Tiptoeing and stalking and monolithic Dixie

"Now continue your stalking (which you admit doing on your blog)." ~Brooks Simpson, to Moi

I have a mission for my readers, complete with a reward. Find where I have admitted stalking on my blog, which Mr. Simpson charges. The stalking kitten post from August 23 does not count, because it was made 7 hours and 40 minutes after his claim.

If you can find where I "admit stalking" on 180DTS, you're a winner! You have your choice of reward: this nifty Lincoln-MLK T-shirt iron-on transfer, or a PDF copy of my novel, Southern Man.

Just email proof (a copy-paste from my blog and link to the page will be sufficient) to 180dts@cox.net. Yours truly will announce the winner if and when there is one. I am the sole decision-maker in that regard -- Hey! It's my blog and my idea. If you don't like it, don't play.

Since I've brought up one Brooks Simpson quote, how about another? And it's a doozy, folks:

"Over the last few weeks I’ve raised questions about various assertions I encounter as I tiptoe through the internet to sample historical understandings about the American Civil War."~Brooks Simpson.

This claim is yet another fascinating look into the academic mindset. When they troll our blogs, groups and sites looking for fodder to ridicule or mischaracterize on their blogs, it's "tiptoeing through the internet..." When we visit their blogs and post on their comment threads, we are fringe elements and cockroaches out stalking....

Perfesser Simpson is all het up about the link on my blog to the League of the South. He posted something, a speech or something, by Dr. Michael Hill and then made claims about it; I haven't read or listened to Dr. Hill's speech, so I don't know if or how badly Simpson is mischaracterizing it, but I do know, from observation roughly a decade old, that the League's writing sometimes gets mischaracterized and outright lied about.

I might assuage the perfesser's curiosity about myself and the League -- or I might not. But not until I'm good and ready to. Meanwhile, all this brings to my mind an anti-Southern liberal Mississippian I used to encounter on a discussion group way back in the very early 2000s -- I'll call him Mississippi Guy -- and how he breathtakingly mischaracterized a League quote. He so completely distorted it, even Brooks Simpson would be able to see the distortion. Here's the League quote:

"The League of the South champions without apology the traditional core Southern culture that has defined the national character of Dixie for generations. That dominant culture was historically handed down to us by the Anglo-Celtic peoples of the British Isles who settled the South and formed its original political community. Over the centuries, our culture has been enriched in subtle ways by the influences of other non-dominant, cultural groups, particularly by black Southerners and the French-speaking Cajuns of Louisiana, but at its essence, the South has always remained a predominantly Anglo-Celtic civilisation." From: "Southern Cultural Defense -- A League of the South Approach"

Mississippi Guy said, among other things, that he appreciated the contributions our "venerable Scottish ancestors" made to the South, but he could not support the League's view that the immigrants who settled the South were monolithically Anglo-Celtic (i.e., white) and he could not support the League's goal of a monolithically Anglo-Celtic (i.e., white) South.

You don't have to possess a degree of any kind to see what's wrong with this, do ya?

Here's my reply to Mississippi Guy from all those years ago.

Mississippi Guy's assignment for the evening -- go to Dictionary.com, look up "dominant" and "monolithic" and learn the difference. Heck, I'll even save you the trip to Dictionary.com:

dominant -- exercising the most influence or control.

monolithic --characterized by massiveness and rigidity and total uniformity.

(As an aside, I would like to point out something before you fall down and have a seizure over the subject of Anglo-Celtic cultural dominance.... Exercising the most influence or control does not mean excercising total influence or control.)

Since you like putting words (in this case, "monolithic") in people's mouths (in this case, Dr. Hill's), I think you need another lesson. I have listed below ALL occurances of the word monolithic on DixieNet. As you will see, in no case does it refer to the Anglo-Celtic culture of the South. However, to make sure you really learn your lesson, I think you need to go to DixieNet and use the on-site search engine and search the word "monolithic" yourself. Here's what you'll find:

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From "To Alter and Abolish – Secession Movements on the Move"

Diane Alden

http://www.dixienet.org/dixie-dispatches/diane-alden.htm

"Thus, big government, mega-corporations, various cultural movements, the monolithic mainstream media, corrupted educational system, and feel-good, unprincipled quasi-religions have tossed the Western cultural tradition into the ash heap."

From a Book Review of "The South Was Right"

http://www.dixienet.org/books/tswr.html

"The Kennedys' description of the contributions of Southern black Confederates to the Confederate war effort punctures the 'conventional wisdom' which holds that the Southern cause revolved solely around a monolithic Southern effort to preserve slavery.'

From "The Snakey State: Enemy of the People"

Ambrose Gonzales Elliott

http://www.dixienet.org/spatriot/vol6no4/members30.htm

"He had no trouble gauging the monolithic attitudes among American journalists and understanding their essential dishonesty."

From "A Green Mountain Independence Party"

Thomas Naylor

http://www.dixienet.org/spatriot/vol6no2/members28.htm

"Vermont needs a new political party -- a local independence party -- to challenge the two monolithic national parties and encourage Vermonters to downsize, decentralise, demilitarise, localise, and humanise their lives."

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That's it. That's all of 'em.

Mississippi Guy, please note... Just in case you missed it, the League says that the South's traditional (not monolithic) culture, handed down by Anglo-Celtic people who settled the south, has been enriched by the influences of non-dominant Southern groups, particularly (though not only) blacks and Cajuns.

So I ask again. Who is presenting a "monolithic" view of the South's settlers as Anglo-Celtic? What the League is saying (and it's plain as the nose on your face for people who aren't willingly blind to it) is that the immigrant group with the greatest number of people determined the South's core culture, and other groups added their influence. Think of it this way -- the Anglo-Celts baked the cake; other groups added the icing.

I don't think Mississippi Guy was an academic -- I think he worked in a department store -- but he had clearly learned to mis-think like one.