Mike to Katie from Tennessee: “Your State is Your Country”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Email | RSS

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Audio and Transcript – Your country Tennessee is part of a union of countries.  This is another one of the thinking processes that has gotten totally out of whack and totally out of kilter.  It is a great story to be re-lived that while the great General Robert E. Lee did not believe that the act of secession was legal, he was wrong about that.  When he was asked by Mr. Seward to lead President Lincoln’s army to invade and put down the rebel insurrection in the State of Virginia, Lee said: I cannot and I must side with my country. Check out the rest in today’s audio and transcript…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Caller Katie:  I just wanted to say, after that guy just said so many people didn’t vote, I personally believe people in my generation, that are from the ages 18 to 22, generally do not vote because they are so ignorant to the fact of what’s going on in our country.  It scares me that people in my generation will never get their social security.  I wonder how we will survive economically.

Mike:  You just said what’s going on in my country.  Where is your country?

Caller Katie:  The United States of America but I’m from Tennessee.

Mike:  Your country is Tennessee.

Caller Katie:  My country is Tennessee.

Mike:  That’s right.  Your country Tennessee is part of a union of countries.  This is another one of the thinking processes that has gotten totally out of whack and totally out of kilter.  It is a great story to be re-lived that while the great General Robert E. Lee did not believe that the act of secession was legal, he was wrong about that.  When he was asked by Mr. Seward to lead President Lincoln’s army to invade and put down the rebel insurrection in the State of Virginia, Lee said: I cannot and I must side with my country.  If you read Lee’s letters correctly, and this is the way almost all Americans thought — other than Unionist Yankees that needed the South to produce their goods for them — the proper method of thinking about this is that your country is Tennessee.  There may be things in Tennessee that you don’t like, but what’s going on in the country of Tennessee?

Caller Katie:  I love everything in Tennessee.  I’m happy about Tennessee.  It’s sad that even if Tennessee votes for a president, they will never be elected because they don’t have enough electoral votes.

Mike:  Katie, now we’re getting somewhere.  Maybe part of the exercise is to give up the ghost and give up the silly endeavor that we’re ever going to find common cause and harmony with those states that are never going to vote the way we want them to vote.  Why do you want to be in a union with New York, so you can go visit Saks Fifth Avenue?  So you can go hang out at Bloomingdale’s?  So you can go watch a Yankees game?  So you can go to —

Caller Katie:  I personally don’t care about any of that.

Mike:  So you can go to tourist events and walk down Times Square and take photographs?  Why do you want to be in cahoots with New Yorkers?  New Yorkers don’t want to be in cahoots with you.  If they did, they’d move there.  Why do we continue with this, I think a fruitless endeavor, to believe that the preservation of the current 50-state composition must survive?  If you really believe, if you really, truly believe as a Tennessean that your state is never going to be on the winning side of a presidential election, then your path ought to be clear in front of you, my dear.  This takes rational, calm thought.  You need to be deliberative about this, not kneejerk.  You need to have the courage of strong convictions and intellectual and philosophical reflection and thought.
Perhaps you, young Katie, have identified the takeaway of the whole evening.  Instead of demonizing and vilifying and maybe even wishing evil on those that are on the winning team today, on the Obama team, and those in the winning states today, the Obama states and what have you, maybe the proper reflection and the proper way to look at this is to look at it and say that is probably never going to be, those people in that state are never going to politically agree with me.  Why should they be able to tax me?

Caller Katie:  I don’t think they should.

Mike:  Why should I have to live under the specter of them ordering or them causing me to be taxed to pay for abortifacients and other procedures in other states?  Why should I be on the hook for the welfare or for the roads and bridges or for any of the other things you dislike about the blue states when they don’t like me and I don’t like them?  Remember Chuck Thompson, AG?  Do you remember the book about why maybe it’s time to let the Southern states go?

AG:  Right.

Mike:  Rebel with a cause — what’s the name of the book?  We interviewed Chuck.  Chuck is a liberal.  Chuck also, as a liberal, does not want to have any common cause with people in the South anymore, or with people in the Western states that share your point of view.  What is this delusion that we suffer under that we must suffer this?  For what purpose?  There is nothing in a founding document that says so.  A military victory does not make it so either.

End Mike Church Show Transcript