Replies

"Yankee tax dollars paid for rural electrification, which gave you Yankee invented electric light and Yankee invented air conditioning."

Not just any Northerner is a Yankee; there are good Northerners. You should read the article by Clyde Wilson that Benson refers to for a more precise characterization of a Yankee. For example Thomas Edison, who was born in New Jersey, was certainly not a Yankee; the inventor of air-conditioning was a New Yorker, so he doesn't qualify as a Yankee either. It is difficult for me to imagine a Yankee actually making a positive contribution to civilization. There may have been one or two who did, but I certainly can't think of any off hand.

If someone from New York is not a Yankee I have no idea what one has to be or where one must be from to be a Yankee.

How do I determine if I am a Yankee? I am from NY, but that doesnt make me a yankee. So what does or doesnt?

Makes sense to me. The second one starts to lose an argument, one starts shifting definitions around. Now we have "good" yankees, "bad" yankees, and then there are the decent folks who happen to, by accident of procreation, live in a state north of the Mason-Dixon line.

How convenient.