Paul,

1. I didn't know General Franco was involved. If it is a reference to civil war, he was a fascist and his side won, so I don't get it. If it is a reference to banana republics and other neocolonialisms, I have to admit that those types of governments are still most certainly alive and well in the South as far as its relationship to the North is concerned. If it's a direct comparison to our current President, I would have to agree that, like Franco, George Bush and his buddies seem determined to keep doing exactly what they have been doing all along until they are dragged kicking and screaming from the White House.

Lloyd Bentsen, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Edwards... doesn't sound like it's been sleeping to me.

2. Are you saying it is conservative but it's not sleeping because of the Democratic politicians you listed. Why not list Southern presidents. That way we could include Jimmy Carter, G.H.W. Bush and George Bush as well? Except for the last two, (which might be considered, along with Jeb, carpetbaggers), they were also from the South. If we go back and look at the presidents elected since the South went South (after the passage of civil rights), the majority of presidents have been from the South. Where the Republican party was concerned it most certainly was sleeping and they most certainly woke it up.

Sorry, but the South is inherently conservative, at least so far as the white South is concerned. Hispanic migration is pretty much the key to changing that for the South as a whole.

3. I agree and I hope that was your understanding of what I wrote. I do, however, question the "inherently" part of the statement. Is the white South inherently conservative because of its history of slavery, or because of its origination in agrarian as opposed to manufacturing economies, or because of its chronic poverty and perpetual neocolonial status?

I was not talking about the white South, but the South as it exists today and as it is likely to exist in the future.

I am not a pollster and I have not done demographics in years, but this is a discussion worth having and I'm going to do my home work and get back to you. I will say that any demographer worth his or her salt will most certainly look at trends in race, religion, age, education, income, birthrates and migration no matter what they are looking at, especially politics. Many southern states have large minority populations, up to a third in some cases. Much of the focus on Hispanic immigration on the part of the Bush administration was corporatist cheap-labor driven and much of the resistance by many in his party was the result of the liberal leanings of those same Hispanics. Religion is a key determinant of voting tendencies in the Hispanic community as it is in much of the African American community. That is what really led me to my sleeping giant thesis.

That is the reason I brought up the Hispanic population. I feel very strongly about this. If the secular left component of the Democratic party dogmatically insists on an anti-religious agenda, they will lose the respect and support (and eventually the votes) of the Hispanic population in the same way that they have lost the respect and support of other religious minority populations. The Republican party is expert in recruiting ethnic minorities against the minorities' own best interests. Until David Treen was elected in 1980 Louisiana had not had a Republican governor in over 100 years. It is amazing to me that Bobby Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants, a Hindu converted to Catholicism and about as anti-abortion and hard-right as you can get, is poised to become only the third Republican governor in Louisiana in over a century.

Catholics are anti-abortion but they are not radical conservatives. By and large, they are moderate, but they also represent some of the most progressive, intellectually rigorous and politically active people you will find anywhere.

This response is getting lengthy, so I'll cut to the chase.

I do have a problem with trying to pretend that the Civil War was the North's fault. And like it or not, that is the real political subtext at the bottom of Southern conservatism.

4. Yes, that is the real political subtext at the bottom of Southern conservatism and it was and remains a lie. Who is pretending that the civil war was the North's fault? Not me. It was a war of secession. Hey North, we're leaving. No, you're not. Yes, we are. No, you're not . . .

But what happened after the civil war had a great deal to do with the complete and total failure of the entire society to support progressive change. With the exception of the aggressive economic exploitation of a broken society by all elites, the South was basically abandoned by the North after the war. The manufacturing was in the North, but the natural resources were in the South. The Gilded Age industrialists were not too keen on human rights and living wages if I remember correctly. And the Southern elites were more than happy to provide the assistance necessary to convert the South from a principally agricultural economy into an extraction (how apt) economy that helped fuel (more irony) America's rise to a global superpower. It might be considered rude to put a handful of manure under a person's nose to make a point, but show me a better example than Katrina of the continuing racism and economic exploitation of the poor by the rich. Opportunism and greed is an equal opportunity employer and there are plenty of elites, North and South and East and West to go around.

Thanks again for your comments. Whether I agree or disagree, I admire your honesty and your willingness to back up your statements with facts and research.