discussing as consequences of independence are only possible under independence, and are thus hypthetical.

It would take concrete action by several Southern governments, with broad popular support, to strip away civil rights from those who currently enjoy them, or the appearance that such would occur but for the Federal government.

@Bryan Ekers

So the South will have limited government, huh? No taxpayer dollars spent on trying to enforce laws about when and where one can be gay, black or atheist, huh?

Good luck with that.

Limited in some ways, unfortunately trying to legislate morality in others.