Street-Level Southern Sensibilities

Street-Level Southern Sensibilities are defective, founded as they are in a hatred for the Federal Government (this is Civil War stuff still moldering, like John Brown's body), a hatred of unions (an invention of the North and a tool of Communism - alla Billy Graham and other right-wing sorts) and the need for a permanent underclass to make the ruling elite feel powerful and good.

Right now, our nation is locked in a Civil War of ideas, and what with Reagan and his cheery smile, and before him, Nixon and his cynical use of Christianity, the South has clearly won enormous territory in the American soul.

It's war that no one can afford to lose, not even the South.

As much as the South fought to retain slavery, it was a war they couldn't afford to win. Had the Union disintegrated and the Confederate States perpetuated the institution of slavery, the cost to all is unimaginable - the balkanization of America and an economy built upon forced labor, an economy that would have been doomed to fail.

Romney and Gingrich and all the rest are held in the grip of Southern Sensibilities.

They look to the past for guidance.

They fail to see the future!

The South Has Won the Civil War (of Ideas)

The April 17, 2011 New York Times takes a close look at the GOP's effort to redesign the American landscape, or as I put it, to undo everything done by FDR and liberal northeastern establishment.

Is this really the death of kindness in America?

When it comes to the social compact, it's clearly the death of kindness.

On a personal level, any of the current GOP conservative leaders might be good and decent and even kindly. But the failure is occurring at the point of the COMMON good; the conservative world has always focused on the power of the individual to rise and shape her world; this is intensified in evangelical circles where salvation is a "personal" thing and everyone has to find his or her own "personal relationship with Jesus."

In many ways, the conservative view of America is still a reflection of small southern communities out of which this philosophy grows: rugged individualism, charity (but not social change), religion that's deeply personal and emotional (if it's emotional, then it must be good), small government, low taxes, anti-union sentiments (because unions are socialistic and deny individual initiative and freedom) and social division along the lines of race (determined by God) - as long as a person of color got off the sidewalk, even the lowest of the whites enjoyed class privilege.

The failure of evangelical christianity is its loss of the social heart of Scripture - we are our "brother's keeper." The New Testament is read through spiritualized eyes, translating everything into spiritual principles, thus avoiding the social context in which the New Testament was written.

The medieval church did much the same thing, turning Jesus into a savior, to avoid his ethics, and preserve the social order of the day. Victorian England and its opposition to Darwin was aimed at preserving the social order of landed gentry and the working poor; anything that suggested change was anathema to the church and its patrons, the aristocracy.

The current philosophy of the GOP is an image of the ante-bellum south. With huge migrations of people form the Deep South and West South, all of this was brought to SoCal and the West Coast in the 20th Century - it supported Goldwater's failed campaign, reworked itself and give us Nixon and Reagan, and has since revitalized southern politics and touched the heart of many Americans in the midwest and far west. The movement remains determined to undo the America created by FDR - a "welfare state" and unions, gov't regulation and appropriate taxation, along with a strong middle class. All of this is "the enemy."

As I put it, the South won the Civil War of ideas! And the current GOP has embodied these ideas perfectly!