From the WASHINGTON POST COLUMN:
The key to understanding the Civil War, which began 150 years ago this week, is to realize that it’s still being fought. Indeed, it’s being fought now more intensely than at any time since the 1960s…
In the private-sector economy, the Southern labor system — in which workers are paid less and have fewer rights — has been winning for decades. Despite their huge growth in members during the 1930s and 1940s, unions never succeeded in penetrating the South, where white racial animosity toward blacks thwarted efforts to build working-class solidarity. The gap between Northern and Southern wages remained vast — so vast that many Northern companies began relocating facilities there, particularly after the civil rights revolution of the ’60s made the South seem less culturally foreign…
In the public sector, the battle between Republicans’ radical anti-government agenda and the Democrats’ (semi-hemi-demi, alas) defense of government’s role in nation-building is just the latest version of the sectional conflict that has divided America since the early 19th century, when Northern Whigs such as Abraham Lincoln favored government investment in canals, roads and rails against the opposition of Southern agrarians. Today, under Republican budget constraints, the traditional Southern underinvestment in infrastructure and education threatens to become the national norm…
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