"In its economy, the South was a banana republic, a commodity-exporting resource colony in which a "comprador bourgeoisie" of local landowners and local businessmen collaborated with investors in New York and elsewhere in fleecing the region."

The South still is a Banana Republic. I'll bet 3/4 of the American taxpayers don't know how Haley Barbour in Mississippi ripped them off with more FEMA money than what should have been provided. Barbour used Bush to take more and more and more for fewer and fewer and fewer citizens. He didn't want relief and he didn't expect to everyone to be made whole. It went beyond that. He expected a complete revitalization fund for his entire state.

Here your classic example of the mentality still pervasive in the South: When insurance companies, rightly, refused to pay for flood damage to homeowners who did not have flood insurance, Barbour sough and received millions of extra taxpayer funds for these homeeowners to rebuild anyway. These homeowners, for about $20 extra a month, could have purchased flood insurance with their homeowner's policies and protected themselves.

Here's what was reported as their excuse for not doing do. "The government said we didn't need it (flood insurance)." Well, that's not entirely accurate, but it makes for a handy scape goat. Upon establishing their mortgages, they were provided information that showed they were not residing in a flood zone. Of course, maybe they were not informed that the Flood Maps had not been changed since the early 1980's, that is was up to FEMA to update the maps, and their own state elected officials also could have updated the maps showing new flood zones. They live in a low water area, in hurricane country, surrounded by rivers, creeks, bayous, lakes, ponds, and the Gulf of Mexico and they don't think they need any flood insurance?

Of course the insurance companies, with their history of greed, were sued. They lost in court, which now looks like was a fixed job as some Mississippi judges and one particularly infamous trial attorney has been indicted for bribery. When the insurance companies were told to pay these homeowners, they had already received grant funds from the federal government to rebuild. When asked if they should return that money to the federal taxpayers, here was the response from more than one elected Bubbba, "These people have suffered enough. Leave them alone."

That's right. The poor, poor victims of the South, being picked on. And the Daddy Longwinds sitting there in Jackson protecting them from the prying eyes of the rest of the country. That's Southern Fried values. Greed. Greed. And more Greed. Even Barbour's relatives got caught with FEMA contracts and ripping off the taxpayers. Trent Lott has some family in trouble with the law too. I think he's related to that trial attorney being indicted for bribery. It's a family affair in the South, where the only reason to be a Democrat is to expand the family business into new markets.

They are liars, thieves, cheats, and rip-off artists. Don't be surprised if John McCain chooses Haley Barbour as his running mate.

Dr.Jay1966 wrote of Lind's suggestion that Perot, Dobbs, and Huckabee were populists taken care of by the corporate plutocrats: "Perot, who was about as much a plutocrat as anyone who ever tried to buy his way to the White House with his own billions? Dobbs the corporate bigot? Huckabee whose tax plan would have, while helping the poor, been a bigger bonanza for the rich than W's tax cuts? If those are populists, I'll stick with the "affluent progressives."

I'd have to agree. Perot based much of his campaign on bashing Mexico, and Dobbs certainly meets the test that logic need not govern a series of ad hoc appeals to the sentiments of "the common man." Dobbs's one register of speech is mocking japish outrage at anything done by a politician, which does not require him to take any coherent position for which he might be accountable. Whatever faint strain of populism we have in the media culture mainly rails against this or that in a faux populist appeal to inchoate resentment, with very little affirmative program, either phony or sensible, to do good things (whatever they are). I suppose Huckabee came the closest to doing something else--he did have a proposal, but presumably, in contrast, Bryan's silver proposal could have been implemented, with the desired effects on farmer's debt. Sounds as though Huckabee's proposal would not work at all to address anything he was purporting to do with it. Nonetheless, only Huckabee, among these three, tried to avoid demonizing immigrants or other countries. It seems to be Lind needs to work harder on analyzing what true progressivism would have to say about immigration and trade. Economists at the highest conceptual level generally conclude that there is no moral basis for restricting the free movement of people across borders. It seems to me that economics does have a moral principle, which is free exchange among the peoples of the earth as the soundest basis for human welfare. There is nothing moral about a calculation about the best interests of one economic segment of one country, even if it is American labor. The key question facing politics is how to blend progressivism--to include a social safety net--and the free movement of peoples across the earth given to them by the Creator of the Universe (whoever that might be).

As a son of the South, I can say without reservation, Michael Lind has captured the dark side of Southern history succinctly and brilliantly. Equating that old feudal South with the Republican vision of America is also dead on. Republicans are working hard to put America's middle class all back on the proverbial plantation.

The dictatorial powers the Federal Government has amassed under this and previous administrations without resistance puts our democracy in great jeopardy. From the machine guns in Elian Gonzales' bedroom, to Waco, to the warrantless wire taps, to rendition and torture, I am remembering a kind of government we have only recently escaped in the South. I know what is coming if we do not stand up to it.

Thank you for a brilliant encapsulation of the dangerous future we all face if we do not reclaim our civil liberties and restore economic parity in our country. To have a minimum wage that soon will yield no more than a tank of gas for a forty hour week is disgraceful. It is the beginning of a new slave class, populated by blacks, Hispanics and working class whites. Look at your children. Their future is slavery to the global corporate "Plantation Owners" if we do not stand up to these monsters now.