THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

AMERICA, GET A LIFE! | 2002-05-04

We all know that the South is America's only natural nation. We have a set of attitudes and a deep-rooted culture that makes a nation. This shows that the term "Southern nationalist" needs to be used carefully. We already ARE a nation. What we want is to make our nation, which already exists, independent.

It is important to us to know that we are the only real nation over here. But it also has enormous implications for non-Southerners. It means that the rest of the United States does not have a real identity of its own.

When I cross the border into Canada, I feel that I am in a land that is still an integral part of Europe. All Canadian political attitudes are purely European. Even the upper house of their legislature is appointed for life!

In Canada, if you have a gun you go to prison. If you say anything Politically Incorrect, you can go to jail.

So what does the rest of the United States use as a substitute for nationality? The founder and first editor of the New Yorker Magazine in the 1920s had a sign on his desk that said, in bold letters, "HATE SOUTHERNERS" (James Thurber, "My Years With Ross").

If you had asked someone in the 1920s what America was all about, he would say something like "Mom and apple pie." But now that is unicultural. The only thing you are allowed to say that America is now is the Constitution. When we sit through a list of people on television telling us "I am an American" it is a parade of people who have nothing in common.

So the United States outside the South is a "nation" of people who have nothing in common.

So today, America is stating flatly what that sign on the editor's desk said eighty years ago: the only identity the North has is hating the Southern nation. When they get together in what they call a patriotic rally, their theme is "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which we know as "John Brown's Body."

The only basis for American nationhood today is cultural nonexistence and hate. For all their talk about the Constitution, a United States without the South would have exactly the same laws that Canada has today, Hate Laws and all.

The United States hates the Southern nation and it hates white gentiles. That is its only basis.

That's not a basis for a Union. The North needs to get a life.