Free Republic

As I drove down 5th street yesterday, I spied a bumper sticker that addresses an issue I have been waiting for an excuse to write about. It was in the back window of a pickup truck, whose ability to operate I found simply amazing, strategically situated between an empty gun rack and another sticker depicting Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) urinating on "Osama" with a devilish grin on his face. I will leave the "Osama" reference and defamation of an innocent newspaper comic strip character alone for the purposes of this article, and will concentrate on the content of...

Drive north on 17th Street, look left and up, and there it is. Kasey Montgomery hung a Confederate flag in his dorm room window at UNL to honor his Southern heritage but created controversy in the process. Despite complaints from students and university officials asking Montgomery to take it down the flag remains. It's a three-by-five-foot cut of polyester made in Taiwan, bought in Virginia and displayed in a North Carolinan's University of Nebraska-Lincoln dorm room. It's a piece of U.S. history linking our nation's only Civil War to George Wallace standing in a schoolhouse doorway to the bumper stickers...

As a Louisiana native who is now living north of the Mason-Dixon Line, I am well aware of the concerted effort to erase Southern culture from the nation's collective consciousness. I have written numerous articles addressing this social cancer, and every time I do I inevitably hear from people who have the audacity to call me an extremist. "The Civil War is over," they say. "The South lost. Get over it!" Sure. Never mind that those of us who defend the South do so in response to the increasingly virulent attacks on our heritage. Forget that political correctness has...

Don't get me wrong. I live in the south, and I love the south. I spend my Saturday afternoons watching the Georgia Bulldogs and other southern college football teams; I enjoy true quality peaches and real grapes known as scuppernongs; I eat my fatback and grits; and the people are very nice. I simply disagree with them about politics and religion. The political beliefs of white southerners drag this country down. It has always been this way throughout American history starting with the issue of slavery. Most northern states gave up slavery as early as 1800, but for economic reasons,...

Ebaum, "My sister-in law is from Oklahoma and has a slight accent. She has cats and when she lived in the south she would take them to the groomers and have what is called a Line Cut. To her a line cut is when all of the fur hanging down below the cat's tummy is taken off (because it gets matted or snarled). When she moved to Chicago with my brother, one of the cats fur got all tangled up during the move so she took it in for a line cut. She was quite surprised when she heard the...

The following is a pre-approved posting whose purpose is to offer insight and advice to Northerners moving South. 1. Save all manner of bacon grease. You will be instructed on how to use it shortly. 2. Just because you can drive on snow and ice does not mean Southerners can. Stay home the two days of the year it snows. 3. If you do run your car into a ditch, don't panic. Four men in the cab of a four-wheel pick-up with a 12-pack of beer and a tow chain will be along shortly. Don't try to help them. Just...

If you are from the northern states and planning on visiting or moving to the South, there are a few things you should know that will help you adapt to the difference in lifestyles: If you run your car into a ditch, don't panic. Four men in a four-wheel drive pickup truck with a tow chain will be along shortly. Don't try to help them; just stay out of their way. This is what they live for. Don't be surprised to find movie rentals and bait in the same store. Don't buy food at this store. Remember, "y'all" is singular,...

You know you're from Oklahoma if: 1. You can properly pronounce Eufaula, Gotebo, Okemah, and Chickasha. 2. You think that people who complain about the wind in their states are sissies. 3. A tornado warning siren is your signal to go out in the yard and look for a funnel. 4 Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor on the highway. 5. You've ever had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day. 6. You know that the true value of a parking space is not determined by the distance to...