There are Democratic and Republican areas of the country that have nothing to do with North, South, East, or West. But it’s still true that the Democratic Party and Barack Obama are, by far, least popular in the South. More than that, though, the politicians that represent the South are the ones least likely to oppose the torture of detainees or the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. I don’t want to pick on the South. I am well aware that it was a Republican from San Diego who justified the atrocities at Guantanamo Bay by saying that they were served two kinds of fruit, orange-glazed chicken, and rice pilaf. I am well aware that the Michele Bachman is from Minnesota, Tom Tancredo is from Colorado, and Steve King is from Iowa.
But it is the South that delivers almost all of its electoral votes to the Republicans and that elects the lion’s share of Republicans to Congress. New England has rejected Republicanism so thoroughly that there are currently no New England Republicans serving in Congress. Of the three New England Republicans still serving in the Senate, two voted with the Democrats on the economic recovery act and the other briefly joined Obama’s cabinet.
One thing I’ve noticed about the politics of the progressive blogosphere is that it seems to reject the totalitarian tendencies of the old left. Almost all the prominent progressive bloggers are soft on federal gun control and are committed civil libertarians. Few of these voices would have been committed Cold Warriors, but almost none of them would fail to defend freedom of religion and the right of the public to be free from invasions of privacy.
In other words, even the so-called fringe of the Left in this country…the people that have been committed opponents of the Bush administration…are more committed libertarians than the Right as expressed by their Southern base.
It appears to me that the South, left to its own devices, would quickly abandon core elements of American tradition like the commitment to the Geneva Conventions, the fourth amendment, the separation of powers, and meaningful restraints on executive power. That is the reason I ask whether our cultures are compatible and reconcilable.