Null Set 3

3 comments

1. George Smith

   May 7, 2013 at 4:20 pm

   They continue to make this man’s book germane.
   http://www.amazon.com/Better-Off-Without-Manifesto-Secession/dp/1451616651/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1367960723&sr=8-2&keywords=the+case+for+secession 
   He got a lot of press when it was published and made the book something too easy to ignore. I was considering asking for it for Xmas and didn’t when I read part of it instore. It had just a little too much gratuitous and easy insult in it — and I can stand a lot of that because I’m sometimes guilty of it myself.
   But they keep working this nullification angle so it I think it stays relevant. They really do want to refight the Civil War but have so far lacked the spine to take direct action against fed offices people. The country can obviously not be split in two like the author of the book reasons on about a bit but there needs to be some formal recognition that what is being done is not democracy but quite something else we’ve seen before. “Liberty” does not mean freedom to make laws quixotically attacking everything you hate.
    

    
2. George Smith

   May 7, 2013 at 4:26 pm

   I actually like this one-star review of it, btw. It almost made me want to buy it. 
   http://www.amazon.com/review/R3KRVJFB6FC03U/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1451616651&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=
   Paradoxically, it addresses that fact that the southern ethos decried isn’t just southern. You can look up a famous recent essay by a newspaper editor on Kansas, in which he laments that the state he knew died in the 2010 elections. Kansas has an older history as egalitarian, non-reactionary, a status moderate politicians had fought to preserve for years, eventually losing big time.  

    
3. Frank

   May 7, 2013 at 9:41 pm

   I can only take so much of the Rude One.  

    

   I used to grab the podcasts of him on the Stephanie Miller Show.  Most enjoyable and witty.  The blog posts do tend to wear on one, but the occasional diamond shines through.  

    

   And you are most correct. The Southern ethos isn’t just Southern. It’s wherever, to rip a term from somewhere, Whitemanistan sends its envoys.