blacksundae

John H. Richardson in Esquire:

As a man wise in the ways of human madness once told me, “You think it’s money with the Republicans and sex with the Democrats, but really it’s the other way around.” That’s why folks in the Bible Belt buy more porn than anybody else, and why their pregnancy and abortion rates are the highest in the nation. Because it is always the Other that we desire. Crazy two-legged beasts that we are, teetering in this awkward upright posture, we define our civilization by carving sins out of the category of acceptable human behavior — and then immediately begin committing them with the most feverish enthusiasm.

It’s no accident that much of this impulse comes from the southern states, which recent polls suggest are virtually united in their opposition to President Obama. After all, this is the region that fought government intrusion upon its freedoms by forming its own government to intrude upon its freedoms, that imposed the Fugitive Slave Law on other states in the name of states’ rights, that fought for slavery in the name of liberty. None of this was particularly logical, but then again, logic is just another iron law of compulsion.

Read on.