In the 1860's it was Blue vs. Gray.  But nowadays it's hard to tell the players without a program.  The Democrats have moved into what was then militarily Blue territory, assumed their color and switched sides politically, while the Republicans claim the land of the Gray, painting it a vivid shade of Red.  Who says a tiger can't change its stripes?  And here we are, 143 years later and it's still Them vs. Us as Carole Simpson, ABC News Senior Correspondent eschewing the Constitution, noted at a recent meeting of the National Press Club. "When you tell me, let the states decide, that scares me, OK?  I've got a little map here of pre Civil War, free versus slave states."  " It looks like the map of 2004" she said.

So secession is suddenly a red-hot issue, now in the blue states of the North and West.  Well, in certain precincts, anyway.

One popular map circulating on the Internet shows the 19 northern and western blue states won by Sen. John Kerry conjoined with Canada to form the "United States of Canada."  The 31 red states carried by President Bush are depicted as a separate nation dubbed "Jesusland."

But the idea isn't just a joke, according to some top Democrats.  "The segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don't pay for the federal government", they whine.  Geraldine Ferraro dissed the Reds by saying on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes", "All our creativity comes from the blue states. If the blue states seceded, where would the red states be?"  The San Jose Mercury News, speaking for the citizens of California, headlined, "Forget this - let's just secede from the union".

Lawrence O'Donnell, senior political analyst at MSNBC raised the subject of secession on "The McLaughlin Group" shortly after the election.  "Ninety percent of the red states are welfare-client states of the federal government," said Mr. O'Donnell.  He went on to comment, "Some would say, 'Oh, poor Alabama.  It's cut off from the wealth infusion that it gets from New York and California,' " unaware that this state along with neighboring Mississippi and the others of the Southern Nation were once the richest in the land, only to be stripped bare by the cruel hand of the Northern reconstruction government and the Radical Republican 39th Congress after Appomattox.

The emergence of a solidly Republican South prompted longtime Democratic activist Bob Beckel to advocate Southern independence the morning after Election Day.  "I think now that slavery is taken care of, I'm for letting the South form its own nation. Really, I think they ought to have their own confederacy," Mr. Beckel said on the "Fox and Friends" program.  Is he serious? Would it be a gross understatement to say they don't like us? 

And while secession is often thought to be a Southern phenomenon, Northern leaders repeatedly threatened secession in the 19th century, in protest of such provocations as the War of 1812, as well as the admission of Louisiana and Texas to the Union.  In 1803, Massachusetts Sen. Timothy Pickering proposed "a new confederacy," naming the New England states members along with New York ("the center of the confederacy").

In 1839, former President John Quincy Adams defended the right of secession in a speech in New York, saying, "Far better will it be ... to part in friendship with each other than to be held together by constraint."

Conservative author and columnist Ann Coulter recently opined on "Fox and Friends", "The South's 100% Republican now" and so the citizens of "Jesusland" claim victory.  But is this really a win for the former Land of the Gray and it's allies?  As the emblem of the federal government, the U. S. flag necessarily symbolises the principles and actions of that government, its foremost principle is still that of centralisation - the seemingly endless process of concentrating power in Washington, D.C.  The resulting actions taken by the federal government have left a long train of constitutional abuses in their wake.  As Jefferson & Madison feared, it has become the final judge of the limits of its powers.

We are forced by license to make the state the controlling party in our marriages and to register our children with its mark at birth allowing the government to be the owner of our families.  We carry that mark in the form of a social security number invading our privacy in our jobs, our banking, our credit, our income, our health care and much more.  So, domestically, it should be no wonder that the South continues to suffer confiscatory taxation, the murder of millions of unborn children, regulation of who we can hire and fire, and how much they must be paid, how much water is used to flush our toilets, how much of a crop a farmer is allowed to produce; the list goes on.

Of course let's not forget some of those extra constitutional agencies that have been erected for administering their version of public education, the arts, health care benefits, retirement benefits, food, housing, and transportation.  Do you have a low-lying spot in your back yard that needs filling, or live along a proposed highway route?  Well then, you can forget your private property rights.  The Corps of Engineers will declare your yard a wetland and put you in jail unless you apply and pay for the proper permits. Some federal judge will condemn your property and take it from you under the guise of eminent domain. Internationally, the U. S. government brazenly pursues empire. It entangles itself in the quarrels of the entire world. It seeks to dominate other peoples and their resources either by overt, armed invasion, or through assassinations, embargos, and sanctions, while euphemistically calling it 'spreading democracy'.

American 'patriotism' as we see it practiced today, has evolved into an unnatural, unhealthy form of nationalism. It takes the created order of affections and turns it on its head. The federal regime expects your strongest affections to be for distant abstractions like the nation, the environment, or the global economy. The American empire, through its schools, inculcates and then demands from its subjects, ultimate and unquestioning allegiance to the central state and the dictates of its administrators. You are called "Jesusland" and can't pray in Jesus' name, but you will pledge allegiance to the U. S. flag. If they require your body for cannon fodder or your property to, 'advance the greater good', then fork over, citizen. And do it without objection, because if you're not with us, you're with the terrorists. Caesar gets his first. God and family get the leftovers - if any!  Can any of you imagine, in your wildest dreams, that during the first centuries of the Church's existence, a Christian would have dared to have the imperial Roman standard brought forth, and then ask everyone to stand and say, 'Hail Caesar!'?  No!  They chose to be named as enemies of the state and die a martyr's death for the Faith.  Yet we find and approve of this very symbol in the position of honor in our places of worship.