Thursday, January 24, 2013

Progressives Marginalize "Southern" Values




A couple of weeks ago, I slapped down some cash to see the movie, Lincoln.  The first scene was a liberal Yankees wet dream.   Two pairs of Blue Bellies, both black and white, bragged to their commander-in-chief on how many “Rebs” they killed.  That kind of dialog must have been orgasmic to those who despise Southerners and those with a “Southern” mentality.  And indeed, it has.  The liberal propaganda machine is in full-throated appraisal of this movie.  Some believe the North didn’t go far enough.  According to a Salon writer, 665,000 dead aren’t enough to placate his bloodlust:  

I’m not sure America ever paid that debt, in blood or money or any other currency. The lingering effects of our racist history – from the resegregation of our public schools to the enduring and astonishing “wealth gap” between whites and blacks – are national problems, not just Southern problems. Our new Civil War is infused with the undead spirit of the old one and waged by a rebellious neo-Confederacy rooted in the states of the Old South, but its influence can be felt, as with the pro-slavery forces of the 1860s, in every part of the country. (Fernando Wood, the fiery pro-slavery Democrat played by Lee Pace in “Lincoln,” was a former mayor of New York.)

Let’s face the facts.  What today’s liberals declare as “Southern” is actually traditionalism.  And Mr. Andrew O’Hehir’s column typifies the progressives’ contempt of anything traditional:  marriage, family, religion, independence, and constitutional government.  Their Civil War is not only against American traditional values; it’s against God himself.

Then we have the New Yorker columnist, George Packer.  He too believes the “Southern” mentality is becoming more marginalized.  He declares the traditional values demographic are isolated below the Mason-Dixon Line.  But that can be disproved.  Take a look at the 2012 general election county-by-county map.  What we are witnessing is a rural/urban conflict.




And since these, Yankee writers love to denigrate the South, I wonder if anyone of them gave any thought as to why the South has been so obstinate in their distrust.  Here is an excerpt by Mr. Packer’s anti-Southern article:    

For a century after losing the Civil War, the South was America’s own colonial backwater—“not quite a nation within a nation, but the next thing to it,” W. J. Cash wrote in his classic 1941 study, “The Mind of the South.” From Tyler, Texas, to Roanoke, Virginia, Southern places felt unlike the rest of the country. The region was an American underbelly in the semi-tropical heat; the manners were softer, the violence swifter, the commerce slower, the thinking narrower, the past closer. It was called the Solid South, and it partly made up for economic weakness with the political strength that came from having a lock on the Democratic Party, which was led by shrewd septuagenarian committee chairmen.

Now, back to the movie, the scene where the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens and Abraham Lincoln are in a secret meeting says it all about what would happen to the South after the war.  Lincoln called it reconstruction.  Stephens declared it an occupation.  Stephens was right.  But history is written by the victors. 

One only needs to read the 14th Amendment to get an idea of what happened to the conquered South.  They were disenfranchised and forced to pay reparations.

Section 2.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,* and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.


Section 3.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.


Section 4.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.


It wasn’t until the General Amnesty Act of 1872 which allowed 150,000 former Confederate troops the ability to vote and hold office.  The act still excluded 750 others.  And let’s not forget the Carpetbaggers and military governments who exploited, murdered, and stole from a prostrated populace. 

George Packer wrote about the abject poverty of the South.  That poverty can be traced back to the Northern occupation.  One of the byproducts of Northern Aggression is disease, usually caused by malnutrition. Pellagra was that plague.




 And these anti-traditional Yankees wonder why we distrust the federal government.
        


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