The new “blame America first crowd”
by digby
Can you see what’s wrong with this picture?
A former aide to President Ronald Reagan is calling for southern states to secede from the union and form a new conservative nation called “Reagan” where citizens wouldn’t be forced to compromise on “traditional values” like marriage.
Right Wing Watch on Wednesday flagged conservative author Douglas MacKinnon’s interview with evangelical radio host Janet Mefferd, in which he hocked his new book, “The Secessionist States of America: The Blueprint for Creating a Traditional Values Country … Now.” Cautioning that all his secession talk was purely “academic,” MacKinnon suggested that South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida break away from the United States and form a new republic named “Reagan.”
“You have to remember that all 11 states from the South, including ultimately Texas, seceded legally,” MacKinnon told Mefferd. “They left the union peacefully, they left the union legally, and then President Lincoln … part of the problem there was that the North realized very quickly that it could not survive economically without the power of the South.”
After making the legal case for secession — and branding the Civil War “illegal” to boot — MacKinnon argued that the leaders Americans are electing today do not represent traditional values, particularly when it comes to marriage.
Yes, a member of the so-called “Party of Lincoln” saying the North started the war because it knew it couldn’t survive economically without the South is funny enough. But what amuses me about these scenarios is the fact that Ronald Reagan was the biggest flag-waving American patriot around. As were pretty much all Republicans not ten years ago. “These colors don’t run” blah, blah, blah. And today they seem to hate it, mostly because they hate so many Americans.
It’s fine with me if they hate America. Everyone has the right to do that if they choose. But it would be nice if they could be the tiniest bit consistent about this. When the left complains about American policy it is accused of being UnAmerican and called traitors to their country by these same people. And yet when they don’t like American policies they can call for secession and maintain their reputations as All American patriots at the same time.
In fact from now on I’m going to refer to every right winger who is mad about abortion rights or marriage equality or high taxes the “blame America first crowd” because they have earned that title as honestly as any lefty who complains about America’s foreign policy or criminal justice inequities.
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