Dixie
H/T Kievsky
The latest Alternet diatribe on evil White Southerners thwarting the progress of the Yankee Empire:
“It’s been said that the rich are different than you and me. What most Americans don’t know is that they’re also quite different from each other, and that which faction is currently running the show ultimately makes a vast difference in the kind of country we are.”
Well, I suppose this is true.
Dixie was a “White Man’s Country” for almost three centuries. The existence of race was acknowledged here. Public policy was based on the assumption of racial inequality rather than its denial. It made quite a difference that a native Southern elite was running the show who understood the reality of the negro.
We saw what happened during Reconstruction when the Yankee was temporarily ascendant in the South. It meant the passage of the 14th Amendment by Congress, which consolidated all power in Washington, the start of the Gilded Age in the North, and all the horrors of the carpetbagger and black supremacy in South Carolina, Mississsippi, and Louisiana.
“Right now, a lot of our problems stem directly from the fact that the wrong sort has finally gotten the upper hand; a particularly brutal and anti-democratic strain of American aristocrat that the other elites have mostly managed to keep away from the levers of power since the Revolution.”
The wrong sort has definitely got the upper hand: every Northern state and the West Coast voted for Barack Hussein Obama in 2008, who is now the first black president (you know, that was hardly our idea), who appointed Eric “My People” Holder as Attorney General.
Democrats control the Senate. They controlled the House until the 2010 midterm elections. Ever since 2006, the Democrats have had the upper hand in Congress, and since 2008 they have controlled the White House.
“Worse: this bunch has set a very ugly tone that’s corrupted how people with power and money behave in every corner of our culture. Here’s what happened, and how it happened, and what it means for America now.”
In 2008, Barack Hussein Obama’s biggest campaign contributor was Goldman Sachs, which got a $10 billion dollar federal bailout from the Democratic-controlled Congress. That happened on Nancy Pelosi’s watch.
“Michael Lind first called out the existence of this conflict in his 2006 book, Made In Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics. He argued that much of American history has been characterized by a struggle between two historical factions among the American elite — and that the election of George W. Bush was a definitive sign that the wrong side was winning.”
The key phrase there is “for much of American history.” Neither the Southern planter class or the Northeastern Yankee WASP elite has controlled either Dixie or New England since the mid-twentieth century. George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, TX is hardly a plantation.
“For most of our history, American economics, culture and politics have been dominated by a New England-based Yankee aristocracy that was rooted in Puritan communitarian values, educated at the Ivies and marinated in an ethic of noblesse oblige (the conviction that those who possess wealth and power are morally bound to use it for the betterment of society).”
The Yankee was overthrown by the Jew in the Northeast decades ago. WASPs no longer control New York City or the Ivy League.
“While they’ve done their share of damage to the notion of democracy in the name of profit (as all financial elites inevitably do), this group has, for the most part, tempered its predatory instincts with a code that valued mass education and human rights; held up public service as both a duty and an honor; and imbued them with the belief that once you made your nut, you had a moral duty to do something positive with it for the betterment of mankind. Your own legacy depended on this.”
There are strong remnants of the Yankee culture in the Northeast. In much the same way, Southern culture is still dominated by the legacy of the past. It would be foolish to assume though that the Southern planter class or the Yankee WASP elite is still literally running the show.
“Among the presidents, this strain gave us both Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and Poppy Bush — nerdy, wonky intellectuals who, for all their faults, at least took the business of good government seriously.”
The Roosevelts and JFK actually symbolized the long term decline of Yankee WASP elite in the Northeast. Surely, many a Yankee is rolling in his grave at the thought of an Irish Roman Catholic becoming president of the United States.
In the mid-twentieth century, the Yankee WASP elite was overthrown. It was replaced by a multiethnic elite that took over the Ivy League. Many books have been written about how the Jew and other non-WASPs took over Harvard and other Northeastern universities.
“Among financial elites, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet still both partake strongly of this traditional view of wealth as power to be used for good. Even if we don’t like their specific choices, the core impulse to improve the world is a good one — and one that’s been conspicuously absent in other aristocratic cultures.”
The philanthropy of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett is nothing more than a cost of doing business and a cynical attempt to protect their own vast fortunes from confiscation.
“Which brings us to that other great historical American nobility — the plantation aristocracy of the lowland South, which has been notable throughout its 400-year history for its utter lack of civic interest, its hostility to the very ideas of democracy and human rights, its love of hierarchy, its fear of technology and progress, its reliance on brutality and violence to maintain “order,” and its outright celebration of inequality as an order divinely ordained by God.”
Somewhat true.
I would dispute the idea that the South was opposed to “technology and progress” though. See the cotton gin, the telegraph, the railroad, the steamboat, the tractor, the mechanical cotton picker, refrigeration, and especially the air conditioner. We have too much techno-triumphalism in the South today.
“As described by Colin Woodard in American Nations: The Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, the elites of the Deep South are descended mainly from the owners of sugar, rum and cotton plantations from Barbados — the younger sons of the British nobility who’d farmed up the Caribbean islands, and then came ashore to the southern coasts seeking more land. Woodward described the culture they created in the crescent stretching from Charleston, SC around to New Orleans this way.”
This is a half truth.
South Carolina embarked on its historical existence as an offshoot of the British West Indies. Early colonial South Carolina was dominated by settlers from Barbados. It was the Barbadians who left their cultural imprint on the South Carolina lowcountry which spawned the dominant culture of the Lower South. The same thing happened in Jamaica.
In the 21st century though, the elite of the Deep South has nothing to do with the old Southern planter class, which was devastated by War Between the States and lost power to “New South” elites in the decades that followed.
I think they meant sugar cane. On the other hand maybe it’s one of those tropical drinks that come with a little umbrella you get when you are on vacation. 🙂
No, I think they meant rum plantation. Sugar is mentioned immediately prior to rum.
In England a suspect person used to be called a “rum cove”.
Rum Plantation sounds like a start up distillery.
I still don’t know what’s in a mint julep.
My Mammy didn’t want me drinking.
Lefties just say anything and expect not to be called on it. That makes them sloppy.
Even neocons have to be more careful-like, for example, when they caught flak for conjuring up loony historical analogies between German “werewolves” and the Iraqi resistance.
The German’s immediately threw in the lot with either the US, Werner von Braun, or with the Russians. There was no resistance after surrender.
They did not fight back like the Iraqis.
Got into a verbal sparring match with a German supporter at a bar watching Italy v Germany.
The Germans do love em their Union.
Hunter, you should explore this remarkable dimension to the Union. The Germans clearly tipped the balance in Missouri and elsewhere. The interethic fight between the Angle and the German really was critical. The various massacres by German militias in Missouri are quite an interesting topic.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_massacre#section_1
it’s astounding to find out how the Germans got involved in this in such a profound way.
Instead of respecting the knowledge of the black by the native born the Germans fell for an ideology.
What a silly article. It’s funny how most of AlterNet’s “commentary” is presented with the tone of histrionic teenage girls.
Slave societies are a bad idea as they sell-out the future for the gain of the few in the present. Do your own damn farm work, White man.
It’s unfortunate that combined harvesters were not invented a bit sooner. As I am certain the slavers would have been out of business well before 1860.
Now the US must carry the dead useless weight of 40 million blacks. Had things been automated a bit sooner the blacks could have been repatriated back to bongo bongo land.
Wow. that article is one big: “everything bad is your fault!”, never mind the fact that the south doesn’t have such power, and its own states rulings have been routinely struck down for more than a half century.
“The wealthy and powerful are free to abuse employees, break laws, destroy the commons, and crash the economy — without ever being held to account.” – The south never voted to bring cheap third world labor here, and in doing so fundamentally alter the labor market to produce the conditions complained about here. that was “your” guys(they hate you slightly less then they hate us).
“The military — always a Southern-dominated institution — sucks down 60% of our federal discretionary spending, and is undergoing a rapid evangelical takeover as well.” – Non-discretionary spending consumes 60% of actual total spending, and further the military is hiding the negative consequences of your choices.
“Our police are being given paramilitary training and powers that are completely out of line with their duty to serve and protect, but much more in keeping with a mission to subdue and suppress. Even liberal cities like Seattle are now home to the kind of local justice that used to be the hallmark of small-town Alabama sheriffs.” – Liberal cities like Detroit don’t have it, you could always move there.
“Violence against leaders who agitate for progressive change is up.” – Back in reality the opposite is true, and that is what is driving the other trends you note.
“We are withdrawing government investments in public education, libraries, infrastructure, health care, and technological innovation — in many areas, to the point where we are falling behind the standards that prevail in every other developed country.” – One, we spend vastly more on education and healthcare than anyone else. two, if you support innovation you should be agitating against the patent reform bill your side just passed, and three the government is not the sole source of innovation(quite the opposite really).
“Elites who dare to argue for increased investment in the common good, and believe that we should lay the groundwork for a better future, are regarded as not just silly and soft-headed, but also inviting underclass revolt. The Yankees thought that government’s job was to better the lot of the lower classes. The Southern aristocrats know that its real purpose is to deprive them of all possible means of rising up against their betters.” – Is that what you tell yourself? what happened to those working class individuals who embraced your side, and what happened to those who opposed it? the results speak for themselves.
Slave societies have existed since the beginning of time and always will.
“Do your own damn farm work, White man.”
crowley, being the whiny little bitch that he was, failed to get the memo that the Yankees freed the slaves about 150 years ago. Perhaps crowley should get out more.
If he is white, crowley does not realize that he is a tax slave; if he is nonwhite, crowley does not realize that slavery is all he is fit for, since he cannot think for himself.
Some people are not fit to be free. Crowley is one of those.
Freedom failed. BRA is doomed.
Deo Vindice
Apuleius Has Spoken!
All Hail Ceasar Apuleius!
Descendant From The Gods Of Our Forefathers!
Dante Deo!
( By the Gift of God)
Anon,
the author doesn’t realize that all the ills of which he speaks stem from the freeblack and associated ideological delusions.
Paramilitary coppers in Seattle? Guess why! Ruined husks of cities? Guess why!
Deluded white evangelicals with eschatological beliefs? Yep that too. Suspicious broken down communities? You guessed it! But he won’t dare name it.
All the paragraphs you outlined can be traced back to filthy blacks clogging up a well run society.
Every penny spent on teaching blacks has proven to be a waste. Sink hole after sink hole of decay and blight in everything they touch.
They are more impoverished and degraded As a group now than they ever were when segregation was the law. Except they have multiplied to unsustainable levels in the host.
I could eviscerate this article, but why bother? If the South was so “anti-technology,” why did it so readily adopt the cotton gin or the steamboat or the tractor?
I would like to read your response for one, Hunter.
Or invent that ironclad monitor thingammibob Merrimac.
I get the feeling that Confederates were itching to repatriate blacks as soon as technology allowed their labour to be replaced.
I have a feeling race relations were probably better in the Old South because the worse of TNB and negros themselves were keep in check. Hell they were better when I was a kid and before the negros have rights stuff were enforced
HW said, “I could eviscerate this article, but why bother? If the South was so “anti-technology,” why did it so readily adopt the cotton gin or the steamboat or the tractor?…”
Yes you could. The South needs more scholars as well read as you.
My gut says this is twisted hasbara from top to bottom. What a joke. The Federal military (and its spending) has been a point of contention for 150 years in the south. The bases never left. And the Fed employees benefit and live on land that was once owned by…well, the people who lived there. (Like what the Tobacco Acts did).
And now, the Southerner is a castoffs from Barbados slave owners, lol
This is ever more just the casting of the net over the Wasp, imo. (For wasp genocide).
I say this because the South, the Appalachian (and even the midwest at times) IS LUMPED in with the ever-building DEMON, the wasp-Puritan.
Mark my word on it. Articles such as this make me think the Genocide is aimed more at wasps, the northern europe type, the germanic. It was the South and the Brits –the extra special attack on the Episcopals, for instance— but now New England and the midwest.
He seems to get this psycho information with no root in reality from somebody called Michael Lind, at New American
Wasn’t the south also the first to use armored ships and submarines?
Anti-tech indeed.
“John says:
June 30, 2012 at 12:21 pm
In England a suspect person used to be called a “rum cove”.
Rum Plantation sounds like a start up distillery.”
Hey? Why not? I like the sound of it – “Rum plantation”. I like Rum. Rum can be quite yummy – when coupled with other things – like fizzy cola drinks.
Yes Rum ‘n Cokes suit me to a tee on hot hot days like today. I’m finally achieving full coffee infusion…..It’s 2PM – which is essentially Late Morning for me. Must get out door. No Rum on property. Haven’t enjoyed a Rum and Coke for YEARS. Must remedy this grievous oversight…
Bourbon, Cognac…good stuff.
The ironclad Merrimac right? Seemed pretty advanced to me.
Around here, there’re neo-cons scrambling to look conservative— buying up gadsden flags and homeschooling, whatever they can do. But sadly, they don’t seem to wakeup beyond going out to buy the outfits and flags. As the saying goes, “it’s an inside job.” But they aren’t much for study and reading.
Anyway, it’s true—- they really used terrified women to build a voting block. Seemed especially true in the 70s— that bizarre, sudden sea of confused, put-upon “single mothers” and their now “latchkey kids” without any clue about the working world and a pocketbook full of their mama’s recipes and household advice.
In the South at that time, they had only t.v. and used it to “market” and “sell” the Northeast way, of violence, ethnic conflict, strip malls and traffic jams and seeing through the lens of money.
Southern by Grace, that’s for sure.
Re: Michael Lind
Been following him off and on since the early 90s. His hatred of the south is pathological.
Dear Hunter,
Thanks for your great website. This article like all others is a great education that you cant get in any school these days. Some much stuff I never learned in school that was left out.
Quote: “Surely, many a Yankee is rolling in his grave at the thought of an Irish Roman Catholic becoming president of the United States.”
So I guess Irish Catholics aren’t white people.
Irish Catholics are innately hostile to anyone who is a bit Anglo Saxon though.
Inately.
Essentially the 15,000 odd Catholic Irish who joined the union army were functioning as the friend of the black (Sure they conscript rioted) and Al Smith and Kennedy Clan members were nig lovers. Without the Kennedy Clan no immigration bill? No welfare state?
Apuleius ,
Do your own yard work, creep.
150,000 odd Irish…
As the final humiliation slave owners miscegenate with their own property, making their very children into their own chattel slaves. The horror of it. Better to work.
John
Many Irish fought for our nation in the late unpleasantness. The “wharf rats” who enlisted in the Louisiana Tigers, Philips Legion, and the 24th Georgia Infantry are conspicuous examples. One of our greatest generals, Patrick Cleburne, was Irish. General Hardee said this of Cleburne’s division.
“Where this division defended, no odds broke its line; where it attacked, no numbers resisted its onslaught, save only once; and there is the grave of Cleburne.”
General Patrick Cleburne was shot through the heart and died at the battle of Franklin. When they found his body the next day, it had been pillaged by the Yankees.
“He was in his sock feet, his boots having been stolen. His watch, sword belt and other valuables were all gone, his body having been robbed during the night.”
When you are as great a Southern patriot as was General Cleburne, then I will listen to your screeds against the Irish.
That is a promise.
Deo Vindice
Quote: “Irish Catholics are innately hostile to anyone who is a bit Anglo Saxon though”
Do you think that might have something to do with the English invading Ireland and occupying it for centuries?
Quote: “Without the Kennedy Clan no immigration bill? No welfare state?”
I think it would be more correct to say that without the Jews controlling the Kennedy Clan there would be no immigration bill. Also it was FDR who laid the foundations of the welfare state and LBJ – a good old boy from the South – who built on them.
“Do your own yard work, creep.”
That’s what NAMs like you are for, crowley.
“As the final humiliation slave owners miscegenate with their own property, making their very children into their own chattel slaves. The horror of it. Better to work.”
Don’t be humilated by your miscegenation. Your white part almost makes you human.
Nah, you’re right. You better get back to work. I think you missed a spot in the back yard, anyway.
Deo Vindice
Quote: “Essentially the 15,000 odd Catholic Irish who joined the union army were functioning as the friend of the black”
Yeah, because everyone knows that the Irish love blacks! LOL! Also you might like to read up on the Draft riots to see just how much the Irish loved the blacks.
Apuleius,
I had Huguenot ancestors who worked slaves yet I don’t feel compelled to defend slavery. I still see it as a wretched social system, but then I am not Southern, and I suppose were I Southern, with all the insults Southerners routinely receive, I too might defend slavery just as a way of saying f@!k you. Objectively though it is still a rotten system the results of which we are all stuck with today.
“As the final humiliation slave owners miscegenate with their own property, making their very children into their own chattel slaves. The horror of it.”
That IS horrible. AmeriKan negroes have a LOT of white DNA, going back many generations.
Slavery is evil. We are suffering the results of same. I’m with Crowley, on this one. However – I don’t think Southerners need to defend slavery, or the ideals of the South. They just have to point out that:
1) Slavery has exited in Africa for thousands of years (as well as everywhere else) – and any-one who wants to insult Southerners can get their gluteus maximus to Africa, today, and get the Black Africans to free their millions of African slaves, all over Africa. Or shut the Hell up. Now. Forever. And if you get ANY blowback, begin challenging the Anti-Southerner – “Why don’t you think Africans should free their African slaves? Are you FOR African slavery?” Repeat and rinse until your subject’s head explodes.
2) Tell them that Jews ran the slave trade out of Newport Rhole Island – “Did you know that? Why don’t you know that? You seem to know so much about slavery – why don’t you know that Jews ran the slave trade out of Rhode Island. Isn’t that interesting? Jews have always been slavers. The Roman historians used ot wirte about how Jews trotted there human cargo everywhere, all over. Isn’t that interesting? Don’t you think that is interesting? The Jews sold slaves to Romans, and slaves to American planters. Geez – Jews have profiting from slavery for EVER. Sooooooooooooo much longer than a handful of Southern Whites. I’ll bet they’ve made FORTUNES over the centuries. Should Jews pay reparations to Blacks, and White Southerners, for all the horrors they caused? I think so. Don’t you think so?” Continue in that vein. It’s sooooo much fun………
Statistically speaking the vast overwhelming majority of Irish appear to have sided with the Union and actively joined up to seek revenge on the nearest Anglo Colony.
And don’t worry chum, I’m half Irish myself. There’s absolutely NO mistaking their outsized roll intoppling the Confederacy. Not quite as involved as the Germans but substantial enough to field an entire field army for the north.
The North appears to have expertly diverted a human stream of Irish and agermans directly at Dixie. A few anecdotal leaders and a handful of regiments don’t make up for the bulk of the real sentiment.
Yet I appreciate Hunter’s historical review of the BETTER reasons why slavery flourished in the southeastern colonies and states, and the Caribbean region. We need to try to think like a Planter did then, about growing his crops.
Great comments as always, Apuleius. Thanks! People are quick to forget that slavery is a natural state of mankind throughout history. Arabs were big slavers, but they castrated all the black males they took to Arabia to serve them. Europeans were taken as slaves by the Barbary pirates. Hell, the Russian people were serfs (a type of slave) up until the 1860’s. The South didn’t invent it, but had to deal with it anyway. Same for Brazil, that although having millions more slaves and much harsher work conditions managed to end slavery without killing 600k to 800k white men. The North’s way of dealing with it was fanatical and suicidal to the entire nation. You are right to defend the South regarding slavery. Never ever ever give the moral high ground to the Marxist enemy.
BTW, I’m not saying slavery is a good thing, far from it. It always, always backfires somehow. If you read the constitutional debates, slavery was not talked about a lot. Nearly all of the resistance to it was due to it’s effect of depressing helpful white immigration.
Not so.
http://www.historynet.com/americas-civil-war-why-the-irish-fought-for-the-union.htm
the union was a moment of freaking insanity. Lincoln got a lot of white folk killed and dispossessed. Slavery was going to disappear through mechanization. The only thing the union did was to prevent deportation.
How much were Poles and Slavs involved? I know most of them immigrated after the war, but the leader of the mostly German pro-Union militia in Missouri had NOT a German name: Kowalski. I think the Southern immigrants to contested Missouri labelled all non-Southern immigrants as German since the majority were. The militia was very effective for its size.
“If you read the constitutional debates, slavery was not talked about a lot. Nearly all of the resistance to it was due to it’s effect of depressing helpful white immigration.” It did depress “helpful white immigration” of several kinds. The Amish initially settled not only in Pennsylvania but also in North Carolina; in fact Jacob Amman himself settled and died in North Carolina — and Mennonites settled early in Virginia — but the system of slavery made it difficult for them to prosper and expand, and only in recent decades have these German Swiss begun moving south again, especially into Virginia, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee.