Edwin W. Edwards, the once and future King of Louisiana
I, for one, support the grassroots petition calling on Louisiana to secede from the United States. Why should we settle for always being No. 49 or No. 50 among U.S. states when we could be the No. 1 nation in the Caribbean?
Grendel says: I doubt you’d be #1 at anything even in the Caribbean. For instance Bermuda has the 3rd highest income in the world. And the literacy rate in Cuba is higher, while the infant mortality rate is lower. Though perhaps you could make top five in political corruption.
Chris says: I was in New Orleans for a Jungian Psychology Conference and Louisiana sure *felt* like nowhere else in the country. It really has that caribbean feel to it. The slow pace of life, the history etc … Now here’s an observation. Puerto Rico has asked to join the union as a state, so why don’t we just swap PR for another state so we can keep the flag at 50 stars. So who should we swap it for??? Texas perhaps??
wm says: Heck yeah! US out of Ohio!
Rod Dreher says: Hector, Grendel, y’all are harshing my mellow.
WhollyRoamin says: Louisiana secession solves two problems at the same time.
Matt says: Don’t worry, I’ll unharsh your mellow: Louisiana would have the best football team in all of the Caribbean (but of course, we would have to specify which football; if it’s the football the world cares most about about, you would suck, even for a Caribbean nation). So the mellow was only relatively unharshed, I guess.
JasonG says: As a South Carolinian, I’m quite grateful for Louisiana & Mississippi. We’ll never be #50!
JT says: Only if you promise to take Alabama and Mississippi with you.
DavidT says: Personally, I’m with that woman who asked James Thurber, “Why did we have to purchase Louisiana, when we got all the other states free?” http://books.google.com/books?id=Zwsu73A3yUsC&pg=PA131
Rod Dreher says: Only if you promise to take Alabama and Mississippi with you.
Be careful what you wish for. If you drive all of the SEC states out, you’ll have to content yourself with an America cursed by second-rate college football.
Charles Cosimano says: And somewhere in Heaven, General Butler is laughing.
Sands says: “Be careful what you wish for. If you drive all of the SEC states out, you’ll have to content yourself with an America cursed by second-rate college football.”
Hush your mouth. As long as Texas remains in the Union, college football will be just fine.
EngineerScotty says: Be careful what you wish for. If you drive all of the SEC states out, you’ll have to content yourself with an America cursed by second-rate college football.
Checked the top 3 lately? 
Sands says: But we have our own secession thing going on. Doesn’t look like we’re going to wait for S. Carolina to take the lead this time.
Jay says: Be careful what you wish for. If you drive all of the SEC states out, you’ll have to content yourself with an America cursed by second-rate clean college football.
Fixed that for you.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says: Lol to the original post and to the replies.
JonF says: Grendel,
Um, Bermuda is no where near the Caribbean. It’s way out in the Atlantic. Unless maybe you meant the Bahamas instead?
Don Quijote says: Texas Secession Petition Racks Up More Than 80,000 Signatures, Qualifies For White House Response
These people are lucky that I don’t make policy, cause my answer would be:
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Long live the Republic of Texas!!!
Long live the Republic of West Florida!!!
And any other State who does not want to be part of the Union is free to go as far as I am concerned.
BCaldwell says: Cosimano… even suggesting that Benjamin Butler made it to Purgatory is fighting words for someone from the New Orleans area…he was a horrible little man worthy of having the chamber pot dumped on him.
It used to be that many in Louisiana and around the country believed that the United States might not object all that much to it leaving the union…hell, when David Duke was running high in the polls for U.S. Senate and then Governor many of us thought that the United States would actually ASK Louisiana to leave.
Jim says: If Louisiana tries to secede, the result would be the same as last time: New Orleans would be captured early and “sit out the war”. The state would collapse after drones destroy all the plants that produce hot sauce. This time, however, we should let the Mississippi River run its natural course and take care of the problem once and for all……naturally, organically.
The White House petition site has been filling up with these for every state (and various related petitions) since Election Day.
At this point, Louisiana’s petition has crossed the 25,000-signer threshold which supposedly will yield an eventual response. The other states above the threshold at this writing, in descending order, are Texas, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina. (The next two below the threshold are South Carolina and Arkansas.)
Something seems oddly familiar about that list of states… I’m sure it will come to me eventually….
Tyro says: If Gov. Edwards is any example, then the Republic of Louisiana will also have a political culture that has a much flashier fashion sense than the USA’s national politicians.
That’s funny. As opposed to wanting to leave the country (geographically)…
Bush is reelected, liberals threaten to move to Canada.
Conservatives: Secession.
Very telling. (of what exactly I’m not quite sure.)
Beyng says: Those who revel in cherry-picking statistics to expose the South as a third-world desert have obviously never been there, just as those from the South who revel in depicting the North as a giant, godless ghetto have obviously never been there.
Nickp says: Are you also going to move Louisiana across the Gulf of Mexico? ’cause Louisiana borders the Caribbean like England borders the Mediterranean.
grendel says: JonF,
No I meant Bermuda, though the Bahamas also likely kick Louisiana’s butt too. Bermuda, despite it’s location, is generally considered part of the Caribbean cultural zone characterised by the legacy of slavery and the plantation system. Bermuda is also a member of the “Caribeean Community” (sort of like the European Community, but with more palm trees)
Polichinello says: At this point, I’m willing to look at reaccession to Mexico. Might was well be in a country with a rational foreign policy and serious immigration controls.
El Mono Liso says: “Those who revel in cherry-picking statistics to expose the South as a third-world desert have obviously never been there, just as those from the South who revel in depicting the North as a giant, godless ghetto have obviously never been there.”
Well, I live here, and it is pretty much a Third World desert.
Uncle Vanya says: Years ago I heard Antonin Scalia say that the question of secession had been resolved once and for all by The Civil War.
I laughed.
Ray says: On a mellow-unharshing note, infant mortality and life-expectancy data from Cuba can be considered downright falsified, as they do not include any deaths of premature infants (!). Similarly, any other data from that regime should be treated with a heavy grain of salt.
JasonG says: “Similarly, any other data from that regime should be treated with a heavy grain of salt.”
Well, living in a state, South Carolina, where our GOP government just let the barn door open for the entire public citizen records of personal data to some 4 pack a day, East European hacker, I’d be ok with some false data to throw the scent off.
Buckey says: While we’re at it, can we give Michigan to Canada?
Greenman says: Wow, so folks on the Right actually took their “America, love it or leave it” rhetoric seriously?
wm says: Hey Rod, can you guys at the American Conservative use this as an opportunity to hype the peerless, immortal, giant-among-men Bill Kauffman’s Bye Bye Miss American Empire? Pretty Please? Such a great book.
After my ancestors fought so hard to NOT let Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and of course South Carolina, leave the union, why are all these northern liberal elitists demanding that they all go together?
Oh yeah, my unionist ancestors lived in Tennessee, and didn’t want to leave.
J says: Only if you promise to take Alabama and Mississippi with you.
I’d include Tennessee and Arkansas. And put a big bow ribbon on it.
grendel says: while you’re plugging books, there’s always this: “Better Off Without ‘Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession”
Available at Amazon:
RE: “Wow, so folks on the Right actually took their ‘America, love it or leave it’ rhetoric seriously?”
I can imagine a response from the folks in question might be, to paraphrase The Great King Reagan,
“[We] didn’t leave the [U.S. of A.]. The [U.S. of A.] left [us].”
Oh, and (Twirling hat around head)
“Yee-haw!! Adios! you pinko commie bastards!!”
BCaldwell says: Don’t burn those Confederate Dollars yet, boys.
Actually given the state of the greenback, old Confederate currency is actually a good thing to have….I’m talking about selling some of it to collectors.
This is quite hilarious….
Rod, isn’t Edwin Edwards a little old to run things? I’m sure he still looks good and is probably in good shape all around but the guy has to be in 80′s , right?
I actually lament the fact that the body politic no longer has scoundrels and rascals like Edwards around anymore. It was great fun back in the day. Would love to see Edwards debate someone like Obama, or a Clinton. Couldn’t you see him against a Bill Clinton, he could call Clinton an amateur on the whole extramarital affair thing and it would have real juice and Clinton would probably have to agree.
[Note from Rod: Naw, Edwin is 85, and is on his third wife, Trina, who is 32. They announced this summer that they were going to try to have a baby. The old boy's still got it, somehow. -- RD]
TWylite says: The new nation should be called The Democratic People’s Republic of Skipwithistan.
Actually, by some measures (e.g. life expectancy) Louisiana ranks well below Cuba and somewhat below the more developed Anglophone countries (Antigua, Barbados, maybe some others). So, not first in the Caribbean either (at least with respect to life expectancy).