Posted on 08/26/2003 4:15:08 PM PDT by 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.
But be careful - he's like a creature from a low budget horror flick on the drive-in B movie circuit. Say his name three times and he'll appear and spread his toxic goo all over the thread.
You're forgetting that it was the South that pushed for tariffs in the first place because of Indian cotton.
Even on the issue of slavery, so many people today are ignorant of the fact that, the main reason why Northerners opposed slavery was because of the threat it posed to free white labor in the North, rather than genuine concern over the fate of the slaves.
The framers of the Constitution didn't want slavery if I remember correctly but had to compromise with the southern representatives and included it in the constitution.
Posters like #3Fan, ignore the fact that states in the American West, in Washington State, Oregon, and elsewhere, had laws preventing blacks from moving into those states.
Forget? No. I agree that people don't like excessive immigration disprupting their communities. If the South hadn't had slavery there would've been no reason for this excessive immigration.
It was also in those Northern states, that the most vigorous efforts were made, to exclude Chinese immigrants from America.
And now certain states are more against Mexican immigration than others. Are they wrong to want to limit Mexican immigration?
Was he in this movie?
This is a completely credible and true statement.
The moral standards once traditional to the United States as a whole (decency, honesty, and dignity) will soon fall.
All of what you say here is true.
However, even Democrats from the South have higher moral standards than their political comrades from the North or West.
Yep, I hate unions too. And I agree that there are many that are against excessive immigration. Is it wrong for certain states to be so against Mexican immigration?
As a matter of fact, the great industrialist, Henry Ford, was hated by many members of organized labor, because he opposed unions and hired blacks as strike breakers.
Yep that's probably true. So it's your contention that the South pro-slavery stance meant that they were an inclusive society?
Well, he's crude, stinks up practically every thread he lands on, and seems to have no difficulty wallowing in the midst of his own refuse so yes, that's probably a good guess.
Yeah, Bill Clinton and Al Gore are shining beacons of morality. LOL
They spawned Eli Whitney who with his dandy little cotton gin made cotton King and hence an explosion of slavery and all the other crap that has come down the pike since.
Though born in Massachusetts, Whitney's long been associated with Connecticut where he lived much of his life. The cotton gin (and the development of cotton mills in Britain, New England, and Europe) help to explain "King Cotton," but if anything it makes the planters look worse than otherwise -- less paternalistic and more concerned with getting the big bucks, sharing all the mercenary vices they denounced in Northerners.
That slavery was abolished in Southern states by the Emancipation Proclamation -- if slavery was abolished in the Southern states by the Emancipation Proclamation -- is no particular reflection of Confederate anti-slavery sentiment. That abolition had to wait a year or two or at most three in Border States like Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, or Delaware is no indication of Northern hypocrisy. Rather, it's a reflection of the ambiguous condition of the Border states, slave states with union loyalties or under union control. With the minor exception of a score or so of slaves in New Jersey, the Northern States had abolished slavery by 1860.
In general, accusations of Northern hypocrisy may have some validity, but tend to support Southern hypocrisy. The presumption seems to be that Northern guilt or sins wash Southern offenses clean. Such charges have less to do with either the objective or the moral view of things and more to do with having something to throw at the other side.
The question is what one does after throwing every charge or accusation at "the other side." The tendency is to act like that's that and the matter is settled. The truth is that at that point one hasn't even begun to answer the serious questions. The debate format may be some use for determining the facts in objective history, but it's of little use in reaching a moral reckoning about the Civil War era or our country's history. That would require much more introspection and soul searching than this format allows.
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