] That seems to be a theme here: the South takes Northern
] ideas and blows them up into gigantic proportions
] undreamt of by the Yankee originators.

Are Southerners trying to become old-fashioned Northerners?

] Are Southerners mainly people who are trying very hard to
] be old-fashioned Northerners?
]
] The phenomenon seems to go back a long, long way, and it
] may have something to do with how the South got to be the
] Bible Belt. Two centuries ago, when New England was the
] Bible Belt, the South had a reputation as an unchurched
] wilderness populated by godless heathens. Knoxville, in
] particular. In 1810, when it was capital of Tennessee,
] Knoxville was described with horror (by a
] Pennsylvania-churched minister) as the only capital city
] in the world without a single chapel of any denomination.
] But later, in that respect, the South became more
] Northern than the North.
]
] A related native of the North was prohibition. The
] American temperance movement started in Massachusetts in
] the 1820s. The idea gained some advocates in Tennessee,
] but they weren't successful in a big way until after
] Illinois reformer Frances Willard conducted her more than
] one crusade in Knoxville. She sometimes made the South
] seem as if it was behind the times because unlike
] some progressive Northern communities, we didn't yet have
] prohibition.

A very interesting observation on the collective psychology of the South.

] There may well be some sort of subversive cultural
] exchange program going on here. The North is pretending
] it's Southern, as the South completes its metamorphosis
] into a wacky funhouse version of the Old North. But you
] have to wonder whether we're getting the best of the
] bargain.

Being Jersey Yankee who lived in Tennessee, and now resides in San Francisco, this article amused the hell out of me.

] He believed car salesmen were part of a conspiracy to
] enslave the Southerner to Yankee interests: auto
] manufacturers, loaning institutions, and oil companies.

very interesting article... i'm sure there is more balance than he gives light to, but nonetheless, it's an intriguing line of thought...