The Myth of the Morally Superior Yankee

http://www.lewrockwell.com ^ | February 10, 2004 | Thomas Dilorenzo

[TomServo]

For your Dixie Ping list please, Sir....

[PeaRidge]

bump

[reelfoot]

Tom Dilorenzo BUMP.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Bingo.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Related thread:

E. J. Dionne's "Harvard boutique" Liberal Gnosticism
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1071359/posts

[#1CTYankee]

The word "Yankee" gained popularity in the early to mid nineteenth century to describe a particular brand of New Englander: arrogant, hypocritical, unfriendly, condescending, intolerant, extremely self-righteous

Hey! I resemble(Some of)that remark

[Petronski]

"... the War to Prevent Southern Independence..."

LOL

[4CJ]

There was a New England version of the Ku Klux Klan as well, in the form of roving gangs that conducted "terroristic, armed raids on urban black communities and the institutions that served them" (p. 165). So it turns out the "Klan," like the Black Codes, was a New England invention.

I'm shocked, shocked I tell ya.

[ontos-on]

OK, OK, but are you for Kerry or ag'in him?

[dighton]

Yankees have never shied away from using the coercive powers of the state to compel others to be remade in their image. That’s why compulsory government schooling originated in New England, as did prohibitionism. It’s also why Stalinism took hold in the North (especially in New York City) in the twentieth century, as did its offshoot, neoconservativism, in more recent times. Indeed, many of the more notorious neoconservatives openly admit that they were Stalinists in their youth and have never fully abandoned those beliefs.

This is so confusing. I thought the evil neocons were Trotskyites.

[steve50]

A yankee puritan bump

[HELLRAISER II]

He does have some good points, I mean someone from New York State acts completely different from someone from New York City. My best friends are from Ohio & Pennsylvania and I only refer to them as being a Yankee when i'm trying to irritate them. Although i'll admit that when I lived in Central Florida the DAMN YANKEES were there by the thousands and I couldn't wait for winter to be over so that they'd leave and go back North.

[Capriole]

Thank you! This is a keeper.

I'm surprised that some of our South-hating Freepers haven't shown up yet to refute all of this. Still, it's early. . .

[Little Bill]

That’s why compulsory government schooling originated in New England, as did prohibitionism. It’s also why Stalinism took hold in the North (especially in New York City)

Compulsory government schooling was instituted so that kids could read the Bible. There are no Yankees in NYC except those that moved there. The definition of Yankee, in Mass anyway, is of long time English descent and Protestant. Proibitionism was instituted to keep the Irish in line and we have been paying for it since,

[PeaRidge]

"It can not be denied that for five and twenty years the agitation at the North against slavery has been incessant. In 1835 pictorial handbills and inflammatory appeals were circulated extensively throughout the South of a character to excite the passions of the slaves, and, in the language of General Jackson, 'to stimulate them to insurrection and produce all the horrors of a servile war'.

"This agitation has ever since been continued by the public press, by the proceedings of State and county conventions and by abolition sermons and lectures.

"The time of Congress has been occupied in violent speeches on this never-ending subject, and appeals, in pamphlet and other forms, indorsed by distinguished names, have been sent forth from this central point and spread broadcast over the Union.

"The long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects.

"The different sections of the Union are now arrayed against each other, and the time has arrived, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when hostile geographical parties have been formed.

"I have long foreseen and often forewarned my countrymen of the now impending danger. This does not proceed solely from the claim on the part of Congress or the Territorial legislatures to exclude slavery from the Territories, nor from the efforts of different States to defeat the execution of the fugitive-slave law.

"All or any of these evils might have been endured by the South without danger to the Union (as others have been) in the hope that time and reflection might apply the remedy.

"The immediate peril arises not so much from these causes as from the fact that the incessant and violent agitation of the slavery question throughout the North for the last quarter of a century has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves and inspired them with vague notions of freedom.

"Hence a sense of security no longer exists around the family altar. This feeling of peace at home has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections. Many a matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and children before the morning.

"Should this apprehension of domestic danger, whether real or imaginary, extend and intensify itself until it shall pervade the masses of the Southern people, then disunion will become inevitable.

"Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and has been implanted in the heart of man by his Creator for the wisest purpose; and no political union, however fraught with blessings and benefits in all other respects, can long continue if the necessary consequence be to render the homes and the firesides of nearly half the parties to it habitually and hopelessly insecure.

"As sovereign States, they, and they alone, are responsible before God and the world for the slavery existing among them. For this the people of the North are not more responsible and have no more fight to interfere than with similar institutions in Russia or in Brazil."

"How easy would it be for the American people to settle the slavery question forever and to restore peace and harmony to this distracted country! "

"They, and they alone, can do it. All that is necessary to accomplish the object, and all for which the slave States have ever contended, is to be let alone and permitted to manage their domestic institutions in their own way."

President James Buchanan, December 1860, State of the Union Report

He completely and truthfully understood the motivation of the secessionists.

[stainlessbanner]

Thanks for posting this.

[dighton]

Good morning.

Just as clarification (probably unneeded), the italicized remark in #15 is DiLorenzo's, not mine.

[stainlessbanner]

Still, it's early. . .

They'll be along shortly. Keep your powder dry and your tea sweet