A New Stoplight in Town

Last week, the powers-that-be installed a new stoplight in Highlands, NC. It’s on Carolina Way at the intersection with US 64, just east of Main Street. That makes four stoplights we have now. And it raises the question of why the 99.44% of my readers who live in a town larger than 1,000 people should care in the least bit about this major civic improvement.

Last week I drove my usual route from Watts Bar Lake in Tennessee, back to my home. The trip was mostly on blue line highways through small towns, across the spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I saw things that helped me to understand the results of the 2004 election far better than the pundits in their air-conditioned, hermetically-sealed cliff dwellings in New York and other large cities.

The first was the site of what the pundits think, wrongly, is the key to those election results. In Rhea County, Tennessee, they have lovingly preserved the old courthouse where the Scopes Trial took place in 1925. That trial concerned a state law which forbade the teaching of evolution in Tennessee high schools. John T. Scopes was the teacher convicted of violating that law.

The case pitted two towering lawyers against one another. Clarence Darrow was counsel for Scopes; William Jennings Bryan was special counsel for the state. Darrow was the voice of “science and modernity.” In addition to his legal skills, Bryan was a legendary orator and three-time Democratic nominee for President. In an unusual twist, Darrow called Bryan to the stand to cross examine him on his fundamentalist Christian beliefs.

The pundits who are blissfully ignorant of the realities of people who live in the “Red” counties, the ones that carried the day for President Bush, pretend that the contest between Darrow and Bryan was played out again in 2004. The pundits have half of the equation right. They’re right that many people who supported Senator Kerry believe, along with Darrow, that reason is paramount. They believe that man is, if not perfect, at least perfectible. Nirvana would come if only the government would pass the laws they approve, and take the actions they deem correct.

They’re wrong to believe that the key supporters of President Bush are hard-shell “Bible-thumpers,” to use a phrase popularized by H.L. Mencken when he covered the Scopes trial for the Baltimore Sun. Did people with such religious beliefs support Bush? Yes, but in about the same percentage of the votes cast as in 2000. The notoriously wrong exit polls this year were right about this one point: More people this year than in prior years were interested in “moral values,” and that group voted heavily for the President. The meaning of that, however, is broader and more subtle than the pundits know.

Allow me to help them out. Along the way I passed the Westside Baptist Church in Cleveland, Tennessee. Remove the sign out front and the cross on the roof and this elaborate complex could easily be mistaken for a large resort hotel in that small town. It’s no secret that people in these towns take their religions seriously (please note the plural).

There are billboards in these parts that are solid black with just a few words on them. Each has a statement followed by a signature. There is no identification of who or what has placed those ads. Here are two of those I saw on this trip:

I find two aspects of these signs interesting. The first is, they are non-denominational. They encourage readers to seek their personal relationships with God, in any religion and in any way. The second is that people hereabouts take the ideas of a higher power and a call to morality (however defined) quite seriously.

Another tradition hereabouts is lettered signs in front of the churches, that are changed from week to week. One of those I saw on this trip said simply, “God humbles us into greatness.” That gets more to the point. Folks around here lose respect for people who are “full of themselves,” who think that they are exceptionally gifted, who pretend they aren’t subject to the flaws and frailties found in all mankind.

Inside or outside of a house of worship, we don’t take kindly to anyone who places himself above all others. Ray Stevens caught this idea just right in his song, “The Mississippi Squirrel Revival.” It took place in the “First Self-Righteous Church” with one of the key parishioners being “Sister Bertha Better-than-You.” A basic part of morality is being a decent human being, not better than others, not worse than others, but simply well grounded in truth and common sense.

You begin to see the point. Morality is not the sole province of fundamentalist Christians. Nor even of religious people of all denominations. Folks hereabouts who don’t attend any form of services except baptism, marriage, death and an occasional Christmas, still believe in morality. “A man’s word is his bond.” That’s an incredibly old-fashioned idea which would be laughed at in many parts of America. But we take that seriously in the “Red” counties that dominantly supported the President.

We started by talking about the new stoplight in Highlands. It eliminated traffic jams involving as many as ten cars in a row, when they were hung up behind a log truck, or a Cadillac bearing Florida plates with a Q-tip at the wheel. (For those not familiar with “Q-tip,” it means a short, elderly driver, showing just a tuft of white hair above the wheel.) Yes, life is a whole lot different in small towns, rural areas, and the growing ex-urbs, than it is in the big cities in the “Blue” counties.

Life here is more personal, more honest, more in line with common sense. And we prefer our political leaders to show the same characteristics. All that is included in the catch-all phrase of “moral values.” Odds are, the pollsters who asked that question didn’t have a clue about the broader meanings of the phrase they used.

I have a challenge to any and all of the pundits who don’t understand what happened in the “Red” counties, and therefore are only guessing about the reasons for the outcome of the 2004 election. One from England is invited to accept this offer, except for anyone who works for the Guardian. The same offer goes to one from New York or Washington, except for Maureen Dowd or Paul Krugman.

As you can see I’m excluding those who lack a sufficiently open mind to learn from the experience. And here’s the experience offered: The visiting pundits can bring a mammal of their choice. They can visit for a week. I offer excellent food, intelligent company, beautiful surroundings.

I ask only that the visitors have a passing familiarity with three books: Common Sense, by Thomas Paine; The Federalist, by Madison, Hamilton and Jay; and Democracy in America, by Alexis deToqueville. No one should be on the loose discussing American politics in public without a familiarity with such basic works.

In return, I promise not to discuss politics with the visiting pundits – nothing newer than 50 years ago, at least. We’ll stick to history, not politics. What I will do is take them thither and yon on the blueline highways of the American South. I’ll introduce them to places and people who are almost entirely new to them. Again, the purpose is not to talk politics, but to observe a slice of real life.

It’s been a lifelong learning experience for me. A week in the midst of reality couldn’t be too harmful to a pundit, now could it? I’ll even throw in a guided tour of the new stoplight in Highlands.

About the Author: John Armor is a First Amendment attorney and author who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. CongressmanBillybob@earthlink.net

Don’t make me come down there.
God.

Reading that, I could hear my Dad saying 'Don't make me come up there', when I was a kid and causing trouble with my brother.

$0.02 about the 'values' voter:

I'm not sure what the question was (I think it was 'What was the most important issue in your choosing whom to vote for'). But to offer 'values' as a choice makes no sense.

Someone who thought Bush lied, Bush went AWOL, the war was about oil, Halliburton keeps people crippled because they make wheelchairs, could select 'values' as their one, most important, factor. 22% of voters selecting 'values' doesn't tell us much at all.

"... we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country." - William Jennings Bryan, 1896 Democrat Convention

Now there was a Red-Stater and an orator of the first rank!

"One from England is invited to accept this offer, except for anyone who works for the Guardian. The same offer goes to one from New York or Washington, except for Maureen Dowd or Paul Krugman." (in-your-face challenge from CBB)

Great idea!

Well. That qualification certainly takes the wind out of the sails of that challenge!

I doubt there are any Liberal pundits out there nowadays who have even heard of these works - much less have a passing acquaintance with their contents. If they did, they would have the nearly impossible task of keeping the "Liberal" label with a straight face. Now, if you wanted to discuss "gender issues"...

Nice writing though, Congressman. But, you're going to have to work to cut your marvelous prose down to the obligatory 750 words, eh?

hey didn't you always have one? where 107 comes out from Cullowhere and crosses 64? or is that Cashiers where that crossing is located? I never really differentiated Highlands from Cashiers. A bunch of transplants bought land in the middle of nowhere and jacked up the price. Welcome to Highlands and Cashiers. I would say give me the Cowee Valley area down towards Franklin (where one side of my family is originally from) any day of the week but they're buying up that too. Oh well, there's places up 129 that aren't gone yet maybe

Please let our mutual friends in the Tar Heel State know about this. Many of them will recognize the territory.

I recognize the territory - if there is a more spectacular late October drive anywhere else, I can't imagine it. I didn't make it to the Highlands-Cashiers area this fall, like I had the last few years. Decided to see another part of the mountains instead, and set up camp near Hot Springs. But I'll be back for sure, probably next October.

The God billboards - the first one I saw was the "You think it's hot here?" one. It was on the Florida Turnpike up in Sumter County, the north end of the road just a few miles south of where it ends at I-75. Naturally it was in the middle of August, so I got a good laugh out of it. There's still some of the God billboards up in that area. That's just about my favorite part of Florida, that whole area around Sumter, northern Lake and Marion Counties. I camp up there in the winter and spring whenever I get a couple of days where I can toss the gear in the back of the truck and drive up there and pitch the tent.

There's no mountains in north central Florida, of course, just lots of forests and gentle rolling hills. But there are lots of good, honest, hard-working folks who know that "morality" is a lot more than some cookie cutter phrase that can be picked up off the shelf, packaged and fed to the masses in a series of 30 second sound bites. The exact same kind of people you note are so common in western North Carolina, in other words.

These people are one of the main reasons I keep going back to north Florida, just like why I keep coming back to the N. Carolina mountains. They have a LOT to teach the self-proclaimed "elites" in the "Blue States", if these "elites" could get over themselves just long enough to learn. Thanks for the words about one of my very favorites places on this earth.

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.