I read your comment yesterday, started to comment, then refrained myself because I wanted to think more on it.
As a born and bred Westerner I love the West, I love the land, I love the customs that have evolved from settling and living in this raw country.
Yes, there are people that live in the West, that want to strip everything from her to make their fortunes. They are not true Westerners though. The Westerners that I know, that I have grown up with, worked with, and lived side by side with are not those people. The Westerners I know love the sage brush prairies, the deserts, the mountains, and canyons and rivers. They feel privileged to ranch and farm, or own a whitewater rafting business in some of the most majestic country on the planet. If I may quote an old Southern saying: Just because the cat had kittens in the oven, don't make 'em biscuits. You have to realize though, the West has had it's own invasion of carpet baggers to contend with, coming out of what I call, the "eastern" west, California, WA, and Oregon. Places filled with people who hold not one true Western value although, geographically as far west in the country as they can be. I am convinced they all have true Commie hearts, through and through and if the ocean were to take them all, it would be awesome.
Yes, I will admit that Westerners are open to new people. It is part of the Western Code (yes, it is still alive, no matter who makes fun of it) that you don't judge a man by his past, but by his actions today. How do you think thousands and thousands of Confederates were able to pour into this country and build lives for themselves after the war. The West was a place for second chances, new beginnings and a place, for the most part, free of interfering Yankee feds. The wonderful part is that all those Confederates brought all their best customs and traditions with them.
The West is big place. People had to help each other just to stay alive. Part of the Code is you minded your own business, but you ALWAYS are neighborly, someone's life might depend on it. You might think that isn't so nowadays, and maybe in the cities it doesn't apply so much, but in the rural West it still does.
My only credentials for my opinion are that of someone born in the Southwest and raised in Nevada and Wyoming, and who has lived in nine Western states. My people all arrived to the West from the South, where the best part of them had settled after leaving Ireland and Scotland.
I am a Westerner with Southern roots that run deep and I am not alone.
Miss Violet
Well, that's a misunderstanding of Oregonians at least. Geographically, 90% of Oregon holds the same values you do. Most of Oregon is desert in fact, and wide open spaces.
ReplyDeleteTwo cities in Oregon determine what the rest of the state does - Portland and Eugene. They're also two big population centers. The suburbs surrounding are much less liberal. Portland has a large population of homeless, drug addicts and trust-fund liberal kids from back east and elsewhere. And now my state is being overrun with refugees from California who ruined their state and are starting to ruin mine.
Oregon has voted for democrat governors for 30 years or more, but up until recently they were more conservative democrats. The past 5-10 years have seen a change and Californians and others from out of state moved in and pushed for gun control and more environmental laws, etc. Oh, and the big push for legalized marijuana.
It's unfortunate the usual suspects with bad ideas, now that they've ruined their own states are spreading their disease elsewhere and ruining others' home states.
They are everywhere unfortunately.
DeleteYes, I will agree with you that there are Oregonians that don't hold liberal values. I have had pleasant conversations with Oregonians when I have been in the state. Unfortunately, Oregon is in the same boat as WA state and Nevada. That is, that a small geographic area that has a high concentration of liberals, run the state. Eastern WA and Oregon are basically rural and conservative, but all the power is on the coast with the libs. Neither state has the luxury of having a mechanism like the electoral college to give the people with conservative views any power. Nevada is in the same boat, all the power is in Las Vegas where all the out of state people come to work the casinos. Reno is overrun with people leaving Oakland. Harry Reid is from the Liberal Las Vegas area. So basically whatever your state's libs decide to implement as policy gets shoved down your throat and there is nothing you can do about it. There is no way to fight it, as your liberal majority goes, so goes your state. They aren't going to let you secede from the lib part of the state, no way will they let that source of revenue go, gee, that sounds familiar, doesn't it?
DeleteI don't know what the answer is, I don't even know if there is an answer.
Neither state has the luxury of having a mechanism like the electoral college to give the people with conservative views any power.
Delete& I imagine you could not get it changed with the current power brokers.
Excellent comment Miss V.
ReplyDeleteDitto.
DeleteThat's a nice post, but if the West welcomes in new people who are, say, Communist, then Communism becomes the Way of the West.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like a sort of Suicide of the West, then.
My interest has always been in a Southern Southern way, an attempt at actual preservation of some remnant of the Southern people, as Southerners.
But it frequently seems impossible to argue for such, because Southerners and others end up declaring how it's their Way to cease to exist. They welcome in new people, identify with whomever happens to reside in their state, intermarry with the newcomers, and in all ways are thus fading away.
I'm descended, like many others, from original colonists. And I'd rather liked the idea of existing as opposed to not existing.
Anyway, with regard to current US policy, today I rather like trade protections. They not only thwart globalism, but they allow market wages to rise higher in the US, thus thwarting pressures for government intervention. As Ron Unz noted, it's better to have higher wages than higher government social service expenditure. And since everyone can vote, the poor are going to vote for one or the other.
it's better to have higher wages than higher government social service expenditure.
DeleteOf course the problem will be automation which is already happening in regards $15 an hour.
I don't necessarily disagree with anything you have stated. I was merely trying to convey the idea that the West is more than you described and the people here that hold Western values are more cohesive than you might believe. I think that a lot of that comes from the Southern values that the Confederates that settled here brought with them.
DeleteI might add that while Westerners are welcoming, they can also be quite severe with people who, shall we say, choose not to be honorable in their dealings. I can assure you Sir, a good many Westerners know exactly why cottonwood trees exist.
Each of us being loyal to our regions take nothing from each other, what we have in common only strengthens both.
know exactly why cottonwood trees exist.
Delete:)
My interest in politics, originally I guess when I was young, was I wanted to "save the South", do more than even R E Lee had. But I didn't want to take respectable actions as we inevitably went down with the ship. I actually wanted to win, which is a very different thing.
ReplyDeleteI wish there were a movement though that also focused on results and winning, not on trying to convert new comers to the South to a part of the South's past political ideology.
Any policy that serves the South is good. It doesn't matter to me whether Southerners in the past also supported such a policy. What's good for the South is then good. That's just a very different way, an antithetical view, than the thinking at this blog here.
Winning, by which I mean survival, is a good thing. If the past classical liberalism doesn't bring victory, then it should be abandoned in favour of a new Way that does bring victory.
Any policy that serves the South is good. It doesn't matter to me whether Southerners in the past also supported such a policy. What's good for the South is then good.
DeleteAgreed.
This has been an interesting topic to consider and I have enjoyed the conversation.
ReplyDeleteTwo things keep coming to mind that I can not seem to move past.
The first, if you live somewhere where a small area has a high density liberal stronghold and because of that high population advantage those liberals make all the policy for your state, all the conservatives are made irrelevant. Not only are they irrelevant, there is NOTHING they can do about it and consequentially, their area/state is for all intents and purposes part of the liberal horde. I don't say this to upset anyone, it is just the reality.
The second observation is this. There is no way to keep people who don't hold your area's customs and culture, from moving to your area. Our country allows free movement throughout the country. The only way it could be effectively done is to shoot them as they rush the border. :-) We know that isn't allowed because if it was, poor Florida wouldn't be full of retired Yankees and Idaho wouldn't be fending off Californians trying to bully us into abandoning our firearms.
Let's face it, if there was a foolproof strategy to keep outsiders out, the South would have implemented it a long time ago. :-)
Until such a thing is discovered, I say love your family, grow tomatoes, and depending on the time of day, drink tea or whiskey. :-)
You're just knocking them dead! https://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2017/01/comment-by-miss-v-on-miss-violet-on.html
DeleteHa, you're funny Brock. I have cabin fever. I'm on a mountain that has had six plus feet of snow, I want to garden and dig in the dirt, and I'm on week four of recuperating from the flu, and my dang grill is buried under snow. But life is good, I'm just getting owley with winter, lol.
ReplyDeleteI'm on week four of recuperating from the flu,
DeleteWhoa! I've had it twice, but nothing like you. Sorry.