Sherman? For real? And claiming that the South gets little aid or attention? The Southern states, with their proud bootstrapping traitorous heritage, are the nation’s top beneficiaries of federal welfare — they contribute the least and take the most.

I want to get on board, I really do. I have Southern family and live in a quasi-Southern state. I’ve seen and lived the angst and the divide you refer to. But I can’t take seriously a screed that justifies Southern attitudes — attitudes that want to take away my right to bodily autonomy or my right to sit at the front of the bus, amongst other deeply held beliefs of these deeply religious sorts — by invoking Sherman and the rest of the well-worn Southern litany of Mean Things the Damn Yankees Have Done to Us Even Though We Done Nothing Wrong and By the Way How do You Like My New Stars and Bars, Just Showing My Cultural Pride is All. As Hank Hill once said, “No. Way. No god dang way.”