The Yankee Nation

Some of my readers have asked me why I insist on referring to the "Yankee Nation" instead of the United States.  It is a fair question.

The short answer, as many already know, is that the federal association of States - as we now exist - are no longer united in any meaningful sense.  There are far more instances of separation of purpose, values and political philosophy among us than existed under the Constitution when it was written.  There are even more differences between our present condition than the unity that existed under the Articles of Confederation.

But there is more.

From the outset, the States found differences among themselves.  Current Revisionist historians would like us to believe that the chief difference between the North and the Southern States was the "Peculiar Institution".  Certainly, there were Northern people who owned slaves as did Southrons.  The chief differences, however, were ones of pride versus humility.

Locked as they were into a seemingly self-perpetuating cycle of supposed intellectual superiority,  people of the North (especially the "scholarly class") supposed that very little enlightenment existed outside of  New England.  The system of higher education of the North, constructed by Puritans and Congregationalists, tended to rely upon the proofs of circular logic to legitimize their high opinions of their thoughts.  Later, this dynamic was also morphed into an East/West dichotomy.  (When your blogger graduated from a well-known school in Virginia and was headed to Arizona, the faculty was horrified.  "Agent Nowhere Man", they said, "you know, of course, that the synapses don't fire as well West of the Mississippi ... don't you?")

The pride among the Yankees is as brutal as it is demeaning to their supposed inferiors.  Because we enjoy life at a different pace, because we speak English more closely accented as it is in England, because our choices in food tend to be more basic and because our existence is more aligned with the soil than it is with political thought we are judged by Yankees to be less-than-equal to them.

When the Brig. Gen. Stand Waite, CSA - a Cheokee - heard of General lee's surrender on 9 April 1865, he was truly amazed.  Both Lee and Waite (worlds apart in social experience) were both men of the soil.  Finally, Gen. Waite surrendered at Doaksville, Indian Territory two months later.  Lee moved on from Richmond to the presidency of Washington College; Waite moved into financial disintegration.  Both men, however, remained with the soil.  It was what they knew and it was who they were.

In the same month that Gen. Waite surrendered, Gen. Joseph Shelby, Texas Gov. Pendelton Murrah and others went to Mexico in search of new soil.  They never found it.  My own ancestors returned to the Tidewater area of Virginia and into the hands of Carpetbaggers - probably wishing that they could have gone to Mexico to make a go of the Colonia Carlota.

"And for a Carpetbagger, I do not give a damn.
So it's forward to the frontier, soon as I can go.
I'll fix me up a weapon and start for Mexico."

The Carpetbagger was the second instance of Yankee Nation active aggression against the South.  The first (the War to Prevent Southern Independence) was characterized by active force of arms against us.  The Carpetbag Aggression was simply backed by the threat of force of arms.  Officially, Yankee Nation Carpetbagging ended in 1877; unofficially, it has been going on ever since then.

They have moved in among us.  We have sent our children to be educated in their universities.  Worst of all, we have hired many of them to teach in our universities to teach our future leaders and Statesmen.  Because this dynamic has been going on for more than three-quarters of a century, many Southrons have fallen prey to belief in large portions of the Yankee myth.  Insidiously, elements of that myth have crept into the belief system of many of our Southern "leaders".  The current Governor of North Carolina comes to mind.  The Yankee myth was bad enough when it simply stayed in the North.  Now, however, they're telling it to us on our own soil.

The myth that they tell themselves about us is that we are backwards, less educated and more "religious" than they are.  That, they believe, cements our status as being less-than-equal to them in all respects.  It is their belief and that belief is their religion.  The average Yankee worships his sad belief just as surely as we worship the Holy Trinity and they have spent decade after decade in their attempt to convince us of its veracity.

My contemporary, Old Rebel, has recently posted a link to Valerie Protopapas' open letter to a famous Yankee Nation protagonist, Bill O'Reilly.  O'Reilly is a True Believer in all myths of the Yankee Nation.  He is an ardent proponent of The Yankee Nation sending Yankee Nation troops on foreign military escapades.  In the company with other Yankee Nation apologists (Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, etc.), O'Reilly (and the others who have never served one day in the military) have no problem exposing young people to danger for all the wrong reasons.

O'Reilly, Limbaugh, et al, collectively and individually suffer from the deep delusion that Yankee Nation myths are solidly true.  Since they are such unquestioning True Believers, then they also believe all portions of the myth such as: Southrons are unalterably backwards and are in need of close supervision by our ethical and intellectual betters.  We cling, they believe, to a contorted understanding of the Constitution and must be protected from the potential fruits of our error.

We have grown weary of their protection and their arrogance; we yearn for freedom.

Deo Vindice