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you're either an idiot, or a bigot, or both.
and so are the mods who modded you up.

something doesn't require the use of an explicit slur to be racist.

just a few examples of dog whistles, proving they do indeed deal with actual racism and bigotry:
-when talking about Islam, using Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein, for the reaction anything Islamic gets from people on the right
-in 1956 Georgia changed their flag, adopting the stars and bars in response to the growing civil rights movement. this is what it looked like before 1956: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia...
-Ronald Reagan calling for "States Rights" mere minutes away from Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights activists were shot and killed in 1964 by racists who also believed in "states rights", where people in the south still thought segregation should be handled as a "states rights" issue (indeed, the main one) and not at the federal level. the phrase even calls back to the civil war itself, where the states seceded over their "states rights" to have slavery.

The Civil War was not about the oppression of slaves (contrary to popular belief). It was about the crushing of dissent.

I never said what the Civil War was about. I was merely responding to what appeared to be a complaint about the South's way of life having been destroyed; if that's what they were referring to, much of that way of life should have been destroyed, so the destruction of that way of life wasn't a bug, it was a feature.

Sadly, although the 13th Amendment to the US constitution finally added one more freedom that the Constitution defended, the "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" clause left a rather large loophole through which several states snuck (not that the North was a land of rainbows, magic ponies, and racial equality).

(And not that the Southern states were paragons of freedom even for white people, especially white people who wanted to teach slaves to read and write or didn't particularly want to participate in patrols hunting down runaway slaves.)

Here's a photo of the billboard. Ludowici Billboard

Then I remembered that for some time now, some people who think of themselves as "hackers" (in the original sense of the word) have played language nazi every time they've heard the more popular use of the word. "No!" they exclaim. "You mean cracker!"

This ignores two important linguistic principles:

1. Words can have more than one meaning. You're supposed to figure out which one from context.
2. You can't just coin a new word and expect people to use it in place of an existing well-established word. Especially when the coinage is so lame.

Of course they do. But I don't have an obligation to pay for it. Several families I know homeschool. Not for health reasons, but I think that a severe peanut allergy would be cause enough for parents to homeschool their allergic child. If anaphalaxis is only a sniff away, why would they put their child at risk?

Futhermore, why should my non-allergic child be barred from peanuts, a healthy snack that's been the #1 cash crop of my home state of Georgia? :)

Stagflation

An unpretentious, egalitarian demeanor, however, did little to offset the severity of the national and international problems that Carter inherited. In 1973 the Arab oil producing nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) had sharply reduced oil production, driving up prices and creating selective gasoline shortages. In addition to higher fuel costs, escalating health and food prices spurred a tenacious inflationary surge. The combination of rising prices, persistent unemployment, and a stagnant economy had by 1977, when Carter took office, been dubbed "stagflation." The Carter administration sought to slow inflation by raising interest rates and restraining federal spending.

Along with other measures, the program of federal fiscal austerity that Carter followed eventually brought inflation under control but at considerable political cost. Wage workers, a core Democratic Party constituency, fared poorly under Carter's economic prescriptions. In the battle to control inflation, administration policies encouraged reduced employment, and for those employed, it advocated pay restraints that had the effect of decreasing real wages. Disillusioned, many traditional Democratic supporters either deserted the party or abandoned politics altogether.

They didn't "kill off" The Wind Done Gone, they actually turned it into a bestseller that you can buy just about anywhere. Also, "great" isn't all that accurate either. I haven't read it, but the reviews were pretty harsh. The final paragraph of the encyclopedia link I gave above sums up the critical reaction.