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Source: (consider it) Thread: Purgatory: Is there hope for the Bible Belt?
Bullfrog.

Prophetic Amphibian
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quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
Matins, that actually was the only neutral definition I could think of -- Southern working class, originally rural (the thing is, I think with urbanisation, you could have urban rednecks). I was pressing to see what people would come up with. I wonder if anyone else will wade in now.

That seems reasonably accurate. I can remember childhood conversations when we discussed the nuanced differences between a "redneck" and a "hick." People who lived in a particular part of the county near where I grew up were sometimes called "Crick rats." "Hillbilly" is another word, though it's not used as much as "hick" anymore and has more or less the same meaning. "White Trash" or "Trailer Trash" is another variant, though it covers a different demographic. "Cracker" has a more specifically southern connotation, and is a somewhat different animal than a "Good ole boy."

Generally, I think "redneck" tends to refer more to farmhand types while "hick" refers to mountain types, and "hick" is more of an insult where "redneck" is sometimes reclaimed (see below). Both tend to be impoverished and lacking education, though the specific lifestyles may vary a bit. "Trailer Trash" refers to poor white folks who live in trailer parks. "Crackers," I think (that's a bit more south than me) are lower middle class white racists, again with connotations of lack of education & culture. "Good ole boy" refers to an insider in the white-dominated southern culture.

The overall flavor is poor (lower middle class to living-out-of-your-pickup-truck impoverished), white, rural, and lacking in education or culture. There's also a family of accents that identify the speaker as being of this group (y'all, etc.)

Like other pejoratives (queer, n****, etc.), there are people who claim some of these labels (redneck in particular) as something they are proud of, often meaning that they're independent, traditional, conservative (in a positive sense), free-thinking, hard-working, Christian, etc. However, I don't think this usage is exactly the same as the pejorative that means "ignorant white bigot."

A favorite story is when I met someone in college who was from NYC or something. I mentioned I was from Western MD and her eyes lit up. "Do you know any rednecks?" she asked, as if they were some sort of cultural novelty item. I mentioned I was related to some. That ended the conversation nicely.

--------------------
Some say that man is the root of all evil
Others say God's a drunkard for pain
Me, I believe that the Garden of Eden
Was burned to make way for a train. --Josh Ritter, Harrisburg

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Patrick the less saintly
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Rednecks are invariably white, poorly educated, working class (although by no means necessarily poor) and usually with some connexion to rural areas, although many now live in cities.

There is, however, more to it than that. The country singer Jerry Jeff Walker adeptly captures the implications of the term in his song 'Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mothers', where he paints a picture of a typical redneck male:
quote:
He was born in Oklahoma,
His wife's name's Betty Lou Thelma Liz
And he's not responsible for what he's doing
Cause his mother made him what he is.

And it's up against the wall Redneck Mother,
Mother, who has raised her son so well.
He's thirty-four and drinking in a honky tonk.
Just kicking hippies asses and raising hell.

Sure does like his Falstaff beer,
Likes to chase it down with that Wild Turkey liquor;
Drives a fifty-seven GMC pickup truck;
He's got a gun rack; "Goat ropers need love, too" sticker

Note, amongst much else, the gun rack, rednecks invariably being the sort for whom the broadest possible interpretation of the 2nd must always take precedence over such mundane factors as common sense. The line about ' kicking hippies asses' is the crux of the song, hinting at the extremely insular world of the redneck, who, in stereotype always and in fact not infrequently, is known to lash out irrationally whenever this world view is challenged. For many Americans, the several murders of civil rights activists, both Black and White, during the 1950s, 1960s and beyond created the defining image of redneck culture in their minds: I remember hearing the news of a Black man being lynched in East Texas, and I'm less than twenty years of age; It is a sign of how far the American South has come that his murderers were actually brought to justice, although it is a reminder of how far they have yet to come that his murderers are slated for death themselves by a State that still believes it has the right to do so.

Redneck culture is deeply wrapped up in the Stars and Bars flag, which is often seen crossed with the Stars and Stripes on pickup trucks in less salubrious parts of the American South. The irony of this is lost on them, as, in fact, is all irony. Younger rednecks are less likely to be racist than their parents, or at least less likely to be open about it, but they have their own prejudices, which are as acceptable in their culture as they are unacceptable in most of the developed Western World, chiefly a deep-set homophobia and a xenophobia that most often manifests itself in anti-immigrant terms. Stereotypically redneck areas are invariably Republican and have been so ever since they were deliberately courted by Richard Nixon, something LBJ predicted would happen when he signed the Civil Rights Act. In the U.K., they would be BNP.

Defining features of redneck culture:
  • Gun culture (to an almost absurd degree. Rednecks almost invariably hunt, and are criticized for their unsporting methods by other hunters, but those that can afford it also collect guns just because they think that they're cool).
  • Fundamentalist Protestant Christianity
  • A machismo that identifies their lifestyle with manliness and urban lifestyle, particularly that of urban intellectuals, with effeminacy
  • A belief that said effeminate urbanite intellectuals are out to get them (rednecks hate and fear the government, but for entirely different reasons than do liberals and radical leftists).
  • A conception of justice based on the idea of 'an eye for an eye' (the vast majority of rednecks will be in strongly favour of capital punishment, hence the disgusting enthusiasm shown for it by both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.)
  • Social, political, and religious conservatism.

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Barefoot Friar

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quote:
Originally posted by Patrick the less saintly:
Stereotypically redneck areas are invariably Republican...

Interesting. While this is likely true on a state and national level, the majority of county and local officials around here run as Democrats. Also, according to Wikipedia, Democrats outnumber Republicans in the Alabama state legislature.

Kinda sounds like your invariably has some variations.

--------------------
Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. -- Desmond Tutu

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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
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That's a deeply depressing picture, Patrick. Even I'm not quite that negative in my views, though only time and experience can tell which one of us views things more accurately. Is it possible that there is what we might call deep-redneckism, and OTOH "redneck-lite"? I know people who I'd say rather fit into the latter category -- they're Christian libertarians with culturally Southern habits and conservatism. They don't fit the BNP-hatemonger stereotype. Of course, to be fair, the folk I'm thinking of are in central Texas,so maybe they're a less virulent subtype?

[ 02. May 2009, 23:46: Message edited by: Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras ]

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Twilight

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I find this thread sort of offensive but that's probably just because I'm I'm from West Virginia and not as tolerant as the rest of you.

I wouldn't worry about any of it, though. Most media is produced by liberal people on the coasts and we hillbillys are greatly influenced by what we see on the TeeVee.

Just last week a young woman lost the Miss USA contest because she gave a conservative Christian answer to a question she was asked. She had a big point lead until she got a "0" from the judge who asked where she stood on gay marriage. Little future beauty queens were watching and learning.

I disagree with her on the issue but I did wonder what any of this had to do with her ability to open car shows in a bikini.

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Bullfrog.

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quote:
Originally posted by Padre Joshua:
quote:
Originally posted by Patrick the less saintly:
Stereotypically redneck areas are invariably Republican...

Interesting. While this is likely true on a state and national level, the majority of county and local officials around here run as Democrats. Also, according to Wikipedia, Democrats outnumber Republicans in the Alabama state legislature.

Kinda sounds like your invariably has some variations.

There used to be a southern coalition of democrats, generally referred to as the "dixiecrats." In the 1960's, many of them turned Republican, and other democrats turned Republican for a number of reasons in the late 70s and early 80s, which explains the political mixture in the south.

If I may say so, to say there "some variations" in that "invariable" is putting it mildly.

--------------------
Some say that man is the root of all evil
Others say God's a drunkard for pain
Me, I believe that the Garden of Eden
Was burned to make way for a train. --Josh Ritter, Harrisburg

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Angel Wrestler
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quote:
Originally posted by Macx:
You must have never had cheese grits or sweet tea.

Just catching up on old posts on this thread, so sorry if this is sooo yesterday!

Cheese grits and sweet tea? Eh, they're arright.

But those fried green tomatoes! Field peas, hoppin' john, greens & cornbread!

--------------------
The fact that no one understands you does not make you an artist.
(unknown)

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Macx
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That is the stuff. You'd be making me hungry if I hadn't just made it home from an event we have here called the Festival of Nations. I ate cuisine from a dozen countries and. . . Mmmmmm! The international events in this city are somethings I am really going to miss when we leave here.

Thank you, + Irl Gladfelter, both for your service and your reponse to Bellringer.

Patrick,
quote:
Rednecks are invariably white, poorly educated, working class (although by no means necessarily poor) and usually with some connexion to rural areas, although many now live in cities.
Sounds to me like you may only know of Rednecks from watching Beverly Hillbillies reruns.
quote:
and are criticized for their unsporting methods by other hunters
What other hunters and what methods might these alledgedly more sportsman like hunters use? Most of what you have said in that post communicates a level of ignorance mixed with prejudice. Why bother talking if you are justy going to propagate biggoted misinformation. Criminy! Your going to go off and paint them as xenophobic? Talk about the pot calling the kettle! I think you are demonstrating the flip side of the statement
quote:
. . . belief that said effeminate urbanite intellectuals are out to get them . . .
in the "just because your paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you" kind of sense.

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Ghosts are always faster in the corners.
Your shipmate,
Macx

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rugasaw
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I guess I am not a red-neck after all. My wife will be so surprised. Patrick, by your definition, there are not very many red-necks running around.

--------------------
Treat the earth well, It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children. -Unknown

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rugasaw
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quote:
Originally posted by Macx:

Patrick,
quote:
. . . belief that said effeminate urbanite intellectuals are out to get them . . .
in the "just because your paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you" kind of sense.
In southeastern Oklahoma Native American culture is so mixed in with mainstream culture it is hard to tell what practices orginated where. Native Americans have extremely good reasons to be paranoid of government. But that is well documented. Non-natives also have reasons. Many people in Oklahoma know someone who have had property taken away from them by the government.

--------------------
Treat the earth well, It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children. -Unknown

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Seraphim
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Not sure how much I can add...all the appropriate buttons seem to have been pushed.

I am from the south. My ancestors here first got off the boat in Virginia in 1652, and to my knowledge I do not have on either side of my family tree a progenitor who ever hailed from north of what was to become the Mason Dixon line. My family to my knowledge in most lines is between 5 and 7 generations Mississippian. And to my knowledge precious few of them, if any were rich by any standard. My own father prior to joining the army lived in a house with a dirt floor. At least one of my great grandfathers that I know of served in the Revolutionary War, and I know of Three Great Great Grandfathers who served in the armed forces of the Confederacy. One was imprisoned twice by Yankees, the second time in a situation today that would easily qualify as a place of extreme privation, if not torture. One third of the men in that camp died of dysentery and diarrhea. The youngest inmate in that prison was 11....and he was shot. Among my ancestors were a number of preachers and deacons in both the Methodist and Southern Baptist churches.

My Revolutionary forebearer had the distinction of being the first Indian Agent in Mississippi and built the first jail in Mississippi. He also was largely responsible for helping a number of the Choctaw Indians hide in the Neshoba swamps during Pres. Jackson's forced march on the Trail of Tears.

That's my roots in the South. And here are my perspectives on the OP and other points raised in this tread.

1. Is there hope for the South.
I hope not. We would tend to ask that of the rest of the country...is there hope for California or New York? We sadly shake our heads and say, "God only knows. Lord have mercy."

Consider that in a recent study of charitable given in the US, the more conservative and bible belty, the more charitable they were per capita. The richer, the more liberal, the more tightfisted they were with their money. Mississippi, comes in at the bottom of almost every economic and social scale devised by man,...even Arkansas has more money than we do...they are our next closest competitor off and on with Alabama for bottom of the heap. Yet. per capita, Mississippi is the most generous state in the U.S.

2. Xenophobic. Personally I don't find this to be true in its extremes, but there is a definite sense, especially in rural areas that if you aren't from there, then you aren't from there. In order to really be from a place a] your ancestors had to have settled it, b) your family has been in the area approaching a century....if your great grandparents are in the local church graveyard, you are from there, and have a certain natural right. Even if you've moved off for your whole life...and came back, if your family is rooted there, then you belong entirely. If your family is more recent, then you may be fully accepted but your roots in the community are more incidental, not so tight knit....its a nuance. The only other place I've encountered anything like this mindset is islands in the Pacific...you have to be from there in your deep ancestry to be from there, and short of that you are a guest in the community, more than a member.

But it is not a hateful mindset. It is very welcoming of the stranger. It only grows intolerant when the stranger tries to challenge or change local ways. For example the guy who moves into a semi rural area on the outskirts of a town or city who is not from there and who tries to get leash laws enacted where they have never existed before will get lots of "My dogs were here before you were, if you don't like it, live somewhere else where they live like you want to live, but leave us and our dogs alone."

There are a couple of factors I think that play heavily into this. 1. Though there is a lot of diversity in the South it is for all that a distinct culture closely related to that of the Appalachians, and it is largely a Scots-Anglo culture, heavy on the Scots. The only people who wear more plaid live in Seattle, and the only people with more Mc/Macs in their name hail from Scotland or Ireland. The South at heart is agrarian Celtic. That tells you a lot about everything else.

With respect to history though, our experience has shaped us I think somewhat like the Russians. They have a long national history of being invaded and that has made them very touchy about anything untoward happening on their borders. They have reason to fear the stranger and to make preparation for the fulfillment of those fears.

We were invaded during the Civil War, and we were economically raped by Federal Law for at least ten years following....sort of like what France imposed upon Germany after WWI. It took over 100 years to gain back a sizable part of our losses. And socially we are still subjected to laws that apply only to our region and to nowhere else in the nation. To be a southerner is still be be legally second class in the US....maybe third or fourth even.

The violent racism that some associate with the south is the fruit of the brutalities of the Reconstruction, not of the more general racism that pervaded both US and European society at the time. Blacks as a group, though not necessarily as individuals were looked up as the cat's paw of Yankees who continued to do us harm. They were made a symbol of our national humiliation. But when the fed. gov. forces pulled out, they left the poor black man to fend for himself having deeply embittered the society in which he had to live. Anyway, that's where it comes from.

The point is, we were invaded, made to feel it, and not let to forget it...and we haven't. We don't like yankee interlopers for much of the same reason the rest of the world resents the "ugly american" Brash, know it all, disrespectful, meddlesome, garishly wealthy and willing to spend gobs of money to remake you in his image for your own good. No thank you. When the world says Yankee Go Home, they mean it pretty much the way it is meant in the south...except we resent being lumped in with the yankees.

We have a saying, the difference between a yankee and a durn yankee is that a yankee knows when to go home.

The point is, being invaded made us suspicious of the good will of outsiders, and outsiders who come in and try to enlighten us, change our ways, and make them like them justifies us in those suspicions. This is underscored that we no longer have the social or political might we once had to make that resentment felt in any meaningful way outside our borders.

Rather than taking the clue and leaving us alone we get stuff like "Is there any hope for the Bible Belt?" The hubris of that is just...well...typical.

Guns and the South: Never ever think the south holds on to its guns so hard is because we are just fools for hunting. Culturally we like hunting well enough. But there is another reason why the States of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Arkansas have more guns between them than the whole rest of the US combined is very simple, we have never forgotten why we have the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution. It has nothing to do with hunting. It has everything to do with making sure the citizens of each state have the wherewithal to resist the hand of an overreaching federal Government. If the state legislature or the governor calls for it, he can have a standing militia of close to a million men in each state to fend off the federal government. We have guns and protect the right to bear arms for that reason above all others...to protect our families and ourselves, first from criminal intruders, and secondly from federal intruders.

The Stars and Bars: The above is why this flag is a precious memory to so many of us. It is a symbol of our lost nationhood, the justness of the cause of liberty for which we fought, and to honor our forbearers who fought so nobly and so well under its colors. No matter what others tell you it has nothing to do with racism and it makes most white southerners angry to see it in the hands of klan and nazi groups using it as a symbol of racism contrary to its heritage. Not that we don't enjoy the fact that it also ticks off politically correct liberal do-gooders. It is a symbol of Southern Pride if anything. And its retention is also in some respects a symbol of defiance...a reminder to the rest of the country that the only reason they won was because they had killed 1 in every 4 males in the south...and we ain't forgetting.

Politics: As noted earlier, Republican and Democrat don't mean quite the same thing down here. Elsewhere Republican is synonymous with conservative and Democrat with liberal. Here we have conservative democrats still. If the South were not so heavily invested in the Republican party despite the number of times it has been culturally betrayed by the Republicans, it would be more Conservative Libertarian. That is what should be understood about the Southern political mind, It it conservative as a rule, and it is libertarian with respect to state and federal government. Close to home though, it is a little more traditional democrat. It likes it when local governments are responsive to local social and personal need....but many of those old ways are considered illegal now. For example it used to be common for county supervisors to occasional dump a load of gravel on the driveway/private access road to rural voters, especially the elderly, and to send a grater to sooth the gravel out. But this got stopped be cause some outsiders sued in fed court as a private use of public resources. In older days the law was treated as a foundation and a kind of last resort when human usage and appeal failed. We didn't care about the niceties of the law so long as the local government served its people...but outsiders came in and from our perspective turned the law into a yankee "justice factory", and inhuman machine. "Equality" can be made into a very in humane virtue in the wrong hands.

Politically where you will probably find some sympathy, or room for growth as you guys might have it is that in the south Crunchy Cons are gaining ground. Think ecofriendly, granola eating hippies who are social conservatives and get just as misty eyed when the band plays Dixie as the old redneck chicken farmer down the road.

And as a footnote to you European hunting buffs...come to MS, Fox hunting is alive and well here. One of the biggest fox hunting venues in the world is up near Clarksdale I believe...around 4000 acres just for fox hunting...where you actually get to hunt a fox and not just ride horses and blow itty bitty horns.


Hope for the South: Yes I think there is. And I think those who think the religious culture of the South will surely desentigrate the way it has in the rest of the US and Europe are probably more right than wrong.

On person in this thread wondered if the way Christianity seems to be dying out in so may places...so weakened in others might not in some way be the work of the Holy Spirit. Actually, personally speaking I think so at least in a certain sense....becasue I think the predominant forms of Christianity in the U.S. and Europe are heretical hence cut off from the fullness of life in the Spirit, perhaps cut off from His life almost altogether in a narrow sense. Like a big limb that falls from a tree can have signs of residual life for a long time, may even blossom and fruit, it soon enough it exhausts itself and dies. I think Protestantism is dying, and that death is well progressed. the rampant liberal theology in much of what survives of it is ample evidence of its inner rot. It is decaying and what little islands of comparatively traditional Christian life shrink upon themselves more and more. The south is one of those last islands of life...though it is culturally traditional without subscribing to the deepest and most ancient traditions of Christianity.

I think Western Christianity has to essentially die away so that it can be reseeded, rerooted from Eastern Christianity.

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Seraphim
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Addendum:

As if the previous post was not long enough or polemical enough (in places) I forgot a point or two I meant not to forget:

Sophistication: Just where do you think the better part of American culture comes form...even its not so better parts:

Mississippi has more artists per captia than any other state in the nation. And the bulk of the great American writers from the last century were Southern: William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Richard Wright, Eudora Welty, (and our mother among the saints) Flannery O'Connor, Robert Penn Warren, to name a very few. Where does modern music come from...in a word Mississippi. We gave you blues, rockabilly, bluegrass, Gospel, Jazz, Dixieland, Rock and Roll. Elvis may have recorded in Memphis, but he was from a Mississippi family.

Three Doors Down is from Shebuta (I think), REM from Atlanta. You take away the South's and especially Mississippi's contribution to American music...and there is hardly anything of it left.

And need I mention Mrs Paula Deane, or Kat Kora (cooking...)
Heck, even Coca Cola was invented in Vicksburg MS before it got sold off to interests in Atlanta.

Jim Henson of Muppet fame was a southern boy...Sesame St. would not have been the same...nor its influence without him.

So you see my point, much of the "sophistication" that folks in the rest of the country gets so hoity toity about, has its root with us. Cut us off, homogenize us out of existence and the better part of what is good or interesting about America fades into oblivion.

So...it's not a question of if there is hope for us...it is a question of whether there can be any hope without us.

Now if you will excuse me I'm sure there's a row of new cotton nearby that needs to be hoed (that's a garden tool, not a profession for the folks in Rio Linda)

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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
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It's when you start talking that stuck-in-the-civil-war stuff that you completely lose my sympathies. That's like the mentality I've experienced first hands from both certain Southern Slavs and some Baltic Europeans who can't get over ancient history. Are Southerners still going to be nursing their ancient grievances another 900 years from now?
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LutheranChik
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Seraphim: Isn't it time you got over it?

I wonder what my life would be like if I spent considerable portions of it nursing my wrath over the Wars of Religion, the Franco-Prussian War, the Stalin era in the USSR (during which a number of my German-Russian relatives "disappeared" during his various ethnic cleansings), etc., etc.

I'm not hearing a lot of Jesus in your post, to tell you the truth.

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New Yorker
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Seraphim -

As a fellow Son of the South, I say Preach On!

I especially like the part about flying the Confederate Flag just because it offends the politically correct. They really need to get over it. Pardon me, while I fire up iTunes and listen to that jolly good song The Bonnie Blue Flag!

(.... then quickly Mississippi, Georgia and Florida all raised on high the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!)

I will disagree - in emphasis only - about the Late Unpleasantness. I think the memory of that debacle is fading away more than your post would lead one to believe. Of course my experience is in the Upper South and the larger cities. I have little experience with the Deep South of Mississippi and the like.

Thanks for your post.

[ 03. May 2009, 11:40: Message edited by: New Yorker ]

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Twilight

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quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
Seraphim: Isn't it time you got over it?

I'm not hearing a lot of Jesus in your post, to tell you the truth.

What? I thought he answered the OP with some interesting social observations with a (very) few explanatory connections to recent American history.

If we're going to go back through looking for Jesus in the posts here I, personally can't see him amidst all the superiority and prejudice.

The people in the northern part of the country have given us an inner city culture where more young African-Americans are killed on the streets in a week than are killed in the rural south in a year so you can all just look at your own loggy eye for a bit.

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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
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I saw recently that Nashville and Memphis have among the highest crime rates in the country. I don't think inner city violent crime is confined to any particular area of the country. It's a phenomenon of urban poverty and the proliferation of guns, gangs and drugs in America.
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LutheranChik
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News flash: Inner-city crime is not confined to the North, nor to North America, nor to the Western Hemisphere. And -- I personally, do not live in a city, as has been mentioned in a past post.

I'll also mention, by way of passing, that except for one great-grandfather who hopped off the boat from Germany and promptly signed up for the Union Army -- had he landed in a southern port he'd have probably joined the Confederate Army -- all my relatives arrived from the Old Country a generation after the Civil War ended. So I'm not contending for the honor of the North. If anything, I'd point out that at least some of my relation came to the U.S. to escape the neverending ancestral blood feuds of Europe. For Christ's sake, people, get over it and move on.

[ 03. May 2009, 11:53: Message edited by: LutheranChik ]

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RadicalWhig
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quote:
Originally posted by Seraphim:
...it is largely a Scots-Anglo culture, heavy on the Scots. The only people who wear more plaid live in Seattle, and the only people with more Mc/Macs in their name hail from Scotland or Ireland. The South at heart is agrarian Celtic. That tells you a lot about everything else.

This is fascinating to me - although it is something I have long had an instinctive feeling about.

To me, America is the South. The only places I've been in America are Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, and North Carolina. These places were visited on various occasions between 2000 and 2002, mainly because I was learning the banjo and interested in Southern music and culture.

I love the South. There's something in that volatile mixture of Saxon and Celt, god-fearing and loose-living, that just rings a bell inside of me. It makes me want to forget, for a moment, the Scotland of Adam Smith, David Hume and Andrew Fletcher, and to charge naked and woad-daubbed across a glen shouting "Yee-hah!"

There are parts of Tennessee which look just like the places around here - although a bit warmer. The parallels are stunning, if a little obvious. What are grits but a form of porridge? What is Southern Whiskey but Scotch whisky from a different crop? There is some Southern music which, if you squint your ears up a bit, sounds just like Scottish traditional music. Even classics of Scottish literature, like "Confessions of a Justified Sinner" and "Testament of Giddeon Mack" could pass, in some ways, for "Southern Gothic"

But what really struck me was the similarity in social culture. Jim White's documentary movie, "Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus" brought it all home for me. In Glasgow, people are friendly till they stab you. In the South, they are friendly till they shoot you. Violence is, in both cultures, quite near to the surface. They are both, at heart, lawless people who have little respect for abstract authority, but will defend to the death a principle they believe in. Both tend to be suspicious of strangers, and clannish in their social relations. Feuding is a way of life. Jesus and the Devil are alive.

Of course, here in Scotland we don't have rednecks or many rural poor - they were cleared up and sent packing by English or Anglicised landlord. Those who didn't end up in the USA or Canada found themselves in the industrial cities, where two centuries of dependency, bad housing, bad diet, and lack of space, have killed off most of the noble pride found in the South, and replaced it with an angry, sullen, passive-aggressive streak.

Put another way, the Scottish Ned is a Southern Redneck caged up in an industrial city and reduced from the precarious-but-proud condition of hard scrabble hill-farmer to the demoralising condition of concrete-penned welfare recipient. For the Scottish Ned, becoming a Redneck would be a step up in the world - a rediscovery of an inner self which needs room to breathe and hillsides to roam. Some of the violence could be channelled into hunting, shooting, and driving big pickups.

(Yes, I know, I've committed just about every sin of stereotyping, cultural projection, generalisation, unsubstantiated claims, etc etc; but this isn't a social science thesis, it's just how it seems to me).

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Radical Whiggery for Beginners: "Trampling on the Common Prayer Book, talking against the Scriptures, commending Commonwealths, justifying the murder of King Charles I, railing against priests in general." (Sir Arthur Charlett on John Toland, 1695)

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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
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RadicalWhig, you seem simply to be romanticising violence and anarchy.
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Zwingli
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quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
Seraphim: Isn't it time you got over it?

<Snip>

I'm not hearing a lot of Jesus in your post, to tell you the truth.

I'm not hearing a lot of Jesus in your posts, or in those of (for example) Patrick the less saintly. Almost everything you've said would reinforce a belligerent Southerner in their prejudices, while not doing much to increase the understanding of the rest of us.
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Beeswax Altar
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quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
Seraphim: Isn't it time you got over it?

I wonder what my life would be like if I spent considerable portions of it nursing my wrath over the Wars of Religion, the Franco-Prussian War, the Stalin era in the USSR (during which a number of my German-Russian relatives "disappeared" during his various ethnic cleansings), etc., etc.

I'm not hearing a lot of Jesus in your post, to tell you the truth.

Do you see Jesus in Patrick's posts?

People in the South are over the Civil War. There is a stronger desire among people in Vermont to leave the United States. They still do and will always have a sense of pride in the Civil War. Explaining why would take a long time.

Good post Radical Whig.

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RadicalWhig
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quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
RadicalWhig, you seem simply to be romanticising violence and anarchy.

I do tend to romanticize things - it comes from the poetic Celtic half of my Celtic-Saxon mix (which is itself, you will notice, an unforgivable romanticisation, which my Saxon half cannot stand). I probably romanticize Celtic highland civilization and contrast that with the degraded state of the descendants of old highlanders in West Central Scotland today. Still, romanticized or not, there is a certain truth at the base of it.

I don't think that I'm romanticising violence or anarchy as such. It's just that I acknowledge these things to be part of our culture (or, more properly, part of a part of our culture). It's better to embrace them and let them have an outlet, rather than trying to deny them, keeping them bottled-up, and then reaping the nasty consequences.

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Barefoot Friar

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quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
It's when you start talking that stuck-in-the-civil-war stuff that you completely lose my sympathies. That's like the mentality I've experienced first hands from both certain Southern Slavs and some Baltic Europeans who can't get over ancient history. Are Southerners still going to be nursing their ancient grievances another 900 years from now?

One might argue that the Arab people are still smarting from the crusades, and that the late great unpleasantness is a product of that. Are you losing sympathy with them as well?

The Jews have not forgotten the Holocaust. Are you losing sympathy with them as well?

The African-Americans have not forgotten slavery, nearly 150 years ago. Are you losing sympathy with them as well?

They may be our trading partners now, and they may or may not have brought it upon themselves, but do you think the Japanese will ever forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Will you lose your sympathy with them?

Nor should we forget.

This is part of our history, our heritage. It is far, far deeper than we can delve into here. It is rooted in why the United States was created in the first place.

The South did not fight the War Between the States* in order to keep slaves. Slavery was already on the way out - the cotton gin and Egyptian cotton were beginning to see to that - and had the yankees left well enough alone it would have died peacefully within the next 10-20 years anyhow. No, ask a Confederate soldier why he was fighting and he would likely tell you it was over states' rights. The vast majority of southerners were not slaveholders, and many were opposed to slavery.

Even within the US forces, the question of slavery was not as common as the history books like to say. After the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, a number of Union soldiers said that they would lay in the woods until moss grew on their backs before they would fight to free the slaves.

It is a question of freedom. Freedom from oppressive government. Freedom from taxation without representation. Freedom to choose which laws to enact and which ones to avoid. The freedom for states to leave the union if the people see fit.

The US Constitution was proposed by the Constitutional Convention to be an experiment. The idea was that if it didn't work, we could scrap it and try again. And what the yankee history books forget to mention is that between 1810 and 1830 a group of New Englanders were pushing - nay, clamoring - for the northeastern US to secede from the union. They were claiming - get this - that the federal government was interfering with free trade and states' rights.

Also let us not forget exactly where these slaves came from. New Englanders were some of the most prosperous slave traders in the business before the Constitution's ban on new slaves entering the country took effect. After that clause took effect, many of the same New Englanders smuggled slaves in from Africa and the Caribbean. You don't read about that in the history books.

And don't kid yourself about how Abe Lincoln was going to free the slaves. Mary Todd's family were slaveholders. When Lincoln saw in 1862 that the British were giving consideration to entering the war on the Confederate side, Lincoln knew he had to spring into action. He knew that the British were concerned over the slavery issue, and he knew that the Confederacy would possibly agree to emancipate the slaves in exchange for military and naval help. Lincoln decided to beat them to it and wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. But look at the EP closely. Note that Lincoln only frees those slaves within the territory held by the Confederate army at that time. Note that it does not free those slaves owned by Mary Todd Lincoln's family, nor those within territory controlled by the Union forces. Sounds kinda hollow to me.

Follow that up with the fact that ol' Abe Lincoln wanted to send the freed slaves back to Africa (hence the nation of Liberia) or to the American Southwest. His assassination put an end to that, thankfully.

Don't misunderstand me: Slavery is wrong. But it wasn't the issue. The issue was an oppressive federal government that was overstepping its bounds.

You talk about losing sympathy with cultures which refuse to forget past atrocities. It may very well be bad for people to hang on to past wrongs. I have lost patience over the same issue in the past. The difference is that Southerners are not asking for reparations or a handout because they lost the war or were subjected to Reconstruction. Southerners do not have an inferiority complex because of the War. We remember it, we know it happened, and we know why, but we don't whine about it or allow it to hold us back. But it is as much a part of our identity as fried chicken and sweet, iced tea.

Is there hope for the south? You betcha. But not in the way some posters are thinking. I think the time is coming when, culturally and politically, the South will once again be at the forefront. The real question, as asked by so many others here, is whether or not there is hope for the coasts.

Saraphim, you put into words what I could not yesterday. Thank you.

LsK, Patrick, et. al.: We may have to agree to disagree on this. I'm not changing my mind anytime soon! [Biased]

-- Joshua
_________
*This has been incorrectly labeled the Civil War. It was not a "civil war", however, because the Confederate forces did not seek to take over the government in Washington, only to remove themselves from it. Had it been successful, it would have been labeled a revolution.

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Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. -- Desmond Tutu

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LutheranChik
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quote:
There is a stronger desire among people in Vermont to leave the United States.
Do you have any citeable/verifiable proof of that?

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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
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Please don't use that misnomer "states' rights" -- persons have rights, states have sovereignty.
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Mockingbird

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quote:
Originally posted by Padre Joshua:
But look at the EP closely. Note that Lincoln only frees those slaves within the territory held by the Confederate army at that time.

The President's power to emancipate slaves only applied where military law was in effect, since it arose from his power as commander-in-chief. So of course he had to spell out exactly where such places were. Otherwise he would have overreached his constitutional powers.

The Civil War was a civil war, like it or not, believe it or not.

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Forþon we sealon efestan þas Easterlican þing to asmeagenne and to gehealdanne, þaet we magon cuman to þam Easterlican daege, þe aa byð, mid fullum glaedscipe and wynsumnysse and ecere blisse.

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Beeswax Altar
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quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
quote:
There is a stronger desire among people in Vermont to leave the United States.
Do you have any citeable/verifiable proof of that?
Second Vermont Republic

You never answered my question.

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Grammatica
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Not all buttons have been pushed yet:

To go with the fried green tomatoes and chicken: Fried okra. Fried catfish.

And the cornbread must be skillet cornbread. No sugar, please! There will be plenty in the sweet tea.

If it weren't for the food, I'd have been out of here long ago.

[That was the nice post about the US South. A nasty post or two may follow.]

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Grammatica
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One of the peculiarities of the US South is that it takes in much more in transfer payments from the Federal government than it gives back in the form of taxes. Transfer payments include, of course, the support for military bases, which are key to the South's economy, but also crop subsidies, disability payments, and (in Florida and North Carolina) Social Security payments to retirees who made their money in the North The South's own economy generates very little wealth; it's still dependent on an inefficient (because labor-intensive) agriculture and, in the tourist and retiree areas, a low-wage service economy.

Thus the South needs money channeled from the Federal government to survive. It got that money, historically, because its Congressmen were reliably re-elected. Southern primaries were all-white until after the Second World War, and black citizens did not have voting rights until the mid-1960s. During all that time, Southern Democrats formed the backbone of the New Deal coalition. They attempted a split in the 1948 election, after Harry Truman offended them by integrating the US military, but Strom Thurmond's "Dixiecrats" fizzled and they came back to the fold. Their reward was a larger-than-merited share of Federal tax dollars, to be spent at the Congressman's discretion on his staunch friends in local government.

It was impossible to be elected as anything else but a Democrat from the South until Richard Nixon reached out to white voters upset by the Civil Rights Acts of the Johnson era. Southern white voters then reliably supported Republicans, creating the Reagan coalition, and continuing to receive their accustomed Federal dollars as rewards.

After Newt Gingrich was forced from the House of Representatives by a group of Southerners who took the reins of government from 1996 on, the largess flowed like a mighty river. Enabled by "earmarks" and other devices, the Southern Republicans during the most recent Bush presidency took a budget surplus and turned it into a gigantic deficit, while helping out their Wall Street friends by deregulating and starving Federal oversight agencies of the funds they needed to do a proper job. The SEC was warned about Bernie Madoff several times, but was unable to investigate for lack of funds.

We all see the results of this in the US today -- and so do those of you who are overseas. And as a result, Southern Republicans are just about the only Republicans left in Congress. Now they have no one to make a coalition with. What will happen to their transfer payments now?

I think the next few years will be very interesting ones for the Southern Republicans, a.k.a. the Bible Belt.

[ 03. May 2009, 17:46: Message edited by: Grammatica ]

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Grammatica
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Nasty post #2: Yes, the Bible Belt Southerners I know do remind me of the ever-warring nationalities of the Balkans. They think and act exactly like the Serbs I knew in Cleveland. (Hi, fellow Clevelander!) An acquaintance of mine -- a South African -- said they reminded him of the Afrikaners. Their little towns to him were like kraals.

"Bible Belt" Christianity is the tribal religion of the rural South.

So perhaps the question should be: Is there hope for any inward-looking tribalist society?

Back to work! I've got a lot of it, but I'll be reading.

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Janine

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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:

Several ship-mates live in the US Deep South or the Mid-West. The Bible Belt. Fortunately or unfortunately for them.

And they appear to struggle. Whilst appreciating aspects of the prevailing religious culture they evidently feel out on a limb if they don't subscribe to dispensationalism, a pro-Zionist stance on Israel, vote Republican or otherwise subscribe to an ethos and emphases that the rest of Christendom does not necessarily hold.

Some are heroically bearing witness to other ways of doing things. And I take my hat off to them.

My question is this. Is the Bible Belt buckled so tightly that anything other than the stereotypical views that the rest of us ascribe to it cannot breathe? Or does the fertile soil allow (potentially) other flowers to bloom?

Will it loosen up in time?

And if so, will it eventually go the way of the Eastern seaboard and the Pacific coast and become more liberal, more secularised or more pluralist?

Let's not forget that parts of New England were eventually described by Finney and other revivalists as the 'burned over district'. Could the fervour of the Bible Belt States eventually burn itself out?

I'm not one of those who sees all Mid-West/Southern US Christians as hootin' an' a hollerin' Appallachian snake handlers. But it does strike me that there's a conservative, fundamentalist, South Baptist/Pentecostal 'Left Behind' type hegemony down there that is far from healthy in many respects.

But I'm on this side of the Pond. And have only visited New York.

What are the views/insights of those who live there or who know it well?

Gamaliel

**********************************************


quote:
Here's what sounded in Janine's head as she read what was originally posted by Gamaliel:

Several ship-mates live on the US East Coast -- or, God love 'em -- the Left Coast. If the undergirding middle of the map is the Bible Belt, then I suppose the bits that are not sensibly restrained by the Belt would be the... Love Handles? The Panniculum? They live there, fortunately or unfortunately for them.

And they appear to struggle. Whilst appreciating aspects of the prevailing religious culture they evidently feel out on a limb if they don't subscribe to existentialism, a touchie-feely stance on Palestine/Israel, vote for Liberal (or God forbid) Socialist candidates, or otherwise subscribe to an ethos and emphases that the wide majority of people who claim to follow the Christ do not necessarily, homogeneously, hold.

Some are heroically bearing witness to other, hands-on, common-sense, non-ethereal ways of doing things. And I take my hat off to them.

My question is this: Are the Love Handles hoisted up there so tight, trying so hard not to be buckled in, that anything other than the stereotypical views that the vast creamy middle of the cookie ascribe to it, cannot manifest?

Or is there any soil to allow other flowers to bloom? Will it loosen up in time?

And if so, will the leftover, unBelted, unsecured, unruly bits eventually go the way of the sturdy Heartland and the iron-bellied South, becoming more down-to-earth, more spiritual and more open-armed to anyone who'll step up and be a neighbor?


... Could the laxity of the Right and Left Coasts eventually tighten up? Develop a little warmth? Catch fire for the Lord?

I'm not one of those who sees all non-Bible-Belt Christ-followers as overswanked unrealistic Bi-Coastals. But it does strike me that there's a neo-liberal, unbounded and unfounded hegemony of churches so secular they might as well be Wal-Mart, out there around the edges. They may not be sick but they sure look peak-ed.

But, here I live, directly under the buckle of the Bible Belt -- I actually have to travel North to hit it. And I have only visited the Midwest, and a little of the Southwest -- and the only time I ever went to the East Coast north of the Carolinas, it was to visit D.C. as a child. So I know I missed a lot of East Coast nuance.

What are the views/insights of those who live out there on the edges, or so far above the Belt that they cannot feel the support? What do frequent visitors see, 'way out there on the Love Handles, flailing for their balance on the fluted edges of the Great Moon Pie?




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Take Me Home * My Heart * An hour with Rich Mullins *

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PataLeBon
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I was raised in South Eastern Oklahoma (the part of the state that the rest of them wish to forget) also known as Little Dixie. And I was raised by Yankees. (My father's job brought him south with Mom and then they had me. [Smile] )

And I now know that I'm partially redneck! And liberal! [Biased]

quote:
Originally posted by Patrick the less saintly:
Defining features of redneck culture:
  • Gun culture (to an almost absurd degree. Rednecks almost invariably hunt, and are criticized for their unsporting methods by other hunters, but those that can afford it also collect guns just because they think that they're cool).


Why yes, guns are cool. And hunting is a sport and occasionally rules are broken. But there is an understanding of why the rules are there. They may be broken in fact, but never in spirit. If there is nothing left to hunt then what happens to the sport?

quote:
  • Fundamentalist Protestant Christianity


  • Well, I'm definably a "Protestant Christian", and self define as one, even if I'm TEC. "Fundamentalist" - no, mainly because I find those that self define as that seem to pick and choose which parts of the Bible to adhere to.

    quote:
  • A machismo that identifies their lifestyle with manliness and urban lifestyle, particularly that of urban intellectuals, with effeminacy


  • Well, yes. But that is as much as a fault of the "liberal media" as much as anywhere else. Know of any shows set in the south that don't have stereotypical characters? The Oklahoma portrayed on TV is nothing like where I was raised, or any of the "normal" parts of Oklahoma either...

    quote:
  • A belief that said effeminate urbanite intellectuals are out to get them (rednecks hate and fear the government, but for entirely different reasons than do liberals and radical leftists).


  • Ask the Five "Civilized" Tribes exactly how "civilized" the US Government was. Native Americans recieved the right to vote after women and African Americans. Native American tribes received the "right" to have their own say in how their money was spent in the 1970's. This is in my lifetime, so yes, it's recent.

    quote:
  • A conception of justice based on the idea of 'an eye for an eye' (the vast majority of rednecks will be in strongly favour of capital punishment, hence the disgusting enthusiasm shown for it by both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.)


  • There is a feeling that things should be "fair". And as long as there is a way that people who could hurt others for "fun", could be out in a few years to return to that lifestyle, you are going to have a problem convincing them that a "life" sentence is actually a life sentence.

    quote:
  • Social, political, and religious conservatism.

  • It shouldn't be a crime to be a conservative any more than it should be a crime to be a liberal.

    --------------------
    That's between you and your god. Oh, wait a minute. You are your god. That's a problem. - Jack O'Neill (Stargate SG1)

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    Janine

    The Endless Simmer
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    It ain't. Yet.

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    Take Me Home * My Heart * An hour with Rich Mullins *

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    Gamaliel
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    Great post, Janine. One of the best of yours I've seen! [Overused]

    And, of course, it follows neatly on from the OP. As I said to someone else, I might just as easily start a thread 'Is there hope for the Coasts?' or 'Is there hope for secularised Western Europe?' or 'Is there hope for any of us?'

    [Ultra confused]

    I've been equally appalled and fascinated as I've read this thread. In the same way as I was appalled and fascinated by the 'Southern Gothic' novels I've read and the accounts of the US Civil War I've dipped into.

    And as an Anglo-Celt (Anglo-Welsh) I can sympathise with RadicalWhig's take and with the sense of an embattled South maintaining its identity against all odds. And I don't doubt that you're more likely to find neighbourliness and people wading knee-deep in mud to push you out of a ditch below the Mason Dixon Line than you might elsewhere.

    But does the buckle need to be so tight?
    Can it loosen to allow the love handles to wobble and bob their way back down?

    I love that image, Janine. [Overused]

    I wouldn't want to see the Southern States secularised and losing their flavour ... anymore than I'd want to see the Eastern seaboard or the Pacific coast turn into an extension of Alabama.

    But what do I know? I'm just a pinko limey.

    Socialism isn't a dirty word over here, Janine, despite Thatcher's best efforts to wipe it out and New Labour's repudiation of it.

    Look at those hicksville disciples you've mentioned on another post. Strikes me that they practiced something akin to that ... but without the hi-falutin' ideology that often accompanies it. [Snigger]

    Gamaliel

    --------------------
    Let us with a gladsome mind
    Praise the Lord for He is kind.

    http://philthebard.blogspot.com

    Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
    Barefoot Friar

    Ship's Shoeless Brother
    # 13100

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    quote:
    Originally posted by Matins:
    Second Vermont Republic

    Food for thought. For the record, one of the founders of this was a history professor at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama - an historically African-American university.

    --------------------
    Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. -- Desmond Tutu

    Posts: 1621 | From: Warrior Mountains | Registered: Oct 2007  |  IP: Logged
    cliffdweller
    Shipmate
    # 13338

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    quote:
    Originally posted by Twilight:
    I find this thread sort of offensive but that's probably just because I'm I'm from West Virginia and not as tolerant as the rest of you.

    I wouldn't worry about any of it, though. Most media is produced by liberal people on the coasts and we hillbillys are greatly influenced by what we see on the TeeVee.

    Just last week a young woman lost the Miss USA contest because she gave a conservative Christian answer to a question she was asked. She had a big point lead until she got a "0" from the judge who asked where she stood on gay marriage. Little future beauty queens were watching and learning.

    I disagree with her on the issue but I did wonder what any of this had to do with her ability to open car shows in a bikini.

    And why it's OK to judge women based on one's subjective standard of physical beauty, but not based on one's subjective standard of answers to socio-political questions.

    --------------------
    "Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

    Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008  |  IP: Logged
    Janine

    The Endless Simmer
    # 3337

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    If I had been the little beauty bunny I'd have looked ol' Perez in his sicko-fan-tick eye and said,

    "If you'd like to sit down over a cup of coffee with me and discuss my personal opinion on the topic -- which you asked for! - - based on and informed by a conservative Western Christian understanding of what God wants from us in the matter -- Why, I'd be pleased and honored to make that date with you!

    If, instead, you want the best snappy beauty contest answer I can provide you at this moment, all I can say is that I thank God every day that we live in a time and a nation where people can dare to follow their dreams. Even when what they believe isn't the popular stance."

    But of course it's easy to think up an answer when you ain't the one on the hotseat.

    --------------------
    I'm a Fundagelical Evangimentalist. What are you?
    Take Me Home * My Heart * An hour with Rich Mullins *

    Posts: 13788 | From: Below the Bible Belt | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
    Seraphim
    Shipmate
    # 14676

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    Some very interesting replies. And here are some shotgun remarks directed at bits and pieces of some of those replies.

    Anglo Celtic culture: A few years ago...actually several years ago I read a fascinating article that defended the proposition that the Battle of Gettysburg was the last of three great historical clashes with Celtic culture. The first was when Julius Caeser went up against some big Celtic chieftan...name started with an "A" but I forget it off the top of my head. The second was the battle against William Wallace's forces that finally took him down, and the the their as stated was Gettysburg.

    All were fought in essentially the same way. The Celts were scary fierce, wildmen in battle (Rebel yell and all that), as if the battle field were some crazy game...as much sport as duty. Celts tended to be careless about loses...which was not so much a problem if the first wild surge or two carried the day. Also, when the battle was done, Celts tended to head home to tend to the cows, plow the field, mow the hay, kiss the missus, then gear up and head back to battle some time later if needed.

    The opposition though (Rome, English, Union) fought like a machine. It if lost one battle, it fell back, regrouped, and came back, again and again. It was like trying to fight a buzz saw. No matter how many teeth you knocked out, it kept spinning and sawing with the teeth it had left. And it had to saw quite a bit at the South. As noted before, the South did not surrender until it was at a place where 1 in 4 of its men had died because of the war. Basically the South lost due to exhaustion and lack of resources.

    Slavery: It is true it was on its way out but still would have taken another generation or two. That said thousands of blacks fought on the side of the Confederacy, a few thousand officially, many more off the rolls. General Forrest...the guy who later started the Klan, freed every one of his slaves with their families who would agree to fight...and fight they did. Forrest's mounted infantry tactics are still excellent military reading...he rewrote the book by his exploits. And what was true of him was true of many other Southern Officers.

    Native American's: One little known fact about the Confederacy outside the south is that the Native American tribes of the South were given non-voting representation in the CSA Congress. And it was not like the South had been easy on the Native Americans. The Cherokees received a really raw deal. They were civilized by white standards, lived in log cabins, had their own writing system, were largely Christian, and had become excellent gunsmiths....in less than a generation in the early 1800s they were reduced from prosperity to begging door to door for food. They even won redress for their grievances in the US Supreme Court but President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the decision. And for all that, bad as it was, when the CSA was formed most of them threw their lot in with the South rather than the Union.

    One of the footnotes of history that gets overlooked is that the almost genocidal campaigns against the indians of the west by the Union in the 1870s had as its impetus pay back for the Indians support of the South. It was Shermanesque Union revenge and pre-emptive vengeance on the Indian nations for the friendliness shown by Southeastern Indians towards the Confederacy. We even had a few Native American CSA generals, Chief Joseph Boudinette is one of the Cherokee (I think). Here is a little historical tidbit worthy of savor on the subject: Cherokee Declaration

    Getting Over It: Not very likely any time soon.

    Being clanish: Yes, that we are, especially in rural areas of the south. One of the first topics of conversation between two southern strangers is "who are your people?" Eventually some maiden name of some great great grand parent or aunt from a given area will crop up and the other will reply with something like...waddaya know, I my great grandmother said her sister married in with some (trigger name)s in Covington county. And so having established that four or five generations back they might have some common kin, the conversation can continue on more immediate fronts. (for what its worth here is a list of my own ancestral family names of various greats and grands going back to the mid 1600s: Hawkwold, Anderson, Henson (a couple of swedes I know), Manning (yes of Archie and Eli Manning fame...we've a common Mayflower ancestor 400 years or so back), Wyndam, Newsome, Cole, Matheeny, Flannagan, Ellis, Bruce, Pierce, Peavy, Burns, Varnado (a Huguenot I think), Black, Harrell, Moore) The point is not to display a portion of my family tree, but to demonstrate that many of us know it back..or at least big chucks of it back to colonial times. Knowing our people is part of knowing who we are and where we are from...and as important, where we belong, and where we don't.


    Not much Jesus: Maybe that is a failing on my part for not working more of the religious aspect into my address of the OP. But as our mother among the Saints Flannery O'Conner said, "the South is Christ haunted". You just can't escape Him here. He will not let you be. For example. If you drive through many parts of the south every few miles you will see three crosses beside the road, two blue and the one in the middle gold. Some years back a man lost his son to an unfortunate highway accident and won a settlement of about 2million dollars in a lawsuit. As a testimony to his son he spent that money to buy permission and erect hundreds of such crosses along southern highways. Also, it is still not unusual for the better part of the teachers in the local schools to also be sunday school teachers in local churches. Bibles are pretty much in evidence in every classroom, either on the class bookshelf or on the teacher's desk or in the teacher's lounge. And that is true from kindergarten to high school. It is actually in college where a southern child will first meet an educator who is not at least a nominal Christian, if not an active one. Or if you go to a local bank or store it is as common as not for the cashier to say, "have a blessed day" when you depart. And of course if conversation risks straying into gossip, it can be made better by affixing "Bless his/her/their heart(s) to anything you feel compelled to say...and it is thereby known nothing mean spirited is intended, "Why bless his heart, he just can't seem to stay away from a poker game". "I know, I heard last week he lost most of his paycheck in a game of cards. It's the devil's business, it is. Sure 'nuff, and his poor wife and babies, livin' in that broke down old trailer." "Bless their hearts." "Yes, bless their hearts, don't know why she don't leave him as hard as its been on her." "Don't you know it...well her mother, God bless her was a fine Christian woman as ever I met." "That she was." "Must be good upbringing, trying to be faithful to the Lord and hope he'll come around and change his sorry ways, bless his heart." "I got an extra sweet potato pie just going to waste, think I'll take it to her, invite her and her husband to church some." "I'll be praying for you." "That's so sweet...so how's your boy?" "Can't seem to hold a job, bless his heart."

    Posts: 354 | From: Hattiesburg, MS | Registered: Mar 2009  |  IP: Logged
    Twilight

    Puddleglum's sister
    # 2832

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    quote:
    Originally posted by cliffdweller:
    quote:
    Originally posted by Twilight:
    I find this thread sort of offensive but that's probably just because I'm I'm from West Virginia and not as tolerant as the rest of you.

    I wouldn't worry about any of it, though. Most media is produced by liberal people on the coasts and we hillbillys are greatly influenced by what we see on the TeeVee.

    Just last week a young woman lost the Miss USA contest because she gave a conservative Christian answer to a question she was asked. She had a big point lead until she got a "0" from the judge who asked where she stood on gay marriage. Little future beauty queens were watching and learning.

    I disagree with her on the issue but I did wonder what any of this had to do with her ability to open car shows in a bikini.

    And why it's OK to judge women based on one's subjective standard of physical beauty, but not based on one's subjective standard of answers to socio-political questions.
    Because she voluntarily agreed to be judged by a subjective standard of beauty but not on socio-political questions. After all, this is Miss USA we're talking about not Miss America -- no talented, college girls with social "platforms" in this one-- just girls hoping to use their brand new implants to best advantage and maybe be Donald Trump's next wife.
    Posts: 6817 | Registered: May 2002  |  IP: Logged
    cliffdweller
    Shipmate
    # 13338

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    quote:
    Originally posted by Twilight:
    quote:
    Originally posted by cliffdweller:
    quote:
    Originally posted by Twilight:
    I find this thread sort of offensive but that's probably just because I'm I'm from West Virginia and not as tolerant as the rest of you.

    I wouldn't worry about any of it, though. Most media is produced by liberal people on the coasts and we hillbillys are greatly influenced by what we see on the TeeVee.

    Just last week a young woman lost the Miss USA contest because she gave a conservative Christian answer to a question she was asked. She had a big point lead until she got a "0" from the judge who asked where she stood on gay marriage. Little future beauty queens were watching and learning.

    I disagree with her on the issue but I did wonder what any of this had to do with her ability to open car shows in a bikini.

    And why it's OK to judge women based on one's subjective standard of physical beauty, but not based on one's subjective standard of answers to socio-political questions.
    Because she voluntarily agreed to be judged by a subjective standard of beauty but not on socio-political questions. After all, this is Miss USA we're talking about not Miss America -- no talented, college girls with social "platforms" in this one-- just girls hoping to use their brand new implants to best advantage and maybe be Donald Trump's next wife.
    Sorry, on the scale of global injustices I'm just having a pretty hard time working up a lather over that one. Poor baby.

    --------------------
    "Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

    Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008  |  IP: Logged
    FCB

    Hillbilly Thomist
    # 1495

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    I'll just note that Patrick's original use of "redneck" was as a description of the entire state of Arkansas outside of Little Rock and Fayetteville.

    --------------------
    Agent of the Inquisition since 1982.

    Posts: 2928 | From: that city in "The Wire" | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
    Twilight

    Puddleglum's sister
    # 2832

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    quote:
    Originally posted by cliffdweller:
    Sorry, on the scale of global injustices I'm just having a pretty hard time working up a lather over that one. Poor baby.

    This isn't a thread about global injustice but about fundamentalist values in certain areas of America and I thought this was a good example of how unpopular such values are becoming throughout the country.

    Yet, shouldn't basic civil rights apply to everyone no matter what social class? Instances such as this indicate that we are losing our freedom of religious choice. In a nationally televised contest, a woman was asked a question that forced her to disclose that she was a fundamentalist Christian. She lost the contest because of it and no one cried foul. What next? Ask American Idol contestants where they stand on abortion? If someone on the panel had asked her if she was Muslim and then eliminated her because she said yes, would it matter?

    [ 04. May 2009, 03:22: Message edited by: Twilight ]

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    Beeswax Altar
    Shipmate
    # 11644

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    quote:
    originally posted by cliffdweller:
    Sorry, on the scale of global injustices I'm just having a pretty hard time working up a lather over that one. Poor baby.

    Of course, this is minor. Now, let me propose a hypothetical. Let's suppose a Christian minister was judging the Miss USA pageant and asked Miss California's opinion on gay marriage and she replied,"I believe our nation should stop discriminating against gays and lesbians. Everybody should be allowed to marry the person they love," or something along those lines. Then, let's suppose the Christian minister marked her down. Next day, the Christian minister posted a video on the internet in which he called her a "dumb bitch" and a host of other derogatory names.

    In all honesty, and only you will know if you are being honest, would your reaction still be, "Poor baby?"

    --------------------
    Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
    -Og: King of Bashan

    Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged
    Janine

    The Endless Simmer
    # 3337

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    Oh, Lawd.

    What state was the too-truthful contestant from? California, wasn't she?

    Hmmmn. I guess California, too, must be a hotbed of fundamental traditional Christians. How ironic that a Southerner beat her, over that question.

    --------------------
    I'm a Fundagelical Evangimentalist. What are you?
    Take Me Home * My Heart * An hour with Rich Mullins *

    Posts: 13788 | From: Below the Bible Belt | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
    Lyda*Rose

    Ship's broken porthole
    # 4544

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    PataLeBon:
    quote:
    Know of any shows set in the south that don't have stereotypical characters? The Oklahoma portrayed on TV is nothing like where I was raised, or any of the "normal" parts of Oklahoma either...
    Oklahoma is portrayed on TV? [Eek!] Oh, right. Saving Grace.

    And I'm trying to think of any other current TV show set in the South... [Confused] Real Housewives of Atlanta? It's been quite a while since Evening Shade. (Arkansas) Is King of the Hill still running?

    Florida doesn't really count when it's Miami, so there goes CSI: Miami.

    Check for yourself.

    --------------------
    "Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano

    Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
    Twilight

    Puddleglum's sister
    # 2832

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    quote:
    Originally posted by Janine:
    Oh, Lawd.

    What state was the too-truthful contestant from? California, wasn't she?

    Hmmmn. I guess California, too, must be a hotbed of fundamental traditional Christians. How ironic that a Southerner beat her, over that question.

    Very ironic indeed, Janine. I wish someone's cousin had gone there and talked to her -- then she could have gone home and reported just how backwoods conservative all Californians were (and what big earrings they wear!)

    I love Lyda's list. I like that my current area, Columbus, is represented by "3rd Rock from the Sun," all about space aliens disguised as humans.

    Posts: 6817 | Registered: May 2002  |  IP: Logged
    Sine Nomine

    Ship's backstabbing bastard
    # 66

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    quote:
    Originally posted by Twilight:
    I find this thread sort of offensive

    It's certainly reconfirmed some of my prejudices.

    --------------------
    Precious, Precious, Sweet, Sweet Daddy...

    Posts: 16639 | From: lat. 36.24/lon. 86.84 | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
    cliffdweller
    Shipmate
    # 13338

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    quote:
    Originally posted by Twilight:
    quote:
    Originally posted by cliffdweller:
    Sorry, on the scale of global injustices I'm just having a pretty hard time working up a lather over that one. Poor baby.

    This isn't a thread about global injustice but about fundamentalist values in certain areas of America and I thought this was a good example of how unpopular such values are becoming throughout the country.

    Yet, shouldn't basic civil rights apply to everyone no matter what social class? Instances such as this indicate that we are losing our freedom of religious choice. In a nationally televised contest, a woman was asked a question that forced her to disclose that she was a fundamentalist Christian. She lost the contest because of it and no one cried foul. What next? Ask American Idol contestants where they stand on abortion? If someone on the panel had asked her if she was Muslim and then eliminated her because she said yes, would it matter?

    that was my point-- IMHO it's not a civil rights violation. She willingly entered a contest that is explicitly based on assessment of highly superficial, ill-defined, artificial and subjective standards. The fact that those ill-defined and subjective standards apparently shifted to include a particular socio-political position does not change the fact that it is already a "discriminatory" process, and that was known to her from the get-go. For her to cry "foul" because she ended up on the wrong side of those artificial, ill-defined and arbitrary standards makes no more sense than for other women to claim that the pageant discriminates against women with big noses or fizzy hair or flabby bums. Because those women aren't going to win either.

    --------------------
    "Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

    Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008  |  IP: Logged
    cliffdweller
    Shipmate
    # 13338

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    quote:
    Originally posted by Matins:
    quote:
    originally posted by cliffdweller:
    Sorry, on the scale of global injustices I'm just having a pretty hard time working up a lather over that one. Poor baby.

    Of course, this is minor. Now, let me propose a hypothetical. Let's suppose a Christian minister was judging the Miss USA pageant and asked Miss California's opinion on gay marriage and she replied,"I believe our nation should stop discriminating against gays and lesbians. Everybody should be allowed to marry the person they love," or something along those lines. Then, let's suppose the Christian minister marked her down. Next day, the Christian minister posted a video on the internet in which he called her a "dumb bitch" and a host of other derogatory names.

    In all honesty, and only you will know if you are being honest, would your reaction still be, "Poor baby?"

    Yes, my reaction would honestly be about the same. Either way the pageant is based on arbitrary, subjective standards and really says very little about the contestants other than what a very small, select segment of society thinks about them. It's all about marketing an "image".

    Obviously I would not think highly about the judge who calls a woman a "dumb b****h" and would have some outrage about that. But I've already said I don't think very highly of Perez Hilton either.

    Basically this is why I don't watch beauty pageants.

    --------------------
    "Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

    Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008  |  IP: Logged



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