Given its multi-national nature, it is unsurprising that a fierce culture war rages in the United States today. When different cultural, ethnic and religious groups are forced together under a single government it is only to be expected that a competition will ensue over cultural and legal dominance. Once again the very distinctive culture and politics of the South is pitted against the Progressive, deracinated culture of most of the rest of the US. Kim Severson writes for the New York Times:
Food has always been a complex issue in the South, where the country’s most distinct culinary region often eats its supper against a backdrop of race and religion.
So for a Southerner like Justin Breen, whether or not to go to Chick-fil-A is not as simple as choosing sides in a national cultural war that has pitted people who support the chain’s biblical position on homosexuality against those who do not.
For Mr. Breen, a young motion graphic designer with many tattoos, a baseball cap and a best friend in the gay pornography business, the chain’s chicken sandwiches and waffle fries transcend all the protests and political symbolism that have played out this week.
“Chick-fil-A is tradition,” he said after his regular stop for a chicken biscuit breakfast on Tuesday.
Tradition, whether in food or social issues, is laced throughout daily life in the South.
Restaurants in small towns often close early on Wednesday nights so Christians can go to choir practice and Bible study. Skirmishes over displaying the Confederate flag are framed as hate versus heritage, and churches are still largely racially segregated simply because that is how communities divide themselves.
And Southerners also tend to be emotional about their food, which is a great defining aspect of the region.
“One of the most controversial stories I wrote was about tomato sandwiches,” Kathleen Purvis, the longtime food editor at The Charlotte Observer, said of the Southern summer staple.
People here are both proud and fiercely protective of homegrown brands whose reach, like that of the 1,600-store Chick-fil-A chain, has stretched past Southern borders. So when outsiders begin to criticize a Southern food institution, the wagons circle.
“We are the only defeated Americans, at least until Vietnam,” Ms. Purvis said. “Southerners have always had a sense that everybody puts us down, so we need to defend what is ours.”
This article and all-too familiar struggle between the very different cultures of the traditional South and most of the rest of the United States bring to mind the following insightful declaration made long ago by South Carolina statesman Robert Barnwell Rhett:
The Constitution of the United States was an experiment. That experiment consisted in uniting under one government different peoples, living in different climates, and having different pursuits of industry and institutions…. The experiment has failed.’
Thanks to Occidental Dissent for the article!
Sounds very much like they’re trying to whitewash away the fact that most people stand with Chick-fil-A over the president’s stand against gay marriage and make it all about honoring “tradition” regardless of the reason, just because it’s a “southern institution” and that’s the only thing important. What hogwash!!
That last line, “the experiment has failed” sounds very familiar. I believe Julius Caesar said something similar about Rome’s republic. We need a Caesar today to come in and save our traditional values.
Centralisation has failed, VS. Multi-nationalism has failed. Different peoples should not be forced together under a single government. That was Rhett’s point. And history has certainly proved him correct.
This country could stand to learn a lot from Rome, the only empire to successfully be multicultural. They did not actively persecute other cultures within their borders, but they also made it very clear that if you want *all* of the benefits that come with Roman rule, you must become a Roman. You must accept Roman culture, speak Latin, be loyal to the Emperor, etc. You must be a Roman. There was none of this “cultural equality” nonsense until much later, and that was when Rome declined.
VS, As soon as Rome opened up citizenship for non-Romans, and especially for non-Italians who were essentially incapable of ‘becoming Roman,’ they were doomed to collapse. They eventually forced citizenship on all the peoples of the empire for taxation purposes. They made lots of mistakes in the last couple of hundred years. But their biggest mistake was thinking that they could make Romans out of Syrians, Arabs, Egptians, Hebrews, Slavs, Germans, etc. They could no more do that than we can make Southerners out of Mexicans, Japanese, Haitians, Arabs, etc. Like the Romans, we are a particular nation of people – an ethnic/cultural body – and once we begin pretending otherwise and give that up that which we are, we will disappear as a people.
Stand up for Southern values and Southern Business in August! Visit the Active South website, and help promote Southern values and Southern businesses like Chick-Fil-A. You can learn all about what’s going on with this “battle”, and find Biblical support through a sample letter. There’s also a place where you can email or call some of the miscreants involved in this affair who are blatantly anti-christian and anti-southern: http://activesouth.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/chick-fil-a-southern-company-under-fire-for-christian-beliefs/
Exactly, Michael. Which is why Rome was stronger when citizenship was limited. And for those not already citizens, it had to be earned in the Auxilia. 20 years in a nation’s army will make a national and a loyalist out of you. But you are also right that too much cultural difference makes assimilation impossible. The Greeks eventually adopted the Roman identity, seeing themselves as true Romans for a millennium after the fall of the Western Empire, and maintaining good Roman virtues. The Britons also came to see themselves as Romans, though theirs was more a hybrid culture than an actual assimilation into Roman culture. But no other non-Italian region truly became “Roman” en masse. And universal citizenship only made it worse.
I wish more Southerners would recognize (like Ms. Purvis) that they are a defeated/conquered people (I think Kathleen Parker alluded to this same point in another opinion piece.) If most Southerners understood this, they would not volunteer to join the Federal military, they would not graciously tithe to the Federal government, and they would not gather to salute the Federal rag and sing Federal songs.