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.
You're not seeing my point. If you look at my post, you'll see that I said the former slaves escaped to the northern cities. The reason that the Northern states vote liberal and the Southern states vote conservative is because of city vs rural. Blacks vote 95% liberal and we absorbed them in our cities making our cities larger by a greater degree. It doesn't take much to push a state to one candidate or another. This exodus from the south made our cities large in relation to out rural population. Your cities are not as large and it doesn't turn your whole state liberal like it does ours.
Your average white person in the north is more likely to be liberal than the same demographic in the South.
Our cities are larger so it's more likely that a person randomly picked from the North will be from a city and therefore vote liberal.
Research voting stats...in a Cotton State, typically the whites have to go 70% or better Pubbie to carry the state and they do more often than not. I doubt you will find whites voting like that anywhere else in the country.
Because your cities are smaller you can get those numbers because there will be a higher percent of rural voters.
I would also argue that Southern blacks....particularly rural blacks are more Conservative at least culturally than those in the North.
Yes, because your cities are smaller, you have more rural blacks. I'm not blaming the blacks, I'm only pointing out the circumstance that when they fled their oppression in the south, they ended up in cities which contributed to their liberalism.
Have you ever been to the liberal mecca of the Upper West Side of Manhattan? Hardly a black in sight south of 125th (sans a few blocks of Amsterdam up near St John the Divine).
Yes that would be an urban area. Our cities are larger because we were willing to get rid of slavery earlier giving us a technological advantage for 130 years drawing more residents and blacks fleeing southern oppression to our cities thereby contributing to liberalism.
I would agree that black voting patterns account for local liberalism largely in urban areas but they do not explain the broader picture. Black liberal voting habits also make most Southern urban areas liberal as well. Atlanta is a perfect example and Nashville too except their influence is somewhat less due to lower numbers.
Lucky for you your cities are smaller it it saves your states from being liberal.
Bush would have had a landslide if it was not for NBC/CBS/ABC announcing that Gore had won the election.
Many people did not bother to vote after hearing that.
Ther was massive voter fraud in the last election ON BOTH SIDES.
I remember when I was a kid, I would feel sorry for Californians on TV during Christmas because they didn't get snow. Now I realize they don't even want snow. lol Fine with me, to each his own, I like the seasons.
Not exactly New England I admit. The Deep South is indeed hot and winters wet and temperate. I like cold weather too and enjoyed upstate NY mainly for that reason. My 8 years in Manhattan were maybe 2-3 degrees on average colder than Nashville and summers in the city can be very very hot. Manhole lid popping hot as anyone who has lived there knows.
I know some of the best memories of my life occured in crisp weather. There's something about it that makes people more fun to be around it seems.
Slavery kept them behind industrially and tecnologically. Why invent things and try to come up with a better way when you can simply order 40 people to do manual labor for you and you getting all the profits.
And the North didn't have to work and be innovative for their income, either. They didn't use slaves simply because they didn't need them -- there were plenty of different groups of recent immigrants to do the kinds of dirty work that few Northerners wanted to do. They may not have been "slaves," but the Irish immigrants who worked in the coal mines of Pennsylvania were worse off in many ways than blacks in the South.
But that was industry and there were more industries than coal mining and there were other states in the north besides Pennsylvania. You can't point to coal miners in and assume every worker in the North worked that way. And when you pay someone to work, you're always looking for a better way to do something. This leads to innovation and a better economy. There were 4 million slaves in the south so their incentive to innovate was much lower and it got them behind for 130 years.
Glad you added the "at least". I grew up in Miami, my dad was from Alabama and my mom from Key West, and when air-conditioning made it's way down there that all the "damn yankees" followed. After that it was said that you had to go north to get south. More true today than ever.
I don't deny that Northerners didn't want to be inundated with blacks in the 1800s. We don't want to be inundated with Mexicans now so is that right or wrong? Hell, there are some here on this thread that don't even want to be inundated with other Americans or do you not remember the post where the guy said (paraphrasing) "don't move down here".? People don't like their communities disrupted or the continuity disrupted to a great degree. You can't equate that perpetuating slavery.
1. Were about to vote
2. Heard about the call
3. Believed it enough to decide not to vote at all.
When Jimmy Carter and the Dems made the same argument about why they lost some close California COngressional seats in 1980, we generally did not believe it, and careful research studies showed the same thing, to the extent that such studies can.
NOW, I will agree that in an election as close as Florida's, ANYTHING can make a difference. Just ONE vote per precinct in the Panhandle would have doubled Bush's margin. But, big numbers -- no way.
Also, since we easily, and correctly, dismiss all the Dem whining about people who were too stupid to punch the right place, or notice that they were double voting, etc., isn't it equally stupid for people to fail to vote (having waited to the last 10 minutes, BTW) because some network tells them so??
Where would Republicans have that opportunity? Republicans don't have areas where they outnumber Democrats 95 to 1. Democrats do and that's why they can get away with voter fraud. Plus it's in the Democrat mindset to cheat for power.
This from a guy that is one-issue and spends every day refighting the Civil War. You post the same thing day after day after day after day after...
I think there is something to that --- when machines get invented and make productivity go up --- manual labor is not productive.
Republicans have their stupid people like the Dems (though not as many I'm sure). What makes it wrong is that the media lied and lieing is wrong. They claim to be objective but they are nothing more than propaganda machines for Democrat socialists.
If you are paying the manual labor a decent wage.
At this year, we'd have likely had three possibly four wars including a possible nuclear scenario in the 50's if Japan hadn't gotten nuked in WWII.
Both nations would definately be worse off but I don't think that the South would have turned into Turtledove's rendition of the Nazis.
I used to like Turtledove's series, but they are getting far too pat and predictable. He's basically retelling history and only changing the players, not the course.
Responding to him only encourages his anal retentive qualities, which lead him to incoherently respond virtually word-by-word to everything you post. Point out his incoherency and he will start making bizarre and absurd accusations against you. A favorite of his is "cyber-stalking," which he alleges against practically everybody who can withstand the incoherency and respond to his posts more than a couple times. It's a true paranoia and his is not just limited to civil war stuff - he does the exact same thing on practically any issue you can dream of and, from what I am told, is particularly nutty when it comes to the subject of NASCAR. The best way to deal with him is ignore him and he will go away until he finds another thread to pollute.
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