Posted on 04/26/2008 3:49:33 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
"A savage, rather unsophisticated set of mores"...
One way of gnashing one's teeth over the sudden scrutiny of the Obama candidacy, and its loss in Pennsylvania, is, well, to go back and blame American history for creating such illiberals. Now it's not just those "white folks" or the "white working class," but, you see, all those hick Southerners, wild Westerners, crazy Catholics and evangelicals, blood-drenched frontier warriors, sanctimonious Wilsonians—almost anyone other than the ancestors of those annoited it seems who now favor Barack Obama.
Cf. the recent essay by Michael Hirsh, which if it is serious and not a joke, is one of the most puerile things I have seen yet published in Newsweek, but also one of the most invaluable in revealing the attitudes of disdain behind the current liberal mindset as well as the ideology of Obamania. I think what Hirsh is describing was also once analyzed by James Webb, albeit he drew different conclusions:
"This region was heavily settled by Scots-Irish immigrants—the same ethnic mix King James I sent to Northern Ireland to clear out the native Celtic Catholics. After succeeding at that, they then settled the American Frontier, suffering Indian raids and fighting for their lives every step of the way. And the Southern frontiersmen never got over their hatred of the East Coast elites and a belief in the morality and nobility of defying them. Their champion was the Indian-fighter Andrew Jackson. The outcome was that a substantial portion of the new nation developed, over many generations, a rather savage, unsophisticated set of mores. Traditionally, it has been balanced by a more diplomatic, communitarian Yankee sensibility from the Northeast and upper Midwest. But that latter sensibility has been losing ground in population numbers—and cultural weight.
The coarsened sensibility that this now-dominant Southernism and frontierism has brought to our national dialogue is unmistakable. We must endure "lapel-pin politics" that elevates the shallowest sort of faux jingoism over who's got a better plan for Iraq and Afghanistan. We have re-imported creationism into our political dialogue (in the form of "intelligent design"). Hillary Clinton panders shamelessly to Roman Catholics, who have allied with Southern Protestant evangelicals on questions of morality, with anti-abortionism serving as the main bridge. Barack Obama seems to be so leery of being identified as an urban Northern liberal that he's running away from the most obvious explanation of his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former Weatherman Bill Ayers: after Obama graduated from college he became an inner-city organizer in Chicago, and they were natural allies for someone in a situation like that. We routinely demonize organizations like the United Nations that we desperately need and which are critical to missions like nation-building in Afghanistan. On foreign policy, the realism and internationalism of the Eastern elitist tradition once kept the Southern-frontier warrior culture and Wilsonian messianism in check. Now the latter two, in toxic combination, have taken over our national dialogue, and the Easterners are running for the hills."
There's much more. But if one finishes this silly piece, there is still hope. You see Hirsh also quotes Michael Lind to the effect that the problem is not just Southerners or Westerners per se, but "folk cultures" and the loss of "patrician cultures".
As a lifelong Westerner (five generations on this farm), I confess that many of us (including the Democratic Party of old) thought that the loss of dominance of partician culture had saved the United States, and is precisely what makes us now different, thank God, from Europe. Ask the Bosnians—or for that matter the Europeans themselves.
The people that think like this should confine themselves to breeding dogs or horses. This Newsweek article is nothing but a Neo-Eurotrash Selective Breeding Theory of the left’s favored peoples, bordering on Fascism.
It hardly surprises me that Hirsh calls for the accession to power of a patrician wing of U.S. politics inasmuch as he appears to be an admirer of its international counterpart. That such a wing is arrogant, wasteful, and considers itself accountable to no one is the very essence of autocracy. That's fine if one is an autocrat - "It is good to be King" - but the rest of us take a rather dim view of it. Stupid and tin-eared as Obama's handlers have proven to be, they're not that stupid and tin-eared. The same cannot be said for Mr. Hirsh.
Kansas has confederates?
I was with you til the end, then I began to disagree. Have you seen the bobble-heads that get on all of the news programs and spout the scripture of “Change”. They can’t define it, but they can parrot it.
So Hirsch thinks that the Northeast is still controlled by Transcendentalist, abolitionist thinkers like Emerson, Thoreau, Parker, and Alcott? The Yankees/Boston Brahmins haven't been in power for over a hundred years. Then the Irish Catholics took the reins. The Italians also got into the act.
"A rather savage, unsophisticated set of mores" describes the Kennedys perfectly. Not to mention the ward bosses and union thugs that run politics in NE cities.
Obama is the ultimate empty-suit, quota-hire.
Isn’t it interesting that the liberals are coming out in talk and in print to express their ignorance about/disdain for/fear of the middle class? I think it’s an effort to give Obama protective cover, like liberal women who wear pants suits so Hillary won’t seem so bizarre.
Clear violation of copyright. I'll sue.
What I think is happening is that we have had the requisite temporal lag to guage and evaluate the threat posed by this strange and unnerving threat eminating from more backwards regions of the globe. Society and its institutions are swinging to confront that threat. What seemed important in our yesterdays now rings a bit hollow.
A case in point is your reaction to a point in the endless drivel coming out of the UN. Past case, it would not be noticed or even worth responding to. Now it is odd to our sensibilities. That the Archbishop of Canterberry could proclaim the inevitability of Sharia is not surprising but the reaction to it, both disbelief and the social relegation to relic status shows that we are transforming and the view of Western Civilization is coalescing in a defensive mode. This is where and how battlelines are drawn.
“The days of the “bushwhackers” and “jayhawkers” are long past.”
Don’t count on it!
How The South Won (This) Civil War by our cultural better, Michael Hirsh
Wait till some press scrutiny is placed on the people McCain has surrounded himself with.
MH needs to get back in his time machine and get back to the future...on this planet preferably.
We are converging as one nation to face global threats. Some will be left behind in the dust clinging to their brands of what America should have been long after history has already been made.
Without Oprah’s Obama now and the popular “Obamanaia” among the American masses, HRC would already be getting the movers lined up for Jan. 20, 2009, as she would have been nominated outright and immediately. She had been expected to face a weak challenge from “the right” in the general election. It never dawned on her and “Bill” that the fight could be from the left in the primary.
I think millions of Americans have been misled. Obama may yet win (and I am unsure he will at this point) simply because of prices at the gasoline pump. For many generations, the American people have punished the party holding the White House for perceived economic woes, and high gasoline prices fall into that category. Ask GA Jimmuh!
“it’s all those crazy white southerners and neo-confederates.”
it’s all those crazy white southerners and neo-confederates who populate the foxholes when it hits the fan. (and there’s never an elitist to be seen until the smoke clears and those crazy white southerners and neo-confederates have made it safe to go home.)
Still, most of those dispossessed persons turn to elitists for “leadership”. But they may think Oprah’s Obama is “one of them.” At lot of it used to be name recognition, but Oprah’s Obama has had that since Christmas now.
"also quotes to the effect that the problem is not just Southerners or Westerners per se, but "folk cultures" and the loss of "patrician cultures". "
They are replaying the Hofstatder Paranoid Style theory of disgruntled pseudo-conservatives quite shamelessly. If the voters do not go along with liberalism or Rockefeller Republicans there must be something wrong with them or they are just "mindless" rednecks. This is another version of the sociological theory behind Obama's San Francisco comments.
Michael Barone had already outlined the Jacksonian demographic for the Democrats and Hillary's strategy.
"which if it is serious and not a joke"
It must be a joke.
"The outcome was that a substantial portion of the new nation developed, over many generations, a rather savage, unsophisticated set of mores. Traditionally, it has been balanced by a more diplomatic, communitarian Yankee sensibility from the Northeast..."
"So Hirsch thinks that the Northeast is still controlled by Transcendentalist, abolitionist thinkers like Emerson, Thoreau, Parker, and Alcott? The Yankees/Boston Brahmins haven't been in power for over a hundred years." 7 posted on Saturday, April 26, 2008 7:28:31 PM by LibFreeOrDie
Emerson and Thoreau to the rescue... They had Bill Clinton for eight years. The "Southern Strategy" is part of the Democrats' politics as well, unless they want to send Edwards, Clinton and Gore home. They tried running the "Patrician cultures" before with Dukakis and John Kerry. It didn't work. So they are stuck with a few communes in Massachusetts and Vermont with low birth rates.
"We have re-imported creationism into our political dialogue (in the form of "intelligent design"). Hillary Clinton panders shamelessly to Roman Catholics, who have allied with Southern Protestant evangelicals on questions of morality, with anti-abortionism serving as the main bridge."
You see, their real problem is this belief in God thing... How do they expect to win elections without Christians or those who believe in God and conventional morality? What kind of country would that be like?
It's like they have learned nothing from Obama's "clinging to religion" comments.
"the same ethnic mix King James I sent to Northern Ireland to clear out the native Celtic Catholics.
"Hillary Clinton panders shamelessly to Roman Catholics"
Isn't that what elite liberals would like to do - "clear out" Catholics and the conservative pro-life vote? Isn't that what they did do with their social engineering policies in America's cities and their extremist politics, pushing pro-life Catholics into the Republican voting fold (the Reagan Democrats)? That's exactly what they just did in Pennsylvania. They themselves are guilty of what they are accusing.
They don't disagree with that part at all.
In fact, anti-Christian social engineering is a central part of the liberal agenda. This is essentially saying, "the problem is all of these social groups that believe in God and conventional morality." How could anyone not call this elitist? You can't run the country with just secular humanist limousine liberals from San Francisco and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
If the rest of us would just shut-up and get with the program, they could.
At least, that's what they think...
Pretty much. That’s it in a nutshell.
PING for excellent observation.
Hofstader re-tread is right.
They are also channelling Sen Webb’s scots-irish stereotyping and the “Jacksonian” bloc identified by Barone.
But are considering those ‘hicks’ unable to govern themselves.
“This is another version of the sociological theory behind Obama’s San Francisco comments.”
Spot on. Obama’s problem was his distanced, sociological “them” attitude - making it clear his “us” is his cabal of leftwing comrades, not US, the God-fearin’ gun-totin’ flyover middle Americans.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.