Very occasionally, I receive a comment that merits a post on its own, to invite further comments from other readers. Herewith, one received yesterday:
You are spending too much time on line with the US paleocons.
Their small town agricultural and industrial protectionism puts them out of step with Middle America. Your small town agricultural and industrial protectionism puts you out of step with Middle Britain.
Their opposition to the war on terror puts them out of step with Middle America. Your opposition to the war on terror puts you out of step with Middle Britain.
Their traditionalist Catholicism and affinities with Eastern Orthodoxy and the old schools of Episcopalianism, Presbyterianism, Methodism and Lutheranism put them out of step with Middle America. Your traditionalist Catholicism and affinities with Eastern Orthodoxy and the old schools of Anglicanism, Nonconformity and Scotch Presbyterianism put you out of step with Middle Britain.
Their abomination of the name of Abraham Lincoln and their sympathy with Southern secession put them out of step with Middle America. Your abomination of the name of Winston Churchill and now your sympathy with a potential cause of Northern secession, with "Churchill and the miners" obviously in the background, puts you out of step with Middle Britain.
What do people think?
Unceasingly amazed at who reads this blog, I have received several terribly high-powered emails today from people to whom it had apparently also occurred that the loss of either Scotland or Wales would at best raise serious questions as to why the North should remain tied to a part of the country which holds us in cultural contempt (although at least we are not ignored completely, as the West Country is) while relying on us to bail out its wretched City with the fruits of our proper economic base that it despises.
Without the farming, fishing, manufacturing and shopkeeping land of an economically leftish social conservatism rooted in Catholicism, Presbyterianism and Episcopalianism; without the farming, manufacturing and shopkeeping land of an economically leftish social conservatism rooted in Catholicism, several varieties of Nonconformity, and the sane High Churchmanship that provides the background music to the Church in Wales; then what, exactly, would there be in the Union for our enormous population and, compared to the South East, our vastly more reliable economy?
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Yes, Yes, Yes! Like the Scots, we could take back control of our fisheries. Like the Scots and especially the Welsh, we could dig back into our vast unused reserves of coal. The opportunities are endless.
ReplyDeleteThe supporters of Lincoln, who had been willing to preserve slavery as the price of saving the Union and who wanted to transport all blacks from America to Africa, were as anti-Catholic as they were anti-Southern and one of the first acts of the Civil War was the burning of Charleston's Ursuline convent by Lyell Beecher, father of Harriet Beecher Stowe. She was one of numerous abolitionists who went on to take no further interest in black welfare once the Civil War was over.
ReplyDeleteThe Republican Party defined itself against anyone - the rural South, poor (often Catholic) white labor, poor black labor, the Native Americans on the frontier, anybody at all - who stood in the way of an empire of capital. They denied outright that an American working class could exist, only what Lincoln called "young starters". Very soon after the War, Republicans were railing against universal suffrage and publishing cartoons of the two monkey-like figures of "The Ignorant Vote" named "Paddy and Sambo".
That party was largely founded by the Forty-Eighters who went on to be particularly brutal Union officers. They were German and Austro-Hungarian Communists who had fled to America after the failure of the 1848 Revolutions.
From what you describe, this is very much indeed like the conflict between the North of England and the people who have taken over the government of the UK.
Mr. Lindsay, unlike your sock puppets I disagree with you about many things.
ReplyDeleteI do think that your critic who said "Your opposition to the war on terror puts you out of step with Middle Britain" is talking cack. Most people I know support withdrawal from Afghanistan & Libya.
The majority of those I know who don't support withdrawal do so not because they are neocons but out of misplaced loyalty to our troops. I say misplaced loyalty because if they were REALLY loyal to our troops then they would want them bought safely home.
As depicted in Gone With The Wind, there were lots of Catholics in the Old South.
ReplyDeleteThe Episcopal Church, founded by High Church SPG missionaries and with its name and bishops taken from the Jacobite Scotch insisters on liturgical worship and episcopal polity, was the Established Church in the South whereas the Establishment in New England was Puritan Congregational.
Jefferson Davis was an Episcopalian with Tractarian leanings and the Papacy actually recognized the Confederacy because the no less racist Union was so extremely anti-Catholic.
So Scotland, a manufacturing and agrarian country of Catholics and Calvinists with a few influential Episcoplian gentry and intellectuals, might go her own way? So Wales, an industrial and agrarian country of Catholics and Calvinistic Methodists with a few influential High Church gentry and intellectuals, might go her own way?
In that case, let the North, a manufacturing and agrarian country of Catholics and Methodists with a few influential High Church gentry and intellectuals, go her own way. Good luck from a manufacturing and agrarian country of Catholics and Baptists with a few influential Episcoplian gentry and intellectuals, which once tried to go our own way, too.
Sock puppets? Hardly! I am finding this thread most educational.
ReplyDeleteAssures you that we read you as much as you read us, David. This idea is fascinating.
ReplyDeleteAnd you certainly do "disagree with [me] about many things". Many, many, many things.
ReplyDelete"And you certainly do "disagree with [me] about many things". Many, many, many things."
ReplyDeleteAmen.
I am afraid I don't recognise this free trading, rabidly pro-imperialist "Middle America" of your critic. Certainly there is this Baptist-Pentecostal-Non-Denominational Fox News-watching segment of the population which is slowly growing, but even it (or especially it) is protectionist and weary of putting troops in harm's way (as they are often related to them). And people watch Fox News and listen to Limbaugh in part because there is no paleoconservative or nationalist conservative voice allowed to flourish.
ReplyDelete