Lincoln's legacy - Red states receive blue cash

This article is depressing, Was the Gettysburg Address a mistake? at Politico by Chuck Thompson who writes strongly in hope of letting the southern Tea Party states secede. He's pretty much calling their bluff and hypocrisy. In general, the "liberal, socialist" states pay more in taxes than they receive back from the feds, and the southern states receive more than they pay. See graphic here and article here.

 Thompson writes in the article concerning the South's response to Reconstruction was "... casting itself as the woebegone victim through typically radical politics (obstructionist), religion (evangelical), race relations (segregated), education (under-funded) and business (anti-labor), has done its level best ever since to remain an emotionally estranged partner who nevertheless sticks around for the financial support."

The Northern liberals keep donating their money to help the poor in other states including those in states who need assistance. Those states who proclaim fiscal restraint to the detriment of those in need, that the feds then come to pick up the tab for. Now with the highly imperfect ACA (Obamacare) which sought to help more of the sick by paying for them to be on Medicare, many of these states refused the offer, and prefer to keep the needy in need. In places where megachurch pastors refuse to publicly comment on the unmet need of the poor in their states being blocked by their states.

The reason the federal government is offering to get everyone insured is because the states and the charities could not get it done. People were suffering and going into bankruptcy because of unaffordable healthcare, but churches, charities, and proud state governments could not, perhaps some would not, solve the issue, nor even stem the bleeding.

On this anniversary of the Gettysburg address it would be nice to strive for the ideal of the Declaration of Independence which Lincoln appeals to in the opening and close of that short speech.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
....that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

If we all are created equal, let's treat our neighbors as nicely as we'd like to be treated. If the people want medical care, let's stop obstructing their government from getting it to them. I'll give Lincoln the last word, close to the end of his life at the Second inaugural address, spoken like someone familiar with the open-handed posture in the parable of the good Samaritan.

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds. Abraham Lincoln

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