Tennessee, a state of surpassing beauty and friendly folk, also is a place steeped in history, from the early days of Andy Jackson to the last sighting of Elvis. Too bad that appreciation of the past hasn’t pervaded the governor’s mansion.

Gov. Donald Sundquist objects to proposed EPA clean-air regulations which, in part, attempt to curtail the transport of Middle America’s smokestack emissions to the Northeast via the prevailing westerly wind. Never mind that the noxious plumes from the Volunteer State’s power plants pass first over his own citizens; Gov. Sundquist will have nothing to do with a proposal he says amounts to “Big Brother coming down here and throwing a bunch of data at us that will harm our state.”

And so the governor is trying to organize nine of his neighbors, from Alabama to Michigan, in a protest of the EPA’s smog-reducing rules, which he says, in a stirring call to arms, “should be treated the way American revolutionaries treated tea in the Boston Tea Party. Let’s dump in the harbor all the data.” For the sake of dear old Dixie, it is hoped that this dim view of data is the exception rather than the norm.

Before these other governors put on the war paint, before they follow this misguided Tennessean into insurrection, they might want to consider what the Boston Tea Party led to — the Intolerable Acts, a complete and ruinous hammerlock on Boston trade. George III was tough, but the EPA is tougher. In other words, these states might find more profit in cooperation, in working together to improve the air this nation breathes, than it will find in acting like morons.

Oh sure, the Intolerable Acts did lead to greater resolve and resistance among the colonies, and eventually to independence, but those rebels had the benefit of extraordinary leadership. Donald Sundquist, to be blunt, is no George Washington.

Then, with the excess zeal often found among top aides, Justin P. Wilson, Sundquist’s top aide, tops his boss. “We don’t need an arbitrary government promulgating intolerable acts for the economic protection of a New England that can no longer compete.”

What Mr. Wilson lacks in understanding history is exceeded only by his skewed vision of competition. Down in his neck of the woods, there’e a little thing called the Tennessee Valley Authority. The TVA was created by the federal government back in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, to do two things: To control the raging rivers of Appalachia and to bring electric power to its impoverished rural regions.

The TVA accomplished those tasks decades ago, but this Congressional sacred cow lives on, grazing on massive taxpayer subsidies of some $1.2 billion a year. Little wonder that the average electric rate in Maine is nearly twice that enjoyed in Tennessee. Imagine what $1.2 billion in free money would do for rates in Bangor, Boston or Brooklyn. Imagine the competition.

Gov. Sundquist and Aide Wilson also assert that the EPA rules would cost their state jobs, although they are at a loss to say what jobs and how many. There’s that data thing again.

So pity the poor New Englanders who have to inhale not only the poison coming from Tennessee’s power plants, but also the nonsense spewing from its governor’s office. Pity even more the poor Tennesseans who live right under the stacks.