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

[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.