Dixie Rebel

  TV news lives on polls, but I don’t think they are accurate.   They show to some extent what some people are thinking, but they don’t necessarily predict the outcome of elections unless there is a substantial spread between the responses.   I would not even trust a 10% differential.   I think there are many people, like myself, who do not reaspond to poll questions, so the people polled are not representative, and many do not respond honestly.   Those who do respond may strongly favor a candidte and thus tend to respond in wsys they think will help their candidate, e.g. by saying what issues they think are important.   One big problem is that most pollsters are elite Democrats from left-leaning media or academia.   Conservatives sense this and when these leftist pollsters call, Republicans are not going to cooperate with them, because they see them as the enemy. The pollsters have contempt for the conservatives they interview and the interviewees know that.     Thus, polls tend t

  The Founding Fathers were not enthusiastic about pure democracy.   In his excellent book, The Quartet, historian Joseph Ellis describes James Madison’s views on a democracy that represented the direct choices of “the people.”     “Madison’s experience at both the state and the federal level had convinced him that “the people” was not some benevolent, harmonious collective but rather a smoldering and ever-shifting gathering of factions or interest groups committed to provincial perspectives and vulnerable to demagogues with partisan agendas. The question, then, was how to reconcile the creedal conviction about popular sovereignty with the highly combustible, inherently swoonish character of democracy. Perhaps the most succinct way to put the question was this: How could a republic bottomed on the principle of popular sovereignty be structured in such a way to manage the inevitable excesses of democracy and best serve the long-term public interest?     “Madison’s one-word answe

  I resent the fact that Democrats revile Southerners who have positive feelings for the Confederacy.   Our ancestors fought for the Confederacy. It is normal to have positive feelings about your forebears, especially when they did brave things.   My great-grandfather fought for the Confederacy at Shiloh and at Mobile Bay.   I will not condemn him for that.   For me the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of respect for Southern bravery and devotion.   The Confederate army did not fight against blacks.   They fought against other whites.   Slavery was an issue, but it was not part of the war; it was part of the politics.   White Confederates did not kill blacks unless they were on the battlefield as troops of the Yankee army.   Lincoln made a point of creating black military units, because there were none when the Civil War started.   By and large the white veterans of the Confederate and Union armies reconciled after the war.   Blacks took no great interest in the Civil War battle

It appears from the various bills and campaigns that the Democrats are pushing that their goal is to bring millions of Central American immigrants to the US and have them vote for Democrats.  The Democratic effort to bring more immigrants into the US has been going on for years. It is likely that the Democratic drive to bring Latino immigrants into the US was one of the main reasons that Donald Trump was elected President.   His first campaign speech, when he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower, was about immigration.   Trump is white trash and he knows how white trash thinks.   He knows the Democrats despise white trash and believe that destroying its political power is their road to political victory.   That’s one reason they applaud and encourage the destruction of Confederate statues.   Not all Southerners are white trash, but Democrats think they are.   By vilifying white trash and stuffing the country with immigrant blacks and Hispanics, the Democrats elected Donald Trump.

  Two recent articles on the Foreign Affairs website deal with the question of what Putin plans to do about Ukraine.   Will he invade or not? ·        Russia Won’t Let Ukraine Go Without a Fight ·        Ukraine in the Crosshairs I think the first ignores the history of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, while the second tends to downplay the importance of the history.   The second article refers to an essay by Putin on the history of the relationship, calling it “revanchist drivel.”   There are several matters that may be prompting Putin to threaten to invade Ukraine.   ·        Putin see Ukraine as a historical part of Russia and does not want to see it move further toward the West. He may try to keep it physically under Russian control.     ·        Lukashenko, the Putin-supported president of Belarus is being challenged by a popular movement in Belarus. Putin may fear losing his proxy in Belarus as he did in Ukraine.   ·        Putin’s popularity and suppor

 Fulbright This post of an excerpt by the Abbeville Institute from William Fulbright’s book The Arrogance of Power reminds us that not all Southerners are idiots as the New York Times and Washington Post would have us believe.  The people who got us into Afghanistan and Iraq would have done well to read Fulbright’s book.  Fulbright wrote: The attitude above all others which I feel sure is no longer valid is the arrogance of power, the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission. The dilemmas involved are preeminently American dilemmas, not because America has weaknesses that others do not have but because America is powerful as no nation has ever been before and the discrepancy between its power and the power of others appears to be increasing…. We are now engaged in a war to “defend freedom” in South Vietnam. Unlike the Republic of Korea, South Vietnam has an army which [is] without notable success and a weak, dic