Because I live less than twenty miles north of the Maxon-Dixon line, I can quickly wind up in Dixie simply by making a wrong turn. While I was in Maine, things felt much different. Almost every town up there has a little square with a statue honoring veterans of the Civil War. And it’s so far away from where the fighting occurred that it made me wonder about Mainers’ motivation for preserving the Union. What’s clear, however, is that there is a ton of civic pride about Maine’s role in defeating the traitorous Confederate insurgency.
When I hear Detroit-born rocker Ted Nugent suggest that things might have been better if the South had won the war, it grates on my ears. But I think it is the logical conclusion for anyone who follows the modern GOP and their states’ rights rhetoric. The GOP’s appeal isn’t limited to the South, but that’s their power base and that’s where their ideology gathers strength.
It’s increasingly clear that liberals and conservatives don’t want to live together. Not only do we not want to live on each other’s terms, we don’t even want to live with the compromises that are made necessary by our mutual existence.
