Ted Nugent says it might have been best if South had won Civil War

By David Ferguson/Raw Story

Seventies rocker turned conservative firebrand Ted Nugent has penned a column for theWashington Times in which he slams Chief Justice John Roberts for his decision on the Affordable Care Act and posits that the world might be a better place if the United States had dissolved into separate powers following the Civil War. The firearms enthusiast, avid bow-hunter and recent Secret Service Interviewee has made headlines before with his unvarnished opinions and occasional emotional outbursts about liberals and Democrats, including an exhortation to fellow Republicans to “ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November!”

Nugent has taken the Supreme Court decision upholding “Obamacare” hard, and finds no joy in the fact that fundraising for Mitt Romney has skyrocketed since the announcement of the opinion was made last Thursday. Like many conservatives, Nugent seems to feel that taking away insurance companies’ ability to deny coverage to children with bone cancer and muscular dystrophy is a knife through the heart of democracy, a potentially lethal blow to the free market, from which the American experiment may never recover.

“Unlike other conservatives, I don’t care if his vote to save Obamacare turns into a cash cow for the Mitt Romney’s presidential political machine and galvanizes the GOP,” he wrote. “There are some things more important than politics and elections. Striking down un-American, Constitution-violating Obamacare is one of them.”

Nugent, who scored minor hits with the single “Cat Scratch Fever” and the album “Weekend Warriors,” maintains that the America he believes in has been so sullied by the Affordable Care Act, that it might be better if the Union had been conquered in the U.S. Civil War so that the American dream might have died before it could be so degraded.

“Because our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government hold the 10th Amendment in contempt, I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War. Our Founding Fathers’ concept of limited government is dead,” he wrote.

“Obamacare will now join Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as another unaffordable, unsustainable, runaway, unaccountable social program,” lamented Nugent, “Limited government is dead. The smothering era of socialism is here.”

150 Years Later, Tea Partiers Still Aren’t Over The Civil War

By Travis Waldron

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s beginning, when secessionists fired on Union troops at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. According to a new poll from CNN, the Civil War’s legacy remains unresolved. The poll finds that Republicans and Tea Party supporters are more likely to support the Confederacy and confederate leaders than Democrats or Independents.

According to the poll, nearly one in four Americans sympathize with the Confederacy more than with the Union. That number grows to nearly four-in-ten among white Southerners. Among Tea Party members, 26 percent sympathize with the Confederacy more than the Union, and that number grows to 28 percent among Republicans.

Meanwhile, while respondents overall viewed slavery as the main reason for the war by a 54-42 margin, Tea Partiers and Republicans held different views. Fifty-two percent of Republicans believed slavery was not the main reason, and that number rose to 54 percent among Tea Partiers.

The poll comes at a time when Republicans and Tea Partiers are rehashing the battles that both led to and came out of the Civil War. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and others havecome out in support of nullification laws. In both Texas and Tennessee, lawmakers have floated the possibility of secession. And across the country, Republicans haveattempted to revoke the 14th Amendment guarantee of birthright citizenship. And, of course, there was Rep. Paul Broun’s (R-GA) reference to the “Great War of Yankee Aggression” on the House floor.

Even though these battles are radical and out of the mainstream, it isn’t that shocking that these Republicans are attempting to refight them. According to these poll numbers, that’s exactly what large segments of their base want them to do.