[valo403]

Originally Posted by tripin_billie

I think Colin Woodard's thesis in "American Nations" is once again showing to be correct. There are two fundamentally opposed concepts of rights in the USA.

One, supported by the north east, midwest (but not Indiana) and west coast region, is the Germanic concept of Freiheit. Freiheit contends that all people have equal rights and expansion of rights is universally good and does not reduce another's rights.

In opposition is the south, greater Appalachia, and new west (Montana, the Dakotas, etc.). Here, the concept of rights is linked to the Greco Roman concept of Libertas, where rights are a zero sum. In this worldview, if a minority group is extended a right, this inherently means that another group must have lost a right. For example, freeing the slaves and giving them citizenship and voting rights is interpreted at the same time as a loss of the right for rich, white land owners to own slaves.

These restrictive voting laws just expose this type of worldview.

I do think that the country is really beginning to get past a fracture point. While it isn't written nearly as well as Woodard's "American Nations," I'm currently enjoying (and largely agreeing with) Chuck Thompson's "Better of Without Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Succession."

Also, it's full of full blown racists.