“there was good and bad on both sides, so let’s all get along.” But looking at all the anger you have underneath that way of thinking and how you can’t stop it from coming out doesn’t speak well for that approach.”
That’s not what I said. I said that regardless of anyone’s selected affinity today, it was an American war and it belongs to us all. There is no relevant “side” today. So to say “you” or “the South” or “the North” was for or against anything is irrelevant today because we are Americans and we own both sides of that war.
I have no anger. I’m completely objective. The Southern culture of today,for better or worse, stands closer to the America of our founding than any other region in the country. That is to the credit of the South, but more importantly, to the detriment of our fellow Americans who must endure their statist neighbors.
If I offend my geographically-challenged neighbors to the North, I suggest they take offense at the tyrants in their midst that would enslave and deprive them of their God-given liberties enumerated in the Constitution. Don’t waste time getting mad at me. They know I’m right. Their neighbors prove me right every day by voting with their feet.
“The whole “How dare you think yourself superior to us! We are superior to you!” approach. Make up your mind. Are you for some kind of reconciliation or are you looking to settle scores?”
What’s wrong with pointing out the South is better - i.e. more American than any other place in the US? It’s true. We are more individualist, we serve in the military more, we are more patriotic, we trust our citizens to live more unimpeded by government (we’re losing this edge every day, granted). Southern values are just better. It’s not my fault that our poor neighbors to the North willingly put up with losing their freedoms and liberties. We’re better in the South for have preserved more freedoms and liberties. Sorry for not sugar coating that for ya.
As for reconciliation - we need no reconciliation - America was preserved after the Civil War, thank goodness.
THose who try to claim that it’s folks who live in the South today were somehow more responsible for slavery in our Union than any other American living today is the height of stupidity - yet here it is on this thread in all it’s splendor. It’s a North thing.
The poor poster feels morally superior with his lecture about slavery being bad - when he is actually morally inferior, inferior as an American, and all around misguided (and probably has a number of bad habits and poor hygiene) to his Southern neighbors.
It’s not my fault I’m born a Southerner and recognize the superiority of the cultural attributes thereof. You should learn them and emulate them more. You’ll be a better person, a better American.
Americans face similar problems wherever they live. The South, like the West, escapes some of the problems of the crowded urban Northeast by having developed later and being less thickly settled, but still, there are some quite impoverished areas in the South.
You can make a lot of Southern religion and traditionalism, but still, divorce rates are higher in the South. If you're talking about cultural decline, the South is maybe 10 or 15 years behind the North. Where we are now, you may be later.
I'm not saying that makes the North better, just that different regions are better at some things and worse at others. Different regions do different things better and a country benefits by having citizens with different skill sets.
I don't think you're being entirely honest or keeping up with the debates here -- I don't know which it is. When I came here, I'd have said, "yes, the Civil War belongs to all of us; every American's heritage is both Northern and Southern (and other things beside)." But I've seen so many people taking up the Confederate "side" of the Civil War so passionately that those of us who don't are left to speak up for the Union.
People are so devoted about one side or the other in the conflict that saying "you" and "us" has become a convention here. That's the way things have been on these threads for years. Most of the time it doesn't involve assumptions of superiority or inferiority. It doesn't mean anybody, certainly not the poster you attacked, is blaming present-day Southerners for slavery.
You are so heated in your defense of your region and your abuse of the other that I don't think you can claim to be above all that. And I don't think you can play both the passionate sectionalist card and the "we're all Americans and we own both sides of what happened" card. The two are inconsistent.
If you want to play the sectional uniqueness card, you might not simply assume that Southern uniqueness means superiority, but also specific burdens or failings in the past. If you want to play the "we're all Americans" card, maybe recognize that we share a lot in the present as well as in the past.