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Yankee Wake Up
This book answers these questions:- What does Noah's flood have to do with the War in Iraq?
- Is Harry Potter a Libertarian?
- Why are we still fighting the War of 1812?
- Is drug prohibition the modern equivalent of the Puritanical outlawing of Christmas?
- How is the income tax like ghosts and goblins?
- Is Dora the Explorer a Communist?
...and more about guns, transfats, the environment, education, speed limits, time zones, religion, and justice.
These essays blend Yankee history, humor, ingenuity, and ideology to examine today's hot topics.
Each one will give you something unique to think about and talk about with others.
Together, they are a fresh way of looking at life, a way whose roots are almost as old as humanity itself.
NEW: Read the introduction
Availability
- Purchase through Amazon.com (also available in a Kindle edition).
- Download the complete PDF (including book covers; 22MB).
- Download just the inner PDF (no book covers; 1.5MB).
- View all the essays and columns online.
Introduction
Who or what is a Yankee?
Ask an Australian or a European and they'll say it's an American. In America, a Southerner will say it's a Northerner and a Northerner will say it's a New Englander. In New England, they'll point you towards Connecticut. And in Connecticut? Yankees are probably in Fairfield County, the westernmost quarter of the state, the most populous, the richest, and the most free.
It's been that way for over 200 years. Even in the pre-Revolutionary period, it was a contemptuous term by foreigners for Americans generally, New Englanders in particular, and, most specifically, residents of Connecticut. Yankees were made fun of for being simpleminded. The song "Yankee Doodle," now Connecticut's proud state song, literally meant "American fool."
Why? Because a moral, principled person can appear simpleminded to those who waffle and hedge. And those unprincipled people, lacking logic and morality, can only scorn.
But it takes greater strength to declare "It is wrong" than to whimper "It depends." It takes a true Yankee heart to forge a nation where all are free, even the tired, wretched, and poor.
Are you a Yankee at heart? Read these essays and find out.
We Yankees founded a free and great country and promptly fell asleep for the next two centuries. But it is time to end our political hibernation. All is not well with the nation we made.
Yankee, wake up! America needs you again.
Phil Maymin
Fairfield County, CT
May 2008