Conservative Southern Values Revived: How a Brutal Strain of American Aristocrats Have Come to Rule

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/visions/156071/conservative_southern_values_revived%3A_how_a_brutal_strain_of_american_aristocrats_have_come_to_rule_america_/

It's been said that the rich are different than you and me. What most Americans don't know is that they're also quite different from each other, and that which faction is currently running the show ultimately makes a vast difference in the kind of country we are.

Right now, a lot of our problems stem directly from the fact that the wrong sort has finally gotten the upper hand; a particularly brutal and anti-democratic strain of American aristocrat that the other elites have mostly managed to keep away from the levers of power since the Revolution. Worse: this bunch has set a very ugly tone that's corrupted how people with power and money behave in every corner of our culture. Here's what happened, and how it happened, and what it means for America now.

North versus South: Two Definitions of Liberty

Michael Lind first called out the existence of this conflict in his 2006 book, Made In Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics. He argued that much of American history has been characterized by a struggle between two historical factions among the American elite -- and that the election of George W. Bush was a definitive sign that the wrong side was winning.

For most of our history, American economics, culture and politics have been dominated by a New England-based Yankee aristocracy that was rooted in Puritan communitarian values, educated at the Ivies and marinated in an ethic of noblesse oblige (the conviction that those who possess wealth and power are morally bound to use it for the betterment of society). While they've done their share of damage to the notion of democracy in the name of profit (as all financial elites inevitably do), this group has, for the most part, tempered its predatory instincts with a code that valued mass education and human rights; held up public service as both a duty and an honor; and imbued them with the belief that once you made your nut, you had a moral duty to do something positive with it for the betterment of mankind. Your own legacy depended on this.

[Kolesar]

1. "They hate us for our freedoms" was a bush message that spoke to the evangelicals

Robinson explains here why it works.

The last few paragraphs of her essay really wandered off topic, though:

As Lind points out: to the horror of his Yankee father, George W. Bush proceeded to run the country exactly like Woodard's description of a Barbadian slavelord. And Barack Obama has done almost nothing to roll this victory back.
...
Torture and extrajudicial killing have been reinstated, with no due process required.

[nxylas]

5. I don't think they were off-topic at all

They were real-world examples of how the Southern slaveholder mindset has infused all aspects of contemporary American politics.

[Kolesar]

121. Jeb Stuart never saw a Predator drone...eom

[RobertEarl]

29. Bush family are carpetbaggers

"...to the horror of his Yankee father, George W. Bush "

Bush was no southerner. He was a yankee. Someone whose family moved south to rape and pillage and take advantage of an un-educated populous.

It wasn't a yankee President who got civil rights passed. It was a southerner. It wasn't a yankee who got medicare established.

I had read about southern bashing here on DU and after reading this thread i am now well educated. It sucks.

Bush was a damn yankee. Not a southerner.

[Ken Burch]

66. The Bushes are carpetbaggers in the original post-Civil War era sense

The original carpetbaggers showed up in the South after 1865, often with ties to the Republicans at some level, but chose not to do anything to make life better in the region(or to help freed blacks in any meaningful sense)but simply to try to make money off of the misery that many people experienced in the South after the war. Their actions helped cause the resentment that was then displaced onto freed slaves(and which led, after the Republicans gave up all their principles and agreed to end Reconstruction in the name of hanging onto power-in-name in the 1876 presidential election, to the institution of the "Jim Crow" laws). They also did almost nothing to actually repair the war damage in the South at all.

You can see a lot of carpetbagger values in play in postwar Iraq.

[HiPointDem]

108. the bushes have some southerners in their family tree.

[Kolesar]

120. This article is not "southern bashing " eom

[RainDog]

123. You miss the point

The article talks about two historic elite factions in American society and what typified them.

Eisenhower, for instance, was a conservative. But he send Nat'l Guard troops for the Arkansas Nine. He funded the interstate hwy system. He didn't mess with tax levels.

That's one sort of elite position - you do public service work for the good of the nation.

The current "no taxes," and "no public good" outside of the church stems from a different mindset. The ratios of poor people in southern states, the lack of public health services, the low literacy rates, the religious fundamentalism - those are the things the Republican Party calls for now.

In my opinion, the current crop of Republicanism stems from the disaffected religious and their affiliation with the KKK to oppose civil rights, evolution, women's rights, personal liberty as in prohibition vs regulation - those are Klan positions and were the former positions of many Southern Democrats into the 20th century, as well as portions of the Midwest.

While they stayed with the democratic party because of economic populism through the first part of the 20th c., they broke with Democrats because of the Civil Rights act of 1964.

iow, Racism and religion, and all that implies, is the reason the current Republican Party has any traction.

[HiPointDem]

69. oh yeah, i'm sure bush senior was horrified, absolutely horrified. fucking incubator babies anyone?

what a bunch of bullshit this article is.

yeah, those patrician new englanders who financed the slave ships and shot down striking textile workers, who made kids work 12-hour days in their factories.

blood is dripping from their hands.

[kestrel91316]

105. "They hate us for our freedoms" was the truest example of

projection ever to come out of that drunkard's mouth.

[bemildred]

2. +1

Good find.

[annabanana]

3. An excellent article. Do you "wish you were in Dixie"? Guess what?

Maybe you ARE.

[ananda]

21. A lot of states . . .

are moving towards the new Dixie society,
including ones not in the South.

Wisconsin comes to mind.

[HughBeaumont]

4. K & R . . . an important passage from this article:

When a Southern conservative talks about "losing his liberty," the loss of this absolute domination over the people and property under his control -- and, worse, the loss of status and the resulting risk of being held accountable for laws that he was once exempt from -- is what he's really talking about. In this view, freedom is a zero-sum game. Anything that gives more freedom and rights to lower-status people can't help but put serious limits on the freedom of the upper classes to use those people as they please. It cannot be any other way. So they find Yankee-style rights expansions absolutely intolerable, to the point where they're willing to fight and die to preserve their divine right to rule.

[Tsiyu]

16. That paragraph NAILS it

Exactimente.

I have visited and worked in a place where we joke that "the South won." They believe in very harsh and cruel double standards.

It's all about their fantasy of being "superior" humans. God really does love them best.

They are traitors to the ideas of "democracy and freedom."

They make life hell on earth for the poor.

[RKP5637]

39. They should be labeled for what they are: American Terrorists! n/t

[antigone382]

19. No, I don't really think that has much to do with how many southern conservatives became that way.

I have no problem with discussing the major flaws of the South, but this is just another of those condescending and historically inaccurate pieces that reduces every political and cultural conflict in North-South relations to slavery, racism, and the civil war. I realize it justifies this by claiming it is talking about Southern "elites," as opposed to commoners, but most of the voters are commoners and if you conflate their experiences and worldviews with those of the wealthy, you will never understand what is going on in peoples' minds enough to build a culture change. It makes sense that Northerners would ignore the history of the labor rights movement in the South, because it makes them look a little less benevolent and enlightened than they're comfortable with.

So let's discuss a little about the history of extractive industries in the south--such as coal and lumber--which were mostly owned and controlled by that better breed of aristocrat--the yankee one. It was Northern money that sent lawyers into Appalachia and other areas to deceive and intimidate small farmers into selling their mineral rights--or shot the resisters and forged their signatures outright--and then took their land out from under them. It was Northern money that compelled local governments and police to go along with this, while they set up coal camps that were every bit as exploitative and brutal as any slave plantation, and with severe environmental degradation to boot.

It was the local, state, and even national government that endorsed the violent suppression of any resistance by workers and farmers for generations, and that was all funded by Northern money. A culture that Northerners don't value and don't understand was destroyed, along with an ecology. I live on a mountain that to this day has severe water issues, because so much of our water was poisoned many decades ago by coal operations that have long since left, and taken the jobs with them. So people have now had both their sustaining natural resources and their capacity to generate an income taken from them.

But despite the oppression and betrayal of their own governments and those lofty and well-meaning Northern aristocrats the article talks about, workers did manage to organize, often sacrificing their lives to bring in labor unions. But even the unions were weakened and corrupted, not entirely through their own fault, but resulting in a failure to adequately meet the needs of the people who had given so much to support them--whether the interpretation is correct or not, the unions are seen as ultimate betrayers, just like every other institution that is supposed to have protected and delivered us.

You combine these events with propaganda--funded, again, by the Northern business interests who controlled everything--and it is no wonder that the people here place no faith in government, unions, or anything else but their own abilities to work for a meager living and survive. These people have good historical reasons to trust only in their own individual ability to meet their needs. Everyone else has failed them--and worse, many have justified it through portrayals of their culture as backward, and they themselves as ignorant, inbred, toothless, barefoot, racist, and generally subhuman. If you don't acknowledge that, you will never contribute to the political change that is desperately needed.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

20. Slavery by Another Name

So let's discuss a little about the history of extractive industries in the south--such as coal and lumber--which were mostly owned and controlled by that better breed of aristocrat--the yankee one. It was Northern money that sent lawyers into Appalachia and other areas to deceive and intimidate small farmers into selling their mineral rights--or shot the resisters and forged their signatures outright--and then took their land out from under them. It was Northern money that compelled local governments and police to go along with this, while they set up coal camps that were every bit as exploitative and brutal as any slave plantation, and with severe environmental degradation to boot.

The best book I read in 2011 was Slavery by Another Name, written by Douglas A. Blackmon, the ex-Atlanta bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal. No amount of recommedation is enough. This is an astonishing work about a subject that I knew next to nothing about.

I'll let the author speak for himself:

INTRODUCTION
The Bricks We Stand On

On March 30, 1908, Green Cottenham was arrested by the sheriff of Shelby County, Alabama, and charged with “vagrancy.” Cottenham had committed no true crime. Vagrancy, the offense of a person not being able to prove at a given moment that he or she is employed, was a new and flimsy concoction dredged up from legal obscurity at the end of the nineteenth century by the state legislatures of Alabama and other southern states. It was capriciously enforced by local sheriffs and constables, adjudicated by mayors and notaries public, recorded haphazardly or not at all in court records, and, most tellingly in a time of massive unemployment among all southern men, was reserved almost exclusively for black men. Cottenham’s offense was blackness.

After three days behind bars, twenty-two-year-old Cottenham was found guilty in a swift appearance before the county judge and immediately sentenced to a thirty-day term of hard labor. Unable to pay the array of fees assessed on every prisoner—fees to the sheriff, the deputy, the court clerk, the witnesses—Cottenham’s sentence was extended to nearly a year of hard labor.

The next day, Cottenham, the youngest of nine children born to former slaves in an adjoining county, was sold. Under a standing arrangement between the county and a vast subsidiary of the industrial titan of the North—U.S. Steel Corporation—the sheriff turned the young man over to the company for the duration of his sentence. In return, the subsidiary, Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company, gave the county $12 a month to pay off Cottenham’s fine and fees. What the company’s managers did with Cottenham, and thousands of other black men they purchased from sheriffs across Alabama, was entirely up to them.

A few hours later, the company plunged Cottenham into the darkness of a mine called Slope No. 12—one shaft in a vast subterranean labyrinth on the edge of Birmingham known as the Pratt Mines. There, he was chained inside a long wooden barrack at night and required to spend nearly every waking hour digging and loading coal. His required daily “task” was to remove eight tons of coal from the mine. Cottenham was subject to the whip for failure to dig the requisite amount, at risk of physical torture for disobedience, and vulnerable to the sexual predations of other miners— many of whom already had passed years or decades in their own chthonian confinement. The lightless catacombs of black rock, packed with hundreds of desperate men slick with sweat and coated in pulverized coal, must have exceeded any vision of hell a boy born in the countryside of Alabama—even a child of slaves—could have ever imagined.

Please read this book. Once Sara Robinson has done that, then she can tell me all about enlightenment.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

61. Wow.

Thanks for posting.

[RainDog]

67. PBS did a video: Slavery By Another Name

http://video.pbs.org/program/slavery-another-name/

It's great - especially when white women have to come to terms with their ancestors: men who were supposedly upstanding "self-made men" who lied and falsely imprisoned African-American men and forced them into unpaid labor.

I agree with you that SBAN is a great book. The video is also excellent.

I also agree that every part of the country exploited people, always in pursuit of profit. Slavery, however, is America's original sin. At the same time - it's the entire basis for capitalism - if you can game the system so that you pay next to nothing for labor - that's all a capitalist cares about. We see it now with outsourcing jobs to people who locked in ghettos in China.

Americans don't care if they can have their toys as cheaply as possible. They pretend these things don't exist. It doesn't matter where they live.

[HiPointDem]

70. "americans" generally are little different from germans, french, mexicans or anyone else. if they

don't see the slaves it's out of sight, out of mind, i'll take the toys. you're right, it doesn't matter where people live, they take the toys if they can get them.

not to mention that the slavemasters don't bring it to the attention of their customers day and night, for obvious reasons. a lot of people aren't aware or don't believe that people are worked to death to provide consumer goods.

[RainDog]

77. we're all complicit

even when we try to make choices that don't exploit - it's impossible.

however, I do have to say that in other parts of the western world where I have lived or visited - you just don't see the sorts of consumption that you have in the U.S. in terms of the size of houses, cars, appliances, the size of individual items for sale... I think we sort of do lead the world in the bigger/better mindset - though the housing crisis seems like it's correcting some of the Real Estate McMansion madness that went on - SUVs aren't as popular anymore b/c of fears about gas prices and job issues - obviously there are outliers among the extremely wealthy, but avg. citizens don't think their liberty is denied to use light rail or trains and people live in smaller dwellings without sacrificing a thing other than fuel bills.

what you also don't see in those other places - or maybe it's a matter of degrees - is the astounding poverty and opportunity b/c they have social safety nets that provide health care, education and job training.

[HiPointDem]

79. you don't see it in europe as much because they're more populated than the us -- and because

their ruling classes own quite a bit of the open land (being older and more entrenched than the american ruling class).

i'm saying you don't see the big ostentatious houses so much (actually, a high proportion of europeans rent, and that's partly the high price of land and partly that a lot of the owners are rentier class and not about to sell) -- but europeans consume rather a lot of consumer goods.

and when they emigrate to the us, they live like americans. just as americans who emigrate to europe tend to live like europeans.

same in japan -- smaller and more populated, but they love to shop and their houses are (generally) packed to the gills with stuff, despite the stereotypical japanese aesthetic of spareness.


you *do* see it in places like australia and south africa, with similar open land v. population.

i reject most of the "we're all complicit" line of thought. i once accepted it, but that was before i started thinking about power relations.

we're not all complicit. some of us are not complicit, some of us are mildly complicit, some of us are majorly complicit, and some of us are pulling a lot of the strings to make other people dance their tune.

including strings that tell the average person: "*you're as complicit as i am -- we're all complicit". though the only power that average person has is not to buy things and join a protest, while the person telling him he's complicit is the person making bank on slave labor, degradation of the environment, etc. *That's* the person making the killing decisions, and &that's* the person who can stop making them.

[RainDog]

80. true

you see the same in densely-populated American cities.

I'm not as complicit as a lot of people I know - I don't live extravagantly and never have, have made choices all my life that reject the bigger/better aesthetic - but anyone who lives in a western nation does exploit others.

there's an excellent documentary called Darwin's Nightmare that talks about Nile perch - people in Tanzania are expected to eat the heads and guts of fish that are flown to western nations (and caught with high tech equipment that has further impoverished local workers.)

None of the profits of that huge industry have "trickled down" to the people there.

The same story holds true, even today, in Latin America and companies like Chaquita who use forced labor. When Ashcroft was AG, he refused to hear a suit from workers who complained an American company held them at gunpoint to force them to work in horrid conditions.

In China today - people are locked into ghettos at night and forced to work for subhuman wages in subhuman conditions so that Americans can have cheap electronics.

But, yes, I am no where near as complicit for using my computer to type this as is the CEO of a company making decisions about their labor policy or the board members of a corporation who go along with this for the sake of quarterly earnings.

[HiPointDem]

83. people who live in western cities don't personally exploit others (unless they do). what you mean

is that they have more consumer goods than people in some countries, they have more amenities than people in some countries, and part of the reason they do is because their countries have been pillaged and dominated by western countries and their people are used as a cheap workforce by western countries.

iow, those countries are going through circumstances similar to those americans had in the 17th-19th centuries -- being dominated by foreign powers, exploited for resources, used as a cheap labor force. and are now beginning to go through again, as wages are jacked down, working conditions worsen, benefits taken away.

how is that *your* individual fault? because you don't rise up and say "stop"? i can guess that you probably do, whenever you are able -- probably go to protests, try to buy non-exploitative products or buy little, try to speak up whenever you can.

does anything stop? no.

been there, got the t-shirt. bought into all that 40 years ago, did it for 30 years -- and the world got worse. my nun-like purity did absolutely nothing to change the world, & now i must perforce endure being lectured by 20-year-olds (as i probably lectured my elders, lol).

because contrary to what ordinary americans are taught, we don't have much power to affect much of anything unless we're organized, and the ruling class -- while we were buying puka shells collected by fijian co-ops or whatever -- the ruling class was busy destroying the labor movement and breaking up all indigenous venues where people came together that might form a basis for organization around common interests, not to mention dividing us along identity and class/status lines. to the extent that people have forgotten their own history, like a conquered people. which is what we are.

and telling us (as the ruling class always does) that *we* are exploiting others (as if the guilt were shared around equally) is one of the ways they render people (especially the kind of people likely to care about such things and want to do something) stupid, guilt-ridden and ineffective.

and it ain't just westerners: plenty of chinese elites exploiting other chinese, africans exploiting africans, etc. plenty of asians and africans who would love to be in the position of exploiter, consumer of goods, owner of big house, etc.

I don't pay that stuff much mind anymore unless it's something egregious. shopping choices aren't going to change the balance of power and aren't going to save the planet. only a direct attack on the power of capital is going to do so, & it doesn't look like there are many takers for that fight.

[RainDog]

84. by saying it's not personal choices

however, there is no sense that collective action can change anything.

but - you know, the reality is that the American voter is more concerned about twenty dollars a month going for national health care - so, yeah, fuck it.

[HiPointDem]

85. collective action has nothing to do with personal shopping choices. and the "average person is

more concerned about..." blah blah is crap. the average person is concerned about lots of things.

what the average person doesn't see is how they can effectively do anything about most of them. including the health care issue. in fact, a majority in the us would like single-payer. they didn't get it, because the ruling class in its wisdom once again granted them the deal that was best for the ruling class.

the only way people can be effective is if they're organized. the average person doesn't feel capable, doesn't have time for, doesn't feel like he knows enough about the issues or the power-brokers -- to organize anything, nor does he feel like if he tried his efforts would lead to any national organization capable of affecting policy.

and he's right, in general -- for the most part, successful movements are supported by some fraction of the elite in struggle against a different fraction.

i hear people saying what you're saying all the time here: "people are stupid, lazy, vote against their own interests, etc".

it's either the product of deep disillusionment/cynicism or it's duplicitious classist elite doublespeak. what it isn't is a realistic assessment of reality.

[RainDog]

86. I see that people get out in the street

in other western nations and refuse to accept what they're told.

it's not classist to notice that, for instance, when I lived overseas, the person at the green grocer knew more about American politics than people here.

but, again, whatever. I am deeply disillusioned.

[HiPointDem]

87. in general, it's not that significant there either. in france (the country i'm most familiar with)

it's because of unions & the various left parties. they call out their workers, they make a big show -- just as afl/cio can still call out what's left of its workers here to make a show.

but in both places, a lot of the union and left party leadership is selling out their workers under the table, bit by bit.

and in a lot of european countries now the home-grown version of the 'tea party' (partly stage-managed, same as here) is on the ascendant, and for similar reasons.

it ain't that different. there is no constant culture or society. things change according to circumstances.

deeply disillusioned too, but not hopeless. maybe for my own life, but not for humanity.

i think people need to get clear on what's happening and stop waiting for a savior -- politicians, movement leaders, etc.

[RainDog]

88. I beg to differ

it is very different.

my ex is from a European country and I still have contact with ex-in-laws there and the right wing movements in Northern European nations have no where near the ability to influence - or even the desire to change much of the social democratic legislation that is part of the fabric of life there.

I can't speak for what's going in Southern Europe - but I know people in about 4 different countries in Northern Europe who are politically active - and there's no comparison to what goes on here with working people supporting policies against their best interests.

It's not just unions - tho, yes, they do get people out. Students come out in support of unions and so do others who have no association with unions.

Voting is mandatory.

Television news is not a constant stream of right wing bullshit.

Those things make a big difference.

[HiPointDem]

89. i said "on the ascendant". perhaps you haven't been following recent elections. the error is to

think that there is an unchanging europe with an unchanging culture and social practice.


In this election, France’s establishment has embraced Islamophobic ideas to an unprecedented degree. Right-wing populism, once a fringe phenomenon, has been conquering the bastions of Europe’s political mainstream with frightening speed; even so, most observers failed to predict the extent to which anti-immigrant themes would shape this campaign. It’s difficult to know whether Europe’s populists are approaching the zenith of their power or will continue their steady rise. But one thing is certain: At no point in Europe’s postwar history has the far right’s influence been as pervasive as it is now.

Two weeks ago, in the first round of the presidential elections, nearly one in five French voters opted for Marine Le Pen, the leader of the extremist Front National party. Marine, who replaced her father, Jean-Marie, as party leader a little over a year ago, has donned a cloak of respectability, severing the organization’s ties to the most flagrant neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic groups. But the core of her appeal remains unchanged: It consists of hatred of Muslim immigrants, along with everyone else she considers alien to the French nation. Her tactic of giving racism a pretty veneer has clearly worked well. In her first run for president, she already gained a greater share of the vote than her father ever managed to muster.


http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2012/05/europe_s_far_right_is_the_true_winner_of_france_s_presidential_election_.html


In the 60s and even 70s, i would never have predicted the right turn under reagan, let alone the steady move to the right ever since. it is happening in europe, and for some of the same reasons.

it's been happening for a while, in fact. perhaps europeans are as clueless as americans were in the 80s.

[RainDog]

95. think what you will

I"m glad you know more than they do.

[HiPointDem]

96. It's not what I or they "know" it's what the hard evidence demonstrates: votes such as the

one i linked, legislation, benefits rolled back.

[coalition_unwilling]

114. As evil as slavery was and is, it is NOT America's original sin. What Europeans

did to the indigenous folks here, i.e., stealing their land, gets to claim that title, imho.

I remember when I heard Bill Clinton say slavery was America's 'original sin.' And remember thinking most native Americans would beg to differ.

[RainDog]

118. The Europeans who came to the American continent were not Americans

The creation of the United States depended on a compromise on slavery so that the southern states would join. The founders thought it was necessary to have these states included in order to be able to counter British opposition.

That's what I, and I assume Clinton, was talking about.

The legal incorporation of the United States depended upon one group of white people telling another group of white people that they would go along with slavery to get what they wanted.

[coalition_unwilling]

119. I understand your point and agree with it. I would merely point out that slavery began

in North America before there was a United States also. Without theft of the land from the indigenous peoples by the European invaders, there could have been no slavery here.

The Electoral College and the absurdity of a U.S. Senate that accords two votes per state irrespective of how many people live in a state are both legacies of the Fuastian bargain with the slaveocracy to which you refer.

[ieoeja]

23. The southern colonies were founded by Normans seeking to expand the British Empire.

The northern colonies were founded by Anglo-Saxons seeking to escape the British Empire.

You are talking about mountainous Celtic communities filled with people who, coming from a military culture, were viewed as inferior allies by the Normans.

I come from the hills myself. And we didn't consider the ourselves "southern". Southerners were that other culture down in the flat lands. And they very clearly looked down upon us. So did wealthy northern flat landers.

When I moved to the suburbs of Chicago I was treated horribly. Then I moved into the city itself, and ... had no problems whatsoever. Turns out "hillbilly" is just one more ethnic group for the melting pot. And as one that almost speaks English, more welcome than most.



Of course, back when I moved here the suburbs were pretty much 100% Republican. And I have found that northern Republicans really don't like hillbillies. They aren't too fond of southerners either, but they really look down on hillbillies. Northern Democrats, on the other hand, like I said, they didn't give a shit.

[bvar22]

57. In my younger days,

...my Southern Accent (New Orleans) and good manners
got me Laid a bunch in my travels up North,
especially during the Winter.

[Tsiyu]

59. Are you contradicting me?

Well, I never!


I say it's accurate because I thought the paragraph was discussing the Southern elites not the common Southerner.

Hope you are staying cool, smarty pants!

[antigone382]

99. lol, well maybe..

I think my reaction is more to the article itself (I went all the way over to alternet to read it)

I just reject the idea that it would be great if we just went back to a kinder, gentler breed of elite. Also some of the stereotypes of southern history and culture found in the article are just plain over the top.

[Tsiyu]

109. Oh. A READER are ya?

Someone who actually reads the article at the link provided rather than mouthing off on the OP's snippet alone?

Good fer you. I should do that more often.

Me, who is not going out to brave the heat today. Who is going to be a pain in the ass on DU instead

[antigone382]

110. We had a storm last night...doubt it will do much except raise the humidity.

But at least the area won't quite be like a box of matches going into the 4th.

Global Warming my foot!

[Tsiyu]

113. I kept watching the radar last night

hoping we'd get some, but no dice.

Stuff is drying up like crazy - will have to plant another veg garden.

One of the guys measured the temp where I'd been working Friday. It was 120. Lol. I thought it felt pretty stifling, but I endured Atlanta so what's a little brain-frying heat?

Yeah, that global warming - what a myth.

[HiPointDem]

68. among the folks extracting profits in appalachia = bouvier ancestors of jackie kennedy.

i'm not a southerner, but i definitely agree that americans in their youth are given the impression that slavery was an entirely southern affair -- a lie.

the biggest beneficiaries of the slave system were a small slice of the population of the south and a larger slice in the north -- as it was the north (rhode island stands out) that built and financed most of the slave ships and brokered most of the cotton (brown brothers harriman stands out).

not to mention the northern financiers with interests in slavery in the caribbean long after it was illegal in the north.

the more i've learned about the economics of the slave system, the more i realize what freaking hypocrites and liars the american ruling class are. The slave system was the basis for a great deal of their wealth -- yet ruling class history turns it into "bad southerners v. good northerners".

I'm more with michael parenti -- cui bono? Who really benefited from slavery? It wasn't southeners in general or white people in general, it was a lot of the same families who own corporate america today.

White-trash Whitey Whitebread in Cornpone Arkansas takes the rap for the sins of the ruling class, and by design.

[antigone382]

100. Yep...

And those giggling "Deliverance" references and pictures of toothless, shoe-less, trailer dwelling redneck/hillbillies gets a total free pass...or if you call people out on this classist, regionalist bigotry, they bring out that hollow justification "well they deserve it for voting against their own best interests"--making the assumption that anyone who is southern, lives in substandard housing, and has insufficient access to education, economic opportunity, and medical care automatically makes them conservative. Even if a majority are, focus on political beliefs alone, while ignoring the centuries of social forces and outright propoganda that have bred those beliefs, is never going to result in positive change--nor does it invalidate the fact that classism is classism, whoever the objects of derision are. When you use someone's social position to make them subhuman, you undermine all progressive causes.

[HiPointDem]

107. no argument here.

[coalition_unwilling]

116. Just out of curiosity, what's your take on John Brown? Today, he

would be dismissed as a "blood-thirsty terrorist" or "insane" (or some such nonsense). I guess what I'm really asking is whether Brown's actions (and the Abolitionists in general) in some way wash away some of the North's collective guilt. Or is that stain so indelible that nothing can ever cleanse it, in your opinion?

I wish you could fashion this reply into an OP of its own - really solid analysis. I've done my share of South-bashing on DU for sure but I will be seriously reconsidering that position henceforth.

[hfojvt]

41. I sorta thought this line was key - sadly enough

"to the horror of his Yankee father, George W. Bush proceeded to run the country exactly like Woodard's description of a Barbadian slavelord. And Barack Obama has done almost nothing to roll this victory back "

It also makes another point, for which I am sometimes derided - that I think that George Bush Sr., for all his faults, had much more class than his son did/does.

Another curious part is. Having defeated the moderates in the GOP, it seems that most moderates are still voting with the GOP. That they would still, for some reason or other, rather vote for a Conservative in the GOP than a moderate in the DP. Otherwise you would expect Democrats to have total electoral domnation. Because we should have picked up a whole bunch of disaffected moderate Republicans. Unless moderate Repiblicans never were a huge part of the GOP, just a semi-dominant part because of their money power. But the GOP still has the money power.

[Dawson Leery]

51. Lincoln was wrong when he said "malice towards none".

The aristocratic culture of the south needed to removed (i.e Czar Nicholas and family).
The plantation owners and southern baptist church needed to be eradicated.

[freshwest]

65. And whether the promise was true or not of '40 acres and a mule' the plantations should have been...

Broken up and given to the slaves to farm and set up their own communities to live in peace as they deserved. Instead this gang kept on going. Some say it was foreign money that kept them going; I don't know.

All I know is that I grew up in the South and had to listen to racist bullshit every damn day, except in my home where we never allowed such dumbfuckery.

I can't count the number of times I heard the oh, so smug mantra repeated, 'Send them all back to Africa.'

My answer was, 'If the white people hadn't brought them here, they wouldn't be here. But they did. Learn to live it because they ain't going anywhere.'

I never disagreed with black nationalists on a philosophical level. I'd want to be separated from these racist yahoos, too, if I were in their same place.

I think we can do better now, but we have to keep working on it. Man, but I'm tired of trying to school these brats.

[myrna minx]

6. wow - my friend and I were just discussion this topic. Thanks for posting.

[DinahMoeHum]

7. If you want to know why the working-class whites prefer "Massa's plantation"

read this story from a couple of years ago:

http://www.salon.com/2010/09/07/southern_labor_history/


The sense of "learned helplessness" was drummed into these people for centuries.

[JohnyCanuck]

8. The early Barbados connection with South Carolina

By the late 1660s, Barbados – fueled by the production of sugar – had become the wealthiest English colony in Americas. The rather sudden boom of "sugar wealth" altered the society and economy of Barbados, and the island's new culture quickly became the standard for other English possessions in the West Indies.

This new wealth also brought a population boom as people flocked to Barbados, an island 1/5 the size of present-day Charleston, to make their fortune. By 1670, Barbados' population was estimated at 60,000 inhabitants, with approximately sixty percent being African slaves. As precious cultivatable land became increasingly scarce, plantation owners began to look to the North American mainland.

As a result, Charles Towne was established in 1670 by the eight Lord Proprietors on what came to be called the Ashley River. Over the next three years, well over half of the white settlers and enslaved Africans who arrived in the Carolina colony came from Barbados, bringing with them the successful colonial model that would shape the social and economic future of South Carolina for centuries to come.

The political influence of the Barbadians is evidenced in the political structure as well as the leadership that emerged from the island – seven of the first 21 governors were either Barbadian or had close Barbadian ties. The Barbadians also had an enormous economic influence on the new colony. Their experience and capital, complemented by their entrepreneurial spirit, made the plantation system a reality, although cotton and rice, not sugar, ultimately surfaced as the major cash crops for South Carolina.

http://www.sc-heritagecorridor.org/the_barbados_connection/

[Kolesar]

17. The brutal culture that was the first to secede in the Civil War

good information, thanks!

[leveymg]

44. 50,000 "Redleg" Irish Slaves were deported to Barbados by Cromwell from 1649-1660

Most Americans have no idea that the Irish were enslaved by Oliver Cromwell's regime as part of the English Puritan program of ethnic cleansing against Catholics and the Irish, and half a million deported as forced laborers to various English colonies in the New World and Australia. Here's the story of the "Redlegs" who ended up in chains working English sugar plantations during the mid-17th Century: http://www.historyjournal.ie/irish-slavery/55-irish-slavery-main-page/106-the-irish-slave-trade.html

THE IRISH SLAVE TRADE

History Journal has uncovered fascinating research into the role of Irish people exposed to the same suffering in the early slave trade with Irish deportees and indentured servants sent to the same dreadful conditions initially in Antigua and Montserrat and later in Barbados and the United States. From the early 1600s to 1800 many 1000s of Irish people were sent to slave conditions in the Carribean and US as part of the trade in human labour that marked the start of the slave trade.

Irish and african people suffered under dreadful conditions in Barbados, Antigua, the southern states of the US and Brazil. The legacy of this trade in Irish people still remains today with a strong Irish mark left on the culture of the Caribbean. Although there are records of Irish people being transported to South America as early as 1612, the earliest confirmed records of indentured servitude date from 1636.

Cromwell's Deportations

Cromwell had a devastating effect on the population of Ireland in the 1600s, reducing it by 500,000 just 1.1 million from 1641 onwards. During his reign, more than 50,000 Irish people, mostly women and children, were forcibly deported to Barbados to work on sugar plantations.

Redlegs in Barbados and Antigua

The Irish in Bardados earned the pejorative term 'Redlegs' as they struggled in the extreme heat and sun on sugar plantations. Their legacy remains to this day.

[grasswire]

106. who knew?

fascinating, thanks

[northoftheborder]

9. Excellent points to discuss

[Starry Messenger]

10. k&r

[TomClash]

11. In other words

They want to be "free" to enslave us.

[aaaaaa5a]

12. Excellent article.

We had a few threads here a while ago trying to figure out what is wrong with the south. And why this regions politics are so hateful, brutal and bad for America. This article would have explained a lot. Thanks for posting.

[woo me with science]

13. A pretty devastating summary of American policy right now:

"It's not an overstatement to say that we're now living in Plantation America. As Lind points out: to the horror of his Yankee father, George W. Bush proceeded to run the country exactly like Woodard's description of a Barbadian slavelord. And Barack Obama has done almost nothing to roll this victory back. We're now living in an America where rampant inequality is accepted, and even celebrated....."

*Torture and extrajudicial killing have been reinstated, with no due process required.

*The wealthy and powerful are free to abuse employees, break laws, destroy the commons, and crash the economy -- without ever being held to account.

*The rich flaunt their ostentatious wealth without even the pretense of humility, modesty, generosity, or gratitude.

*The military -- always a Southern-dominated institution -- sucks down 60% of our federal discretionary spending, and is undergoing a rapid evangelical takeover as well.

*Our police are being given paramilitary training and powers that are completely out of line with their duty to serve and protect, but much more in keeping with a mission to subdue and suppress. Even liberal cities like Seattle are now home to the kind of local justice that used to be the hallmark of small-town Alabama sheriffs.

*Segregation is increasing everywhere. The rights of women and people of color are under assault. Violence against leaders who agitate for progressive change is up. Racist organizations are undergoing a renaissance nationwide.

*We are withdrawing government investments in public education, libraries, infrastructure, health care, and technological innovation -- in many areas, to the point where we are falling behind the standards that prevail in every other developed country.

[RKP5637]

40. Well said!!! n/t

[mahatmakanejeeves]

14. Good G*d, what a load of self-serving crap.

Last edited Fri Jun 29, 2012, 09:52 AM - Edit history (2)

Shall we continue quoting from that article?

Among the presidents, this strain gave us both Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and Poppy Bush -- nerdy, wonky intellectuals who, for all their faults, at least took the business of good government seriously.

Woodrow Wilson was a notorious white supremacist.

http://postalmuseum.si.edu/AfricanAmericanHistory/p5.html
The History and Experience of African Americans in America’s Postal Service

Woodrow Wilson: Federal Segregation

During Woodrow Wilson’s 1912 presidential campaign, he promised African Americans advancement. He stated, “Should I become President of the United States, [Negroes] [sic] may count upon me for absolute fair dealing and for everything by which I could assist in advancing the interests of their race in the United States.”(1) Believing in his promise, many African Americans broke their affiliation with the Republican Party and voted for Wilson. He did not, however, fulfill the promises he made during the campaign to the African American community during his presidency. Less than a month after his March 4, 1913 inauguration,(2) President Wilson’s Administration took the first steps towards segregating the federal service.

The question of federal segregation was first discussed in high administration circles at a closed cabinet meeting on April 11, 1913.(3) At the Cabinet meeting Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson argued for segregating the Railway Mail Service. He was disturbed by whites and African Americans working in the Railway Mail Service train cars. The workers shared glasses, towels, and washrooms.(4) He said segregation was in the best interest of the African American employees and in the best interest of the Railway Mail Service.(5) Burleson’s ultimate goal was not only to make the railway lines “lily white”(6) but to segregate all government departments.(7) President Wilson replied to Burleson by saying that he had made “no promises in particular to Negroes [sic], except to do them justice.”(8) He argued that he “wished the matter adjusted in a way to make the least friction”.(9) While President Wilson expressed no direct objections to Burleson’s segregation plans, support came primarily from other cabinet members.

Shortly after the April 11 cabinet meeting, cabinet members Treasury Secretary William G. McAdoo and Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson segregated employees in their departments with no objection from President Wilson.(10) Segregation was quickly implemented at the Post Office Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. Many African American employees were downgraded and even fired. Employees who were downgraded were transferred to the dead letter office, where they did not interact with the public. The few African Americans who remained at the main post offices were put to work behind screens, out of customers’ sight.(11)

The segregation implemented in the Department of Treasury and the Post Office Department involved not only screened-off working spaces, but separate lunchrooms and toilets. Other steps were taken by the Wilson Administration to make obtaining a civil service job more difficult. Primary among these was the requirement, begun in 1914, that all candidates for civil service jobs attach a photograph to their application(12) further allowing for discrimination in the hiring process.

Hey, no problem, he knew best, and it was all for my own good. If only I were his intellectual equal, I would know better.

Talk about whitewashing. Lord, save me from my intellectual superiors.

And please pass me some o' them grits.

Wait - I just have to add this:

http://postalmuseum.si.edu/AfricanAmericanHistory/p6.html
The History and Experience of African Americans in America’s Postal Service

1920’s–1930’s: Coming Back Together

A shift from federal segregation to desegregation came in the early 1920’s under Republican administrations. The number of African Americans employed in the Post Office Department (POD) began to increase during President Warren G. Harding’s Administration (1921-1923).(1) By 1928, it was estimated that African Americans made up 15 to 30 percent of postal employees in major post offices.(2)

The status of African Americans postal employees continued to improve during the 1920’s and 1930’s. In 1925, the First Assistant Postmaster General, J. H. Bartlett, attended a meeting of African American postal workers. In a formal address, Bartlett discussed the “The Value of the Negro [sic] to the Postoffice.”(3) In his address, Bartlett encouraged African Americans to take advantage of the opportunities available to them through employment with the POD. He stated that of the 46,739 city letter carriers in the United States, 2,400 were African American and pointed out that many African American men had just been appointed to supervisory positions in New York and Chicago post offices.(4)

Opportunities for African Americans for advancement within the Post Office Department continued under President Herbert Hoover and his Postmaster General, Walter F. Brown. At the fifth biennial convention of the National Alliance of Postal Employees (later NAPFE), the Second Assistant Postmaster General, on behalf of Brown, emphasized to the convention attendants that Postmaster General had the “concept of a fair deal for all.”(5)

[eppur_se_muova]

47. Odd that they would put WW in that list. He was Southern-born and -raised:

Wilson's father was originally from Steubenville, Ohio, where his grandfather published a newspaper, The Western Herald and Gazette, which was pro-tariff and anti-slavery.[15] Wilson's parents moved south in 1851 and identified with the Confederacy. His father defended slavery, owned slaves and set up a Sunday school for them. They cared for wounded soldiers at their church. The father also briefly served as a chaplain to the Confederate Army.[16] Woodrow Wilson's earliest memory, from the age of three, was of hearing that Abraham Lincoln had been elected and that a war was coming. Wilson would forever recall standing for a moment at Robert E. Lee's side and looking up into his face.[16]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson#Early_life

[HiPointDem]

72. that should clue us in that the author hasn't taken much trouble with her article. just bs.

[Tom Ripley]

102. Woodrow "History written in lightning" Wilson was a notorious racist

I was also surprised to see him included in that list

[HiPointDem]

71. The Roosevelts made their first fortune in sugar -- using slave workers.

That old sugar-house was the first erected before the Revolution, and worked during the war and for forty years afterward. The proprietor who built it, and who manufactured sugar in it, was a great man in his day and generation.

His name was Isaac Roosevelt. His house faced on Queen Street, now Pearl, in Franklin Square. Harper & Brothers now own that property, and it is No. 333 Pearl Street. On the rear of his house and in the centre of the block was the sugar-house. A large alleyway ran up to it from what is now No. 8 Jacob Street. The Isaac Roosevelt mansion was originally 159 Queen Street. To understand the matter, Queen Street in those days of 1786, when the sugar-house and the old mansion were in their glory, commenced at Wall Street and extended to Chatham, ending there, within a few rods of the great fresh water pond.... Almost opposite to Isaac Roosevelt's residence (No. 159 Queen Street, now 333 Pearl and part of 331) stood an old building, and it yet stands (1863) as 324 and 326 Pearl, and is called now, and has been for sixty years, part of the Walton House. In 1786 it was occupied by the Bank of New York, of which Isaac Roosevelt was president.

http://www.oldandsold.com/articles14/new-york-45.shtml

The family stayed in the sugar business a long time -- they had interests in the west indies slave sugar business too.

Bush ancestors benefited from slavery too -- cotton, in their case.

JFK being the child of recent irish immigrants of non-aristocratic backgrounds was the only one who didn't benefit from slavery so far as i know.

scratch an elite family in the us, you'll find slaves lurking somewhere if they've been here a long time.

[mmonk]

15. Seems to be a tad bit of an oversimplification

[antigone382]

25. I really take issue with the argument that the problem is the wrong set of elites taking power.

The articles makes the claim that all our problems arose, essentially, because Northerners lost control of American culture when the South developed its own higher educational institutions and prosperous cities. Northern businessmen did not play any better of a role in Southern class or race relations than Southern elites did. They looked down on the music, food, and culture of the people who lived there--hillbillies, rednecks, worthless hicks, whose toothless, inbred, racist character was often invoked; the children of degenerate thieves, worthy of sterilization in the era of eugenics, who are still routinely portrayed as inferior and subhuman due to conditions that have nothing to do with ideology, and everything to do with good old fashioned classism--and exploited their labor in horrendous ways that were quite literally no better than slavery. Claiming that things would be better if Northerners had simply been allowed to dictate their superior views to their cultural and intellectual underlings is not one iota better than claiming that Southern elites should be able to control their underlings.

[antigone382]

32. It's easy to be one when you can't drink the water in your own community...

...because it is too choked with the iron and other pollutants left their decades ago by a coal company that has long since left, taking the jobs and profits with it. The "south" is not on the rise. Certain elites in certain parts of the south are. The South is not a single, contiguous culture any more than the North is.

Read a little about the history of coal, timber, iron, the railroad, any of those projects, how the workers were treated, and who held the money behind it all, and then get back to me.

And for the record, my mother is from Syracuse.

[antigone382]

35. The fundamental premise of the article is that the wrong elites are in power.

That the Northern elites came from a less brutal and ethnocentric culture, and that individualism in Southern politics stems solely from the desire to oppress others. All of these points are factually incorrect and historically ignorant.

[antigone382]

43. The problem is with elites. Period.

The philosophy that perhaps the poor are due a few crumbs is not a superior philosophy, nor is it any more unique to any particular region than the philosophy that the poor are merely grist for the mill.

At present I don't have the time to gather the sources and write out a complete article. I would recommend to you "The United States of Appalachia" by Jeff Biggers as an introductory primer. If I have time later I will get links, titles, authors, etc. and present them to you in more detail.

[antigone382]

50. I grew up here. Do you want to tell me you know more about it than I do?

And as I said, I was raised by a liberal northeasterner, and I did indeed spend much of my youth feeling out of place in the South, until I grew older and developed a deeper understanding of the people here. I have also traveled in the Northeast. I envy many aspects of the culture and politics that dominate the region, but I can also say that Northerners, particularly those who spent "some" time here and think that gives them a complete picture of a very large and multifaceted place, tend to have a very reductive and condescending understanding of problems that have a far more complex character than Northerners want to admit. In my experience they had amazingly simplistic understandings of race relations.

For that matter, a lot of Northeastern states don't begin to touch on the actual diversity that places in the South have; I know far more people in interracial relationships here than I do there. I recall an editorial in Vermont patting themselves on the back for having the kindness to allow the underpaid exploitation of undocumented agricultural workers. Nothing beats getting lectured on race relations by the whitest state in the union!

[antigone382]

53. Exactly. n/t

[HiPointDem]

75. looking at the elites in power (the ones who let us see them, at any rate), they seem a pretty

multicultural bunch, so far as the north-south divide goes.

and, as is the case with george bush, scratch a southener you'll find their ancestors in the north a generation or two back. and vice-versa.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

94. Is there a wrong elite?

Is there a right one? This is a class struggle. Not a struggle about which elites are less oppressive!

[Sirveri]

60. In a way the wrong elites are in power. There should be no elites in power.

The problem is with those who own the means of production demanding that they be allowed to rule everyone under them. This sounds like more posturing between the factions of those who would vie for control of the vox populi. They're worse overlords than we would be, so you should fight for our right to enslave you because they're worse slave holders then we would be.

[antigone382]

101. +1

[HiPointDem]

73. +1. it's because the northern elites exploited first and exploited more thoroughly that they got

to be top dogs and write the histories.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

93. I was thinking the same thing.

Which master would I have? Brutal or somewhat less than brutal?

[bemildred]

37. I agree. The Northern elites were nothing to write home about either.

Some of them were capable of being just as vicious as anybody.

We got rid of one set of oligarchs, and we need to get rid of the other ones too.

Edit: I like this piece on the whole, because it points to an important theme in US politics, not a new idea at all either, mind you, I can list books, but it does reduce the culture of the South to cartoonish dimensions. And you are quite right that the problem goes much deeper than replacing Poppy with Shrub.

Edit2: I thought about making the same complaint myself, but I was pretty sure somebody else would bring it up.

[antigone382]

45. Yes, that's really my only complaint about this whole article.

It's the way it smugly holds up Northern elites as an example to be followed (though of course they had a few flaws *too*, teehee!). It is utterly historically ignorant.

[DocMac]

55. I'm thinking...

Leona Helmsley.

[bemildred]

58. There ya go.

I think about her all the time these days. Her name is legion nowadays.

[DocMac]

62. I don't know how people remember her,

but she had that attitude that would let you know that you're an insect and she is the Queen.

She had no problem dishing out feelings about putting her boot on people's throats.

That's the kind of moral compass we can expect from these fascists. North and south!

[bemildred]

63. "Only the little people pay taxes..." nt

[HiPointDem]

74. bush 1 simply had better manners than bush 2; he was every bit as brutal. cia, gulf war,

incubator babies, iran contra...etc.

[Number23]

104. Fantastic post. I love how the bigotry, racism and ignorance of the North are somehow minimized

because according to the author, "they at least had some concept of noblesse oblige" even as they benefited from racism and class privilege probably even more so than their Southern cousins.

This article is so stupid it's embarrassing.

[coalition_unwilling]

115. C. Vann Woodward's seminal "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" (1955) notes

that Jim Crow laws began in the North before being adopted in the South.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

91. Because we let them.

[Odin2005]

18. General Sherman didn't burn enough, it seems.

The entire southern elite should have been completely destroyed. Now they are treating us all like slaves.

[ieoeja]

24. Outside South Carolina Sherman may have not burned anything (or very little).

Southern articles and diaries written during Sherman's march to the sea praised Sherman for saving the cities from starvation and putting out the fires left by Confederate forces attempting a burnt earth retreat. The "evil Sherman" stories largely originated after the fact. Into which would you put more stock?

Sherman himself wrote that he never understood where the "March to the Sea" stories came from in light of what he actually did do in South Carolina. Everyone knew South Carolina's history. They surrendered to the British months into the American Revolution then set out virtually the entire war. They spent decades trying to convince their neighbors to secede. And, of course, they started the damn Civil War.

South Carolina also paid for Andersonville. The first escapees from Andersonville arrived at Sherman's camp about the time they hit SC's border. The march had previously "taken on a carnival like atmosphere". The mood in Sherman's army changed drastically when the Andersonville survivors showed up.

So the Union Army burnt everything in sight during the march north through South Carolina. And Sherman freely admitted doing that.

Various people at the time noted that the burning stopped the second they crossed into North Carolina. Noone knows for certain if the Richmond fire was started by defenders or advance Union forces. But it is historical fact that as soon as Sherman arrived he put the Army to work containing the fire, forcing his men to work all night long at the task.

[Odin2005]

64. Everything I've read says Sherman wanted to destroy the Planter Aristocracy

Most of the damage came from Sherman's troops living off the land in order to maximize speed and destroy the enemy's ability to resist as well as his deliberate policy of destroying the Planter Class.

[SpartanDem]

26. It's not just about the elites

the tea party's right wing populist rage is also about protecting privilege under the guise of "freedom". The tea party is really about protecting white, Christian privilege, they would rather see minorities oppressed and keep their status. Even means supporting policies that don't benefit them economically.

[malthaussen]

27. The problem I have with such simplifications

... is that they dodge the issue of Yankee industrialists, whose attitude toward their workers was, if anything, rather worse than the attitude of the Southern slaveowner toward his slaves. As has been pointed out time and again, whatever may be said against the slaveowner, at the least he had marginal interest in the physical wellbeing of his property, which the industrialist did not have to worry about, unskilled labor being easily replaced.

For every good Yankee aristocrat infused with noblesse oblige, how many Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Carnegies were there? Sure, Carnegie was a great philanthropist, and supported education, but he still treated both rivals and his own workers like something scraped off the bottom of his shoe. Read about the people who built the railroads sometime. Predominantly just the kind of aristocrat this article wants us to believe are the good guys, they were experts at the kind of corporate piracy in which Bain Capital engages. They smashed the competition, ran companies with no regard for the welfare of the worker or the customer, and pocketed obscene profits at the expense of the public, later salving their tender consciences with some philanthropic work. Their predominant difference from plantation owners was that they were able to amass much larger fortunes and personal power.

Focusing on "elites" also ignores the common people, who are the recipients of whatever it is the "big" people are trickling down this year. Fortunately, a couple of posters upthread have reminded us of how things look from the bottom up. I'll only add this: whenever I hear Mr Obama or anyone else promoting increased dependence on coal as an energy source because it will "create jobs," I want to grab them by their pencil-necks, shake them, and scream in their faces "Do you want your children to work in the coal mines, sucker?"

-- Mal

[antigone382]

30. Yep, and MTR pretty much turns your entire town into one big coal mine...

Blasting away eons of flora, soil, and rock (weakening folks foundations in the process) filling in valleys, clogging streams, turning the water black or orange, and leaving giant, faultily constructed containment ponds suspended over peoples' communities, homes, the schools their children attend, which leach toxins into the soil and run the risk of bursting...

[leveymg]

28. A variation on the "Cowboy Capitalists versus the Eastern Establishment" analysis of the 1960s.

Sounds like something Carl Oglesby wrote or a debate inside the SDS when such points still mattered. Now, I'm afraid its not really an American problem, anymore, as both power elites are now just local yokels serving the global bankers.

[Junkdrawer]

92. +1

[Aerows]

33. This is a fantastic article

And VERY true. I live in the South and I can say without reservation that this is truly the mindset of the would-be Southern aristocrat. Many of the tea baggers think THEY would be the aristocrat if their ideas go through. It's all about restoring the white, straight Christian male to (in their mind) his rightful place over everyone else.

[1StrongBlackMan]

38. Interesting points. n/t

[Phhhtttt]

42. KICK. NT

[RainDog]

48. Remnants of the Great Awakening, as well.

some interesting demographic info on religion and region - not just in the U.S., but central to this issue, it seems.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002185204

[hifiguy]

49. The old Yankee establishment, as a whole, did

have a concept of civic responsibility that extended to the entirety of the community. The southern establishment did not. Over the last 30-40 years the heirs, both actual and "spiritual", of the antebellum southern aristocratic mindset have waxed ascendant. This has been a disaster for the country.

Excellent article.

[treestar]

54. Interesting article

In the old South, on the other hand, the degree of liberty you enjoyed was a direct function of your God-given place in the social hierarchy. The higher your status, the more authority you had, and the more "liberty" you could exercise -- which meant, in practical terms, that you had the right to take more "liberties" with the lives, rights and property of other people. Like an English lord unfettered from the Magna Carta, nobody had the authority to tell a Southern gentleman what to do with resources under his control. In this model, that's what liberty is. If you don't have the freedom to rape, beat, torture, kill, enslave, or exploit your underlings (including your wife and children) with impunity -- or abuse the land, or enforce rules on others that you will never have to answer to yourself -- then you can't really call yourself a free man.

While true, it is not limited to the South, in the 19th century, when it comes to the wife and children. Workers may not have been slaves, but had few rights.

[treestar]

56. This ties into Rmoney saying people should get the education they can afford:

Once we understand the two different definitions of "liberty" at work here, a lot of other things suddenly make much more sense. We can understand the traditional Southern antipathy to education, progress, public investment, unionization, equal opportunity, and civil rights. The fervent belief among these elites that they should completely escape any legal or social accountability for any harm they cause. Their obsessive attention to where they fall in the status hierarchies. And, most of all -- the unremitting and unapologetic brutality with which they've defended these "liberties" across the length of their history.

And Rmoney is not Southern. Education is for the rich, so they can effectively control the lower classes.

[Beartracks]

76. An intriguing analysis. This bit summed it up for me...

"The Yankees thought that government's job was to better the lot of the lower classes. The Southern aristocrats know that its real purpose is to deprive them of all possible means of rising up against their betters."

================

[HiPointDem]

90. riiight. the nice yankees who gave us the ludlow massacre, among others.

On this day in 1914, two companies of guardsmen attacked the largest tent colony of strikers near the town of Ludlow, home to about 1,000 men, women, and children. The attack began in the morning with a barrage of bullets fired into the tents. The miners shot back with pistols and rifles...

To stay safe from gunfire, women and children took cover in pits dug beneath the tents. At dusk, guardsmen moved down from the hills and set the tent colony on fire with torches, shooting at the families as they fled into the hills. The true carnage, however, was not discovered until the next day, when a telephone linesman discovered a pit under one of the tents filled with the burned remains of 11 children and 2 women.

Although the "Ludlow Massacre" outraged many Americans, the tragedy did little to help the beleaguered Colorado miners and their families. Additional federal troops crushed the coal-miners' strike, and the miners failed to achieve recognition of their union or any significant improvement in their wages and working conditions. Sixty-six men, women, and children died during the strike, but not a single militiaman or private detective was charged with any crime.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/militia-slaughters-strikers-at-ludlow-colorado

...on the orders of the rockefellers and their class collaborators. northerners all.

[Lint Head]

78. The Old Guard in South Carolina long for the plantation days.

They are so steeped in having slaves that it has translated into the modern world in other forms of using employment as the master slave paradigm with politics used as the underpinning. The good ole boy sheen is still there because the right wing political aristocrats have a woman Governor they can control in the southern tradition of the woman being subservient to the man because the Bible tells them so.

[Tom Ripley]

103. And the irony is that most of them would have been staring at the ass end of a mule from sunup to...

sundown during "the good ol' days"
However, every wistful cracker is absolutely convinced that they too would have had a plantation.

[Bette Noir]

81. The author makes some mighty big leaps of logic in this article.

Barbados? Really?

And trying to tie Los Angeles to the "Barbadian" southern aristocracy, Evangelicalism and all? Drop yourself in any neighborhood in Los Angeles, and I'd bet you'd meet 50 Catholics and 50 secularists before you'd run into a single Evangelical.

I find it very hard to swallow any of the author's logic, given the flaws I see through the lens of my own experience and education.

[coalition_unwilling]

117. Evangelicals are strongest in Riverside and Orange Counties, altho

there are many branches of the 4-Square Evangelical sect (cult?) located in Los Angeles.

Because LA is now 51% Latino, of course Catholics will get strong representation here.

[DonCoquixote]

82. I hate Southern GOP assh*les as much as anyone

But it is always tempting to demonize all.

There is a lot of truth in this article, especially about the way Northern Aristocrats did their damage, but realized even they had a leash. But this article does not talk about the poor southerner.

The South was settled by Scotch, Irish and other celts. It is no accident the stars and bars is a St. Andrews cross. Now, the reason why this is important is because the Celts were mistreated badly by the English, who used the pretense of "good government" to screw the Celts every which way, from trying to supress their religion, to using their religion as an excuse to take their land, to putting factories on that taken land.

The Celts knew they had no government to really represent them. Let's face it, they still do not, save for that part of Ireland that got liberated after World War one. That is why many of Celtic descent still, do this day, see government as an evil. The tragedy is, like most people that were abused, they grew up and sought to become ABUSERS. After all, take a look at how they treated Africans:

Celts: had a different language that was suppressed by the English.
Africans: The Celtic Americans chose to suppress African culture and language and religion. No this is NOT ancient history, as any Black person who gets "complemented" for "Good English" can tell you.
Both: It is also why Southern Whites get VERY defensive of their accent, as the twang has been found to be a relative of a Scottish accent.

Celts: Churches tended to be the true cultural centers and welfare centers that the government would not be.
Africans: Churches tended to be the true cultural centers and wlefare centers that the government would not be.
Both: Southerners of Celtic and African descent still see Churches as a part of thier community. It is why Churches are still segregated in practice, and why both Southern Blacks and Whites would gladly fight and die for their churches, and why Clergymen on both sides are still so powerful in the South.

The point is that we cannot just focus on the plantation owners. If you want to South to see things your way, you have to try to understand their history. That does NOT mean kiss the ass of those creeps who DO think of themselves as the new planation owners. Yankees and Southerners both have an elite that thinks they were entitled by God to oppress the lesser, though admittedly the Southern variety knows how to rile up the masses better.

[backscatter712]

97. Reminds me of a different article...

I don't remember the title or author, but it said that a lot of people in today's authoritarian right descended from a group of Scotsmen that lived along the border with England. They had a harsh, puritanical flavor of Calvinist religion, and an insular culture that was particularly intolerant of outsiders and foreign ideas. Many of their descendents and their memes ended up in today's American Bible Belt.

[backscatter712]

111. Found it - the Scots-Irish roots of fundamentalism!

http://coldtype.net/Assets.05/Essays/02.Joe.Scots.pdf

[XemaSab]

124. Slightly racist

but there are certainly some truths to be had in there.

[moondust]

98. Slavery may have been abolished but not the slave owner's mindset.

No doubt all-white fraternities and sororities have something to do with perpetuating it.

[yardwork]

112. I don't know about this. It looks like Wall Street is blaming the south again. I don't buy it.

The wrong people are in charge of the U.S. that is for sure. Most of them are not southern.

[fascisthunter]

122. and there isn't much that is conservative about fascists

they use the term to blend into society, but these psychos are not conservative.