I’ve heard the jokes, you’ve heard the jokes: is it too late to let the red states secede? (Or as Janeane Garofalo refers to ’em: “the cracker belt.”)

But link to the below maps to see the chilling correlation between the slave vs. free states of the Civil War and the red state/blue state breakdown of 2004.

(Thanks to ourword.org, a great feminist blog: http://ourword.org/node?from=10&PHPSESSID=a1ea9ac9f0cac3ce01d6c65cce906564 and then scroll down half a page.)
Matsu of Media Girl provides a telling analysis of how the former slave states have knuckle-dragged and resisted moral and civil rights fights for over 150 years: including being the bastions of Jim Crowe laws and voting against the ERA.

And what is needed now to turn the red states blue, based on a history lesson or two:

 “As long as the Republicans have deadlock on the South, they need to pick up a few swing states and the Neo-Confederacy – the successors of the Kansas-Nebraska Act – to hold the White House and with sparsely populated states having two senators a piece even the senate itself was not out of reach.

They key thing is the message.

So back to 1964 and what caused me to leave the Republicans, and so this is a sort of oral history at this point.

As I said, in 1964 the conservative wing of the Republican party was largely discredited and were called “extremists.” Many were “closet” John Birch Society members and if not out-and-out Birchers, as they were called, they at least felt kinship. The Birchers saw Communist infiltration and agitation everywhere. The Democrats were seen as “soft” on Communism – and that included John F. Kennedy – and many Birchers went so far as to suggest President Eisenhower was a Communist.

Well, needless to say, this was too much for most people to swallow.”

A fascinating piece, read more at: http://mediagirl.org/2004/12/irrepressible-conflict