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.
“You are so heated in your defense of your region and your abuse of the other”
I’m abusive towards the governmental approach of the North, and I think you’d agree, if you are an American. I’ve been most expressive of welcoming those who come to the South to avoid the things which I abuse.
The North will become more “Southern” if America is to survive.
“Different regions do different things better and a country benefits by having citizens with different skill sets.”
Kumbaya-BS. The North doesn’t suffer having untalented citizens, rather it suffers untalented government - indeed overbearing, enslaving government.
I love my fellow Americans. I pity the ones who do not enjoy the freedoms that I do. Most do not realize or care, unfortunately. I lament the encroaching loss of freedoms for everyone - but I trust that the Federal government will be bankrupt before they can get them all - and then we can seize them back.
“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.”
Sure I can, and no they are not. What you fail to grasp is that you need more of what we’ve got in the South. We need more of it here too. It makes us all better Americans. So take THAT, Yankee!
“If you want to play the sectional uniqueness card,”
Uniqueness? I think I said the South is BETTER - which certainly does imply uniqueness from the government attitude of the North (and many citizens). I’ve got Southerners in mind that would be better suited to being your neighbors than mine, but at least they have more of a chance of becoming right-thinking Americans than they do in your neck-of-the-woods.