It's All About the Civil War

Sorry for the hiatus--had some inescapable real-life things come up.  In the meantime, the Wisconsin protests continue, and grow, as their governor intransigently tries to force through the revocation of labor rights that have been in place for decades.  Here is a post from Balloon Juice that ties the rabid opposition to organized labor that we see in the Republican party to earlier efforts to profit economically off the unpaid labor of others (e.g., slavery and prison labor).  The maps are quite telling.