Stick a fork in them. When you and me and Eric are finished with them, that's really it. Underground opposition is all that's left.

I agree with the last sentence. The American people haven't changed so much as the Republican Party has. A fiscally conservative socially liberal platform would return the party to dominance so they can screw it up all over again.

I'm pretty much read out of the movement as a Catholic Burkean/Hayekian. Can't really find a home in the Dems either - anti-traditional values, pro-regulatory burden, tax raising, basically me-hating statist.

So do me a favor, and sometime a few years from now, after the circular firing squad on the right quits shooting, let me know when anybody actually gives a shit about my vote or my concerns about the way *society* is going. Okay?

/s
Middle Aged White Guy

That "academic author" you cite just uses big academic words to call all southern whites racists, bigots, poor, and stupid.

Gee, where have we heard that before?

I've lived in the South for 40 years now and Democrats have not ever been "out of power" here. I cannot count the number of people I know who have never in their life voted for a Republican and state they never will.

Obama's race mattered much less than his party affiliation did.

My question is when will the North ever stop gloating over winning the Civil War and stop punishing the South for losing?

And that "academic" is wrong about Southerners being so enamored of authority. And about the reasons behind our apparent lack of interest in and jealousy of "the rich" who oppress us.

I'm sickened just having read the first 15 pages of that poorly written crap.

But Donna, he saw Deliverance 4 times, how can you say he's wrong about southerners?

In February 2004 I was in Lexington, KY for several weeks. Just on the drive from the airport to the hotel I spotted one car with a pink triangle sticker, and another with a rainbow flag, and each time I thought "Somebody must not have gotten the memo - a bunch of redneck crackers are supposed to be beating these folks up." I also saw a few cars with Kerry/Edwards stickers on them, and marvelled at the lack of damage done to them. In ever so tolerant and diverse Seattle, it would be a matter of when, not if, a car with a "W" sticker got keyed or egged or had its tires slashed.

I don't buy the myth so cherished by coastal elites that Southerners are stupid, violent bigots. Hunt up a map of election results by county, see how may red areas you
ll find in the North and the west coast. Then explain to me again about oppressors.

Folks there was a movement in the South that began with a K that was really anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic.

You can look it up.

And where the folks from pushing the "Moral Majority"? You know. The guys behind the Culture War.

BTW it doesn't matter how much area is red. What matters is the area where the votes are.

Now all of this may be legacy. It may no longer be fact. The difficulty is that due to the amygdala the hurts are long lasting. People have to die so change can happen.

BTW the gentry in the South and the common folk are two different propositions.

What I am trying to deal with is not reality. It is perception. Perception more often determines voting patterns than reality does.

Note: socons in cahoots with progressives brought us alcohol prohibition and drug prohibition. Due to the latter we are losing Afghanistan and will be at war with Mexico within a few years.

The socon/progressive alliance got us public schools as indoctrination centers. That one got away from them.

Southerners are not stupid. They don't seem any more violent than average. But for quite some time - say a century or two maybe more - they practiced bigotry.

The South may no longer be what it once was. However, an individual's memories are long and actions are more often determined by memory than reality. Death is good.

In any case until perception is erased by some very memorable action the legacy of past hurts will remain. Or we can be patient and let death do its job.

What would convince me that socons have come to their senses? They should say something like:

"We must end drug prohibition because it is fueling the enemies of America around the world and criminals here at home."

Any one care to give me odds that they will be the first major component of American society to bring it up?

Say. Maybe they are not as smart as I thought.

OTOH given this society in general maybe Americans like financing criminals. After all price supports for criminality is an American tradition dating back to alcohol prohibition.

There are new words being introduced into this debate, and the latest is "rankist".

http://tinyurl.com/5outgb

Here's a truly bright guy, who has concocted another reason to cast doubt upon anyone who disagrees with his prescriptions for social policies...we are simply rankist in our views.

I caught this guy on UCTV and was appalled. His intellectual solipsism represents a stark break from pragmatism, and is self-avowedly so. His views? View mankind as living in a box, and change the parameters each is allowed to express himself within that "new" box.

Only that will allow us to become the type of person that this brilliant mind wants us to become.
.

M. Simon, you really need to brush up on your KKK history. The first Klan (Reconstruction era) was truly southern and morphed into a violent group shunned by most southerners.

The second Klan of the 1920s was nationwide. It was promoted partially because of immigrants, blacks migrating north and partially because of prohibition. It was the Klan destroying stills in Arkansas, IIRC.

You really can't call us southerners prohibitionists for the most part. We did our share making and running the illegal stuff and have NASCAR to show for it.

Southerners had little to do with the success of the Klan in Michigan, for example. Oh, except the black southerners who had moved there.

It was a big city thing for the most part and most of the South was still rural in 1920.

Perceptions do matter, but posting things that support wrong perceptions doesn't help to get to the right one, does it?

Donna,

Thank you.

BTW despite being shunned the Klan was quite effective. I wonder why the authorities never clamped down on it.

Prohibition was an important force in state and local politics from the 1840s through the 1930s. The political forces involved were ethnoreligious in character, as demonstrated by numerous historical studies.[6] Prohibition was demanded by the "dries" — primarily pietistic Protestant denominations, especially the Methodists, Northern Baptists, Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, Disciples, Congregationalists, Quakers, and Scandinavian Lutherans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States

In any case the most virulent bigotry was associated with the South.

As with all history the deeper you get into it the more complicated it is.

===

Perhaps the best thing to say on the subject is that the current Democrat Party is a coalition of oppressed and formerly oppressed minorities.

Perhaps they just pick on Southerners because of its former history re: blacks.

I will come back to the subject again at some point. Obviously once the oppression stops things get more fluid but they take generations to change because politics runs in the family.

Note also: it only takes a small fraction of a population to oppress a larger fraction if authorities do not step in. So even though the fraction may be small, if it is loud it gets heard. If it is violent and loud it becomes an accepted part of the culture.

I have not lived in the South since about 1950 (at the foot of Monticello - you could see it from our back stoop) when "colored only" was a common sign. So my understanding is obviously dated. As a Jew the only time I ever ran into overt bigotry in my life was when I lived there so that may color my perception as well. And that was only one incident and rather mild at that. I was called a "Jew Boy" by some kids I was playing with. I was 5 at the time. It never reached the level of violence. Nor did the kids quit playing with me. I never played with them again though.

Let me also note that most of my contact was with the gentry due to my dad's position in town (he was the manager of a large clothing store) so I never had much contact with the "masses". I got treated well by the gentry and never felt a bit of bigotry from them.

Maybe it was a class thing. The gentry were aristocrats and bigotry was beneath them?

OG,

I think the guy is pulling rank.

With all these evil theories floating around it is just a matter of time before some lunatic picks them up as a new reason for oppressing people.

BTW I note that he gives his rank on the bio-page you linked. How nuts.

M. Simon -- there's an old saying that southerners like the negroes they know and that northerners like the negroes they don't know - ie, the ones in the south.

Perhaps I am biased due to my own family history which includes several men from Alabama and Tennessee from various lines which fought and died for the Union.

These men lost more, in property especially, than did my ancestors who fought for the Confederacy.

They were subjected to the same loyalty oaths and the reconstruction hit them especially hard.

History is not easy, it's not well-defined, and it's not always what the victors of wars want it to be.

Mr. Simon, in your disquisition on the Klan you neglect to mention that it was associated with the Democrats. In fact, so were the Jim Crow laws, slavery itself, and lynchings. Bull Conner, Lester Maddox, George Wallace, all Dems. Selma and Montgomery, brought to us by Dems.

What boggles my mind, is how the Dems have so sanitized their past so that they have nothing to do with racism, and in fact, according to their "history," have always fought against it. Likewise, in the north the labor unions were at the forefront of racist and anti-immigrant agitation (after all, no red blooded American wanted these riff raff taking good jobs from decent folks). Now, the racist Dems are joined at the hip with the racist unions in standing up for the little guy (so long as he isn't a nonunion plumber with a middle name of Joe).

You speak of perceptions, that is one I would dearly love to understand. The one that the Dems have always stood up for the oppressed bespeaks a Stalinist talent for airbrushing history.

Hey, I'm in my 40s.
The Civil Rights movement? Men in bedsheets?

That's aging boomer glory-days nostalgia, not part of my lived experience.

I DID live through the heavy-handed, liberal-imposed "fairness" of affirmative action and stifling political correctness.

And the economic uncertainty and foreign policy impotence of the Carter era.

The Reagan/Gingrich revolution redefined the Republican party for me and my generation - as the party of fiscal responsibility and small government. And of proud promotion of Western democracy overseas.

Plenty of room in that tent.

And on social issues? As gen-Xers become parents, many of us - having lived with the fallout of their Boomer parents trashing traditional values and "finding themselves" - think traditional values are just fine and dandy, thanks. You'd be amazed what being a parent does to your views on things like parental notification when a teen is pregnant.

Rasmussen and others have pointed out how conservative voting was on ballot initiatives - no to environmental nonsense, no to gay marriage. And that Obama won by stealing the small-government, low-taxes meme from the Republicans.

Guess what? Blacks and Hispanics voted overwhelmingly against gay marriage and other "progressive" ballot measures.

Sounds like a non-white, non-Protestant constituency to me.

All Republicans have to do is get clear about who they are - and re-earn our trust that they will follow through.

A Republican party based on fiscal conservatism, small government, and defense/promotion of Western democracy can be a very large tent indeed.

And bans on gay marriage and sensible curbs on abortion (like parental notification and a ban of live-birth "abortion") will not lose many people - certainly not all those Catholics who've been voting Dem all these years.

So: let's leave attempts to "recreate '68" to LA Times columnists, shall we?

OG,

I left this comment at the url you gave.

I note that Robert Fuller denotes all his credentials on his bio page. That is rank rankism for those of us without such credentials. Perhaps re-education is in order.

Steve,

You are correct but you left out on important fact. Lyndon Johnson threw them out of the Democrat party in 1968 and Nixon invited them to the Republican Party.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

In recent years, the term "Southern strategy" has been used in a more general sense, in which cultural themes are used in an election -- primarily but not exclusively in the American South.

Ben-David,

I believe it is important to understand history. It is often ugly but, it helps us understand how we got to where we are.

As to men in bedsheets - I never saw one up close and personal in my whole life. And I was never nostalgic for them.

In fact I have been anti-racist for as long as I can remember. When I was 5 I drank out of a "colored only" water fountain because even at that age such discrimination offended me. My mom was so proud. However, she did pull me back after I had taken a drink in order to avoid a public scene. I had started reading at about age 4 so I knew what it meant.

And yes you are correct. As racism recedes as an issue in America the contradictions in the Democrat Party will destroy it.

None the less look at the map. Republicans have no representation in the North East. That is worrying. And what ever your views on abortion it ought to be taken off the table as a national issue with respect to Republicans. It loses us the vote of the culturally liberal.

The Republican Party needs to rebrand itself as the "leave us alone party". It is the only way to square the circle. Republicans need to stop fighting the Culture Wars. Return the issue of culture to the states where it belongs.

Here is what the national party should stand for:

Cultural Liberty
Economic Liberty

I have had a number of emails from folks who find the idea of a "leave us alone" party rather attractive.

With hot wars on the decline for now the party has lost its attractiveness to a lot of voters for now. We are going into one of America's periodic turns inward. So for the time being the Culture War is on the table. It is ugly. Republicans should give it up. Liberty is pretty and is in the Grand Tradition of America. Let every one live their lives as they see fit as long as it doesn't violate public order.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. Thomas Jefferson

A war on abortion that was effective would give the Government far too much power. The way to deal with it in my opinion is exactly the Clinton formulation: Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. And how do we as Republicans make it rare? Convince women not to have them. And that convincing should be private. Avoid putting government guns to people's heads. One thing that would be helpful is to make adoption easier and less costly. And that is something Republicans can champion without descending into a Culture War.

Currently the Left is making Economic War on Americans. The Right is doing the Culture War. How about a party that is against internal wars? It is not the Government's Job to make war on its citizens. Neither a War On Poverty nor a Drug War.

As a libertarian, putting Palin on the ticket was the one thing that convinced me to vote for Obama. Palin is the model of an anti-libertarian. (And yes: I'm aware that the same could be said about voting Obama; in my defense I can only offer that I was really voting against Palin.)

Seeing as losing the libertarian block is one of the main reasons that the GOP has been fading the last few years, the best strategy at this point would be to never mention her again.

I wasn't surprised to find that your comment failed to stick...it seems to be a sales site for his book. Humourous jabs are not always accepted with the grace and love as was the giver's intent.

I started watching his talk on UCTV since the topic was titled "Politics of Dignity". It was an eye-opening experience to listen to him twist and turn the meaning of dignity into a new vert.

Dignity is someone in America has at birth. And as someone who, in the main, attempts to live to the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount, I know that I'm often tempted to deride those who are foolish.

It just seems to me, that a man with dignity will take responsibility for his own choices. I've had my honour and reputation impuned, but my dignity is my own. And, as such, is unassailable. As is, I would hope, yours.

Where I would ask others in the Republican party to pause is, while we disagree on what have become sticking points over "one-issue" voting, I'd remind you that while most argue over abortion, there was a great reaction to removing prayer from school. That has, in the main, died down. It still pops its head up when school administrators make the news by bringing attention to--usually their own--stupid decisions, but in the main, no Republican has to announce his support for mandated school prayer to pass the ER litmus test.

There is hope that the ER--SoCon--side can see that while they may not be able to win the day, that we are natural allies on most other issues.

(And as far as Governor Palin being an "anti-libertarian", it is, perhaps, that Jim needs to visit Alaska.)
.

Jim,

Palin never once, while she was Governor of Alaska, made any mention of her religious views on any hot button issue.

The people had no idea of her religious affiliation until she got the VP nod.

You have been duped.

She practiced her faith and governed libertarian. Just the way it ought to be done.