Nikki Haley´s recent remarks about the Civil War has shown how tough shape the Republican Party is in. 

In 1861, there was not a single public school in the Confederacy. Thom Hartman wrote a commentary showing that life in the South was hard for all but the richest people. 

See this excerpt and then the commentary.

As I wrote in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, the South had ceased to be a democracy by the 1830s and by the time of the Civil War was a full-blown police state run by a few thousand morbidly rich families who lived and acted like the feudal lords of ancient Europe.

And, most interesting, a disruptive new technology—the invention of the cotton gin—drove the process.

Haley Shows the GOP Base Is All About Racism and Oligarchy

As Nikki Haley well knows, the Confederacy rose up not simply to preserve slavery and the Southern oligarchy, but to extend that oligarchy to the rest of the United States.

Sincerely,

Ed