Absolutely correct. Having lived in SC for fourteen and a half years, I saw how the Strom Thurmonds, Jesse Helms, and the Baptists run their respective states. Not well, but with force and control.

The racial prejudice thrives and I often felt I was in a ghastly dream about pre-Civil war times. The blacks are still treated like inferior slaves. The Civil War is still being fought. By God, "The South Will Rise Again!"

I can't speak for the rest of the southern tier of states, but I imagine the prejudice thrives there as well. WHEN will we learn to live in harmony. If we can't do so in our own country, how can we expect to teach human values by example to other nations.

Please. Bury Jesse Holmes and all of his counterparts. We'd all as soon forget about him and his filthy politics.

Baruch Hashem

from Michael Lind's book, The Next American Nation," page 251,

"As Peter Viereck suggested, fascism, if it ever came to America, might take the form of transtolerant nativism, with patriots of all races and religions joining together in attacking the designated hate objects of the regime: intellectuals, homosexuals, political heretics. The racial and theological elements of the new white nativism would be played down, in favor of a transethnic and possibly transracial Americanism defined by narrow political, moral and aesthetic conformity. In the wilder nightmares of the left, secular humanists would be purged and persecuted, and women forced to bear unwanted children.

Fortunately, we are not likely to see these speculations put to the test. The United States may well experience episodes of authoritarian government in the future but these are unlikely to resemble the mobilizing, chauvinistic dictatorships of interwar Europe, all marching bands and banners. Dictatorship in the United States would most likely be demobilizing, seeking to keep people in their homes, rather than putting them on the streets in uniform. AN AMERICAN DICTATORSHIP WOULD CLOTHE ITSELF IN CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL FORMS; IT WOULD CULTIVATE AN AURA OF NON-PARTISAN TECHNOCRACY AND BUSINESS EXPERTISE, NOT A FEVERISH CULT OF THE GENIUS-LEADER AND THE MASSES. AN AMERICAN FUEHRER WOULD NOT RANT AND STRUT, BUT CRACK JOKES AND ADOPT THE RELAXED, IRONIC 'COOL' STYLE OF A TELEVISION HOST. Individuals resembling Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan are the least likely American dictators imaginable."

Remember this, Mr. Lind?

Any comment?

Wake up, our Next American Nation.

Both the (conservative) "right" and the (liberal) "left" is an illusion.

Excellent article. But why write "musician-slash-flour miller W. Lee 'Pass the Biscuits, Pappy'" when you can write "musician/flour miller" W. Lee? The word "slash" serves when we're speaking.

good analysis. thanks.

The attack on William Jennings Bryan in this article shows what is wrong. Bryan was not a spokesman for the South. He grew up in Illinois and lived in Nebraska. He was an evangelical and his constituents were in the South but in the West.

He was out of touch both with the developing industrial and commerical capitalism and the liberal Protestantism both dominated by the Northeast, but he was not spokesman for the South, disney or otherwise.

> Wings, for example, might have developed on feathered dinosaurs for purposes of sexual display before they were used for flight.

Does the suggestion that wings developed for a purpose implicate something akin to intelligent design?

Jesse Helms and people like him give conservatives a bad name. I am a conservative who has been forced into the liberal camp by forces beyond my control. It happened in the 80's when the 'Dixie Fascist's' took over the Republican party. It was either descend into the same bigoted hell they were in or get out. These are some of the most vile obnoxious people on the planet! They lend a whole new meaning to the word rabid! They are not conservatives they are good old fashion Fascists! There is no other way of saying it. When the American public wakes up to the fact we are living through a fascist era with this type of people and their destructive rhetoric! Something significant might actually happen to stop the slide downward.

A damningly accurate appraisal, more damning if you consider the implication of "little effective push back from progressives." Why is there so little? Because those who claim the mantle of progressivism have spent the past forty years indulging in a politics that all but denies class, alienating and attacking natural allies among blue collar workers. They valorize pathological behaviors instead of condemning them, which may be fun if you can go back home to a better neighborhood, but it's hell on those who can't. They foster a thoughtlessly elite, self-indulgent superiority, gathering to watch the latest episode of The Wire while sneering about the values of those "little people" the Republicans manages to snare with their own creepy traps.

This should be required reading for anyone who presumes to act -- politically.

Author Lind has neatly summarized the great unacknowledged fact of American life: that the South was, and in many respects still is, a Third World hacienda region. There are one or two small errors in the piece, however: e.g., Huey Long was never owned by anybody, and he was not anti-black.

No one owned by the plutocrats could have made the following quote:

“Corrupted by wealth and power, your government is like a restaurant with only one dish. They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side. But no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen”---Huey Long

You mean we have night of the living Jesse to look forward to? Will the nightmare never end?

Jesse Helms politics does live on, it just has more class and veneer today. Bottom line is things are still the same. Power, greed, money, race, and religion drive everything whether your a Democrat or Republican. Such things as immigration, polulation explosion, has increased the diversity of the situation, but it's still the same.