For two reasons: first, it's always cool to run into someone who gets it without you yourself having to be the teacher. And second, when people get pissed I can always send them to him.

Keeping Slaves, Killing Indians, Being Republican

…But it strikes me (undoubtedly because I have been reading and thinking a lot about the 1840s and 50s for the last couple of years) that a true, harsh and meaningful way of explaining the red-blue split is this: the more recently that a place permitted slavery or engaged in wars on Indians, the more likely it is to be a Republican state today. Republican states in 2004 are those where slaves were kept or Indians shot during the last 150 years. Democratic states are those where the Indian wars and slavery ended in the first half of the 19th century or earlier. Of course there are conspicuous anomalies -- Indiana (and maybe now Iowa or Wisconsin) on the right, Delaware and Maryland on the left -- as there always are to such "rules."

And does it mean that white southerners and westerners in 2004 are somehow "guiltier" of the historical crimes of slavery and Indian genocide that the rest of white America? Certainly not. But it is...ironic, at least, that white southerners and westerners today tend to feel less obliged to try to compensate somehow for the racist misdeeds of our collective past.

Hat tip to The Corsair