Better Off Without 'em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession / by Chuck Thompson

[Kim Allen Scott]

Anyone who would try to understand the American character must take into account the horrendously traumatic episode of the Civil War.  No country that has ever been torn asunder as was ours in the early 1860s has had quite the same experience in reconciliation, both attempted and partially achieved.  As William Faulkner once aptly pointed out, in the American South, “the past isn’t even over,” and this study by Chuck Thompson is a cutting, hilarious study that explores the consequences of that truth.  Long known as the backwater of American progressive political thought, the South that Thompson describes is more than an anchor to our society’s advancement, it is an actual threat both internally and internationally.  Allowed their influence to be unchallenged would continue the United States down a path of self-destructive foreign interventionism and internal intellectual decay.  Thompson’s tongue-in-cheek solution to this is to allow the “erring sisters to depart” in an amicable secession scenario, and his reasons are presented in language that is both hyperbolic and compelling.  Although I found his use of profanity in several passages jarring, I must admit this book made me laugh out loud, especially since I recognized so clearly the South that in which I lived for seventeen years of my life.  It made me glad I left, and I highly recommend this book.