Greetings, again, Ed. I've stated several times that your argument about aspects of the south relative to other regions of the country is not what this discussion with koan has been about. It's different.
To retreat back to those long ago days, I simply responded to the flat out assertion that the south was anti-intellectual to point out that that blanket assertion is an over generalization.
As is the pattern on SI, conversations that start with one topic morph into other topics, which is fair, but it needs to be noted that the topics change with the morphing.
Then, to your point, not the original point, about the south relative to other parts of the country, it would depend on several items:
- What you mean by the south. Deep south, Florida, North Caroline, Virginia, and so on?
- If you did regional comparisons, it might well be that it's not so much regional cultures (whatever that might be) but demographic differences (more of one category in a region than another). So it would be important to compare those categories across regional comparisons. Are, for instance, are the senators from Mississippi and/or Alabama any more anti-intellectual than the current crop from Wyoming or Utah? Certainly both sets are extremely conservative. Is that to be equated with anti-intellectual?
Oh, well, I planned to make a much longer list but you can see the point and it's a bit of overkill to keep going.
One more point. You seem to think I'm defending the south, either deep or not-so deep. I'm not, just trying to keep the over-generalizations to a minimum. |
