Has it always been that way?
Whoa! Philosophers and sociologists have written weighty tomes and held endless debates on this very subject. Now you want an answer in 75 words or less?
OK, my personal belief is it’s the catfish. They are very slow to change, and quite suspicious of strangers too. Us folks down here are just about the only ones that eat catfish. Quite clearly, it follows that eating catfish causes conservativism.
Having grown up there, I’ll sum it up here: they don’t make any distinction between political beliefs and religious beliefs.
My take after way too many years in the region. Southerners have not liked certain changes: abolishing slavery, integration, voting rights, etc. Changes in this area are viewed as “progress”. It’s a short jump to being against all progress, presto: conservatives.
I have taught kids who were quite uncomfortable with learning a subject their parents didn’t learn. If their parents learned only algebra, the kids are hesitant about learning calculus.
There is just this incredibly “let’s keep things the same today as they were yesterday” attitude that I keep running into.
“If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.”
Winston Calhoun Churchill???
I think that quote is attributed to a lot of people, including Anonymous. I’m not sure who really came up with it.
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/myths/falsequotes.htm
This site says it sure as hell wasn’t Churchill.
As an atheistic southern conservative, who enthusiastically took on subjects my parents never had, let me contradict what dre2xl and ftg said.
One of the ideas that this country was founded on was that the government shouldn’t get involved in every aspect of my life - I should have freedom to do what I want as long as I’m not hurting others. After the Civil War, it was widely viewed as the government from the north, imposing its will on the people in the south. Yes, there’s a huge contradiction with the slavery issue, but the question is really about the attitudes of white people, since they’re the ones that are the most conservative.
So people in the south have grown up steeped in a belief in a libertarian form of government. However, the south is also very religious, so where libertarianism conflicts with religion, the religion tends to win on those questions. These blended together produce the stereotypical southern philosophy of “let me do what I want without government interference, but you must conform to my religious beliefs.”
Most areas that are principly agricultural tend strongly towards conservatism.
Midwest, South, rural areas of the West.
Pretty consistant.
Beware of sweeping generalizations.
There are some misconceptions and ahistorical arguments here.
Farm areas are not necessarily conservative. Minnesota is a farm state that is one of the more liberal parts of the country. Ohio tends to be balanced between liberals and conservatives—now one, now the other—and is pretty moderate overall. Ohio is an interesting mix of strongly agricultural areas and strongly urban industrial areas. You can’t make any facile generalizations about Ohio.
As for ahistorical stuff: In early America, the South was not known for being notably religious. The religious fanatics in those days were all from the North (mostly New England in the 1750s and upstate New York in the 1820s; the New York religious fanatics were the descendants of New Englanders who had migrated west).
The Federalists were the conservative party because they favored old money and fewer civil liberties. Their support was solidly in New England while they lasted. Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans were mainly based in Virginia and were the liberals of the day.
So it does not look as though the association of the South with religious fundamentalist right-wing politics goes all the way back. So does anyone have a historical analysis of how the South got that way?
From State and Local Government: Politics and Public Policies,, by David Saffell (Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1982), pp. 7-8:
[QUOTE]
[Political scientist Daniel] Elazar identifies three political cultures which can be found throughout the United States – individualistic, traditional, and moralistic. . . . These cultures have their roots in the three geographic regions of colonial America. The individualistic culture developed from the business centers of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore; the traditional culture developed from the plantation society of the Old South; and the moralistic culture developed from the tradition of Puritanism and town meetings in New England. As waves of settlers moved westward, these three cultures spread throughout the United States. . . .
Politics in the three political cultures can be described with respect to (1) degree of political participation, (2) development of governmental bureaucracy, and (3) amount of government intervention in society. Of the three dimensions, degree of political participation (i.e., voter turnout and suffrage regulations) is the most consistent indicator of political culture. In individualistic political culture, participation is limited because politics is viewed as just another means by which individuals may improve their economic and social position. Because corruption is accepted as a natural part of politics, its disclosure is unlikely to produce public protest. In moralistic cultures, political participation is regarded as the duty of each citizen in a political setting where government seeks to promote the public welfare of all persons. In traditional cultures, voter turnout is low and voting regulations are restrictive. Here government is controlled by an elite whose family and social position give it a “right” to govern. In many cases citizens are not even expected to vote.
In regard to development of governmental bureaucracy, the individualistic cultures limit government functions and provide only those few basic services demanded by the public. While bureaucracy is distrusted because of its potential to encroach on private matters, it is often used to advance the personal goals of public officials. In moralistic cultures, bureaucracy typically is permitted to expand to provide the public with the wide range of services they demand. Here government commitment to the public good, honesty, and selflessness leads to low levels of corruption. Traditional cultures tend to be antibureaucratic because a professional bureaucracy would interfere with the established pattern of personal relations developed by politicians.
In regard to government intervention into community affairs, both the individualistic and the traditional political cultures strive to protect private activities by limiting governmental intrusions. The moralistic culture, in contrast, fosters a definite commitment to government intervention; government is viewed as a positive force. The moralistic political culture also differs from the other two cultures in that its political campaigns are makred by an emphasis on issues rather than personalities.*
Saffell is drawing from Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View From the States, 2d ed. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1972), pp. 84-85. Saffell provides a map showing the traditional culture concentrated in the South and the southern fringe of the West, the individualistic culture in the Mid-Atlantic and the central Midwest, and the moralistic culture in New England, the northern Midwest, and the Pacific coast – with lots of local mixtures showing various combinations of the three.
I can’t put my hand on it at the moment, but another historian or political scientist has added a fourth culture – that is, the South is divided into the aristocratic “Piedmont” and the rough libertarian “Highland” cultures, a difference illustrated by the split between Virginia and West Virginia – and he traces all four back to England. The early colonial South was dominated by aristocratic Cavaliers, the Appalachians were colonized by Scotch-Irish and border English, and New England by Puritans from East Anglia. In this theory, these early colonists set the tone for the local culture, political and otherwise, and their influence survived later waves of immigration – immigrants mostly assimilated to the local culture of whatever part of the county they settled in. Of course, before the 1960s the South was never a very attractive destination for immigrants, compared with other parts of the country, so it stands to reason that the colonial cultures would be even more durable in the South than elsewhere. Kevin Phillips used this theory extensively in his book The Cousins’ Wars, which purports to find common threads running through the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War.
Here is a thought. Modern conservatism can be seen as a philosophy in which rich and powerful people convince poor people to support things that are not in their self interest (recent tax cut are an example). Since Southern states have worse educational systems it is easier for rich people to convince poor southerners to take conservative stands.
I doubt that’s it, becuase:
a.) inner-city schools are so often cited as the worst educationally, and you don’t see threads about “Why are Los Angeles and New York so conservative?”
b.) what conservatism is has nothing to do with people being convinced to do stupid stuff; rather, it’s a tendency against change.
Andrew “NO .SIG MAN” “Juan” Perron, who has no idea what does cause it.
Hey Dan, give me a cite for that bit about the south having poor schools, or are you just trying to pass off the south as inferior?
Yes, I was thinking about this last night. A lot of conservatives down here (I’m in Texas) don’t really seem to understand why they’re conservative; it’s just that they “sure as hell don’t want some dadgum liberal spending all their money on welfare.” There’s no conception of how much money goes to welfare, how much money goes to right-leaning causes, or the value of a balanced budget. They just want liberals to stop wasting money on welfare!! And anybody who thinks differently is an idiot, damn it! But how have they benefited from being conservatives? From tax cuts? Really? Hey, I’m all for tax cuts as well, but don’t sell me a tax cut without cutting any spending.
well no, at one point the Native Americans lived there. Native American to Euoropeans, thats quite a change.
The Federalists also favored a dominant federal government, increased governmental spending, and budget deficits, which we might consider modern “liberal” positions.
The D-Rs favored strong state governments, low government spending, and balanced budgets, which we might consider modern “conservative” positions.
Patiently awaiting the thread-transfer…
I would guess that the more content one is with his situation, then the more conservative (little c) one would be. And vice-versa. It’s great down here.
I would refer the OP to the famous Bush-Gore map or Red Areas versus Blue Areas. From that perspective, the question might be better asked, why are people who live near a coast voting, um, un-conservatively. This is not intended to be a political posting, but I would bet if someone viewed the map which is pretty much all red with blue trim, that person might ask the opposite of the original question.
Yes, I understand that the map is an area, not popular, representation of the votes, but the question is an area question.
Well, let’s see. “How long has the South been conservative?” First, define “conservative”. We might say that conservatives today (a) oppose government spending on social welfare programs; (b) generally support high defense spending and an active American military presence overseas; and © support government promotion of personal morality, including monogamy and abstinence from (or moderation in) alcohol, drug abuse, and gambling. By these standards, I would agree that most white Southerners today are conservative.
So, how long has this been the case? Well, how far back does this definition make sense? Who were the “conservatives” in the campaign between Adams and Jefferson, or Jackson and Clay? I submit that today’s definition is workable about as far back as 1900. Before that, nobody was promoting social welfare programs, conflicts over foreign policy were fought on different terms, and until the Prohibition movement, nobody much thought of the federal government as a vehicle to promote morality.
So has the South been consistently conservative since 1900? Generally, yes. As a result of the extreme poverty which gripped the South during the Depression, there was some support for social spending in the early New Deal years. It was an aberration, however, and many Southerners opposed Roosevelt for renomination by 1940 (although they continued to vote Democratic in general elections).
Why has this been the case? (1) Government social spending, and an expanded role for the federal government in general, invariably tended to promote integration, which was anathema to the white South. (2) The Southern experience in the Civil War involved virtually every white family with military service, and white Southerners reminisced about and glorified that experience for decades afterward. This fostered an outlook inherently favorable to a strong military. (3) Southern religious traditions, dating back to the colonization patterns identified by BrainGlutton, have promoted a favorable view of laws to encourage personal morality.
This topic is probably best covered in Great Debates, so I’ll move this thread over there.
bibliophage
moderator GQ