The Liberal Redneck Manifesto Quotes

“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.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“When the NSSF fights against legislation designed to prevent mass shootings because it “won’t work and is a violation of rights,” we understand that many people agree with that argument. But that’s not, at all, even a little bit why the organization lobbies so hard. It works hand in hand with the NRA and certain senators, and spends millions of dollars per year for one reason and one reason only: to make more money. And every time a shooting happens, it makes even more money.

Yes. For real. When a mass shooting makes national headlines, the gun lobby purposefully stokes up fear and paranoia over proposed new gun laws so that scared citizens get out their checkbooks and buy a new AR-15 (or sporting rifle). So why would the NSSF have any interest in stopping mass shootings? Why would it engage politically and invest in compromise, a reform plan that attempts to make all Americans safer, or any sort of reckoning of the role guns play in gun violence? It won’t.

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. The reason why: because that does not make it more money. A customer base kept terrified at all times that this will be “the last chance before the government bans” whatever gun manufacturers are peddling is much more valuable. A customer base absolutely convinced that the just-about-anyone-can-buy culture we have is politically necessary without seeing that it serves those companies is what they’re after. They have achieved it.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“If everyone who’s worth a damn just leaves as soon as possible, then what’s left?”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“It's my right as an American to fly that flag! Yeah? Well, buddy, lemme tell ya, screaming about your rights as an American while rockin' the Confederate flag is like arguing against gay marriage with a dick in your mouth. Makes no sense. But, see, rednecks are immune to irony.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“Men claiming superiority over women because men make more money than they do is like claiming you're stronger than a lion that you tranquilized and put in a cage.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“Stop telling everyone how they ort live their lives and how to be and just love.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“FIRST AMENDMENT
No one shall give a damn about your religion. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want about prayer and God and rules and gays, and everyone else has to take it. It means you can say whatever you want about all that, but I can then say back to you, “Your church is a cult, and all the women in it are fat.” So suck it up, Brother Daryl.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“Jesus drank wine in the Bible, y'all. Yun's make up a bunch of shit he never said about gay people but then just ignore the fact that one time a party started sucking and he abracadabraed some well water into Pinot and got that bitch turnt!”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“...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”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“Slavery happened. That flag stands for segregation. We have monuments to Civil War generals and slave owners, as well as preserved plantations. But we have only one slavery museum, and that was built by a private citizen. We have no national or federal slavery museum. There is no government-funded slavery museum. A proposal to put one in Virginia came through in 2001 and went unfunded and failed. Another one in Richmond reached a similar fate. This is absolutely shameful.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“Men justify the women taking care of the kids and the house and holding down a job because, after all, men are the primary breadwinners in the family. But that’s because we fucking pay women less! Men claiming superiority over women because men make more money than they do is like claiming you’re stronger than a lion that you tranquilized and put in a cage. Sure, you’re in a better spot now—but how ’bout you unchain the beast and see what happens?”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“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?”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“EIGHTH AMENDMENT
The government shall not “crack down” on drug crime while taking kickbacks from industries and companies perpetuating addiction and abuse. You can’t fight wars on drugs—only on people. The drug war kills people, not drugs. Anytime you hear a politician talk about being tough on drugs but then say nothing about pharmaceutical companies, doctors, or insurance providers needing reform as well, you call them what they are: hacks. And hit them in the fa—we mean, vote against them.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“Christians just love to feel persecuted in the South.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“Other days, like any redneck, I'm proud, ornery, and defiant! Who the fuck am I to think that due to my political leanings, slightly above average intelligence, and genuine compassion for all of mankind I'm somehow better than the people around me? I mean, I am--but seriously, who am I to think that?”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“We do wish they’d have the same fervor and monetary backing for, say, a group of black legal gun carriers in Ferguson, Missouri, as they do white folks.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“Church is important to most folks in the South. So the most important thing going is basically ruled by men as decreed by the Big Man himself. Not only that, but the church puts pressures on women that it does not put on men. Young women are expected to be chaste, moral, and pure, whereas young men are given way more leeway, ’cause, ya know, boys will be boys. Girls are expected to marry young and have kids, be a helpmate to their husbands (who are basically like having another child), and, of course, raise perfect little Christian babies to make this world a better place.

So while it’s the preacher man who controls the church, it’s the women—those helpmates—who keep that shit going. They keep the pews tidy and wash the windows; type up the bulletins; volunteer for Sunday school, the nursery, youth group, and Vacation Bible School; fry the chicken for the postchurch dinners; organize the monthly potluck dinners, the spaghetti supper to raise money for a new roof, and the church fund drive; plant flowers in the front of the church, make food for sick parishioners, serve food after funerals, put together the Christmas pageant, get Easter lilies for Easter, wash the choir robes, organize the church trip, bake cookies for the bake sale to fund the church trip, pray unceasingly for their husband and their pastor and their kids and never complain, and then make sure their skirts are ironed for Sunday mornin’ service. All this while in most churches not being allowed to speak with any authority on the direction or doctrine of the church.

No, no, ladies, the heavy lifting—thinkin’ up shit to say, standing up at the lectern telling people what to do, counting the money—that ain’t for yuns. So sorry.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“Some of you from outside the South may be wondering why we’re emphasizing this irrefutable historical fact that everyone should know so strongly already. Well, it’s because there has been an unfortunate tendency down here to deflect as much attention as possible away from the atrocities that the South was responsible for before, during, and after the war, and to focus on the glory, the courage, and all that kind of shit instead. We name roads, schools, and parks after Confederate leaders. We erect statues in their honor. We revere them and honor them, all while ignoring the gigantic racist elephant in the room. 4 Look, it ain’t nothin’ wrong with glory and courage, and it’s completely legitimate to acknowledge the military greatness of some of the Confederacy’s leaders, but what’s not okay is to do so without also acknowledging their complicity in and tacit acceptance of one of the single most reprehensible and inhumane practices in human history. 5 It’s disingenuous. It’s cheap. It’s cowardly. We gotta cut that shit out.

So, yes, we fought a war for slavery, and because sometimes the universe gets some shit right (waterfalls, potatoes, Scarlett Johansson), we lost. Which is another thing we apparently need to remind some of our fellow Southerners of. Not only did we fight a war for slavery, but we got our asses whupped. Until we can all agree to accept this and act accordingly, we’re never going to be able to move on. It’s nothing to be proud of, y’all—it really ain’t. We fought and we lost. But our defeat was a great victory for morality and for the country as a whole. Southerners tend to act as if the Civil War isn’t history but a scientific theory whose results can be disproven if discussed enough. It’s not. We lost. Get over it.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“And, sincerely, we respect her stance. The Liberal Rednecks are all about standing up for your beliefs even when they’re hateful, bigoted, and go against everything your alleged Lord and Savior stood for.

The thing is, doing that would have involved quitting her job—but that’s just something the four-times-married mother was not prepared to do for her faith. Go on TV and be called a hero by powerful politicians who agree with her and her “stand”? Sure, that’s fine. Have the Church pay for her legal bills and prop her up (instead of, oh we don’t know, giving that money to the poor)? Yes, sir. But actually quit instead of breaking an oath (which, by the way, is a sin)? That’s just something Jesus apparently wouldn’t do.

Kim Davis is an analogy for Christians at large in the South. She was not oppressed. She was not forced to do anything. She could have quit. The truth is she did not want to quit her job as an elected official. She wanted to bend the political will of those around her so she could prevent other humans from marrying each other because she didn’t like the idea of it. That’s not oppression—that’s someone trying to use the inordinate amount of power they have (over the media and literally as the clerk) to affect the lives of strangers she disagrees with. Guess what that is? Yup. That is oppression.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“These passive prejudices were not necessarily from a place of ugly, but they certainly weren’t from a place of respect.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“I could shoot the dick off a hummingbird but fuck the NRA with a prickly pear.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“If it wasn't for Prohibition, we wouldn't have NASCAR, and if it wasn't for NASCAR we wouldn't have Dale Earnhardt, and if we didn't have Dale Earnhardt, then our mamaws wouldn't have any plates on their walls.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“Pheromones are like titties for your nose.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“From gun shows, where they openly promote their product by imploring customers to buy “while you still can,” to homegrown militias who apparently believe in their blessed little hearts that they, a group of overweight forty-and fifty-year-old men who have never even had Boy Scout–level training and can’t jog a mile, are the protectors of America, the Second Amendment has by far got to be the most countercultured of all the amendments. Obviously, there are groups that take the First Amendment very seriously, but it’s tough to imagine a group of soccer moms getting together on the weekends to discuss “tactics” on how to keep free speech alive and comparing notes on their sweet new semiautomatic megaphones they use to proudly shout about their rights at “free speech shows.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“Y’all ever seen that 'monkeys typing in a room for eternity would eventually create the works of Shakespeare' quote? Well, one time Drew got high and stated, 'Wait, that happened already. We’re monkeys, and space is eternity, and we typed, and it happened.' He insisted we put it in the book.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“And whether you've had a good day or a bad day - whether you feel okay with how ya life is going or you been thinking a little too much lately about warshin' your mouth out with a revolver - something about the fact that the damn song exists and the guy in it loved that lady his whole life makes you feel more resolved. Shew, goddamn! We need a beer.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“There’s nothing like seeing a rebel flag sticker that says “If You Think the Civil War Was About Slavery, Then You Need a History Lesson” plastered on the back of an ’02 Chevy being driven by a guy who absolutely failed every history class he ever took.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“The papaw is a creature of habit, and no one will tell you that quicker than a papaw himself. For some reason, it doesn’t seem to matter what type of personality you had in your youth; by the time you’re a papaw, you’re a ritualistic curmudgeon who just wants the shade of a tree and a cold glass of sweet tea.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“The home of Mark Twain and André 3000 is worth redeeming. And that’s where this book comes in. We’re going to tackle everything people think they know about the South, both the good and the bad, the glorious and the shameful.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark

“...screaming about your rights as an American while rockin' the confederate flag is like arguing against gay marriage with a dick in your mouth.”
― Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark