podfish
01-31-2014, 10:54 AM
I just found this quote:
“Proud, brave, honorable by its lights, courteous, personally generous, loyal … such was the South at its best,” wrote W. J. Cash in his classic 1941 work, The Mind of the South (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679736476/?tag=slatmaga-20). So far, so good—but Cash goes on to describe some less appealing but still quintessentially Southern traits, among them being “suspicion toward new ideas, an incapacity for analysis, an inclination to act from feeling rather than from thought, an exaggerated individualism and a too-narrow sense of social responsibility.” And, of course, “too great an attachment to racial values”—or, so as not to mince words, racism.
in general, I dislike cultural psycho-analysis. It reeks of stereotyping. But I can't be accused of excessive consistency, and I think this expresses a point of view rather well. Maybe the bit about too-narrow a sense of social responsibility, and the primacy of racism, are more associated with the old South, but this description does fit many people who you see being quoted today. Since it pretty much should go without saying that any attachment to racial values is inappropriate at best, we can leave that criteria out. Then, by their feelings on social responsibility (wide or narrow), separate out everyone who meets the rest of the descriptions. I think we have just identified our two political classes!
“Proud, brave, honorable by its lights, courteous, personally generous, loyal … such was the South at its best,” wrote W. J. Cash in his classic 1941 work, The Mind of the South (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679736476/?tag=slatmaga-20). So far, so good—but Cash goes on to describe some less appealing but still quintessentially Southern traits, among them being “suspicion toward new ideas, an incapacity for analysis, an inclination to act from feeling rather than from thought, an exaggerated individualism and a too-narrow sense of social responsibility.” And, of course, “too great an attachment to racial values”—or, so as not to mince words, racism.
in general, I dislike cultural psycho-analysis. It reeks of stereotyping. But I can't be accused of excessive consistency, and I think this expresses a point of view rather well. Maybe the bit about too-narrow a sense of social responsibility, and the primacy of racism, are more associated with the old South, but this description does fit many people who you see being quoted today. Since it pretty much should go without saying that any attachment to racial values is inappropriate at best, we can leave that criteria out. Then, by their feelings on social responsibility (wide or narrow), separate out everyone who meets the rest of the descriptions. I think we have just identified our two political classes!