The Stubborn South

I liked this editorial from Harold Meyerson in The Washington Post.

The Big Bailout Lessons

”Now as then, the conflict centered on the rival labor systems of North and South. Now as then, the Southerners championed a low-wage, low-benefits system while the North favored a more generous one. And now as then, what sparked the conflict was the North's fear of the Southern system becoming the national norm. Or, as Lincoln put it, a house divided against itself cannot stand.“

An interesting thought (and analogy).

While I’m here, if you’re a Federal employee, you really should consider putting The Washington Post on your reading list. It simply has more news about the Federal government than other publications.

Having said that, Paul Krugman has a good column in The New York Times today. It too puts the South in a poor light.

Bigger Than Bush

”Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.“

Don Brown
January 2, 2009