Untied States of America

Just as talk of partitioning Iraq dies down, up pops some sentiment for dismembering our own country.

Although their motives and political philosophies are worlds apart, the Middlebury Institute and the League of the South are hosting a two-day Secessionist Convention today in Chattanooga.

The Middlebury Institute of upstate New York, whose members are unhappy about the Iraq war and “federal imperialism,” shares the idea of states becoming independent republics with the Southern group, which insists it is not racist despite a Confederate Battle Flag on its banner and its opposition to amnesty for immigrants.

Middlebury director Kirpatrick Sale says the co-sponsorship is intended to show that "the folks up north regard you as legitimate colleagues."

Kirk Sale’s name conjures up memories of the 1960s when he was a student leader of S.D.S. at Cornell, protesting among other social ills, racism and the war in Vietnam. He has gone on to become a respected scholar and author, a self-described neo-Luddite who has written a sympathetic treatise about the Unabomber.

Strange bedfellows, but Yeats too comes much to mind these days: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/ The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.”

It’s an odd world in which those who want to kill each other in Iraq insist on a central government and those here who differ about everything get together to talk about breaking away from their own.

The Wages of Sincerity

Those who worry about the flood of illegal immigrants, the Lou Dobbs legion, can take comfort in the story of Pedro Zapeta. U. S. Customs is on the job.

Zapeta came here from Guatemala, worked as a dishwasher for 11 years and lived frugally to make enough money to buy land in his mountain village and build a home for his mother and sisters. He was not educated enough to send money home or put it into a bank.

He saved $59,000 in cash, stuffed it into a duffel bag and went to the Ft. Lauderdale terminal for a flight home. When Customs officials asked how much money he had, Zapeta showed them the duffel bag. They seized it.

That was two years ago. Ever since, his volunteer lawyers have been trying to prove he was not a drug courier by providing pay stubs for his $5.50 an hour job. Customs officials had turned him over to the I.N.S., which initiated proceedings to deport the man who had been trying to leave the country.

When the story went public, well-wishers donated $10,000 to Zapeta’s cause, but the I.R.S. stepped in to claim taxes on all of his money.

His attorneys say federal prosecutors offered a deal: Zapeta could take $10,000 of the original cash, and $9,000 in donations as long as he didn't talk publicly and left the country immediately. He said no.

This week, a judge signed an order allowing him to work legally in the U. S. temporarily until his tax problems are sorted out. Would Lou Dobbs call that amnesty?