A capital letter makes all the difference. When you say Southerners, you are being specific. When you say southerners, you are speaking of anybody from the southern parts of the United States.
Puerto Rico is the southernmost large area of the United States. Puerto Ricans are southerners, but they are not Southerners.
Hawaii is south of the Rio Grande. Hawaiians are southerners. They are not Southerners.
Most people think that San Francisco is in northern California. Actually it is about the middle of the California coast. San Francisco is also south of the northern border of the Old Confederacy. So over eighty percent of the population of California is made up of southerners.
The South is something else again. When you capitalize it, you mean the Old Confederacy, et al.
If you say “the south” you are not just being insulting, you are being wrong.
I wrote this to William Buckley a couple of years back, and he actually put it in his “Notes and Asides” in National Review. And he agreed with me! If you say southerners when you mean Southerners, you are simply using bad English.
But the present editors of National Review hate the white race and they hate the South as only a conservative who is desperately trying to be respectable can hate the white race and the South. They always make it southerners and the south for a very specific reason: they mean it to be an insult.
But it isn’t just insulting; it is bad English.
What is particularly ironic is that California liberals and respectable conservatives militantly put the south in the lower case. They are making THEMSELVES southerners, which is the last thing on earth they mean to do.
#1 by Bedford on 10/25/2004 - 7:17 pm
Are we Southrons, Bob? I see Pat Buchanan endorsed Bush. Does Bob read H. Millard? My incredible computer (my brain) read an item today about a 17th century warship that was built in Sweeden and was supposed to be the best in the world – it was launched and the sails were unfurled and it tipped over and drowned about 50 of the crew. So much for invincible “Northrons” 🙂
#2 by Peter on 10/25/2004 - 11:55 pm
What about the Arizona and New Mexico, which seceded with the CSA? Are they Southern or southern?
And if they are, what about them of Southern California who sent legally and publicly raised troops to the Cause?
#3 by Joe R. on 10/26/2004 - 2:58 am
Pre-1965 California had a lot of similarities with the South actually. This was before the demographic and political changing of the guard. It was much less crowded and there was a lot of White farming communities before big corporate agribusiness really took over. There was even a significant percentage of the population which was descended from Mid-Westerners and Southerners from earlier in the century. I can even recall visiting cousins in the early 1970’s in the East Bay of the Bay Area, and the Confederate flag was actually popular. I’m not joking. It wasn’t “our flag” but it was fairly popular before political correctness really kicked in shortly thereafter. I’m not certain why, but maybe it was the heritage of the some the people, or maybe what it represented. I don’t want to waste time going into the specifics of our decline because that would merely rehash a lot of what we all already know. Naturally I wish the rest of the country knew more about what we were like before we were force-fed a social revolution by endless waves of Liberal “Northerners.” We were very good people and citizens, healthy, creative, hard working, religious, patriotic, proud of our state, and who very strongly shunned all of the things that are so common here today.
#4 by Bob Whitaker on 10/26/2004 - 1:43 pm
Joe R. that’s why I said the Old Confederacy et al.
National Review KEPT saying Tennessee was a border state, but they stopped that after they published two letters from me asking whatthehell. Buckley’s sister answered me personally on that.
The group that runs National Review now REALLY hates the South, but that statement has not been made since.
Even Senator Baker of Tennessee, turncoat of turncoats, referred to “Our blessed South.”
In a cover article for the Southern Partisan years ago I discussed “Southern Nationalism.” I pointed out that the South IS a nation. It is not a political unit. When Ireland was politically an integral part of Great Britain it still a antion. Whe Poland was repeatedly split up in partitions by Prussia, Austria, and Russia, Poland was still a a nation.
Less than a year ago the Prime Minister of the Holy Land Jehovists worship said that Hitler “killed six million people of our nation.” Israel did not exist when Hitler was alive, but everybody understand exactly what he meant.
Contrary to what the Jehovists say, white gentiles like the Irish and Poles and Southerners are human, and they have nations too.
A nation exists in the mind, not on a map.
People like you are part of our nation even if they’ve never seen the South.