An open letter to the people of the great sovereign states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas.
Greetings.
Nearly a century and a half ago, the people of your states started a bit of unpleasantness with the rest of the nation, and the net result was nearly half a million dead, millions of dollars in destroyed infrastructure, and hard feelings that have lasted to this day.
In light of recent events, let me offer my sincerest apologies. It turns out that all of us were on the wrong side of the question. Certainly, the argument was framed in the final years of the conflict by the noble cause of emancipation, but the main cause that we fought for, the preservation of the Union, was a mistake. Keeping your eleven states as part of the United States has turned out to be a disaster, and it’s time for us to make good on it.
The United States hereby officially apologizes for the preservation of the bonds between your states and ours.
The Union Army hereby officially, retroactively, surrenders.
The United States hereby acknowledges and recognizes the existence of, and independence of, the Confederate States of America.
Are you happy now? You get to keep your distinct culture. You get to fly your little Confederate battle flags without recrimination. You get to think you’re right. But we, the North and the West, will end up with the better deal.
We won’t have to deal with you any more.
You see, your new nation is composed of the former States that were literally subsidized by the rest of us. You, who complained endlessly about how your taxes were too high, were actually receiving more (in some cases, considerably more) in Federal tax revenues than you were paying out. And that’s before we factor the money we poured into your region in the past through the Tennessee Valley Authority, Rural Electrification, the CCC, the War on Poverty, and so on. Today (well, actually yesterday, since today you’re on your own) you’re still getting more from the Federal Government than you’re contributing. If we were speaking in biological terms, you’d be designated a parasite and eradicated without second thought, but we in the North and West actually have a measure of human compassion, unlike most of you, and would not stoop to that level.
True, we’d be losing access to the oil fields of Texas and the Gulf Coast, but know what? We don’t care. We still have the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to draw from, not to mention Alaska once we get the pipeline up and running, and we can keep buying oil from Canada. That will keep us going for a while. Needless to say, we might have to import some oil from the Confederacy, which you will gouge us for, but you’re already gouging us for it anyhow. The United States (well, up until we let you go) is controlled by two Texas oilmen, who have done their level best to keep the price of oil artificially inflated. You can’t do much worse to the price of oil than you already are. And we won’t need it for long, since once we get rid of your influence in our Government, we’ll actually elect some sensible leaders who will wean us off the teat of foreign oil, and invest in alternative sources of energy. And before you think you can prevent this by taking Al Gore away from us, we’ve already arranged for him to have political asylum in New York.
Economically, socially, and culturally, we’ll be much better off without you, so don’t worry about us.
There is a question of where to draw the boundaries. Certainly, the original eleven states belong in the Confederacy, but we don’t really need to stop there. After all, there are many other states that belong with you. Kentucky, for instance. It’s always aligned more with the South than with America, so while we’ll lose the big horse race and good barbecue, we’re willing to part with it. Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska belong with you, too, when you factor in their cultures. Plus this way YOU have to deal with Fred Phelps, Bob Dole, and James Inhofe.
We’ll keep Arizona and New Mexico – they’re a lot like you, but they occasionally come to their senses so we’ll keep them in the fold. Colorado is tricky. My gut reaction would be to let them go, but once you get outside of Colorado Springs, the rest of the state is actually quite sensible. One would be tempted to let Wyoming go because of Dick Cheney, but since he’s really from Texas and just registered to vote in Wyoming at the last minute to keep Texas’ electoral votes in the Republican column, we’ll hold onto it and ship him back down to you.
We’ll keep Utah and Idaho, since we’re going to need SOME insane states to keep us on our toes now that Alabama is gone, and they’ll be vastly outnumbered so they can’t do any real damage. So there’s our border. Good? Good.
There is, of course, the question of people of color. We have ample evidence of how you’d treat them after Hurricane Katrina, when the Texas cowboy occupying the White House left them all to drown. But don’t worry, we’ve taken this into account. We’ll take them. All of them. They’ll be welcome with us. We’ll pay to relocate them. We’ll still have huge swaths of land in Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, and the Dakotas, whose sparse populations give them way too much political influence as it is, and we can take advantage of that. We’ll build new towns solely for Southern refugees. We’ll put them to work building these new cities and new infrastructure, and then we’ll let them have them! It would be a new homestead program! And we don’t have to limit it to blacks, either! Any free-thinking, intelligent, and sensible Southerner would be welcome to homestead with us; we’d love to have them contributing to our economy and culture! We won’t need to worry about slavery starting back up, since everyone who would have a chance to become a slave would migrate north and find a better life even than they have now!
It sounds like a great deal to me! Of course, without Northern and Western tax revenue your economies would start to dry up, and there’s a chance that within 50 years you’ll be petitioning to come back into the Union, but forget it. You’ve run things for far too long. We’ve let you get away with murder. You wanted to be on your own, so now it’s time to let you have your wish. Thanks for all the fish, don’t let the golden door hit you on the ass on your way out. Good bye, and good riddance.
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