The Yankee Problem Againby
Clyde Wilson
Since the November election, the media have been full of observations about the United States being two countries with different ideas and values – the blue (Kerry) and red (Bush) states. Some of the Blues (northeast, upper Midwest, and their colonies on the Pacific) have even been talking about secession from us ignorant bigots who inhabit the Heartland and South. (See "The Election, the Solid South, and Yankee Secession," in Vol. 24, No. 1.) If the people who run and staff the media knew any American history, which they don’t, they would know that there is nothing new about all of this. The Blue regions are simply the domain of the Yankees. Astute readers will remember that I explained it all previously in SP in "The Yankee Problem in America" (Vol. 22, No. 1). In that article I pointed out that Yankees are a type produced by the Deep North who have been marked throughout American history by their greed, hypocrisy, fanaticism, and desire to lord it over the rest of us Americans – politically, economically, and culturally. Thomas Jefferson pointed to the phenomenon of the Yankee just before his election as president when he wrote: "It is true that we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard, insulting our feelings, as well as exhausting our strength and substance." At about the same time he remarked of New England, the original breeding ground of Yankees, that they were "marked with such a perversity of character" that the natural political division of the United States would always be between Americans (non-Yankees) and Yankees. There is nothing new about Yankees threatening secession either. Twice during the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, and several times later, they threatened to break up the Union in fits of pique when they failed to get their way. The current Blue commentators are using extreme language to characterize the non-Kerry states. To hear them tell it, the red states are dominated by religious maniacs and militarists – i.e., people who actually believe the Bible and love their country. There is nothing new about this invective either. This kind of hateful demonization of those who resist domination by Yankees has been commonplace for about three hundred years or more. And, of course, the South, being the biggest obstacle to Yankee domination, has always been the major recipient of Yankee slander and hate. (I can never forget the pundit who blamed the crimes of Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber on "the Southern gun culture.") This hateful rhetoric was used in the past and is now used to abuse Dixie for giving the essential winning margin to the Republicans (something which, in the light of Southern history, is in itself a bizarre development). I can’t see that the Blues really have anything to complain about. They already own the store – lock, stock, and barrel. Nobody with the least sense could detect any meaningful difference between Bush and Kerry. Bush is as likely to do something about "moral values" as his father was to follow through on "no new taxes." It takes a pretty short memory not to have figured out by now that the Bushes are Yankees through and through and that what they say to get elected and what they do are two unrelated things. Southerners were given a choice between a weird rich boy from Connecticut and an even weirder rich boy from Massachusetts and we picked the former, who at least did not come flat out for sodomy and treason. (Besides, the Massachusetts boy is descended from Yankee slave traders, the Forbes family, people who have never been popular in the South.) Throughout the 20th century Yankees browbeat Southerners into becoming just ordinary mainstream Americans. I suppose they didn’t realize that it would make us Republicans. But, in fact, the South is Bush country just to the extent it has been de-Southernized. The great M.E. Bradford pointed out in these pages long ago that a "conservative" (i.e., Republican) in the South is not the same thing as a Southern Conservative. Some of the Blue fury against the Red states arises from the claim that the Blues pay more to the federals than they get back, that is, they are subsidizing us red staters. I have always been skeptical of the claim that the South was a net economic gainer from the federal government. Are we to believe that Blues are so generous and benevolent that they are supporting us? To believe that is to deny three centuries of Yankee behavior to the contrary and the evident nature of the liberal ruling class today. Raw state data about taxes paid and federal disbursements received tell us very little about who gets the profits. For instance, every time a Southern state institutes a new federally mandated program, Blue staters are imported to take all the high-paying jobs, and Blue state consultants and suppliers get a lot of the cash. Of course, the Blues are not really serious about secession. Yankees have no civilization – only money and ideology. Without us to abuse and claim to feel superior to, they would not exist. Nevertheless, it is wonderful that the idea of secession – that is, self-government and devolution of power – has been given some public exposure. After all, our Founding Fathers affirmed that governments rest on the consent of the governed, who may alter or abolish them. If the United States was a normal country, the idea of breaking down a federal government that has grown much too big would be a normal part of political discourse. But, alas, the United States is not a normal country; it is the cannon fodder for a ruling class driven so mad by wealth and power that it seeks to dominate the Earth. Reading the left wing anti-war commentary (as opposed to the conservative, i.e. patriotic, anti-war commentary), one gets the impression that Bush’s belligerent foreign policy can be blamed on his being a Texan and a Christian. Of course, a Skull and Bones carpetbagger does not make a Texan. As for the carnival tent religion Bush professes, it is sadly true that it is pretty widespread in the South today. But it is not the Southern tradition. The identification of God with America and the United States with infallible righteousness is Yankee stuff through and through. It is exactly the type of "religion" that was used to deify Lincoln and justify the conquest of the South in 1861–1865. In Yankee history it is the stage they went through between the hyper-Calvinism of their early days and their present atheism. It did not arrive in Dixie until the early 20th century when various evangelists began imitating the style and content of the Yankee Billy Sunday. (See "The Real Old Time Religion" by the late theologian A.J. Conyers in Vol. 23, No. 3, one of the most important articles ever published in SP.) Traditional Southern clergymen would have made short shrift of heretical mountebanks like Pat Robertson. The flourishing of Bushian religion, like the flourishing of the Republican party, is a product of too many Southerners heeding the endless lectures about the need to forget the past, "join the 20th century," etc. The religion and the politics are the same thing, the adoption of discarded Yankee ideology that equates America with God. Some Southerners are starting to show less of our traditional patriotic loyalty and more of the idiot nationalism that thinks the U.S. government and the President can do no wrong and are entitled to bomb anybody who disagrees. In both religion and politics the dilution of Southern tradition has been a loss to Dixie – and to the whole country. For Southerners, and our sympathizers over the border, have always been the only true conservatives in the United States. The country has continued its leftward roll for almost a half century now, despite repeated Republican election victories. Northern "conservatives," as the Rev. Robert Lewis Dabney pointed out 150 years ago, have never, in the entire course of American history, conserved anything. The leftward lurch corresponds exactly in time with the loss of power of the old-time Southern Democrats in Congress. There have been grave mistakes in the course of Southern history, apart from the original one of going naïvely into a Union with bad people. There was Bragg commanding the Army of Tennessee and Longstreet fumbling at Gettysburg. In the same class is the decision of Southern leaders, when they were kicked out of the Democratic Party, to join the Republicans rather than form our own party. As a result we are powerless. It was probably inevitable but nevertheless a great loss. Today there are no Southerners in Congress or in governors’ chairs – only Republicans and Democrats.
This article appeared in Vol. 24, No. 2 of The Southern Partisan. April 4, 2005 Dr. Wilson [send him mail] is professor of history at the University of South Carolina and editor of The Papers of John C. Calhoun. Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com |
But
we still have something the Yankees don’t have and have never had.
There are still people writing books and poems and songs about Dixie.
There is, despite all, a real Southern culture left. If you want
to put secession on the table, let’s consider the only part of the
United States that really could be its own country. A true culture
is the best basis for a viable country. Compared to that, all the
Blue state talk of secession amounts to nothing but an adolescent
tantrum at not having everything exactly their own way.