Where is Jefferson Davis Now that We Need Him?

President Obama was wrong. There ARE Blue States and Red States and the United States is poorer for that division. In fact, perhaps it might be a good idea to reexamine the possibility of dividing the country- without armed conflict- into the North and the South.

Politically, it makes sense. The conservative mossbacks are mostly Southern- from Tom DeLay to Richard Shelby and Chambliss. Historically, the South has always produced the worst in humans when it comes to sending them to state or federal offices. One can look back to Talmadge in Georgia, the Longs in Louisiana, Theodore Bilbo in Mississippi, Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms in the Carolinas and George Wallace in Alabama. We find public figures like Lindsey Graham of South Carolina who sounds like Gomer Pyle and thinks like Forest Gump. David Duke could never have even run for office in, say, Ohio or Pennsylvania.

The South is holding back the progress of America worldwide. And that is not merely politically. One can fault a number of reasons- poor education, a population that seems indifferent to participatory government, except when money is needed to salvage homes and property after hurricanes or other natural disasters.

What seems fair is to come to grips with the fact that the United States is simply becoming too large, too populous and therefore too unwieldy to be governed by anyone- regardless of party. The Republicans, currently, are not merely the party out of power, as one might find among the Conservatives in Great Britain, but a brake on forward speed of domestic and foreign policies. Let these retrograde Republicans flout their ultra-conservatism politically, economically and religiously. Let them produce some Jefferson Davis of their own and separate their 19^th Century intellectual prowess into their own fiefdoms. If these Southern states don't want to participate in NAFTA or the UN or Global Warming initiatives, fine. Give them their own national platforms and let the rest of us work to maintain a status in the world that, thanks to Southern-drawl Cassandras, has provided a slow fade from international respect and envy.

Maybe the answer is not Blue and Red- but a return to the Blue and the Gray