The Southern Way Part 1

In a new addition to the Blog... I will try each day to at least post a few historical things that happened each day...

Today May 22nd_

-1807 Aaron Burr indicted on charges of Treason
-1826 HMS Beagle departs on 1st voyage
-1956=Preston Brooks (SC) beats Charles Sumner (Mass) with a cane in the Senate
-1906 Wright Brothers awarded Patent #821.393 for their "Flying Machine"
-1968 USS Scorpion disappears
-1980 Namco releases "Pac Man"
-1992 Johnny Carson hosts his last "Tonight Show"
-2002 a Birmingham, AL jury convicts former KKK member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murders of 4 girls in the bombing of the 16th street church.
 -2011 Joplin Tornado


This post is just the 1st part of what I hope to make a regular part of the blog, a take on being from the South.

I am a proud Southerner, I take immense pride in the fact that I am from the South. I love her and her people. But I also am not blind or ignorant to her past mistakes and failures. We must face them, acknowledge them, and move to correct them and ensure they are never repeated. But this has to be done by ourselves, it cannot and should not be done by any outsiders.

Southerners are proud people, fiercely proud of our heritage and our ancestors. We are also fiercely loyal, stubborn, and once set in our way, not even a hurricane can move us. Right or wrong these facts will always trump just about anything else. We are raised that way, to honor and protect family (this includes not just immediate family but extended family, close friends, even to community) above all. This is part of the reason for the Civil War, it is something that outsiders (especially Northerners) can never understand.

I personally believe this is (at least) partly a by product of our Scotch-Irish ancestry. Now I understand not all Southerners are Scotch-Irish but the main backbone of the South is Scotch-Irish. And this is a natural outgrowth from their shared Celtic Tribal/Clan culture. In that heritage, the Tribe (and eventually Clan) came first. You owed your first loyalty to that group and that was carried over when they settled this country. This was a steel part of out soul long before our ancestors came over and it always will be. This is why we identify more with where we grow up more than those from the North do. This is why during the Civil War, Southerners tended to side with the South and more importantly their State over the United States.. over the Union.

We Southerners can and will always fix our errors without outside help, BUT we often do not fix them fast enough, much to our lasting regret and sorrow. We also MUST fix them on our own, any outsiders CANNOT do it for us. I am not saying they should't necessarily try (that is a debate for a different day) but that it won't do any good. All it does is cause us to "bow up" our backs and circle the war wagons. It is viewed as intrusion and interference by outsiders and will ALWAYS cause us to "close up the shop". We must work through them on our own, we only hope that we learn from past mistakes and learn to recognize them sooner and fix them before too much damage is done.

This next part will generate much debate (from all 3 of you that read it that is...lol) but it is my opinion. Part of the reason we had to go through the Civil Rights struggle was because of the Civil War. It is my contention (and I have no facts or basis for this other than my own opinion) that we would have eventually recognized the evils of slavery and ended that horrible blot on our past, but in our own way and on our own time. Please don't construe that statement as condoning it, it is not and it should have ended sooner than it did and as far slavery is concerned is a good thing the war happened and it ended. I just mean that while it ended slavery itself, it did not end the reasons behind it and out of that grew the Civil Rights struggles and evil of the 1900's. I do feel that if we had been allowed to work through it and ended it on our own, then we could have avoided a lot of what went down in the 50's and 60's. It would not have prevented all of it because their is evil out there and there always will be, but we could have avoided some of it.

Of course, such evil as slavery and racism can never be overcome without struggle and pain. Much of it is necessary, for it must be punished and eradicated and just like cancer our other diseases, that is not done without pain and struggle.

Anyway, this is only part 1 and I have rambled on long enough and probably stirred up enough problems so I will end Part 1 here. I just wanted to say that right or wrong, being such a proud, loyal, stubborn people there are some things we HAVE to work through ourselves. Even with all the sin and evil and errors of our past, I am still and ALWAYS will be a proud Southerner.