1/21/13, “Southern Discomfort,” New Yorker Magazine, George Packer, “The political isolation of the American South”
“Now the South is becoming isolated again. Every demographic and political trend that helped to reëlect Barack Obama runs counter to the region’s self-definition: the emergence of a younger, more diverse, more secular electorate, with a libertarian bias on social issues and immigration; the decline of the exurban life style, following the housing bust; the class politics, anathema to pro-business Southerners, that rose with the recession; the end of America’s protracted wars, with cuts in military spending bound to come. The Solid South speaks less and less for America and more and more for itself alone….
The same Southern lock that once held the Democratic Party now divides the Republican Party from the socially liberal, fiscally moderate tendencies of the rest of America. The Southern bloc in the House majority can still prevent the President from enjoying any major legislative achievements, but it has no chance of enacting an agenda, and it’s unlikely to produce a nationally popular figure.
As its political power declines, the South might occupy a place...as a cultural draw for the rest of the country, with a hint of the theme park. Country music and NASCAR remain huge. Alabama teams have won the past four college football titles. After the Crimson Tide’s big win over Notre Dame on January 7th, a Web site called Real Southern Men explained the significance in terms of regional defiance: “Football matters here, because it is symbolic of the fight we all fight. Winning matters here, because it is symbolic of the victories we all seek. Trophies matter here, because they are symbolic of the respect we deserve but so rarely receive.”
That defiance is a sure sign, like Governor Rick Perry’s loose talk of Texas seceding,
that Southernization has run its course….
The South’s vices—“violence, intolerance, aversion and suspicion toward new ideas”—grow particularly acute during periods when it is marginalized and left behind. An estrangement between the South and the rest of the country would bring out the worst in both—
dangerous insularity in the first, smug self-deception in the second.
Southern political passions have always been rooted in sometimes extreme ideas of morality, which has meant, in recent years, abortion and school prayer…. The region is not entirely defined by Jim DeMint, Sam Walton, and the Tide’s A J McCarron. It would be better for America as well as for the South if Southerners rediscovered their hidden past and took up the painful task of
refashioning an identity
that no longer inspires their countrymen.” via Rush Limbaugh
Image below from New Yorker article conveys a place in decay.
Ed. note: The bigoted Mr. Packer says the US has one acceptable culture and it’s defined by the 2012 Obama voter. If you don’t conform, Packer says you should be ridiculed and isolated. He selects the US South for this treatment. He says at best the US South is an amusement park. He makes special mention of Alabama. I had never met anyone from Alabama until a few years ago when I lived in Florida for awhile. I didn’t find Alabamans to be as Packer describes. Some of them speak with a different accent than people from the North but that doesn’t make them a carnival act except to elitists like Mr. Packer. Most normal people including many in Alabama don’t see the silencing of free speech in a country of 300 million people as the “better” and benevolent thing Mr. Packer does.
He says the South's “exurban lifestyle“ has got to go, that it’s one of the things wrong with the South. There’s big money behind this idea. Eliminating exurbia (also known as “sprawl”) is one of the main goals of UN Agenda 21 and its local arm ICLEI.
Numerous US localities have become members of this group and are taking action against the alleged scourge of “exurbia.” Perhaps not wishing to pay money to have phonies and grifters get rid of its exurbia among other things, the state of Alabama has banned UN Agenda 21. By Mr. Packer's reasoning, such examples of independent thought should be put on display at a circus. It’s uniformity or nothing for Mr. Packer. Not because his ideas are necessarily good, but just that everyone must think the same. The penalty for not doing so is you get ridiculed. Ridicule silences most people but so far hasn’t worked on Alabama.
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Remember when diversity and free speech were championed by the left only a few years ago?
Hillary Clinton in 2003:
In 2003, Hillary Clinton very loudly stated: “I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you’re not patriotic. We should stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration.”
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Citations and links:
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““ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability”:
Taxpayer Dollars and Foundation Grants Help a U.N.-Inspired Group Show U.S. Cities How to Enact Climate Change Policies,” Capital Research Center, Nov. 2008
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12/23/11, “Maryland county charts a path out of Agenda 21,” Examiner.com, James S. Simpson
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“US Mayors’ Climate Action Handbook,” by ICLEI
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“UN Agenda 21 sounds like a conspiracy theory but it isn’t,” Democrats Against UN Agenda 21
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6/7/12, “Alabama Bans U.N. Agenda 21 Sovereignty Surrender,” Investors.com
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“Sprawl” will be eliminated by herding ignorant masses into crates in cities. Not unlike boarding a train to Auschwitz, we’ll surrender our automobiles as we do so:
“The campaign against suburbia is the result of laws passed in 2006 (the Global Warming Solutions Act) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and in 2008 (the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act).”…
4/6/12, “California Declares War on Suburbia,” WSJ.com, Wendell Cox,
“Planners want to herd millions into densely packed urban corridors. It won’t save the planet but will make traffic even worse.”
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Map of ICLEI members in Europe (UN Agenda 21′s local vehicle):
map from Democrats Against UN Agenda 21.
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Conformity is insured in Europe by layers of parasites. They have monarchies, a bloated EU, national governments, various UN sanctioned groups, Agenda 21 and ICLEI, and over all that,
Europe has Goldman Sachs to guarantee uniformity:
Nov. 18, 2011, “What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe,” UK Independent, Stephen Foley
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