Denver
Post columnist Ed Quillen offers some alternative thoughts about Abe Lincoln’s
legacy during this President's Day weekend:
While Abraham Lincoln certainly had some admirable traits, recall that his main goal was to hold the Union together. Now, ponder what a fine country we'd have if Lincoln had just let the South go in peace.
Without the South, we'd probably enjoy decent passenger rail service, improved public education and single-payer health insurance. Our federal taxes would be lower, as many of the old Confederate states enjoy substantial subsidies. Mississippi, for instance, collects $2.02 from the federal government for every dollar it pays in federal taxes. It's $1.78 for Louisiana, $1.65 for Alabama and $1.51 for Virginia.
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Granted, American popular music would be worse than dreadful without Southern contributions.
Not to mention
American fiction writing without Southern writers. Instead of U.S. writers from
the South, the following would be notable writers from the C.S.A.: William
Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty,
Katherine Anne Porter, Harry Crews, Rita Dove, Zora Neale Hurston, Peter
Taylor, Barry Hannah, Pat Conroy, Rosemary Daniell, Lewis Nordan, Truman
Capote, Carson McCullers, Kaye Gibbons, Yusef Komunyakaa, Natasha Tretheway, Barbara
Kingsolver, and so on.
Thing is, they
might not have become the writers we know without the angst that comes with
being defeated rebels. And there are some African-American writers on this list
who might not have had the freedom to write in an agrarian slave-based country.
Read Quillen’s
column at http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_19983335?source=pop
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