Secession, Or Patriotism?

If you're Sean Hannity talking about Texas, you want both secession and national patriotism, and all done very loudly too, of course, despite the starkest of stark contradictions between the two concepts.

But there is little new here. If I recall correctly, Wilbur J. Cash, in his path-breaking 1940 book, "The Mind Of The South", carefully explained how, after the War Between The States, the former secessionists paradoxically and quickly transformed themselves into flag-waving ultra-American nationalists. Never again would they be caught on the wrong side of history. They would be more American than anyone ever could be! Take that, you yellow-bellied Yankees!

Other historians have explored how Midwestern politicians like William Jennings Bryan and Southerners like Josephus Daniels tried their unsuccessful best to oppose these ultras, and their Yankee compatriots, on hare-brained schemes like the conquest of Hawaii, Cuba, and the Philippines.

But time moved on, as time always does. The hell-raising Midwestern agrarians were swept away by agri-business (e.g., Thomas Frank's "What's The Matter With Kansas?"), and the Southerners who best-remembered the legacy of the War Between The States came to rest in tombs under the magnolias.

These days, the line between North and South (or as we say these days, between Blue States and Red States) is as stark as it has been since the 1920's, or indeed, since the days when General Sherman burned Atlanta. The modern South and the modern Midwest, away from the ports and sharing a common history of farm mechanization, farm depopulation, urbanization, and suburbanization, and home to common fundamentalist faiths, now have too much in common.

So, if today, Sean Hannity speaks differently out of each side of his mouth at the same instant, there is ample historical precedent. It's an old story, 140 years old, made new again every day, on FOX News.