The new Un-United States of America

It would appear that the full-throated insult to the president by GOP Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina — where else? — has stirred up a new firestorm of secession. Six or seven states scattered around the country want to leave the Union.

I say good riddance. Let them go. It will help lower the national deficit if we don’t have to support federal agencies in seven cranky provinces.

In 1860 Lincoln made the right decision: Go to war to save the Union. The cost in lost lives was ghastly, but consider that if the Confederates had won, America as we know it would have been comprised of several countries:

1.The New England states together with New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and perhaps Delaware and Maryland.

2. The Confederacy.

3. The Southwest, comprised of New Mexico, Arizona and California. Texas might or might not have been the Lone Star Republic and there certainly would have been another major country in the Northwest.

What a jigsaw puzzle. And nothing likely to become the richest and most powerful country in the world.

But we’re 50 states strong now and losing seven or eight states scattered around the South and Midwest would only relieve us of the hate, bigotry and ignorance that has persisted in America since the days we started eliminating the Indians, importing Africans to lives of slavery, the China Exclusion Act, et al.

But today if we disrupt the Union, we’d have to change our name to the Un-United States of America or the Disaffected States of America, or whatever.

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Here’s what could happen to six or seven disgruntled states whose leaders and people think our president is a liar, not a citizen to be respected:

• No more “Stimulus Money� to the runaways.

• All present federal buildings closed and their employees let loose in the unemployment lines of their new rulers.

• All the congressmen and senators of the disaffected given their walking papers.

• All military bases in these states shut down and moved to the real America. Men and women from the states enrolled in any branch of our armed forces will be immediately discharged. Who knows, they may be Joe Wilson Operatives. Or North Korean spies?

• The FBI, CIA and all the other 600 spook agencies of the federal government will move their offices out, along with any other of the myriad federal agencies that support jobs throughout the country.

• All major defense contractors and subcontracts of war planes, weapons, tanks, ammunition, et al., move to states that remain in the United States, and are glad to have our current president in charge, e.g., Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont.

• Residents of the runaway states would be required to show passports and proof of vaccinations in order to cross their borders into America.

• All funding for bridges and roads in the old states ceases.

•  Tariffs imposed on all goods and services emanating from the orphan states — including e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, you name it.

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Some of these proposals may sound draconian. But Congressman Joe Wilson showed the “ugly face of America� when he shouted, “You lie,� at a president who is determined, after 100 years of failed attempts, to convince a torpid Congress to pass health-care legislation that would insure quality doctors and prescriptions for all Americans.

Strange that it doesn’t bother us — a people known for our good deeds elsewhere in the world — that 40 million Americans don’t have health insurance, that we are the only civilized country in the world who abandons our citizens when they are savaged by disease.

And are we really so dense as to cry that Obama’s proposed health reforms suddenly mean that “big government� is taking over? Medicare is run by the federal government — it’s about as big as government can get. All Obama wants to do is give citizens a choice to enroll in a Medicare-style program or join a private insurer.

Why is it so hard for our allegedly smart population to understand that right now the cost of health care in America is so expensive because the insurance companies make critical and costly decisions that affect who you see for health care and what new advances in medical technology you are entitled to that may save your life?

How can a disgruntled former governor of Alaska announce that Obama is going to set up “death squadsâ€� to decide which of our elderly should live or die? And too many Americans believe her.  She’s the one who takes liberties with the truth.

I think it would be politic to retire the formerly respected name of “Joe� and let Joe Wilson and Joe the Plumber quietly fade into obscurity.

Freelance Writer Barnett Laschever, the curmudgeon of Goshen, loves America with all its faults, and is hopeful we can now start loving each other.