So, now, people who favor secession are racists? Isn’t this the same mantra that was directed against those who criticized Obama’s further experiments with socialized medicine, or with the increased role of the state in corporate management? Was this the political purpose behind the establishment’s efforts to get Obama into the presidency (i.e., to label critics of governmental programs as racists, in order to intimidate them into silence)? This form of moral and intellectual bankruptcy has worked to insulate the government of Israel from criticism of its treatment of Palestinians—i.e., anyone who objects is “anti-Semitic”—so is this approach being used here?
For the record, I wrote an LRC article on behalf of the principle of secession seven years ago: was I being a closet racist who knew that a black man was soon to become president? And what about Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Sam Adams, et al., who were at the forefront of colonial efforts to secede from Great Britain? Some of these men were slave-owners: were they doing nothing more than setting Americans up for the day—232 years later!—when a black man would become president? The proposition is so absurd that I can imagine so-called “liberals” embracing it, but INTELLIGENT men and women?
