I'm way past tired of listening to people make snippy comments about people from The South. Yes, the Southern United States. Specifically, the South-Eastern part of the United States. It has always been a wonder to me how much propaganda has been spoon fed to the rest of the country over the last 150 years or so and how much of it people actually tend to believe about Southerner's in general.
The proverbial straw that broke my camels' back was listening to the acerbic Bill Maher on his controversial show, Real Time with Bill Maher, presented on HBO as he proceeded to tear down The Son's of Confederate Veterans as an organization which glorifies slavery and the suppression of Civil Rights. Now, I hear that certain groups are starting to go after Kid Rock, of all people to go after, for flying the Confederate Battle Flag at different parts of his concert show. Are you serious? Really?
To the victors go the spoils, I suppose. Since the Southern states were basically invaded by the Northern States during the conflict called "The Civil War", we in and of The South have had to listen to, endure, and put up with the Northern version of that history since we were kids in school. You don't really get into the truth of those matters until you reach a certain age, normally, by extending the power of your own evolving noodle to the resources that you can find at hand through the efforts of your own research done with objective and unemotional detachment of a true scholar whose only cause is in trying to unravel the true story of those horrible times.
Most people have been programmed through their superficial study of history and by a seemingly orchestrated program of visuals to immediately associate anything Southern with these images: Guys with hoods and dogs chasing Black people through swamps with torches and shotguns; Black people forced to pick cotton on sprawling plantations with White people sitting around on their breezy veranda's drinking mint juleps and fanning themselves in the cool shade; Good Ole Boys in suped up muscle cars with their Daisy-Duke wearing girlfriends in sweetly sweaty halter-tops drinking White Lightning and listening to Lynyrd Skynrd on their 8-track stereo car systems; Bucolic, overalls and flannel shirt wearing farm-boys chewing on a pieces of straw dispensing folksy wisdom and corny humor to unsuspecting city-folk lost on dirt roads and fearful of the pluck-pluck-twanging banjo music off in the distance. I could go on and on through the comic images of hillbilly bumpkins and swamp wandering doofusses through Mayberry and Andy Griffith to Sookie Stackhouse and her redneck vampires and all of the nonsense that has defined in subtle and little ways, a culture and people of The South as a prancing caricature of someones made-up collective of their impressions of a real people. And isn't that wrong?
Nowadays, anybody that stands up and says there is nothing wrong in taking pride in preserving ones culture is usually applauded and encouraged unless you happen to be a Southerner in the United States of America. Then, you are usually called a bunch of names and told that you are a bigot and a racist and that you are politically incorrect. You are being told by the media that you are harmful and insensitive to people of color and people who love civil rights all over the world. So much so, that I have seen where a lot of Southerners are quietly withdrawing from their heritage and actually acting embarrassed about being from The South.
I don't want to launch into a heated debate over issues and things that are deeply hurtful to some people. I do get that there are grievances on both sides of the so-called Mason-Dixon Line even today. Regional rifts that have never really healed after all this time. Differences that have divided a culturally similar people in terms of origin and language into a people of significantly different ideologies and viewpoints. This did not just happen overnight or over the past 150 years. It was occurring long before that, back when the colonies where first being settled. The Founding Father's recognized these differences and some of them even predicted an eventual conflict of interests that might result in armed aggression back before the Constitution was ratified.
The history books would have you believe that the War Between the States was fought primarily over the issue of slavery. I can only urge you, if you hold firm to this belief, to seek further into the causes of that conflict and as to why half of the United States at that time decided to gain a second independence from what was perceived as an overbearing and unworkable central government. Arguments that may yet be valid in light of todays events as they continue to develop. It would do to remind some people to remember that a civil war is usually defined as a war between similar factions within a state, country, or nation who are struggling for control of that common government.
This was not really the case of the Southern States back in 1861. Read the Declarations of Secession from each of the states at that time who left the Union. Their grievances were with the central government and they wanted no part of it. They did not want to control it or take it over. They wanted their independence from it. They felt that the original contract between the states and Federal government forged by the Constitution had been compromised by those seeking to use the central government as a tool of control for special interests. I challenge you to look into the growing hostilities between the political parties that came from those that were termed "Jeffersonian" and "Hamilton" and how they morphed and twisted into the political parties that eventually lit the fuse of war in the 1860's and helped shape the parties we are familiar with today.
My own personal Song of The South is not about oppressing Black people or hateful, despicable images of an old "uncle" singing and dancing, shucking and jiving, down on the plantation waitin on "massa" and "all 'dem folks." That is and always has been an outsiders view of the way things were "down here." Just another hurtful caricature of someone's impression of a lifestyle and history not their own. The story of my South is about growing up on a farm in South Georgia during the summers and learning to work hard with whites and blacks all around. Learning respect for my elders, regardless of their skin color. Being taught respect and gentleness towards women. Learning common decency and politeness and consideration for the state of my neighbor as well as for myself. Learning about and practicing in freedom my choice of religion in the way I was taught by those who came before me and learning to love the things that grow in the ground as well as for the good seeds that are planted in the mind. Of basic consideration for others over oneself. These are the only Southern ideologies that I am aware of. These are the points of Southern Heritage that are spoken of openly by few but practiced so diligently by most all.
But you won't usually see a movie or TV show about that as it truly manifests in the lives of the people down here. Not without surly ridicule and mockery on the urging of mean spirited people with hidden agendas. People that I have found to be lost and atheistic in their personal views while projecting a fervor for some kind of ultra-Liberalism bordering on fanatical, quasi-Humanistic principles of what they consider to be "rightness" for themselves and therefore correct for everyone else. You see, that's what we call 'meddlin' down here.
And that kind of 'meddlin' is not only wrong, it's just plain rude. And I've never known a Southerner who could tolerate bad manners very long from anyone. Especially when it affects a group of folks beyond their own personal space.
Southerners, regardless of what you've seen in the media and the like, are actually pretty tolerant people. You can be whatever you want to be and whoever you want to be as long as you don't bother others needlessly with it or disturb the peace of the rest of the community. If you want to burn incense on an altar to a pagan deity or hoot and holler and worship a rock, then go ahead and more power to you and yours; just don't make an undo spectacle of yourself is all anyone asks. Southerners respect a healthy dose of the occasional eccentricity in our neighbors and in ourselves. It's what makes life exciting and everyone usually likes a little peppersauce in their greens from time to time, if you take my meaning.
Life in The South has always been about the pursuit of happiness surrounded by the people you love and care about and finding ways to share those sentiments in infinitely diverse ways. I seem to remember reading something about that in a document signed by a bunch of fellows with knee breeches and funny wigs who thought it right and proper to tell a king what for across the sea. Some of us, I'd say most of us, still believe in that right down to our little squigglys.
Once upon a time, I traveled with family on a trip to Washington, D.C. to see the great Federal City and explore the place that represents all of us at our very best. We had a good time wandering around the museums and looking at the architecture and admiring the monuments and all. But, I noticed something strange the further North we climbed from our home in Georgia. When we were staying outside of Washington in Virginia, the closer we got into the Federal City, the more I noticed the people around us that lived and worked there were not very friendly in the way that we were accustomed to people being. After some thought about it one night after trying to make small, neighborly chit-chat with the hotel staff, I realized what it was. These people were not open and friendly. They were guarded and tightly restrained within themselves. They did not appear to trust and accept strangers very well. I don't want to say that they were hostile. It wasn't that at all. It's just that they were not considerate. They did not greet one with warmth and genuine good cheer.
As we returned home and crossed over the South Carolina border into Georgia, we stopped in a chain diner to get a bite to eat and refresh ourselves from the long road. When I opened the door to walk into the diner, I was immediately greeted by a lady working behind the counter, who of course I did not know, who brightened up as we walked in with a cheerful, familiar, and much needed, "Hey, y'all!"
I cannot fully express to you now the real feeling of warmth and goodness that settled back into my soul as I heard that spoken brogue and it was like a fresh breeze had blown upon me, warm and wonderful driving off the cold that I had clinging to me. And in that moment, the chill was gone and I knew I was finally home.
Let me further illustrate to you what was given to me as a kind of woodsy wisdom from a man I hold in the highest regard, my own father-in-law. He has taught me a great deal about living life as a man that my own father could not, having passed away when I was a formative twenty-one years old leaving me stranded in the search for my own reigns of manhood at that time. Reigns that I did not recover until my father-in-law stepped into my life and handed them back to me.
In this utterance one day many years ago, he gave me the keys to identify my own place as a Southerner and as a general guide for everyday living in this place or any other. He told me this as we both stood together atop Seminary Ridge at the Gettysburg Memorial, staring over at what would have been the forward direction of Pickett's Charge. After a moment of quiet reflection, he said to me: "Never be ashamed of your Christianity and of being a Southerner." Then he added with a sly smile after a pause, as kind of an afterthought, "...In that order."
Incidentally, my father-in-law is an active member of the Son's of Confederate Veterans, an organization made up of likewise fine, upstanding individuals who take pride in their shared Southern Heritage and who pay tribute in reverent dignity and honor to the humble ties with their ancestors who gave their lives in the service of their country and families during the War Between the States.
The South doesn't need to rise again because, in my opinion, it never stayed knocked down for long anyhow. You can't keep a good people down. Regardless of race or origin, Southerners are pretty much the same wherever you go around here. After my trip up North, I can identify a kinsman from much further away these days. All I have to see is a smile and hear the honest fellowship in their voice to know where I am and where I'll stay. No matter where and how far I roam.
As for the rest of you out there living in the other United States, I know that you are my countrymen and I extend to you always the glad-hand of fellowship as your brethren. But the fact of the matter is, I am a Southerner through and through. That will probably never fade away in my lifetime and you must take me as I take you in all of your regional differences and peculiarities. I will never lose my American cultural identity and I expect you not to lose yours. It is part of what makes us truly Americans, and talking to you now as a modern day Southerner building upon lessons of older, latter day Southerner's, I believe it to be true now as it was then when I say that I don't require you to be like me or believe like I believe. What I do expect is what I expect from anyone: to be treated as you would treat yourself. A mutual respect for our likenesses and our differences that make us who we are. The Golden Rule applies everywhere at all times in all cultures in all walks of life. It should be a planetary thing, not a regional thing.
Perhaps in this way, Southerners contribute something fine and valuable to civilization on the whole in a time when things continue to look powerfully bleak and dim for this nation. Southern people, as a culture of people who are most definitely part of the experience of what is now and what will become the United States of America, hold the special knowledge and remembrance of what it means to be defeated and oppressed after a war which took place on their own native soil perpetrated by their fellow Americans. Out of this kind of suffering comes a new strength and resolve that has tempered the spirit and further defined in a people what it truly means to live in freedom, with liberty and justice for all.
These are the things that dwell in my heart of hearts and, I think, within the hearts and souls of every Southerner from which emerges this new song. A new and truly beautiful song of The South.
The proverbial straw that broke my camels' back was listening to the acerbic Bill Maher on his controversial show, Real Time with Bill Maher, presented on HBO as he proceeded to tear down The Son's of Confederate Veterans as an organization which glorifies slavery and the suppression of Civil Rights. Now, I hear that certain groups are starting to go after Kid Rock, of all people to go after, for flying the Confederate Battle Flag at different parts of his concert show. Are you serious? Really?
To the victors go the spoils, I suppose. Since the Southern states were basically invaded by the Northern States during the conflict called "The Civil War", we in and of The South have had to listen to, endure, and put up with the Northern version of that history since we were kids in school. You don't really get into the truth of those matters until you reach a certain age, normally, by extending the power of your own evolving noodle to the resources that you can find at hand through the efforts of your own research done with objective and unemotional detachment of a true scholar whose only cause is in trying to unravel the true story of those horrible times.
Most people have been programmed through their superficial study of history and by a seemingly orchestrated program of visuals to immediately associate anything Southern with these images: Guys with hoods and dogs chasing Black people through swamps with torches and shotguns; Black people forced to pick cotton on sprawling plantations with White people sitting around on their breezy veranda's drinking mint juleps and fanning themselves in the cool shade; Good Ole Boys in suped up muscle cars with their Daisy-Duke wearing girlfriends in sweetly sweaty halter-tops drinking White Lightning and listening to Lynyrd Skynrd on their 8-track stereo car systems; Bucolic, overalls and flannel shirt wearing farm-boys chewing on a pieces of straw dispensing folksy wisdom and corny humor to unsuspecting city-folk lost on dirt roads and fearful of the pluck-pluck-twanging banjo music off in the distance. I could go on and on through the comic images of hillbilly bumpkins and swamp wandering doofusses through Mayberry and Andy Griffith to Sookie Stackhouse and her redneck vampires and all of the nonsense that has defined in subtle and little ways, a culture and people of The South as a prancing caricature of someones made-up collective of their impressions of a real people. And isn't that wrong?
Nowadays, anybody that stands up and says there is nothing wrong in taking pride in preserving ones culture is usually applauded and encouraged unless you happen to be a Southerner in the United States of America. Then, you are usually called a bunch of names and told that you are a bigot and a racist and that you are politically incorrect. You are being told by the media that you are harmful and insensitive to people of color and people who love civil rights all over the world. So much so, that I have seen where a lot of Southerners are quietly withdrawing from their heritage and actually acting embarrassed about being from The South.
I don't want to launch into a heated debate over issues and things that are deeply hurtful to some people. I do get that there are grievances on both sides of the so-called Mason-Dixon Line even today. Regional rifts that have never really healed after all this time. Differences that have divided a culturally similar people in terms of origin and language into a people of significantly different ideologies and viewpoints. This did not just happen overnight or over the past 150 years. It was occurring long before that, back when the colonies where first being settled. The Founding Father's recognized these differences and some of them even predicted an eventual conflict of interests that might result in armed aggression back before the Constitution was ratified.
The history books would have you believe that the War Between the States was fought primarily over the issue of slavery. I can only urge you, if you hold firm to this belief, to seek further into the causes of that conflict and as to why half of the United States at that time decided to gain a second independence from what was perceived as an overbearing and unworkable central government. Arguments that may yet be valid in light of todays events as they continue to develop. It would do to remind some people to remember that a civil war is usually defined as a war between similar factions within a state, country, or nation who are struggling for control of that common government.
This was not really the case of the Southern States back in 1861. Read the Declarations of Secession from each of the states at that time who left the Union. Their grievances were with the central government and they wanted no part of it. They did not want to control it or take it over. They wanted their independence from it. They felt that the original contract between the states and Federal government forged by the Constitution had been compromised by those seeking to use the central government as a tool of control for special interests. I challenge you to look into the growing hostilities between the political parties that came from those that were termed "Jeffersonian" and "Hamilton" and how they morphed and twisted into the political parties that eventually lit the fuse of war in the 1860's and helped shape the parties we are familiar with today.
My own personal Song of The South is not about oppressing Black people or hateful, despicable images of an old "uncle" singing and dancing, shucking and jiving, down on the plantation waitin on "massa" and "all 'dem folks." That is and always has been an outsiders view of the way things were "down here." Just another hurtful caricature of someone's impression of a lifestyle and history not their own. The story of my South is about growing up on a farm in South Georgia during the summers and learning to work hard with whites and blacks all around. Learning respect for my elders, regardless of their skin color. Being taught respect and gentleness towards women. Learning common decency and politeness and consideration for the state of my neighbor as well as for myself. Learning about and practicing in freedom my choice of religion in the way I was taught by those who came before me and learning to love the things that grow in the ground as well as for the good seeds that are planted in the mind. Of basic consideration for others over oneself. These are the only Southern ideologies that I am aware of. These are the points of Southern Heritage that are spoken of openly by few but practiced so diligently by most all.
But you won't usually see a movie or TV show about that as it truly manifests in the lives of the people down here. Not without surly ridicule and mockery on the urging of mean spirited people with hidden agendas. People that I have found to be lost and atheistic in their personal views while projecting a fervor for some kind of ultra-Liberalism bordering on fanatical, quasi-Humanistic principles of what they consider to be "rightness" for themselves and therefore correct for everyone else. You see, that's what we call 'meddlin' down here.
And that kind of 'meddlin' is not only wrong, it's just plain rude. And I've never known a Southerner who could tolerate bad manners very long from anyone. Especially when it affects a group of folks beyond their own personal space.
Southerners, regardless of what you've seen in the media and the like, are actually pretty tolerant people. You can be whatever you want to be and whoever you want to be as long as you don't bother others needlessly with it or disturb the peace of the rest of the community. If you want to burn incense on an altar to a pagan deity or hoot and holler and worship a rock, then go ahead and more power to you and yours; just don't make an undo spectacle of yourself is all anyone asks. Southerners respect a healthy dose of the occasional eccentricity in our neighbors and in ourselves. It's what makes life exciting and everyone usually likes a little peppersauce in their greens from time to time, if you take my meaning.
Life in The South has always been about the pursuit of happiness surrounded by the people you love and care about and finding ways to share those sentiments in infinitely diverse ways. I seem to remember reading something about that in a document signed by a bunch of fellows with knee breeches and funny wigs who thought it right and proper to tell a king what for across the sea. Some of us, I'd say most of us, still believe in that right down to our little squigglys.
Once upon a time, I traveled with family on a trip to Washington, D.C. to see the great Federal City and explore the place that represents all of us at our very best. We had a good time wandering around the museums and looking at the architecture and admiring the monuments and all. But, I noticed something strange the further North we climbed from our home in Georgia. When we were staying outside of Washington in Virginia, the closer we got into the Federal City, the more I noticed the people around us that lived and worked there were not very friendly in the way that we were accustomed to people being. After some thought about it one night after trying to make small, neighborly chit-chat with the hotel staff, I realized what it was. These people were not open and friendly. They were guarded and tightly restrained within themselves. They did not appear to trust and accept strangers very well. I don't want to say that they were hostile. It wasn't that at all. It's just that they were not considerate. They did not greet one with warmth and genuine good cheer.
As we returned home and crossed over the South Carolina border into Georgia, we stopped in a chain diner to get a bite to eat and refresh ourselves from the long road. When I opened the door to walk into the diner, I was immediately greeted by a lady working behind the counter, who of course I did not know, who brightened up as we walked in with a cheerful, familiar, and much needed, "Hey, y'all!"
I cannot fully express to you now the real feeling of warmth and goodness that settled back into my soul as I heard that spoken brogue and it was like a fresh breeze had blown upon me, warm and wonderful driving off the cold that I had clinging to me. And in that moment, the chill was gone and I knew I was finally home.
Let me further illustrate to you what was given to me as a kind of woodsy wisdom from a man I hold in the highest regard, my own father-in-law. He has taught me a great deal about living life as a man that my own father could not, having passed away when I was a formative twenty-one years old leaving me stranded in the search for my own reigns of manhood at that time. Reigns that I did not recover until my father-in-law stepped into my life and handed them back to me.
In this utterance one day many years ago, he gave me the keys to identify my own place as a Southerner and as a general guide for everyday living in this place or any other. He told me this as we both stood together atop Seminary Ridge at the Gettysburg Memorial, staring over at what would have been the forward direction of Pickett's Charge. After a moment of quiet reflection, he said to me: "Never be ashamed of your Christianity and of being a Southerner." Then he added with a sly smile after a pause, as kind of an afterthought, "...In that order."
Incidentally, my father-in-law is an active member of the Son's of Confederate Veterans, an organization made up of likewise fine, upstanding individuals who take pride in their shared Southern Heritage and who pay tribute in reverent dignity and honor to the humble ties with their ancestors who gave their lives in the service of their country and families during the War Between the States.
The South doesn't need to rise again because, in my opinion, it never stayed knocked down for long anyhow. You can't keep a good people down. Regardless of race or origin, Southerners are pretty much the same wherever you go around here. After my trip up North, I can identify a kinsman from much further away these days. All I have to see is a smile and hear the honest fellowship in their voice to know where I am and where I'll stay. No matter where and how far I roam.
As for the rest of you out there living in the other United States, I know that you are my countrymen and I extend to you always the glad-hand of fellowship as your brethren. But the fact of the matter is, I am a Southerner through and through. That will probably never fade away in my lifetime and you must take me as I take you in all of your regional differences and peculiarities. I will never lose my American cultural identity and I expect you not to lose yours. It is part of what makes us truly Americans, and talking to you now as a modern day Southerner building upon lessons of older, latter day Southerner's, I believe it to be true now as it was then when I say that I don't require you to be like me or believe like I believe. What I do expect is what I expect from anyone: to be treated as you would treat yourself. A mutual respect for our likenesses and our differences that make us who we are. The Golden Rule applies everywhere at all times in all cultures in all walks of life. It should be a planetary thing, not a regional thing.
Perhaps in this way, Southerners contribute something fine and valuable to civilization on the whole in a time when things continue to look powerfully bleak and dim for this nation. Southern people, as a culture of people who are most definitely part of the experience of what is now and what will become the United States of America, hold the special knowledge and remembrance of what it means to be defeated and oppressed after a war which took place on their own native soil perpetrated by their fellow Americans. Out of this kind of suffering comes a new strength and resolve that has tempered the spirit and further defined in a people what it truly means to live in freedom, with liberty and justice for all.
These are the things that dwell in my heart of hearts and, I think, within the hearts and souls of every Southerner from which emerges this new song. A new and truly beautiful song of The South.
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