It was just 157 years ago. Sherman was on a roll. His troops obliterated the South. The Yankees blasted and pounded the plantations, towns and cities. They pillaged helpless households, poor and rich alike. They burned them to the ground. In the vaunted march to the sea, a scorched earth strategy basically expunged any semblance of Southern culture and infrastructure. The smoke and the stench of death lingered to greet the crush of Carpetbaggers, many of whom, vulture-like, came to feed off the Southern carcass. They moved to the South to exploit and profit from the region’s misfortunes. Easy enough. Purchase or lease plantations. Or “partner” with planters crippled by war. According to History.Com Editors, “In addition to economic motives, a good number of Carpetbaggers saw themselves as reformers and wanted to shape the postwar South in the image of the North, which they considered to be a more advanced society.” There you have it — the attitude, the prejudice, the superiority — that exists to this very day. The communication and entertainment industries routinely denigrate, if not ridicule, the South, not only as it was, but as it is. You won’t bother offering examples of this deprecation. Anyone who doesn’t “get it” must be wandering about in left field. The South and Southerners are inferior, always have been, innately defective in one way or another. The people are unschooled, lowbrow, intolerant, irrationally devoted to their Bibles and guns. But, as backward as Dixie may be, new Carpetbaggers by the thousands have cashed in their Yankee chips and set their sights on I-95 South. They’ve decide to abandon (more like “escape”) their “advanced blue-state societies,” famous for grotesque taxation, soaring living cost, unbridled congestion, long winters, and more than their share of civic corruption. Like their forebears, Yankees have decided to export their exceptional, civilized qualities to redeem the substandard South. One of these qualities is political acuity. In North Carolina, they have managed, bit by bit, to paint the landscape purple — a color closely resembling the places they fled. You don’t blame them, not for a minute, for relocating to a more relaxed, convivial, snug and even healthy latitude. But you do blame them for neglecting the obvious — that Southern lifestyle has a deeper meaning than a 6 PM weather report. And you do blame them for clinging to the blue state politics that embrace a Woke-driven ideology. Don’t get testy. Everyone knows — not all Yankees cozy up to Benedict Biden. Or to Socialism, or to open borders, BLM, CRT or vaccine mandates. Not all. But, look Matilda, don’t think those patriotic Democrats vote the way they do after carefully studying history — after analyzing what policies make America a better country. They vote Democrat because they grew up voting Democrat, because they invested themselves in voting Democrat, because they can’t admit they’ve been bamboozled — repeatedly. Their infirmity is habitual prejudice — a psychological addiction as virulent as any drug. The story isn’t new. History.Com Editors say that during the Reconstruction Period, southern state governments were “represented by a coalition of African Americans, recently arrived Northern Whites (carpetbaggers) and Southern Whites” called “Scalawags.” These native Southerners were detested even more than Carpetbaggers, “as they were viewed as traitors to the South.” The story isn’t new but player affiliations have changed. In 1865, African Americans were Republican. Lyndon Johnson sure blew a hole in that loyalty. Carpetbagger and Scalawag Republicans eventually became lefties. The story isn’t new but the numbers have changed. North Carolina has the ninth largest population in America, soon to rank eighth. Every single year, the State adds 100,000 new residents and has for the past decade. Thanks primarily to Northeast immigration, the demographics tilt Left. But you mustn’t shrink from the color purple. Instead, have faith that good people, Yanks and Rebs, left, right and in the political middle, will look Washington D.C. insanity square in the face, and cast it aside as so much detritus. America doesn’t need a new story. It was written in 1776. It lacks only the reading.

Ed. Note: Shout out to many Yanks who make The South a better place.

www.conventionofstates.com