The 10th amendment gives the states the right to succeed; besides the common sense that a voluntary union of states means that members may leave. And yes, Florida has the right to succeed, but we do not have the firepower to beat the Empire. (yet)

I realize that nitpicking spelling is not good netiquette but I have to point out that someone who cannot even spell secede doesn't really have much room to be giving lessons to others on the finer points of the procedure.

Get thee to a dictionary, posthaste.

Captain Sir Quibble Nitpick

As someone who is about as aryan as it's possible to get who grew up in the deep South during Jim Crow, I can assure you that Southerners would *never* have given up slavery without being made to do so by superior force. Unless you have lived it you have not the slightest idea of the sheer, vicious strength of prejudice and bigotry that existed even a century after the Recent Unpleasantness.

I remember Lester Maddox and his baseball bat.. You might remember that he was elected governor of Georgia thanks to that bat.

Just wait until you see some snotty nosed thirteen year old call a white haired great grandfather "boy" and no one blinks an eye.

Then you will understand.

People who claim to be champions of the poor can't even see religious charity as helping their precious poor people because their heads are too far up their asses smelling their own farts. Pathetic.

While I do not completely disagree with you, I must point out that religious "charity" often comes with strings attached that strongly resemble chains of enslavement.

No, that doesn't always happen, but it happens often enough to make many of the non-religious exremely suspicious of religious charity.

Living where I do I have been on the receiving end of some pretty strong mind fuck from the religious right. If I were not such a pig headed, obstinate jerk I might well have succumbed to said mind fuck and become one of the religion intoxicated myself.

Luckily for me, I know enough scripture myself to do a pretty good mind fuck on the "Christians" who try to do it to me. Start talking about the meaning of the parable of the Good Samaritan and point out how the Christ had two pious men pass by the inured man like he was rotten meat and yet the first nonbeliever who came by took mercy on him. Ask them what the Christ may have meant by this, given that the Christ uttered no meaningless words.

The implication I point out often leaves them wishing to depart from my company with all due speed.

Do you know how we can solve this quandary?

Brevity is not only the soul of wit but of communication also.

No.

It's rather like buying a new (to you anyway) car. You never notice that model of car until you start driving one, then you see them everywhere. You have been sensitized to that particular stimulus which heretofore was below your attention threshold.

So it is for me with the phrase "alcohol and drugs", it makes my antennae stand up every time and I hear it constantly from practically everyone, even people who should know better, like my physician brother in law.

How about "alcohol and other drugs?

I know I'm tilting at windmills but I'm constantly reminded of Reverend Neimoller's words.

Fascism, like Communism, has in practice been a kind of "state religion". We have our own "state religion" here, in which, if you are an apostate, you become a non person unless or until you repent of your apostacy.

I'm speaking here of religion in the sense of belief without evidence.

Which words would those be? You do realize Neimoller was no hero, don't you?

Yes, I do know that, which is what makes his words so much more powerful..

You really shouldn't use those terms because you have no more of an idea of what they mean than Jonah Goldberg does. Do you think "democracy" or "freedom" are ideals that are immune from the totalitarian impulse? If you do, you don't know your history.

Now who is mind reading?

You have no idea of what I know.

Democracy can be a totalitarianism of fifty percent plus one.

No matter how much evidence we showed you to refute some of your beliefs, you'd continue to believe them, right? Who's the true believer, here?

Which makes me different from you in what way?

Since I read and post on my own time I haven't been able to follow all the conversations here but to the best of my knowledge you have not answered this question and I'm genuinely interested in your answer.

Do you have to piss in a jar to prove that you are not an apostate of the state religion?

I apologize in advance if you have already answered.