Way Down South

Garry Wills has an interesting essay in the New York Review of Books. In it, he talks about his native region, the American South, home of lost causes and the cradle of the modern reactionary Stupid Party:

"... No one needs better health care more than the South, but it fights it off so long as Obama is offering it, its governors turning down funds for Medicaid. This is a region that rejects sex education, though its rate of teenage pregnancies is double and in places triple that of New England. It fights federal help with education, preferring to inoculate its children against science by denying evolution.

"No part of the country will suffer the effects of global warming earlier or with more devastation than the South, yet its politicians resist measures to curb carbon emissions and deny the very existence of climate change—sending it to the dungeon with evolution and biblical errancy."

Wills says this is the South cutting off its nose to spite the Federal Government, demonstrating political lunacy that is sadly self-defeating.