Southern values revived. How a brutal strain of conservative American aristocrats have come to rule

[hue]

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/01/southern_values_revived/

How a brutal strain of conservative American aristocrats have come to rule America.

It’s been said that the rich are different than you and me. What most Americans don’t know is that they’re also quite different from each other, and that which faction is currently running the show ultimately makes a vast difference in the kind of country we are.
Right now, a lot of our problems stem directly from the fact that the wrong sort has finally gotten the upper hand; a particularly brutal and anti-democratic strain of American aristocrat that the other elites have mostly managed to keep away from the levers of power since the Revolution. Worse: this bunch has set a very ugly tone that’s corrupted how people with power and money behave in every corner of our culture. Here’s what happened, and how it happened, and what it means for America now.

North versus South: Two Definitions of Liberty

Michael Lind first called out the existence of this conflict in his 2006 book, Made In Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics. He argued that much of American history has been characterized by a struggle between two historical factions among the American elite — and that the election of George W. Bush was a definitive sign that the wrong side was winning....

[patrice]

1. From the time of the Constitutional Convention when a main, and un-resolved, issue was slavery,

which was dealt with by assigning 3/5-of-a-man value to slaves as property to landed slave owners to enfranchise the slave owners for the constitutional debate, to 2008, when it was no accident that a SECESSIONIST ran on the Republican Presidential ticket and continues to pimp Wars 'r' Us as the only jobs that the 1% ever provided anyone for all of their taxes that we have been paying for them, this country has been and still is held hostage by the lowest common-denominator amongst us and their slave-holdings have extended beyond color to include entire middle and lower economic classes.