I’m a Republican. I love latte. I live in L.A. half the time. I eat organic food sometimes, I just don’t make a religion of it. I can grow or shoot my own food. I have an “Ivy League comparable” education and I know all sorts of multi-syllable words and I even speak two languages. But I’m from a town of 1,200 — in the racist South, no less! So I guess that sucks all my accomplishments into a black hole.

“…structures and privileges of Southern Post-Reconstruction society.”

Are you KIDDING me? Have you BEEN to the South? Or read a semi-objective book about reconstruction? Among the many other things I get tired of is the holier-than-thou attitude of people from outside of the south who try to pretend that kidnapping Irish farm girls from their families and forcing them to work in sweatshops in the northeast was NOT slavery. And like a lot of other people from the south, I have white ancestors who were slaves. And you really think that Reconstruction was the kindly people from the north coming HELP us? Would you like to know WHY there aren’t big city elitists in the south? Because, as you might notice, there aren’t big cities! Now, why is that?

I really resent the attitude, stated or otherwise, that southern Republicans are racists. I’m not saying that racism never existed in the south and doesn’t still exist, but it has long since stopped being a prevailing attitude. In 2008, white Republicans (which is not redundant, but the only thing liberals hate worse than Republicans is black Republicans) are not opposed to Obama because he’s black. Give me a break. THAT is exactly the kind of elitism we’re trying to tell you we’re sick of!

Unfortunately the Democrats (and some Republians) will work very hard to neutralise this influence and either before the election (via Democrats) or shortly after (via Republicans) she will be moved to a safe place where she can affect nothing substantial.

The British settlers who founded this country came from very different parts of the UK and settled in different areas in the US. I highly recommend the book “Albion’s Seed” by David Hackett Fischer which traces the 4 British folkways in America that shaped this country to a very large extent. The Puritans from the eastern fens of England who settled in New England were diametrically opposed to the “Distressed Cavaliers” from the south of England who moved to the Chesepeake Bay area. The Quakers from the English Midlands who settled in PA and Delaware had almost nothing in common with the largest immigrant group, those from the English/Scottish borderlands and Northern Ireland who moved into the backcountry of New Hampshire, Penn., Virginia and Georgia.

All of these groups disliked and distrusted the others. The “red state/blue state” divide didn’t begin in 1972 or 1980 or 2000 – it was there before the founding of the country. Bostonians and Virginians held each other in contempt even before slavery was introduced. The orginal “Redneck culture” existed long before America did – it was formed from hundreds of years of cattle rustling and battles along the Scottish-English border. Because the “borderers” (commonly, but inaccurately known as “Scotch-Irish”) were the most numerous group by far, they have molded much of US culture – individualistic, tough, anti-elitist, pioneering, practical and yes, also, violent and frequently contemptous of “book larnin’.”

You seem to believe that extreme specialization entitles one to rule, ala any PhD. I would certainly argue that rising at 3am, when one is 16 and still at studies and extracurricular activities, to track, kill, dress and retrieve large game, especially a young girl who does so, elevates one to elite status, far more than knowing every little detail about the tsetse fly.

That which you identify with Plebian classes would have scandalised the society that gave us the Plebians themselves. After all, Lucretia was known for her spinning, not her expertise in the ethnographic expression of spinning techniques among Persians. Cincinatus is recalled for his warrior’s courage and his farmer’s humility, not his extraordinarily deep study of the effects of tax increases on olive production.

Your heart may be in the right place, MM, (and I admit this is obviously debatable) but your extraordinarily myopic worldview is on full display in this post. As is your abject fealty to modernity, as oppressive a thought system as man ever did devise.

The modern conservative DOES respect the elite. . . as long as the elite agrees with what the modern conservative antecedently believes.