Sounds like Italians to me. Or Greeks.
It is grits or nothing for breakfast.
I like grits for breakfast. But it's an acquired taste.
It is knowing that Barbeque is a noun.
Again, that's fun, and I concur, but it isn't something on which to base a political initiative.
It's sitting in a tree freezing your butt off waiting for supper to walk by.
Some people like hunting. But my family never hunted, just weren't into it.
The most fanatic hunters I've ever known were folks in Pennsylvania and the upper Midwest.
Its country music and NASCAR.
Pretty much most folks in the U.S. like country music. Or stock-car racing for that matter.
For me the Confederate flag has always been around.
It has always been around for me, too, but it never occurred to me that it should be a "sacred" symbol.
From those corny license plates that had the fat old soldier saying "Ferget hell!" to the child t-shirts that read "I'm a little rebel", it wasn't racial, it was a statement that said, "I'm country, I'm from the South, and I'm proud."
Anybody can do that. But I find a symbol of rebellion against the United States of America, which nation I'm a proud citizen, to be an odd way to display that "pride".
I remember singing "Dixie" in elementary school music class. We didn't fly the Confederate flag every day back then.
We sang "Dixie," but we sang "America the Beautiful" and "God Bless America" and the national anthem, and other patriotic songs. "Dixie" had no special significance to my recollection. It was just a song (we also sang "Alabama, Alabama, We will aye be true to thee" which was about pride in our state).
My point I suppose is that there really isn't anything FUNDAMENTAL that distinguishes someone from the South vs. someone from anywhere else in the country--except that once some of the rich slaveowners thought it would serve their interests to protect their investment in slaves by seceding from the Union. They were rebels against the greatest Nation God ever put upon the earth.
I can be "proud" of many of those other things, but I don't claim rebellion against the United States of America as a part of my "heritage". That was a bunch of people with ideas and "values" that are so far from my own that I can't even begin to think like they do. I'm certainly not going to honor them by flying their flag.
We're on different roads here. I'm talking culture, you're talking politics. I'll agree that southern conservatives are pretty much like conservatives around the nation. But southern culture is pretty much unique. If I go to New York City or Los Angeles, I'll have a hard time finding a restaurant that serves grits or mustard based bbq. Back home in SC I can go into a gun shop and buy a handgun and walk out with it the same day. I can't do that in Los Angeles or New York. The stock car race in Los Angeles is always sold out, but those people in the stands aren't from LA. You can't even get the race on the radio in LA because no station will carry it. Back home I have my choice of stations. For me, the Confederate flag is a cultural symbol, not a political symbol.