If It Were Not For The South, America Would Be Another Canada Or (Horror!) France.

ComtedeMaistre

[ComtedeMaistre]

I had yet another look at the 2000 electoral map, and I was struck by the fact that Bush carried every single state in the South, all by substantial margins. It made me wonder of how American conservatism would be, if the South had succeeded in its tragic War of Independence in the 1860s.

Sure, there are many bastions of solid traditional American conservatism outside the South. The people of the American West, in states like Utah, Montana, Alaska, Colorado, Nebraska and Idaho, are probably the most freedom loving people in the entire country. They are the strongest defenders of the second ammendment right to bear arms, largely because of their outdoors culture of hunting, ranching, and fishing. They are also the strongest defenders of free speech, self-reliance, property rights and are fierce individualists. They hate taxes with such an intensity, it is scary.

Many midwestern regions, are also solidly conservative. The small towns in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan, represent the true heart of middle America. And there a few islands of conservatism in the East, in areas such as New Hampshire and Upstate New York, surrounded by a sea of liberalism.

But if you remove the South from the map, do you think that Northern Bastions of conservatism can hold out against the liberal tidal wave? Gore would have carried the 2000 election in a massive landslide, if it were not for the South.

[Classicaliberalconservative]

Cuba and Brazil are not in the US and had no influence on American policy. It was the South that was the primary force for keeping slavery alive in the United States and thus the South should be criticized for it. By the 1800s the slave trade in Arabia and Central Africa had been stopped thanks to the British Navy. I agree that the northern states are not innocent of racism and treating black like crap, but none of them wanted slavery. The last slaves were freed in the border states but it was done voluntarily. It took 2 Union Armies make the slave holders in the South give up their slaves.

[putupon]

Look forward to reading it

[Ditto]

Ever consider that it was Southern legislators who directed all that money to their region and contributed to the Sun Belt migration?

Yep. The old southern "Bulls" who ran all the congressional committies like their own personal kingdoms back in the 50s who brought all the pork to Dixie and attracted a lot of ambitious, educated and conservative young Yankees to move to their states and register Republican. LOL. Well it was that and Mr. Carrier who were responsible for the Sun Belt migration.

[wardaddy]

Wrong....the some of the border states did not free the slaves until late 1865 with the 13th amendment. States that had never been under anything but Union authority.


Saudi Arabia did not outlaw chattel slavery until 1960.

And slavery continues today as you know trans Saharan.

You Yankees screw the pooch same as anybody else...only thing is....you think you're better at it..lol

[Ditto]

Thus shooting many holes in the theory that without the South the North would look like France or Canada.

Maybe without the North, the South would look like Mexico.

[Classicaliberalconservative]

Without the North it is probably the South that would look more like France since pre 1789 France and pre 1865 South had some of the same chracteristics. A landed aristocracy hostile to industry and commerce, a class based society with clear boundaries etc. Any change from that would result in European class style politics defined through a worker vs paternalistic conservatism dialectic as in many European states. Statism and socialism that is the result. It is the northeast that keeps America to its free market and classical liberal live and let live traditions.

[Ditto]

A landed aristocracy hostile to industry and commerce, a class based society with clear boundaries etc.

Sounds like Mexico to me.

[#3Fan]

No one is debating that your cities are larger on average and yes that can affect local and even state elections but that does not detract from the fact that whites in the south vote conservative proportionately higher than in the North and that blacks are a higher percentage of our regional population here.

Cities wussify people. Since in our states we have a higher percentage of city dweelers, it turns the whole state liberal in elections. There isn't much difference in rural and city between the north and south in voting patterns otherwise. Our main difference is the size of the cities.

[#3Fan]

Without the South, the US would be more liberal....CULTURALLY. But I maintain that the rest of the US would be more prosperous and more free market and less socialist than it is today. Why is that? I submit to you all that Southern states as well as certain Western agriculutural states get more funding per capita from the Feds than any other region in the US and pay less taxes to the Federal government per capita than any other region, especially the blue states of New York and California (although the business flight from CA may change that). In fact the South benefits disproportianately from New Deal and Great Society Programs like TVA and Medicaid since it has a higher poverty rate. Also massive government subsidies due to Southern control of Congressional and Senatorial committees means a channeling of much non residtributive government spending to these areas. Therefore current southern prosperity is more due to government spending and socialism-lite than anything else. Without a South, socialism would have never gone national. The Solid South of the old days and the big cities of the North had one thing in common....political patronage, corruption and machines. That is the heart of big government and the civil service. It was this coalition that pur Roosevelt in office and sponsored the New Deal and the Great Society. Without a South, rural voters and city reformers would have gradually taken control of the North at the expense of political machines, much like what has happened since and the north would be a libertarian paradise more or less. Socially very liberal but conservative on economics. Essentially classical liberalism, which is this nation's true political heritage.

Without changing the movement of peoples due to a united country (and other history) that could be. I think saying it'd be a model for liberatarianism might be a little stretch though. It seems people naturally drift toward socialism when they have success (maybe not all the way to socialism, but they drift there at least some) and forget the values that got them the success in the first place.

[Ohioan]

Modern "conservatism" is simply yesterday's liberalism; liberalism on the cheap, as it were. You get your leftist socialist welfare/warfare police state, tomorrow, instead of today. But you do get it, eventually.

The Conservative revival that ran from the 1950s until it finally gained a momentary dominance over the Left in 1980, has definitely dissipated its energy since 1984, save for a brief final stirring in 1994. Calling what is now going on in Washington, "Conservative" is a misnomer. However, one must not despair. The very excesses of those inside the Beltway, and among the Federal Judiciary, could well trigger a new birth of sanity among intelligent Americans. How we who care about the American heritage handle the reaction, when it gathers momentum, will determine the future of all our hopes and aspirations.

We do, indeed, have our work cut our for us. But it is a mistake to accord the "Conservative" label to innovations that completely alter the warp and woof of what the Fathers gave us. Deliberately mislabelling concepts is one of the principal tools of totalitarians. It should never be accepted by free men, who would remain free. There is no line in Washington's Farewell Address that is more vital to the preservation of our way of life, than this:

"Honesty is always the best policy."

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[#3Fan]

You and #3 ought to get a room together.

Huh? Why are you getting sh***y? Some of you southerners are so touchy.

Blame the South for FDR?

They supported him the most and still write songs saying how great he was. Ever heard "Song of the South"?

That's a hoot. Blame us for slavery alone?

Both had slavery. I don't see anyone blaming you for slavery alone. You weren't willing to get rid of it peacably though.

Another hoot, ya'll didn't need them....hence all high and mighty by default.

Some mistakes are made to last as that "great" Englishman George Michael would say. Clinging to slavery was one of those mistakes.

[#3Fan]

And that makes about as much sense as your diatribe that because rural Southerners supported FDR in 1932 that we are somehow to blame for your cultural and economic blight.

Economic blight? I think you've been reading too much of Willie Green. lol

[#3Fan]

And what do you call the massive transfer of wealth from everyone to build all the projects up north and all the quixotic urban renewal in your shining cities?

Like TVA?

[#3Fan]

The only reason the South voted for Wilson and FDR is because they were both Democrats.

Yep, Democrats who loved socialism.

The South, up until the 1960s, was STAUNCHLY in the Democrats camp: A Republican just didn't have a chance in the South. (One of the reasons the South was so bitterly opposed to the Republicans was because of the Republican influence and control in the federal government, which resulted in Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War; and, perhaps more offensive to the South, Reconstruction. )

They sure didn't mind the federal power given to them by Wilson's and FDR's socialism though did they?

[#3Fan]

Wrong....the some of the border states did not free the slaves until late 1865 with the 13th amendment. States that had never been under anything but Union authority.

It was first thigs first after the war. If southern politicians hadn't fought so hard for institution of slavery, it probably would've been outlawed in the 1700s.

[Ohioan]

It is the northeast that keeps America to its free market and classical liberal live and let live traditions.

You are being facetious--aren't you? It is the Northeast that has been historically most associated with protectionism. It is also the area where the notion of forcing all Americans--regardless of the values in their respective States--to live according to various forms of regimented centrally decreed values--have all originated.

As for the idea of the South degenerating into Class Warfare? If you look more closely, it was Northern agitation--the NAACP, for a prime example--which led to confrontation between the races in the 20th Century. The leader of the Southern Negroes--Booker T. Washington--advocated Conservative cooperation, between the Free Men and their former Masters--the absolute antithesis of the Class Warfare that broke out in France, between the one-time Feudal Masters & a manipulated mob.

Do not mistake my drift. As a Conservative Ohioan, I am very glad to have my Conservative Southern Friends in the Union. But there is no evidence that they would have been any less Conservative, had they left it. Rather, just the opposite.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[wardaddy]

Always excuses..always pointing fingers. Typical Yankee.

And the typical Yankee votes Dem today whether you like to admit that or not.

I find it funny how you blame black migration for all the woes in Yankeeland yet have the gall to call us racists down here. Maybe we should ping all of FR's resident black FReepers so they can see how much you appreciate them in your midst...lol...that is too funny.

In your world of pointy heada and fingers:

"Those damned Southern slaveowning bastards had the gall to be so nasty and inhospitable that they forced the negroes to migrate up north and now we have the chore of dealing with them and they have subsequently skewed the political demographics to the point that I am huffy"

On behalf of my ancestors, I'd like to personally apologize for making your little ol Yankee life so deplorable by forcing you to have to take in the negroes who have caused you so much grief....noble as you are ...it must be that much the worse...lol

I bet you don't even see that do you in your blind zeal...lol

GOP was right....you are best served ignored.

[Windcatcher]

I can sure tell you the main problem in PA:

PHILADELPHIA.

(and to a lesser degree Pittsburgh) Take the people in Philly out of the equation and PA moves FAR to the right. Go thirty miles from the city and it's a completely different state. That city's like a lanced boil; oozing liberals, leftists, and plain-old "gimme, gimme, gimme" Democrats over everything in the area.

[Lazamataz]

ComtedeMaistre, meet justshutupandtakeit. justshutupandtakeit, meet ComtedeMaistre.

:^D

[#3Fan]

Always excuses..always pointing fingers. Typical Yankee.

I see you're now getting thoroughly upset. Amazing. Wasn't slavery a point of contention when the wording of the Constitution was hammered out? It seems to me the southern representatives pushed for it against the will of the northern representatives. I could be wrong. I'm sure some constitutional scholars here know the answer.

And the typical Yankee votes Dem today whether you like to admit that or not.

Because more are from cities. A victim of our own success.

I find it funny how you blame black migration for all the woes in Yankeeland yet have the gall to call us racists down here. Maybe we should ping all of FR's resident black FReepers so they can see how much you appreciate them in your midst...lol...that is too funny.

Go ahead. I'm sure they're more aware than I that 95% of their relatives are liberal and they have to put up with them politically. I made my point clear. I said that when blacks fled southern oppression they went to the northern cities almost exclusively thereby liberalizing them the same as it liberalizes whites. Although to a greater degree (95%) because of race-baiters.

In your world of pointy heada and fingers: "Those damned Southern slaveowning bastards had the gall to be so nasty and inhospitable that they forced the negroes to migrate up north and now we have the chore of dealing with them and they have subsequently skewed the political demographics to the point that I am huffy"

Dealing with their liberalization, yes. Larger cities mean more liberals. It means it in the south too. Nice race-baiting by you, by the way, you and Jesse Jackson should have lunch.

On behalf of my ancestors, I'd like to personally apologize for making your little ol Yankee life so deplorable by forcing you to have to take in the negroes who have caused you so much grief....noble as you are ...it must be that much the worse...lol

You should apologize for slavery causing the uprooting of so many people who were forced to live wall to wall thereby liberalizing them.

I bet you don't even see that do you in your blind zeal...lol

I knew what I was saying when I said it. If you take that many people and shove them together, they will become liberals. The same thing happens to whites. Are you afraid at looking at truth? Why does truth make you so angry and resort to liberal hyperbole and race-baiting?

GOP was right....you are best served ignored.

You're that frustrated huh?