With their translator ready to go, Lindner and 352nd Lt. Col. Jim Otwell don bulletproof vests and Kevlar helmets and drive out of the compound to visit the state-run sewing factory for deaf Iraqis.

"We want to find out what your working conditions are, anything that we can do to help you," Otwell tells the young women at the factory. He speaks in English slowly, for the benefit of an Arabic translator, who then turns to an Arabic-speaking sign-language translator to sign Otwell's questions to the seamstresses.

The girls' hands start flying as they tell Otwell about their hated boss.

"She would beat us, and pull our hair!" signs Nadia Jabar.

"What about working conditions ... do you have hearing aids? Books you can read?" Otwell asks.

"Nothing!" they sign back.

Otwell and Lindner tour the building, which is cold and dusty. But inside several of the rooms are old products they can sell - hundreds of Iraqi flags they've sewn, dresses and pillowcases. Already the team has arranged for the factory to produce all the uniforms for Iraq's civil defense forces, and piles of cut brown pant legs line the floor.

Now the workers are getting $60 a month, part of which is spent on housing them at the factory. Otwell and Lindner promise to come back soon, and ask the workers to make a list of things that they really need, so maybe next year the factory can get some upgrades. On the way out, the workers jump and clap, as Lindner and Otwell escort the old boss - who had come back to the factory despite a previous arrest by Iraqi police for beating the workers - away from the building.

That's when it struck me: What if Lincoln had just let the South go? What if we now had a country on our southern border made up of the states that formed the Confederacy?

Hundreds of thousands of people wouldn't have died.

OK, the slaves wouldn't have been freed as soon. The Confederacy probably would have been the last holdout country with slaves, but at some point, it would have had to bow to world pressure and give up slavery. In the meantime, perhaps creative Abolitionists in the North would have found ways to make daring raids into the Confederacy, and the underground railroad would have still operated, and ... Well, who knows what other methods for freeing the slaves might have arisen?

But think about it. If the South were its own country, then all those people who so desire it could have a Christian theocracy. They could have a country where the Bible is read in schools; where Creationism is taught in science class and evolution is not; where homosexuality would be against the law; where the Internet and Hollywood movies and rap music could be banned by law.

There would be trade relations between the Union of the United States and the Confederacy, and travel arrangements.

Also, evangelical Christians from the U. Of the U.S. who desired to live in a Christian theocracy could emigrate to the Confederacy. Likewise, progressive-minded citizens from the South, as well as gays and others who would be persecuted, could immigrate here.
...
Yup, maybe Lincoln should have let the South go. As I understand it, many Southerners consider Yankees foreigners anyway.

It's Wednesday morning and liberals around the nation are contemplating the awful implications of another four years in Bush country. Some New Yorkers have already applied for Canadian immigration papers in fear of a Bush win.

The electoral map, however, offers another option – one that may be more sensible and more durable than leaving the country. How about a new Confederacy that combines the West Coast North Eastern states and Canada, all joined together in a new Union of Provinces and States based on rational and democratic principles? This would leave the cowboy heartland and the South to the creationist fate they deserve – not to mention the series of hurricanes that either the global warming they don’t believe in – or the God they do – is sending as a message to them.
...
At present, so many blue collar workers whose wages are frozen, who face export of their jobs abroad, and whose unemployment benefits are about to disappear, continue to abhor the Democrats as the party of abortion and gay marriage. If the Democrats cannot frame a platform that appeals to those voters, then there is little hope for the Democratic Party – or for the United States for that matter.

As for the rest of the world, they'll just have to work out a way to carry on together without the constructive input of the world’s strongest military power.