Apparently the authors — Trae Crowder, Drew Morgan and Corey Ryan Forrester – are well known on the internets as being Liberal Rednecks. I’ve never heard of them prior to reading this book, but I was pleasantly surprised at the content here. It’s a lot more intelligent and thoughtful than I was expecting, and makes me want to seek out more of their work.
“In our humble12 opinion, the South in general’s attitude regarding the war and everything that came after needs a major paradigm shift. Put simply: we need to be more like Germany. Ya see, after World War II, Germany as a nation took responsibility for its crimes, owned up to them, and has refused to make excuses for the atrocities that occurred. Germans own it. That’s just the way it is. (Or at least the perception of the way it is, and as we keep reiterating, the perception can be just as important as the reality.) How many people in the South could stomach the idea of Nazi statues existing in Germany in order to “honor the past” but “not meant to offend the Jews, of course?” Because y’all do realize that’s what most of these Civil War monuments are, right?”
The Liberal Rednecks (and by the way, they address the term redneck in the book and admit that they didn’t really examine all of the implications and connotations when picking it, and now kind of wish they hadn’t) are proud to be Southerners, but that doesn’t mean they’re proud of every aspect of its history. And rather than gloss over the bad parts and shine up the good parts, they carefully examine every bit – good and bad – and talk about what needs to change.
“However you feel about guns and their place in America—whether we’re talking about rifles for hunting or assault rifles, or anything in between—it’s undeniable that the gun lobby has refused to acknowledge or entertain any sort of regulation or reform aimed at making us a safer and saner nation.”
They tackle a LOT of subjects here. Everything from country music to guns to religion. I found it interesting that two of the men were Christians, and one was atheist. I liked that they had different views on almost everything, and each of them brought their own perspective to the table.
There’s some good ole’ boy humor (“…if you think shootin’ guns and muddin’ and pontoon boats ain’t fun as fuck, then us and you, well, we just two different kinds of people” ) and they use the word “ort” so much it made my head hurt, but their message is something we can all embrace: “Stop telling everyone how they ort live their lives and how to be and just love.”
Also:
“Do you really think that if Jesus came back, he’d be hanging out with Ted fuckinging Cruz? Ted Cruz’s wife doesn’t hang out with Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is a skin-walker and a demon from the nether region.”
WORD