It’s True What They Say About Dixie
Throughout most of American history region has been a better predictor of political position than party. That aspect of our reality has been neglected and suppressed in recent times as the rest of the country has conspired or acquiesced in transforming the South into a replica of Ohio.
Yet the notorious squeak vote on the ObamaCare bill shows that the old reality still exists and that the South is still the core and mainstay of any viable American conservatism. My friend Bill Cawthon has run down the statistics on the House of Representatives vote. Of the four census regions, the South was the only one to vote against the federal takeover of medicine. The South (the Confederacy plus Kentucky and Oklahoma) voted 71 per cent against the bill; the Northeast 75 per cent in favour; the West 61 per cent aye; and the Midwest divided evenly.
Every Southern State voted a majority negative. The no vote included 19 Democrats from the South. If you remove the four sparsely populated Plains States of the western Midwest, the Midwest total moves to a majority in favour of ObamaCare, even allowing for the no-vote of the Southern border State Missouri.
This pattern has held on every major piece of legislation since 1965, even allowing that Southern Congressional districts are designed by federal lawyers and judges to maximise the minority vote. Immigration, balanced budget, public prayer, women in combat—the South has provided the brake on the leftist agenda of federal grasp. Of the 212 nay votes on ObamaCare nearly half (100) came from the South.
A century and a half ago, John C. Calhoun, one of the most prescient observers of the American regime, remarked that the South was the balance wheel of the Union which prevented
the whole from flying apart under the stress of the manias that regularly seized hold of the mainstream. It looks as though that is still true, though our ability to control the machine grows weaker year by year.
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Having lived in the South for 15 years you learn a few things that you don't learn in books. It is probably the only region in America where little boys still address adults as 'Yes, Sir' and 'Yes, Mam.' I know it is changing a bit but the core is still there. However if the Confederacy was being redrawn...and it is whether we know it or not by the far left ......it would stretch from the Old South north westward to include Idaho and Montana where freedom and conservatism are still alive among the people. I now live in San Diego, which used to be a bastion of conservative Southern values due to the large military influence and considerable amount of native Southern people, but we now feel like the Marines at Guadalcanal watching wave after wave attempting to overrun the culture. You know, press #1 for English......................and give me a break.....Cesar Chavez Day as a state holiday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The pupils at the little school at which I am the headmaster still say "Yes, Sir" and "Yes, Mam." Here, female teachers are often address as "Miss Mary" or "Miss Pat," that formal intimacy that marks relationships in that unique Southern way. Also, boys do not wear hats, caps or other "headgear" indoors. No man dared to enter my mother's house with a hat on. (My mother hated women's lib and feminism; she asserted that women lost too much authority pursuing such nonsense. As a teacher, she had that look which could wither a figtree at 1000 yards, a look which could make the toughest boys wilt.)
A friend of mine and I were in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, some years back, attempting to retrace the route of the Army of Northern Virginia, a route which would ultimately take the army to Gettysburg. A young lady was our waitress and said to us, "I love to hear you talk!" My friend, quick of wit, responded with, "God talks like we do!" The young lady, even quicker of wit, responded with the question, "She does?" We did not like her theology, but we praised her for her quickness. It remains one of the best memories of a very memorable trip.
#48 Dr. Peters,
Much as I enjoyed your metaphor, it is rather a conundrum, isn't it, whether an accent shapes a culture or the culture shapes the accent?
An Australian friend and I were just going over this very question. We asked ourselves how "Strine", as the older Australian accent is called, (and it is something I bet a Southerner would get a kick out of hearing) evolved out of the original Irish and Cockney tones brought over on the convict ships. My friend has it that it starts with the children; that every generation tends to adjust the language to make it its own. But can that really account for such radical shifts - rice becomes "royce", place becomes "plice", go goes to "gau"? It seems almost as if the strange new landscape - that word again - affects some part of the consciousness in a way that pulls the language center of the brain with it.
Dr Wilson,
While I certainly agree with what you say here, one of my problems with the South is that it seems reflexively for military action. True conservatives support a modest and restrained foreign policy? We have a welfare/warfare state and the South gives unqualified support to the warfare state.
Ron Q @ 54
Dr. Wilson I am obviously not; however, I will venture to give an answer to your question.
There is not evil in appreciating or living out things martial. This is indeed a part of the Southern character, although certainly not the only part nor the paramount part.
Part of the bargain which which was struck as the North and the South reached accommodation on the War to Prevent Southern Indepedence was that both side were, despite their differences, noble and good and that it was good that we again had stated united.
In that spirit, the South began, already with the Spanish-American War, to contribute the martial aspect of its character in the hope that this redering would prove it worthy of the accommodations which had emerged in the 1880's. (Our undoing is our quest for "respectability," I do assert.)
As we Southerners went through this process, we - most of us at least - failed to notice how effective our re-education had been and still is. As a Southern Baptist, I have only recently learned how effective Northern Baptist were in "re-educationing" us after the WAR with revivalism, etc. The emergence of the modern Prussian-model/industrial school systems in the rural South also further pulled us into the orbit of things national.
By WWI, here in Louisiana, we had become more nativist than New England. We dropped our patriotism and became nationalists.
I have often warned fellow Southerners that we have become the Janissary of the very empire which in its nascent stages subdued us. Now, although the empire continues to want our blood, as proved by the percentage of Southerners in combat arms and currently in harms way, the empire does not want our traditions, our customs, our habits, our taboos or our way of life. Even as the empire gladly spills out blood, it airbrushes or, perhaps, sandblasts us from American history.
Hopefully, we will never abandon our martial spirit; but hopefully we will wake up and cease serving the empire which usurps it.