[PEN-L:8355] The Southern Party Seeks Secession (fwd)

["Michael Hoover" <hoov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

forwarded by Michael Hoover

> JUNE 19, 11:19 EDT
>
>  Southern Party Seeks Secession
>
>  By ALLEN G. BREED
>  Associated Press Writer
>
>  RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) =D1 Six score and 18 years ago, their forefathers brought
> forth upon this
>  continent a new nation, conceived in secession and dedicated to the
> proposition that states
>  are sovereign and not beholden to a central government.
>
>  Now, the philosophical heirs to the Confederate States of America are
> making another go at
>  it.
>
>  Organizers of the Southern Party have registered with the Federal Election
> Commission and
>  with the secretaries of state in Florida, Georgia, Texas and Virginia. By
> August, the party
>  hopes to be established in all 11 states of the old Confederacy and
> Kentucky, Maryland,
>  Missouri, Oklahoma and West Virginia.
>
>  The short-term goal is to get candidates elected to state and local
> offices. The long-term
>  objective, which troubles independent political observers even though they
> doubt it will
>  ever happen: Send enough party members to Congress to push for a separate
> Southern
>  nation.
>
>  Wasn't that settled in the Civil War? Not in the view of the Southern Party=
>  ``The shotgun wedding forced upon the South at Appomattox has reached a
> dead end, and it
>  is time to initiate a political divorce for the good of all parties
> concerned,'' declares the
>  group's Web site.
>
>  Those who believe that such talk is the very heart of sedition are the
> victims of 130 years of
>  Yankee propaganda =D1 and of a poor understanding of the U.S. Constitution,
> says national
>  committee chairman George Kalas.
>
>  ``Lincoln once said that a house divided would not stand,'' Kalas says.
> ``Lincoln was wrong.
>  A house divided will stand. It's called a duplex.''
>
>  Kalas, a Houstonian who filed the party's Texas papers in March, says
> there's popular
>  support for the idea of a new Confederacy. But is he just whistling
> ``Dixie''?
>
>  Since 1992, the Southern Focus Polls from the University of North Carolina
> at Chapel Hill
>  have asked whether the South would be better off as a separate nation, if
> that could be
>  achieved without bloodshed. Between 8 percent and 16 percent of
> Southerners have agreed
>  at any given time, and up to 9 percent of non-Southerners have accepted
> the premise.
>
>  Twenty years ago, John Shelton Reed, the author, historian and sociologist
> whose
>  department oversees the polling, predicted the time was coming when
> Southerners would
>  again seek autonomy. His reasoning: Those who actually fought the Civil
> War were all
>  dead; America's role in the world was becoming less clear following
> Vietnam, and the South
>  was ``finally ridding itself of the incubus of white supremacy.''
>
>  ``Although I'm pleased to have my prophecy validated, I'm personally
> ambivalent about
>  this development,'' Reed says.
>
>  Even so, he adds, ``I certainly believe that any group that's telling the
> 'federales' to mind
>  their constitutional business is doing a good thing.''
>
>  Separatist movements are nothing new. Groups of native Hawaiians have been
> pushing for
>  a return to sovereignty in recent years, and the Alaskan Independence
> Party, founded on a
>  platform of secession from the lower 48, helped elect a governor in 1990.
>
>  But a Southern nation?
>
>  Yes, says the Southern Party, rejecting Lincoln's ``flawed notion'' that
> the United States is
>  bound together only by ``some abstract notion of liberty and equality.''
> The group's Web site
>  goes on:
>
>  ``Rather, we believe the United States in general and the South in
> particular are defined by
>  their historically European and Christian ethnic, linguistic and cultural
> core. ... This
>  cultural majority represents the true fusion of blood and soil that
> defines what the Southern
>  nation is. ...
>
>  ``(W)e intend to promote policies that will ensure that Dixie remains a
> predominantly, but
>  certainly not exclusively, Anglo-Celtic nation.''
>
>  Historian Steven Lawson says minorities should feel ``very uneasy'' about
> this. ``They're
>  defining this culture of the South in very limited ways =D1 in a monolithic
> way of whiteness,''
>  says Lawson, a professor at Rutgers University and author of books on
> black political
>  history. ``They are equating whiteness with Southern culture, and that's
> just a distortion
>  of Southern history.''
>
>  Kalas says that's not the point at all.
>
>  Party supporters envision a country with a weak, decentralized government,
> like
>  Switzerland; where schools and courts would proudly display the Ten
> Commandments;
>  where most citizens would be required to serve in the military but would
> only wage
>  defensive wars against foreign nations; and where immigration would be
> vigilantly
>  controlled.
>
>  Party supporter Mike Crane of Hollywood, Fla., sees secession as the only
> escape from a
>  political system that is irretrievably broken and thoroughly corrupt.
>
>  ``I'm tired of working for these Republicrats and Demagods that represent
> things I do not
>  believe in,'' says Crane, a software designer who has gotten in trouble
> for displaying a set of
>  miniature Confederate flags in his office.
>
>  ``I'm tired of a government where those of no faith have more rights than
> those of faith. I'm
>  tried of a government that's obsessed with race and focused on special
> privileges =D1
>  affirmative action, in other words.''
>
>  But party organizers insist their aims are not white supremacist.
>
>  ``Sir, the blacks have been an integral part of the Southern heritage for
> years,'' says Jerry
>  Baxley, an auctioneer and gun dealer from Richmond, Va. ``We're not
> anything but
>  Southerners, and that's how we view our people.''
>
>  Kalas says that when he talks of Anglo culture, he's thinking more about
> language,
>  literature and legal traditions than about race.
>
>  ``The culture that we have today has benefitted everybody, regardless of
> their racial
>  background,'' says Kalas, a former CIA investigator whose father is a
> Greek immigrant and
>  whose mother is of Cajun and American Indian descent.
>
>  When asked if he could foresee minorities playing a role in the party,
> Kalas immediately
>  named one =D1 columnist Walter Williams, an economics professor at George
> Mason
>  University and author of the book ``More Liberty Means Less Government.''
>
>  Williams, who is black, doesn't see himself joining the party. But it's
> not because of the
>  rhetoric.
>
>  ``It doesn't make any difference whether they're inclusive or not, at
> least to me. That's one
>  of the issues of liberty,'' says Williams, who believes in the right of
> secession. ``You have to
>  be a brave person to take liberty.''
>
>  The party is a project of the League of the South, a 12,000-member
> Southern heritage
>  organization. Kalas is the league's ``Rebmaster.''
>
>  Party members say the Southern independence movement is part of an
> international trend
>  toward smaller, more homogenous states. They cite recent moves toward
> self-determination
>  in Scotland and Wales.
>
>  Thomas Naylor, professor emeritus of economics at Duke University in
> Durham, thinks the
>  Southern Party is right on. In fact, he thinks his adopted state of
> Vermont should band with
>  New Hampshire and Maine and join Canada's Maritime provinces, which he
> believes have
>  more in common with each other than with, say, California or Texas.
>
>  ``The government is too big because the whole damn country is too big,''
> says Naylor,
>  co-author of the 1997 book ``Downsizing the U.S.A.''
>
>  Kalas says the party will not likely field its first candidates until
> after the 2000 elections.
>  And he predicts it will succeed where other third parties have failed
> because its key plank,
>  secession, is something the two major parties won't be able to co-opt.
>
>  Unfortunately for the party, the region is a politically tough row to hoe.
>
>  ``The South is easily the worst place in the country for ballot access for
> minor parties,'' says
>  Richard Winger of San Francisco, publisher of the newsletter ``Ballot
> Access News.''
>
>  Alabama, for instance, in 1995 tripled the number of signatures needed to
> get a party on
>  the ballot to 3 percent of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial
> election. To stay on the
>  ballot, a party would have to get 20 percent of the vote, Winger says.
>
>  That the movement even exists is disheartening to some.
>
>  As a history professor, John Hope Franklin believes that peaceful
> secession is a closed issue.
>  But as a black man who daily experiences ``disdain of me and lack of
> interest in my
>  well-being,'' he is worried.
>
>  Franklin, a professor emeritus at Duke, says the Southern Party leaders
> are articulate, and
>  they express views that many Americans share while at the same time ``they
> are against
>  much of what this country stands for =D1 tolerance and diversity and, we
> believe, equality.''
>
>  He adds: ``They're a bunch of nuts, but they're to be taken seriously.''
>
>  EDITORS NOTE =D1 The Southern Party Web site is www.southernparty.org.
> Allen
> G. Breed
>  is the AP's Southeast regional writer, based in Raleigh.