"Despising Dixie" -- A Friendly Yankee Responds to Anti-South Book "Better Off Without 'Em"

Daniel J. Flynn, a writer at the American Spectator, takes author Chuck Thompson to the woodshed for "despising Dixie."  Thompson is the author who wrote the stupid little book, "Better Off Without 'Em," which I panned in a prior post.

Flynn defends the Southern contribution to America, and writes:

Even a Yankee unable to pronounce the letter "r" can articulate the charms of the drawling South. America's military heroes, from George Washington to Alvin York to Dakota Meyer, have disproportionately come from below the Mason-Dixon line. Whether one drinks Coke or Pepsi, Jack Daniel's or Jim Beam, one drinks to the South. Has the CNN travel writer traveled to Savannah, Charleston, or Nashville? The musicians who invented rock 'n' roll -- Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers -- all hailed from the South. It's also a fact that the South has better fiction: Flannery O'Connor, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, etc.

Who but a hater wants to discard all that?

Read it all here.

Hat tip to Stacy McCain for the link.

Dumb-Ass Yankee Runs Down the South in "Better Off Without 'Em"

Some Northern jackass has written a book urging that Southern secession finally be allowed to proceed.  Chuck Thompson, a self-proclaimed liberal, believes the South is so backward and culturally inferior that the North would be "Better Off Without 'Em," which is the title of his poisonous little tome.

Thompson toured the South looking for evidence that his preconceived notions and prejudices were true all along.  Southerners are people who believe (bwa-ha-ha!) in God, Fox News and the Republican Party.  How backward can you get?  Don't the Southrons know that such things are uncool in the snooty cocktail parties of Boston and New York?

"Better Off Without "Em" is a narcissistic, Northern exercise in snobbery and conceit, a way of saying "Look how COOL, sophisticated, enlightened and educated WE ARE compared to these laughable Southerners!  We are just SO SUPERIOR!"  However, Thompson's orgy of self-congratulation does underscore an important difference between Yankees and Southrons.  The former (like Thompson) care deeply about their social standing, and desperately need validation, esteem and acceptance from other "sophisticates."  In order to achieve this high level of snobbery, it is important to go to the right schools, hold the right opinions, and vote for the right (which means left) candidates.  Southrons just don't give a damn, viewing such values as superficial and such attitudes as nonsense.

In spite of the book's rampant bigotry, however, it does reach a point we can all agree with.  The South would be much "better off without 'em."  However, the corollary isn't true.  Just as Lincoln could not let the South go, neither can the modern day liberals and leftists of  today, and for the same reason:  they need our tax revenues.  Parasites cannot survive without a host.

Update:  See also the Wall Street Journal's review, reprinted in Southern Partisan.