Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
19 November 2010
America’s Southern Conservatives
Seeing the northern part of the United States as
too liberal for their tastes, southern conservatives band together to campaign for dissolution of the Union
The American Civil War (1861-
The chief and immediate cause of the war was slavery; it was illegal in the North
while Southerners believed their economy depended on slave labour to produce crops,
especially cotton. Other issues – political, social, and economic -
Still Fighting the Civil War
The Confederacy may have lost on the battlefield, but many Southerners still feel they should not have surrendered. A lot of these Americans are members of The League of the South and they don’t like the federal government – they don’t like it one little bit.
Here’s the opening statement on the group’s websites: “…Abe Lincoln and his minions have sired a long line of domestic terrorists, including most recently George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama (and all who aid them in their misrule). We might throw the larger part of Congress into the mix as well.”
The League and its supporters want to separate from the Union. In October 2007, the Associated Press quoted the group’s president J. Michael Hill as saying: “We believe that an independent South…would be better able to serve the interest of everybody, regardless of race or ethnicity.”
Right-
The League of the South is unrelentingly conservative in its views. Among its core values are:
- “…our primary allegiance is to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Church;
- “Our strongest and most enduring earthly affections and allegiances are to…family,
friends, neighbours, villages, towns, cities, counties, and States. Conversely, our
weakest attachments are to far-
off abstractions such as ‘the nation,’ ‘the environment,’ or the ‘global community;’ ” - The group says that Southern culture “must be nurtured and preserved for future generations of Southerners;”
- They say they rejoice in the fact that it “is has neither been the will of God Almighty nor within the power of human legislation to make any two men mechanically equal;”
- “…Christ is the head of His Church; husbands are the heads of their families; parents are placed over their children; employers rank above their employees; the teacher is superior to his students, etc;” and,
- The League of the South opposes: gay marriage; gun control; and, income tax on individuals and families.
Secession Plan in Place
These Southern views on issues tend to be a minority opinion in the country as a whole. So, the League says let’s split and create “a significantly different country, more in keeping with the desires and the cultural lifestyles of a majority of Southerners.”
The League argues that, “The American South, culturally the most distinct region of the United States and once an independent nation, has the population and the economy to form one of the most powerful nations on Earth.”
The League likes to define the South as the 11 states of the Confederacy, plus Kentucky and Oklahoma.
It would be the 13th largest country in the world by population (74 million), and the fourth largest in terms of Gross Domestic Product.
Plenty of Critics
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a civil rights organization that keeps
a close eye on white supremacists and hate groups. It says there is plenty of evidence
that concerns it about the League of the South and other neo-
J. Michael Hill founded the League of the South in 1994. The SPLC says, “The League of the South included four men with Ph.D.s on its board, along with Jack Kershaw, who was once active in the segregationist White Citizens Council in Nashville and who remains on the board today.
The group now goes by the less inflammatory name of the Council of Conservative Citizens. But no matter how much they have tried to clean up the racist nature of the group’s earlier title, its members are still white bigots (see right).
“Hill’s league started out complaining about the media treatment of white Southerners,
but quickly developed into a racist group calling for secession, attacking egalitarianism,
calling antebellum slavery ‘God-
The League of the South says it has chapters in 16 Southern states.
Sources
“Secessionists Meeting in Tennessee.” Bill Poovey, Associated Press, October 3, 2007.
“Neon-
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The Confederate Flag is still popularly displayed on many houses in the South.
“We...oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-
The Heritage Preservation Association has declared “total war” on those who attack southern values and culture, claiming “atrocities and the cultural bigotry [have] befallen the people of the South.”
The Confederate States of America wants to repeal laws that gave citizenship to blacks and votes to women.