I saw Rick McKee's cartoon in the July 20 paper about Southern states leading the nation in obesity. I could not help but notice the Yankee stereotypes of Southern people.

Could it be that the Yankees actually fear that the South will rise again? How else do you explain the endless attacks on all things Southern -- and especially our beloved Confederate Battle Flag and our Confederate heroes -- initiated by the Yankee stooges the NAACP and the Southern Poverty Law Center?

I realize not everyone from the north is a Yankee. Yankees are people regardless of origin who embrace the New England Yankee philosophy of manifest destiny, a.k.a. nation-building, in which all people are to be conquered, subjugated, indoctrinated, micromanaged and standardized -- thus reconstructed into the New England Yankee image.

If history repeats itself, and it will, the South will rise again. For some reason, Southern people would rather be governed by themselves than to be governed at the point of a Yankee bayonet. Hopefully, with the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon-to-be Iran, the Yankee imperialists will let the South leave the empire in peace. But I think not. After all there is a lot of oil in Dixie.

Tom Stafford, Grovetown